ectoglow wrote:

Unfortunately I seriously doubt she will find them below 34,000 ¥, if at all. Any suggestions on where to roam specifically to find VB games out there (specifically the big four)?

“The Big Four”; Is that a term people use? Can we start using it? Its fairly intuitive as far as its meaning in the context of the VB.

Going to Japan and hitting up shops there probably is the best way to find games for the cheapest. If she does happen to get you good deals on any of the big 4 games, you will have to brag to us. 🙂

Multiple Virtual Boy enthusiasts in the past have used “The Big Four” term to refer to those games, so yes, it has already been in use for a long time and likely will be for many years to come, unless another VB game becomes exceedingly rare, and then there will have to be the big 5 or more.

ectoglow wrote:

Right now I need three of the Big four, But I need them for under $350 each: Gundam, Bowling (JP), and Lab.

This might be your best chance to get Virtual Lab for close to $350.00.

http://page16.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/u46969800

I think your best bet for finding any of those 3 games for that low of a price is to check Yahoo Auctions Japan on a regular basis for a long time and hope that an auction appears with a low starting bid and that not too many people will notice.

Well, today the chat function seems to be working in Firefox. I wonder how much longer that will last.

I might as well mention a problem while we’re at it.

Mine deals with the PVB chatting system. My chatting function does not work at all anymore on my home computer. People can see that I am on and send me chats, but I see absolutely nothing in the upper right corner of the screen and, thus, cannot send or receive chats. It is only when I then use my work computer that I find the chats that I missed.

Anyone have the same problem and/or know what might be causing it? I’ve tried using the site on my home computer with Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Fire Fox, and the chat function didn’t work with any of them.

jrronimo wrote:
I’m confident that there are a few more protos out there that we’ll never see… but I do believe they’re out there.

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MineStorm wrote:
Chris is tied up with exams for the next 3 months. So, I will be both making and distributing them now.

If you want one, you need to send me a donor cart. This will guarantee you get a cart (a sort of pre-order).

I will be making these on a one-by-one basis, so be prepared to wait at least 2 weeks from the donor cart getting to me and your FlashBoy+ being dispatched.

The package will consist of the cart and USB cable (no box) the new price of $100 (+shipping) reflects this.

Anyway, if you are interested, please Email me at –

richard.hutchinson@dsl.pipex.com

Thankyou

Just so you know, Richard, I get requests from people on a fairly regular basis about FlashBoy+ carts (somehow, they seem to find me easier than they find you), and I keep referring them to this old post of yours and telling them that the price that you have listed for them probably has not changed. I will continue to do this unless I hear otherwise from you.

I speak on behalf of the Virtual Boy community, which I’m sure fully agrees with me, when I say that you are awesome for continuing to spend all of the time and energy in making these carts.

keneda wrote:

…

A company like Nintendo, don’t request a return of their proto’s? I hope not.

…

Well, in the case of Nintendo Power, Nintendo Power had such a close relationship with Nintendo that if something was stored at the Nintendo Power office, it was as good as being stored at Nintendo’s office, I believe. Plus, the prototype carts were rather cheap things to Nintendo, so there would have been no financial reason for Nintendo to demand them back.

But the reason why I gave my previous information about Dragon Hopper is because I am highly confident that Nintendo Power kept original EPROM carts of Virtual Boy games that they received in 1995 in their office until the office closed in 2007, and the reason why is because I am highly confident that I have two of those EPROM carts in my possession, as I described here:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=21144#forumpost21144

So my reasoning is: if those two EPROM carts were kept at Nintendo Power’s office until 2007 and then simply let go, why wouldn’t other Virtual Boy EPROM carts, such as ones containing Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers, have been there as well and been let go as well? If that is the case, then the collector from whom I received my carts probably wasn’t so lucky as to receive the other ones, since I am highly confident that the collector from whom I received my two carts has never had Dragon Hopper or Zero Racers in his possession at any time, but I guess he will probably always remain on my suspect list, to be honest.

Dreammary wrote:
That’s so cool, I wish I could get one but alas I can not.

I’m a little confused. Did you get rid of the FlashBoy+ that you have listed in your collection? If not, you can also play this game by loading the released ROM to your FlashBoy+.

I don’t know. I think it could go either way with such a rare item in fantastic condition. There was a copy of a “brand new” Virtual Bowling sitting on Yahoo Auctions Japan for the longest time at $2,500.00. I thought it would never be purchased by anyone, and yet it is now gone. I don’t know how to look it up to see if it was sold or not, but I guess I can assume that it sold, and there is likely no way that this current one on Ebay is the same one that was on Yahoo Auctions Japan recently, but they both are in fantastic condition. If that is the case, then I think the one on Yahoo Auctions Japan would have sold under the notion that if you get just one serious collector looking at your item long enough and often enough and thinking more and more that he will never find another copy in better condition, he will eventually push his “highest offer” up to the seller’s asking amount if it is still within the realm of reasonableness for the collector. A one-week long auction might not be enough time for a serious collector like that to push up his maximum payment amount so high.

In any case, I think it is awesome that the seller is willing to part with this one for possibly a comparatively low price. I hope that somebody gets a nice deal on it.

By the way, if the seller cancels the auction early, I was under the impression that he only gets “one freebie” a year or something under eBay’s new policies. Thus, if he cancels this auction early, he will have to pay the typical selling fees on the “potential selling price,” which would be the highest bid that was placed before the auction closed. Am I right about this?

Dude… even though it is Virtual Bowling and, thus, is likely to be bid up to the max, it is still very risky to start the auction at $0.99 with no reserve:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Virtual-Bowling-for-Virtual-Boy-Mint-Complete-w-Box-Manual-Rare-Sealed-Japan-/390589285944?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item5af0ef8638

Well, concerning Dragon Hopper, I speculate that Nintendo Power kept the Dragon Hopper prototype cartridge, which they used when writing the Dragon Hopper preview that appears in Nintendo Power Issue 86, in their office the whole time until the office closed in 2007. Then, when the office closed, that prototype cartridge probably fell into the hands of some private collector who has been keeping it top secret for all these years. Thus, I don’t think Nintendo has any control over what happens to that cartridge.

rklok wrote:

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Mawa, did you, or can you, get the serial number for this Virtual Boy unit from your friend?

Hi Ben,

I am “the friend” 🙂

Serialnumber is 10075246

Hello rklok,

Thanks for the serial number. Based on the fact that the serial number is above 75000, I must conclude that your Virtual Boy system is one of the regular Japanese retail systems and not one of the in-store demo systems intended only to be played by potential Virtual Boy customers inside of Japanese retail stores, since all of these in-store demo systems typically have serial numbers that lie in the 34000 to 38000 range.

Did you happen to receive your Virtual Boy system with one of the mosaic boxes, like the one depicted here?:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/hardware/?type=vb&sec=images&show=box&region=jpn_fe

If so, I must say that the wrong system was placed inside of that box. If not, then I guess no harm was done there.

Another thing to note is that the small black Virtual Boy stand that you have along with your regular retail system was originally intended to be used in Japanese retail stores along with the in-store demo systems that came in the mosaic boxes. Thus, I hope the seller from whom you purchased the Virtual Boy system didn’t advertise the whole package as a “complete” demo system setup, since the wrong system was matched to the stand. In any case, it is very cool to have the small black Virtual Boy stand to put one’s Virtual Boy system on.

DragonmasterDan wrote:
Wow, I just got a chance to try it. It’s WAAAAAAAY harder than the original version.

So, is it a good challenge or a frustratingly hard challenge? I was hoping to create a good challenge when I designed my mazes, without making the game near impossible. I have yet to play through Stages 2 and 4 (all of thunderstruck’s levels), so I can’t say anything about them, but I did play through and beat all of my stages, so all of the levels across Stage 1 and Stage 3, on an actual Virtual Boy system.

The thing that one learns when designing mazes is that one cannot trust the difficulty that one receives when testing out the mazes on Mednafen. The reason why is because the game runs very quickly and smoothly on Mednafen, so it is much easier to run through the levels and kill all of the enemies. On the hardware, however, the timer counts down at the same speed in real time as it does on Mednafen, but all of the action in the game runs more slowly, so it takes like twice the amount of time to do everything on hardware as it does on Mednafen. Thus, if people simply play my mazes on Mednafen, they might think that the game is pretty easy, but if they play it on hardware, that is where the true challenge is supposed to lie. Of course, it would be best that everybody play it on hardware if possible, the way it is supposed to be.

Even after having memorized all of my own mazes, I found that if I do everything as quickly as possible on the hardware, I will not have much more than 30 seconds left on the majority of my levels. For some levels, it might even be hard to have that much time left. Thus, I very well expected that most people would not be beating certain levels on their first try until after they memorized the mazes. I was hoping that this would offer good incentive, though, to keep at it and, thus, give the game good replayability.

Very nice. You’ll have to provide updated pictures of your more complete collection soon.

Da_GPer wrote:
… I did notice a few things that could use a little work though. I noticed that the screen that you use to adjust the focus and IPD as well as the background in the stage select screen still have the Japanese name showing. Other then that, I dont see anything that could use fixing at this moment…

I wouldn’t count on those being altered anytime ever.

Anyway, I think it is important for the original name “NikoChan Battle” (ニコちゃんバトル) to still appear in the game.

It is important to note that “NikoChan Battle” was a brand new title that Bullet-Proof Software came up with for this final game in the Faceball series. All of the earlier titles in the series were “Faceball” (フェイスボール) even in Japan, and when this Virtual Boy game appeared on the release forecasts in the Famitsu Magazines back in 1995, it appeared for some time on those lists as “フェイスボール” (“Faceball”), but then the time came when those at Famitsu Magazine had learned that the working title had changed to “NikoChan Battle” (ニコちゃんバトル), so it then appeared on the release forecasts as “NikoChan Battle” (ニコちゃんバトル) from then on.

There will always be the question in my mind: If “NikoChan Battle” had been officially released in North America for the Virtual Boy, would it have received a new and similar title, or would they have left it as “Faceball”? If I had to pick one, I guess I would have to say that they probably would have left it as “Faceball,” since the USA doesn’t have a history of changing the title of a game within a running series so drastically; at least, I’m not aware of that happening for any game series. Nevertheless, since no official development work ever happened on the game with the intent of it then being released in North America, I personally will always regard the official title of the game to be “NikoChan Battle” and not “Faceball.”

thatguyinjapan wrote:
Hey guys, Dude living in Japan with a BA in Japanese here. Second field reads as “Number”. My guess? perhaps this VB was a rental unit at some point? Would explain the label…

Do you happen to know if Virtual Boy systems were allowed to be rented out in Japan? There is always the disclaimer on the Japanese Virtual Boy games which reads “FOR SALE AND USE IN JAPAN ONLY AND COMMERCIAL RENTAL PROHIBITED.” I always understood that to mean that Virtual Boy systems were not allowed to be rented out in Japan as they were in the USA.

I am going to go ahead and throw out my initial conjectures on this Virtual Boy unit.

It strongly appears to me that the stickers on this unit were placed there by the retail store that received this demo system for interactive display purposes. It looks like the store first placed a generic and blank sticker on the side that is to the right in the picture and then printed out the identifying information on tape and stuck the pieces of tape to their appropriate sections on the generic sticker. The only set of numbers/letters that I am sure of is the first and top set, which represents the Hardware ID.

In the first field, the only Japanese character that is visible on the left side of the sticker is “品.” It looks like the Hardware ID that was taped to the section of the sticker to the right of this is covering over a second Japanese character. I am going to guess that the covered character is “目,” so the first upper left field should read “品目,” which means “item,” and the Hardware ID was given as the identifier for the item.

In the second field, there appears “番号.” This simply means “number.” So the question is, what is this number for? It certainly doesn’t appear to be any number associated with identifying the Virtual Boy unit itself, so I am guessing that it is a number that let the original retail store that acquired this Virtual Boy system for display purposes distinguish it from other items in the store, so perhaps it is a store inventory number.

In the third field, there appears “日” at the end of the 3 characters, but I cannot make out the other 2 characters. “日” means “day,” so I conclude that this must be a date. It looks like “95” refers to the year, “09” refers to the month, and “07” refers to the day, so this gives us the date of September 7, 1995. Since all of the known Japanese Demo units among PVB users lie within the 34000 to 38000 serial number range, it makes sense that these units would have been manufactured and sent to retail stores shortly after the release of the Virtual Boy system (probably in response to the extreme lack of sales at launch). Thus, this date is probably the day that the store received this system, but knowing the first two Japanese characters might help me determine that better.

As for the fourth field, I can’t make out either of the two Japanese characters, and I have no idea what HCDS might stand for, so I won’t even give any conjecture for that one.

Mawa, did you, or can you, get the serial number for this Virtual Boy unit from your friend?

thunderstruck wrote:
I wanted to include our level designs as well, if that’s ok for you.

Yes, that is fine with me. 🙂

DogP wrote:

Oh, and Benjamin… I’m not sure that I’d lay the blame wholly on Nintendo of Japan. Nintendo in general (America and Japan) chose to use parts from Sanyo, which is the company who actually made the defective display. I’d say Sanyo is mostly to blame because of their bad engineering.

Cool piece of info. Thanks for that. I just always blamed Nintendo of Japan since all Virtual Boy systems were manufactured in Japan.

From now on, I’ll lay the blame on Sanyo. 🙂