More missed pages from Famitsu

Attachments:

1. 

   famitsu-361-p-170-scaled.jpg
   

2. 

   famitsu-361-p-171-scaled.jpg
   

3. 

   famitsu-361-p-172-scaled.jpg
   

4. 

   famitsu-361-p-173-scaled.jpg
   

More missed pages from Famitsu

Attachments:

1. 

   famitsu-350-p-136-scaled.jpg
   

2. 

   famitsu-351-back-of-front-cover-scaled.jpg
   

3. 

   famitsu-357-p-165-scaled.jpg
   

4. 

   famitsu-359-cover-scaled.jpg
   

5. 

   famitsu-359-p-028-scaled.jpg
   

More missed pages from Famitsu

Attachments:

1. 

   famitsu-342-cover-scaled.jpg
   

2. 

   famitsu-342-p-023-scaled.jpg
   

3. 

   famitsu-343-p-075-scaled.jpg
   

4. 

   famitsu-344-p-177-scaled.jpg
   

5. 

   famitsu-349-p-153-scaled.jpg
   

Missed pages from Famitsu

Attachments:

1. 

   famitsu-321-cover-scaled.jpg
   

2. 

   famitsu-321-p-103-scaled.jpg
   

3. 

   famitsu-324-cover-scaled.jpg
   

4. 

   famitsu-324-p-164-scaled.jpg
   

5. 

   famitsu-324-p-165-scaled.jpg
   

Okay. This should be the next to last batch of Famitsu Magazine scans that I will make of all the 1995 issues, and this should fill in the pages containing any mention of the Virtual Boy, which I missed the first time I looked through them, other than the Release Schedule pages. I performed my second look through all of the magazines much more slowly and carefully than the first time through. If there still happens to be any pages in all those issues containing Virtual Boy stuff on them, other than the Release Schedule pages, which I did not locate and scan, then chances are I will never find them and that the VB info is so minor that it wouldn’t be of any interest anyway.

Of course, I still hope to make a collage of all the Virtual Boy Software data across all of the Release Schedule pages and even translate everything into English, but I have no idea when I might get to that.

As usual, the magazine issue number and page number, which pertain to a scan, are included in a file name.

Attachments:

1. 

   famitsu-318-cover-scaled.jpg
   

2. 

   famitsu-318-p-094-scaled.jpg
   

3. 

   famitsu-318-p-096-scaled.jpg
   

4. 

   famitsu-318-p-097-scaled.jpg
   

[Benjamin Stevens]

jasonbar wrote:
Is it just box & manual, or is the cartridge included?

It’s a bit unclear to me from Google’s Japanese-to-English translation:

“Box, with instruction manual, is the Virtual Boy Nintendo Virtual Lab software VIRTUAL LAB. There is no software on the NES. Unused. Behavior, such as a battery backup check is not done. Is a product of many years ago.”

-Jason

The first Japanese sentence indicates that it is an auction for the Nintendo Virtual Boy software: Virtual Lab, along with instruction manual and box. So to answer your question, the auction description indicates that the cartridge is, in fact, included. The second Japanese sentence is a bit odd, and it strongly seems to be the seller saying that the item is not Famicom (NES) software. Perhaps he is afraid that some people might confuse Virtual Boy software with NES software, so he wanted to make the point extremely clear.

• This reply was modified 13 years, 3 months ago by Benjamin Stevens.

dasi wrote:
In almost 1400 words there’s no mention of the 15 Feb 2010 email, and nothing about jojobean’s attempt to scam the owner of Faceball with faked Zero Racers source code… Whether you think we’re all deluded or lying or simply mistaken I don’t know, but your suggestion that by doing what we did we somehow “screwed up much greater things for the rest of us” is totally unfounded.

It seems that you are getting angry about certain things, because you yourself are in the dark about many things. You write of DogP, as if he was the one and only “owner” of Faceball. Read the thread again and observe some of the specific discussion that occurred between jojobean and DogP. It would not make sense that such discussion would have occurred between jojobean and DogP, if jojobean was not very well aware of another source, who had BOTH Faceball and Dragon Hopper.

You must trust me when I say with firmness: people’s actions on this forum at that time very likely caused that genuine source of Dragon Hopper never to release his version of the game ever. I cannot explain any more details concerning that source.

dasi wrote:

Ben, you’ve got the whole thing entirely wrong. I suggest that anyone who’s interested in what actually happened with jojobean and Bound High read KR155E’s summary of events.

In his 15 Feb 2010 email jojobean claimed to have…

jojobean wrote:
…a 100% fully working version of Bound High that plays flawlessly on the hardware. I have the only copy of this that I know of. It is dumped from an actual cart and not pieced together from code. So far I have spoken to nobody else who has such a thing. Just finding someone with the cart is near impossible, let alone finding someone to let you dump it.

What he was actually selling to people was a broken version of the ROM that Runnerpack had compiled for him with VUCC.

It doesn’t get any more obvious than that.

I don’t know what it is that I got wrong. I wrote “his Space Pinball and buggy Bound High were being sold and traded around, with the purpose of getting more funds for Faceball and Dragon Hopper.” There is ample proof that reveals that all of that is entirely true. I mentioned nothing at all about the other things to which you refer, which appear on the forum thread which I specifically cited and which I told everyone to read for themselves, so that each one can decide for him- or herself what all on the thread is true or false information.

HorvatM wrote:
How was it obtained? From Hideyuki Nakanishi?

“In 2008, jojobean joined the scene and somehow managed to get the source from Nakanishi”

Source:
Post #18 of “Bound High ROM – buggy, can anyone help?” thread.

bigmak wrote:
Oki…this thread is so off topic ..i have no idea what to say..tried to put it back on track..doesn’t seem to matter. Guess I’ll start another thread to talk about reproduction news 😛

Oh… right… the topic.

English Gundam and Squash would be cool.

*cough*

Heh… well, if that is the case, then it is all the more proof to show how vital of an asset jojobean was to the Virtual Boy community, since every single released game, apart from the very easy to acquire ones, can somehow trace back to him, and yet he was treated with such harshness by so many. I must say it is pretty disappointing to me.

vb-fan wrote:

If anyone reading this has one of the missing prototypes, I’m very certain we could agree to keep it quiet, and only share with a group here that agrees to not promulgate it at large. That is the spirit of “die-hard enthusiasts”.

FTR, I am very grateful for all the carts being made available; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing the homebrews, and the few prototypes we have. Seeing as how the whole world economy (especially the U.S.) will likely crash in the next couple of months anyway, what’s the point of hoarding them? For what purpose? The programmers did not spend all their blood sweat and tears crafting games so just a dozen “secret clique” people would have them; they were made to be enjoyed by more.

Honor the programmers.

I am not so sure of how easy it would be to find a group in the Virtual Boy community that would agree not to promulgate an unreleased game at large, and collectors who have unreleased games already know this. In fact, the Virtual Boy community is, unfortunately, tainted with a bad history of people breaking their word and doing things without thinking clearly of the repercussions and possibly screwing up much greater things for the rest of us.

There is only one person who I have to cite to support this, and that is user: jojobean. However, jojobean is NOT the person who screwed things up. Jojobean is the person who was trying to get all of the unreleased Virtual Boy games eventually released, and he seems to have been forced to go about it in one of the only ways that would, in all probability, successfully work, and the various individuals who met him with harsh accusations and who did not follow his instructions are the ones who very likely screwed up much greater things for the rest of us.

Some time, if you feel like it, go through jojobean’s post history on this site, reading all of the connected posts, especially the ones on the thread “Bound High ROM – buggy, can anyone help?”, and you will learn of some of the history behind how a portion of the rare or unreleased Virtual Boy ROMs got released. There was a long period of time when the “Big 4” commercial games – so Space Invaders, SD Gundam, Virtual Lab, and Virtual Bowling – were not available online, and none of the people who owned these games were interested at all in trying to get them available to anyone other than themselves. If what appears on the forum surrounding jojobean is true, and I am rather highly confident that it is, jojobean is partly responsible for the release of all 4 of these games to everyone, but he is not the person who released the games. The data strongly shows that he attempted to trade these games in private as part of the plan to pursue other games, namely unreleased games, and it was some person whom he trusted, whom he likely told not to release the ROMs, who did not follow his instructions and, thus, released the Big 4 ROMs online for everyone.

Now, was jojobean successful in getting some unreleased games? Yes, indeed, he was. He managed to get a fully working version of Space Pinball, the buggy version of Bound High, and he was even talking about acquiring Faceball and the big one, Dragon Hopper. He continued his pursuit of trying to get more unreleased games released, and during the process, he tried to find others of the Virtual Boy community whom could be trusted and who would help him with the financial burden of acquiring all the games, since the uber-collectors who had the games demanded vast sums of money. As such, his Space Pinball and buggy Bound High were being sold and traded around, with the purpose of getting more funds for Faceball and Dragon Hopper, and as a result of those trades and sales, eventually Space Pinball got released online, again not by jojobean who gave the instructions never to release it. Note: the version of Bound High that we all enjoy today should not be attributed to jojobean; that point must be made clear.

So, it can be rightly said that jojobean’s effort of trying to get unreleased games released resulted in the release of Space Invaders, SD Gundam, Virtual Lab, Virtual Bowling, and Space Pinball. And guess what? It does not end there, for I can say with firmness that jojobean is also partly responsible for the release of Faceball, because jojobean did things which led to the appearance of Mr. G on this forum, but please don’t expect me to share any more details about that, because Eric and I both know very well that we gave our word never to reveal the identity of the man who previously owned the Faceball cart or the identity of Mr. G, neither should we reveal the details surrounding the acquisition of Faceball, for such would be an extreme breach of trust.

What other important thing needs to be said concerning this? How about the fact that jojobean also claimed on this forum that he knew a guy who owns Dragon Hopper and that jojobean was in pursuit of the game? People charged jojobean with lying about Faceball. They didn’t believe he had any connection to it and that he was just lying to swindle people out of their money. And now Faceball is released, due in part to jojobean, which is all that I’m going to say concerning that. So am I going to think that jojobean was lying about knowing a guy who owns Dragon Hopper? Absolutely not. Did jojobean succeed in getting Dragon Hopper? I have no idea, but I sure do know that he succeeded in getting all the other games he ever mentioned, which people thought he was lying about, so it sure does cause a person to wonder. Nevertheless, what can I or anyone else do about it at this point? Probably not much at all. Why? Because jojobean has now seemingly disappeared entirely from the Virtual Boy scene. And why might that be? Most likely because he was so fed up with all the accusations thrown his way and breaches of trust from the Virtual Boy community that he no longer wants to have anything more to do with us. Am I very happy that all of those games got released online? I definitely am. Nevertheless, I am also rather confident that it was necessary for a single individual to take the route that Jojobean took, in order to get those games available for everyone. If nobody ever did that, then those games still might not be released, and I am also highly confident that jojobean was forced to take the routes that he took once he became highly aware of the personalities, who each had one of the few known copies of an unreleased game. Nevertheless, the releases of those games all occurred through breaches of trust, and I’m rather confident that the uber-collectors who still have the unreleased games were silently watching over it all. This leaves the question: if breaches of trust had not occurred with jojobean, would we now have access to Dragon Hopper, or have the breaches of trust resulted in the fact that jojobean’s purported source of Dragon Hopper is now guaranteed never to release the game?

Why am I writing all this? Because the fact is, all the uber-collectors who currently have unreleased games in their possession already know about such things and have known for a long time; my writing it out very clearly doesn’t change that fact. Therefore, the uber-collectors are not willing to work with multiple individuals at all, because they know that such is highly likely to result in the free release of the ROM of their game, which they may have paid thousands of dollars for and which they may be trying to use as leverage for the acquisition of some other unreleased game. While doing such, it seems to be very difficult, yet still possible, for one person to approach an uber-collector, gain his trust, pay him who knows what for the unreleased game, so long as the game-pursuer promises never to release it. If the game gets released, any chance at acquiring another game from the uber-collector is lost. I am rather confident that any other method is sure to fail, unless the game is currently in the possession of some person on the development team who worked on the game. It always seems that the people who helped to make a game that never got released are the ones who really don’t care much at all about the game and who are fine with the game getting released. Unfortunately, they aren’t the ones who usually have such games, due to the fact that they cared about the games so little that the games easily slipped out of their possession. But then, the game somehow finds its way into the collection of some private collector, who in many cases, unfortunately, loves to go Gollum Style on it.

jrronimo wrote:
Ehh… I take anything Nintendo Power says with a grain of salt: Especially at that time, it was a marketing mouthpiece for Nintendo directly, so I don’t know that I’d take their word as law.

But I would wager they probably had a version of DH that was super close to completion, if it wasn’t 100% complete.

Well, in addition to the Nintendo Power evidence, there is also the Vidpro Card evidence:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/advertising/?v

While it is true that Vidpro cards were made before a game’s official release, there is good reason to suppose that Vidpro would not have gone to the trouble, and especially would not have wanted to endure the expense, of making a Vidpro card for a game unless they had very good reason to suppose that the game was going to be released, and I would think that it would have been in the form of the developer informing Vidpro that the game was done, mass production would begin or had already begun, and perhaps even a specific release date would have been known.

Now, I still have my doubts about whether or not the images of the Dragon Hopper Vidpro card that appear online are truly images of a genuine Vidpro card, but I am more inclined to conclude that the images do in fact portray a genuine Vidpro card that was made for Dragon Hopper rather than a hoax, especially since the discernible screenshot on the back is different from all of the other screenshots from known, trustworthy sources. If a hoaxer made a fake Dragon Hopper Vidpro card, then that hoaxer must have access to Dragon Hopper.

ectoglow wrote:

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

1. Dragon Hopper
2. Mansion of Insmouse (North American Version)
3. Polygo Block
4. Virtual Block
5. Virtual Bomberman
6. Virtual Double Yakuman
7. Virtual Fishing (North American Version)
8. Virtual Jockey
9. Zero Racers

So these were all most likely completed, but we’ve never talked to anyone who currently has em. Should a US version of Gundam be on there, or was that not gonna happen?

I don’t think there has ever been any official mention anywhere that Bandai was planning to let Gundam be released in English or allow some other company to release it for North America, so it shouldn’t be on there unless we find out more information that indicates that it deserves to be there.

Also, there isn’t enough evidence to say that all of these unreleased games were “most likely completed,” only that all of these games were developed to a certain extent and that XX% finished versions of the games are most likely out there somewhere in some form. Based on the observable evidence, it can only be said with confidence that Dragon Hopper was 100% finished, and therefore, there should be a 100% finished version of the game out there, unless it got lost, and this can be gathered from what was written about it in the Nintendo Power preview found in Issue 86. There it reads:

“Despite its challenging leaps and mazes, Dragon Hopper isn’t a difficult game to finish. Since the game doesn’t force players to build levels or spend hours trying to defeat a frustrating guardian, a few hard-core gamers might even finish their quest in one weekend. But the game has so many random spells and hidden areas that players won’t be able to find all of them in a single game.”

I am strongly convinced that Nintendo Power would not have written this if they didn’t already have a 100% finished game in their possession, which could be finished by a gamer in a single weekend.

KR155E wrote:
I think all 5 would fit side-by-side if the side that your photo shows is facing upwards.

Yeah, I see that now. If it is true that this was a case of 5 20-piece boxes, then one can only imagine why the five 20-piece boxes were removed and/or sold separately, apart from the 20 CIB games that were in them.

[Benjamin Stevens]

Do all of the 20-piece boxes that you know of look like the attached one?

If so, the only way that I could see 5 of these being packed into the 100-piece box is if 4 boxes were positioned upright, but then the 5th box would have to be positioned on its side. I guess it is possible that they could have done that, but I’ve never seen it done that way before.

Well, I guess all 5 boxes could have been positioned on their sides as well.

• This reply was modified 13 years, 3 months ago by Benjamin Stevens.

Attachments:

1. 

   vertical-force-20-piece-box.jpg
   

I am pretty sure that this is the first 100-piece box I have ever seen for any Virtual Boy game:

http://page4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/d141548875

Attachments:

1. 

   vertical-force-100-piece-box-top.jpg
   

2. 

   vertical-force-100-piece-box-side.jpg
   

Wow. You truly do want to be “that guy.”

That’s sad.

If you can beat the first quest in about 30 minutes, then you should definitely take a screenshot of it and join the high score competition here. I think high score competitions are the perfect way to add even more replayability to already awesome VB games. I do plan to try to beat sebmal’s high score someday.

Wow… I bet that Mizumo is an alternate spelling for Mizuno, and therefore, you likely found a hidden advertisement for Mizuno Corp., a sportswear and sports equipment manufacturer that has headquarters in both Japan and the USA, which appropriately makes a lot of golf equipment.