Back in the summer of 1997, my parents and I booked a trip to the U.S. which included going to Disneyworld – Orlando and then to New York. When in New York, we went into a Toys r Us and there I saw the Virtual Boy at $29.95 and each game at $9.95. Since I had only read a brief piece of news (10 lines or so) about Virtual Boy in a Spanish magazine, I thought owning a cheap 3D console and games which weren’t available in Spain was way too cool to be true, so I bought everything I found for Virtual Boy in that week, running through all the videogame shops in New York.

The worst experience was finding the f@ck1ng AC adaptor. I went into EVERY single shop in New York (Manhattan area), and when I finally thought I had lost all the chances of finding one, I went into an electronics shop beside the hotel in which they had THE LAST one in stock, so I bought it (for $39.95, 25% more than the console!).

Then I got back to Spain and started searching for games in import shops, but I could only find one which had games for it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t interested in collecting the games at that time, so I thought that paying $50 for Insmouse or Space Squash was way too expensive after seeing that games were at $10 each (silly me, I paid 3-4 times more for those games years later!). Afterwards, I began collecting Virtual Boy things (mainly games) by buying in eBay auctions (much secure then than now, by the way…).

And now here I am, trying to increase my collection day after day and learning from good and bad experiences in the process 😎

I’m a collector, I come to this boards and I would ALSO pay $1,000 for Zero Racers (but in my case I would pay for the ROM image in an EPROM cart, to play it in my Virtual Boy 😀 )

Thanks, DogP, I hope I’m lucky this time around.

Me, a scammer? Pathetic, Michael, you’re pathetic…

Sampler, he also says he ended his ebay account in this post, and you can see in the links you’ve supplied that the account is still active. He’s a liar, and he will always be a liar…

Ok Michael, here’s the scan of the report to the Spanish police to demonstrate it, as well as the bank receipt of the 1,323.19 euro I sent you for SD Gundam and Virtual Bowling. Now, Michael, can you scan and post the receipt of registered shipping demonstrating that you shipped the games to me? Of course not, because you didn’t send them… I also have all the e-mails we crossed regarding the trades. As I said, the truth is there for everyone to judge. If you hadn’t ripped me off, why would I be doing all this? I’m just warning people that you cannot be trusted, that’s all.

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DogP, apart from playing Virtual Boy games, I like collecting them. Of course, I admit I wouldn’t pay so much for the games if I had the ROMs and a flash cart, but I would still pay a few hundreds for them even having the flash cart, which is for what they usually go at eBay and such. Of course, I know this wouldn’t be the general situation, since people download for free mobile games worth 5 euro, so if they don’t want to pay 5 euro for a game, imagine 500 euro.

Although I’m always talking from my point of view of what I would do, I have to admit that you are right, DogP, that my point of view is that of a person who likes collecting virtual boy, who would like to have all the original games available for the system even if the ROMs were publicly available, and who wouldn’t mind sharing the ROMs with the community even after having paid a huge amount for the original cartridges. But it’s very true that I might be the only person to have this point of view regarding the “willing to spend VS availability of ROMs”… 🙁

Sampler, what makes me very happy about all this is that I was able to avoid you getting cheated. As I have said many times, I have all the evidence regarding the money he stole from me last year. He is even reported to the Spanish police and to the British police. The problem is that in the UK, any theft below 10,000 UK pounds is a minor theft, so I could only report him, and they cannot do anything else. On the contrary, in Spain, any theft above 300 euro is a major theft, and since the money he stole from me was 1,300 euro approximately, I reported him to the police so that everything (including the evidence) goes to the judge so that the situation is investigated.

Unfortunately, this will not be the last time that Michael Starkey tries to cheat people. I hope that on one of those cheats, he finally gets caught by the police and gets the punishment he deserves… 😕

In $, are € and £ included? 😎 Now being serious KJ4860, I wouldn’t mind sharing the games although the cost me A HUGE LOT of money, but you have to respect the decission of others who invested their money in their games and don’t want to share. It’s understandable. Life is life (and as I read elsewhere, don’t take it too seriously, you won’t come out alive of it… 😎 )

I know nothing is going to change with the appearance of the FlashBoy, and I’m not trying to get people to dump and release the ROMs, I just want to know mainly the opinions of the owners of these extremely rare games (since the ones who don’t own them is simple: “dump them for me to play” 😀 ). In fact, I’m of the opinion that even if the FlashBoy is finally available, we won’t get more ROMs publicly available.

To share those ROMs, it’s not as easy as “buy the game, dump the game, share the ROM”. Apart from willing to do so (or don’t mind dumping, which is my case), you have to have the knowledge, and I don’t have it. At the moment, what I know how to do is “buy the game, play the game”, and this will probably be forever due to lack of time. So, in the short term, the “buy-play” is the most practical thing to do with those games I don’t own, since pretending me to do the wiring and soldering of a cartridge dumper is as pretending my hamster to build and install a computer. 😀

Oh, and although I don’t think the value of commercial games such as Gundam, VBowling, VLab and Space Invaders would be seriously affected if their ROMs appeared (yeah, I might be crazy… 😛 ) I have to agree with DogP that if prototypes were made available to the public, they would lose all their value. In the end, a prototype is a flash cart with the prototype code in it (…I want to play Zero Racers… 😀 )

Yes. Now it’s a good time to start thinking about what you are going to offer the people that have the games you want to play 😀 I want to play Zero Racers, so I think I’m going to have to offer something real cool 😀 I offer my complete GamePark32 collection for Zero Racers! 😀 😀

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I didn’t say “I wish to dump” the games, I just said “I don’t mind dumping the games”, which is different 😎 if I wished to dump the games, I would begin by learning how to do so and by making myself a dumper as the one DogP describes in his webpage. If there was a general belief that ROMs should be publicly available, I’m sure everyone would unite to get them out. But the problem is that, in my opinion, the vast majority of owners of extremely rare carts and prototypes don’t want to make them publicly available, and the people as me, who don’t mind, don’t have the knowledge or time to get those dumps, so there you go.

Nonetheless, I still say that we are speaking a lot about this before things actually happen, since the first thing we have to do is wait until FlashBoy is available. In my opinion, playing ROMs in emulators -when talking about Virtual Boy- is a bit silly since you don’t get the 3D effect, which is the main attractive of this console. 😛

I agree with Fwirt in that they would spread very quickly. Although not available everywhere, there’s a ROM package which is fairly easy to find using google or eMule, so they would spread very quickly. There are many people who would download it just to be able to say “I have the Virtual Bowling ROM” or something like that. It’s like the latest Harry Potter book, but with a bit less audience. Of course, I would also like to play games such as Zero Racers in my Virtual Boy.

An option I was thinking about was to get, along with the FlashBoy (when available, of course) a CD with all the existing ROMs (commercial and freeware). I wouldn’t mind paying more just to have that CD, but of course, it isn’t in my hands having that CD.

As for dumping the ROMs, I wouldn’t mind doing so with the ones I have, but:

1.- I don’t have the knowledge to do so.
2.- I don’t have a spare Virtual Boy unit to “cannibalize” and make the game dumper.

I know that the existence of the ROM doesn’t make the cartridge less valuable, but that’s my belief, not the general belief (my belief is backed up by the experience I have with the game Darxide for the Sega 32x, the existence of the ROM and the 232 euro I got for my copy some years ago.)

Nonetheless, IMO the first thing we have to do is wait for FlashBoy to be available for purchase, and then we can see what happens 🙂

Frustrated for having had your “yearly rip-off” boycotted, Wizard? You are what you are, Michael, independently from what you eat…

I know, I’m a collector and I wouldn’t mind that the ROMs of the games were available to all, but not everyone thinks the same. Nonetheless, I hope we are lucky and get the ROMs available to play on the FlashBoy (but I’m pessimistic about it… 🙁 )

Yes, but as soon as the game ROMs are publicly available, the ultra-rare games will lose some of their value, so I don’t think the owners of those games would like to see the ROMs publicly available. I own all except Virtual Bowling and SD Gundam (I’m sure you know this by the other forum posts I’ve made 🙁 ), and of course I’d love to play these two games just to see them, but I don’t think that private dumps will be made publicly available.

KJ4860, have you ever thought that the ultra rare games and prototypes might already be dumped, but their ROMs are not available to the public? For example, as you might know, the original Virtual Lab seems to have a bug which makes the Virtual Boy reboot, but I have read somewhere (I think it was on this vr32 forum more than a year ago) that they found the bug and fixed it to get the game to work correctly. Where do you think they fixed it? 😀 😀 I’m also waiting for the FlashBoy, so apart from my belief that those ROMs are dumped but won’t be made public, I would also like to have them and play with them on the FlashBoy (when FlashBoy is available, of course) 😎

No comments… I don’t believe a word from Michael Starkey, so good luck with your trades with him if you finally decide to trade with him. As I said, I have evidence of what happened and even eBay gave me the stipulated compensation they have for these rip-offs. Unfortunately, it only covered approximately 30% of the money I was stolen by this person, but if eBay gave me the money, they admitted that I had been ripped-off, so there you go.

As far as I know, you can use a SNES adaptor, but one from the U.S., not from Europe. I had a Spanish SNES and they weren’t compatible. In fact, not even the connections were the same (nor even similar). I use a 110V to 220V conversor, which is the easiest way to play if you have the AC adaptor.

For everyone apart from “Wizard”, I hope all this subject helps you avoiding getting ripped off when trying to finish your Virtual Boy collection. Remember: google search for the traders before you make any payment, and good luck!