Original Post
Profile Photo
May 21, 2017 • 13:49 Profile Photo litephiter

A while ago, I bought a bunch of VB games from a guy in Mexico City. He gave me a great deal, and at first I was worried that the games would be counterfeit or something. (Although, realistically, who would counterfeit ordinary VB games?) But of course they were authentic and totally fine.

Now, whenever I scroll through eBay, I see other Mexico-based sellers listing large combo lots of common VB games.

Like this guy:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Virtual-Boy-pack-of-10-games-of-Wario-Land-ORIGINAL-ULTIMATE-PIECES-/152553743680?hash=item2384e96540:g:tA0AAOSwmgJY5aA1

And this guy:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/VIRTUAL-BOY-GAME-TELEROBOXER-NEW-SEE-DESCRIPTION-/262956917640?hash=item3d39742388:g:pXkAAOSwMmBV69Le

Is it my imagination, or is there a weirdly large amount of VB stuff kicking around Mexico? What’s especially odd to me is the fact that a few people seem to have giant surpluses of stuff, as though they bought it by the truckload.

Do we know if there was some kind of mass exodus of excess VB equipment from the U.S. to Mexico after the VB flopped and could no longer be sold for MSRP?

10 Replies
Profile Photo
May 21, 2017 • 17:16 Profile Photo jumpman

The best I could guess, would be that when the VB bombed here, it was exported to Mexico, as a way of getting rid of unwanted inventory. Think ET and the landfill solution. LOL

They where pretty much giving them away here once it was all over, and to think a place like Mexico grabbed them up for next to nothing, is more than likely what happened. As it was probably pretty good entertainment at the time, where a TV wasn’t required, as it was a self contained device.

In the past, when my smart phone is generations old, and no one in the US wants it, I can often sell it to users in other countries(and for rather good prices as well), where it may be more cutting edge, as the latest and greatest hasn’t reached there yet. One mans trash, is another mans treasure.

Profile Photo
May 21, 2017 • 19:09 Profile Photo Benjamin Stevens

As far as I can tell from the verifiable information that we have today, when the Virtual Boy was originally released commercially, it was released in “North America.” This includes Canada, USA, and Mexico. Thus, Mexico was part of the originally planned countries to have the Virtual Boy for commercial sale, so I don’t believe it received its Virtual Boy products only after the Virtual Boy’s commercial failure in the USA and Canada. While there isn’t a whole lot of verifiable information on this site, it seems, to support this, we do have some scanned pages of the September 1995 issue of the Mexican Club Nintendo:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/articles/?s050184001

And I do not see any section there that indicates that prospective Mexican customers back in September of 1995 would have had to import their Virtual Boys and VB games from the USA or elsewhere at that time. Not only this, but the Mexican copies of the North American Virtual Boy games usually have Spanish instructions included, and as far as I know, these instructions are very standardized no matter which place in Mexico you get them from, which I don’t believe would be the case if Mexico was not an original target market for the Virtual Boy.

Therefore, the main reason, I believe, why so many Virtual Boy games are still coming from Mexico is because they still have a large leftover stock of games from the original commercial life of the Virtual Boy, and chances are, a lot of Mexican eBay resellers are going into physical stores in Mexico and finally buying their leftover “old, new” stock of VB games that they have stored somewhere for cheap, which the stores have given up trying to sell for the most part, and then selling them on eBay for a rather nice profit when compared to what they likely paid the stores or shops.

Profile Photo
May 21, 2017 • 20:31 Profile Photo vuefinder83

Since we’re on the subject of Mexican Virtual Boy items here, here’s a picture of a Mexican Virtual Boy. It still has a promo tag on the front of the box, one could’ve purchased a new Super Nintendo and received a free Virtual Boy.

What a bargain! ; )

Attachments:

  1. mexican-virtual-boy.png

Profile Photo
May 26, 2017 • 08:20 Profile Photo JoePassive

i was told by some seller that there wasn’t big demend for VB in mexico and they got leftover stock.

Profile Photo
May 30, 2017 • 16:29 Profile Photo thunderstruck

One of my VirtualBoys does have a sticker with a Mexican Nintendo Service phone number on it.

Profile Photo
May 31, 2017 • 04:29 Profile Photo vuefinder83

thunderstruck wrote:
One of my VirtualBoys does have a sticker with a Mexican Nintendo Service phone number on it.

Cool. Can we get a picture, please?

Profile Photo
May 31, 2017 • 13:32 Profile Photo thunderstruck

Actually, it might be from Peru

Attachments:

  1. img_1617-scaled.jpg

Profile Photo
May 31, 2017 • 21:59 Profile Photo Vulpes

vuefinder83 wrote:
one could’ve purchased a new Super Nintendo and received a free Virtual Boy.

Would definitively do that right away! 😀

Profile Photo
Jun 01, 2017 • 06:08 Profile Photo vuefinder83

thunderstruck wrote:
Actually, it might be from Peru

Hmm…that’s kind of interesting, and something I’ve never seen before. Therefore, I have zero info to provide for this.

Thanks for the pic though.

Vulpes wrote:

vuefinder83 wrote:
one could’ve purchased a new Super Nintendo and received a free Virtual Boy.

Would definitively do that right away! 😀

Me too! 🙂

Profile Photo
Jun 02, 2017 • 17:05 Profile Photo thunderstruck

I just checked and there is the usual sticker underneath the Spanish one. So, most likely some reseller did put it there.

 

Write a reply

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.