Well, I’m not sure if anybody has come up with this yet, but here is my idea for finding the other 2 lost games.

Instead of just a giant fundraiser, maybe the site could have its own paypal account just for Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers. From time to time, people can add maybe $5 or so whenever they can or feel like it. Every month, the site could give an update on what the total balance is. No pressure, just a little bank. 🙂

And because I was bored, I tried to do some research on google in Japanese. I can’t find anything for Dragon Hopper at all. Any info on Zero Racers just says that it wasn’t finished.

Here is the official japanese name for Zero Racers if anybody is interested. Faceball was owned by Mr. G, so maybe Japan will help us again. 😉

G-ZERO

I have seen this post on unseen64.net recently about dragon hopper:

“You’ll have to take my word on it since I don’t have proof, but this game was actually completed. On it’s US release date, I actually saw a copy in my local Best Buy. I immediately recognised it because it was one of two games I was looking forward to for the virtual boy. I actually held it in my hands and read the back of the box!

I didn’t buy it because I wanted Zero Racers more and it was supposed to be released in only a few more days. I only had enough money for one game. Sadly a few days later I heard that Zero racers was canceled. I made it back to Best Buy to pick up Dragon Hopper maybe about a week after I first saw it, but not only was the game gone, but their whole VB display was too!
It’s how I learned they were dropping the system.

So the question is, what happened to those games? Were they recalled? Sent to a different store?

They had to have been on sale for at least one day, so there could be a couple copies in circulation out there.

Probably the closest I’ve ever come to owning a really rare game. I wonder how much it’d be worth now…”

Has anyone clues if Dragon Hopper was sold for at least 1 day?

I definitely don’t believe that Dragon Hopper was ever available for sale and then recalled. If this story has any truth to it, then I would say that Best Buy could have, perhaps, had a for display only box for Dragon Hopper on their shelves to advertise the game before the time when it should have been released, and that could have been the box that he was reading. Nevertheless, if that was true, surely there would be leftover boxes of these floating around and people offering them for sale somewhere, so I don’t believe that either. I definitely don’t believe that Best Buy would have ever received a working copy of the game. Thus, I wouldn’t attach any merit to this story at all, but I would love to be proven wrong.

segagamer99 wrote:

Here is the official japanese name for Zero Racers if anybody is interested. Faceball was owned by Mr. G, so maybe Japan will help us again. 😉

G-ZERO

If you read the main page for Zero Racers found here:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/games/?u031g

you will see that “G-Zero” was the working title for Zero Racers until June of 1996. Thus, the official name for Zero Racers is, indeed, “Zero Racers.”

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
…they are likely proud of the fact that they are one of the “chosen few” who ever get to play it, and they probably don’t want to ever give up the joy of that. Unfortunately, there is a strong “collector’s mentality” in existence, where one with the collector’s mentality wants to own something that almost nobody else owns, which can be connected to nothing other than pride the way I see it, and if that is ever taken away from him, then his joy and pride is taken away, and he is basically defeated, and he does not want to be defeated. It is as if he is sitting on his high throne of collector’s glory, far above all others who can never have access to that which gives him his pride and joy, and if others would get to access to his pride and joy, then he would be knocked down from his high place and be brought to the level of all others, and what would he have to boast to himself about then?… Nothing…

That “arrested development” mindset is possible; hopefully ending when a person received effective therapy for self-validation in other areas. Then again, the statement I just made could make someone madder and more closed; I certainly hope not.

One would think in time as VB fades more into the shadows (except with a few of us die-hards), the excitement of hoarding would be supplanted by the greater excitement of gloating.

In that respect — years ago I was a member of Ferry’s message board, which then moved over to VG-Chat. But there was a poster exhibiting BOTH prototypes, “Racers” and “Dragon”. The jpegs looked just like you’d expect — blank gray cases, with “Brother P-Touch” labels.

…no one believed they were legit…

If Dragon Hopper or Zero Racers is out there and in the hands of a person or persons with such mentalities, no public movement to acquire the game will ever work, in my opinion. It would most likely have to be done privately, almost like an infiltration initiative would have to be set up in some way.

Let’s play “armchair psychology” — NO one who has invested a long amount of time (part of his/her life!) coding such a game, will just delete all trace of it. Especially if it’s completed — it MUST exist in the archives of one or more of the programmers, regardless of directives from Nintendo management. The question would be how to contact them, and sweet-talk the code out of them whilst promising complete anonymity…

But then again… one of those games could also just be sitting in some ex-Nintendo employee’s closet somewhere, and he doesn’t even know about the interest in it or the demand for it because he doesn’t follow the Virtual Boy at all. If that’s the case, and such a person is ever found, then he may just be like “Oh… sorry… I didn’t know this was so important. Here, have it.”

How do we get an “inside line” on who could have been programming at the time?

I remember I wanted to know a part-number for a microwave oven (it had a company part number); called the company at lunchtime, bypassed the secretaries and talked to an engineer — he suggested I buy a new $150 timer board. I said, “Can’t afford it; besides, if I send in the old board you’ll just replace this 35¢ part and sell it for $150 to the next sucker.”

He said, “That’s true”. There was a long pause, and he said:
“…Try a ULN2003, but you didn’t hear it from me…”

…and I said, “Gosh, I’m really sorry you weren’t able to help me, but I’m VERY grateful for your time!”

My theory is Patrick Stewart is holding all the dragon hopper carts in a fortress surrounded by warrior Predators. I’m mixing genres, but you know what I’m getting at.

I actually emailed the company behind the game a few times, and every time I got a new answer. One answer was basically that everyone that worked there in the mid 90s was gone or promoted. The VB development software is still present that the company created, but any prototypes were destroyed or held in storage. I also heard that the company moved multiple times, would they have destroyed them?

Just my little research.

Wynd

[L___E___T]

Capcom lost all the source for the Rockman/Megaman NES games, so although it might be hard to believe – it does happen.

Jordan Mechner also recently found the source code for Prince of Persia kicking about at his Dad’s place – so it can get lost. http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2012/03/prince-of-persia-source-code-found/

Back then even in Japan in the 90s these places didn’t hold a ‘back up everything’ like they do now.

On top of that, if these are first-party developed they’re probably in storage but if they’re 3rd party by BPS for example made on a first-party publishing relationship with Nintendo, who knows shat happened to them. I don’t hold out much faith myself, because there just wasn’t tthe priority on backing everything up.

I think someone owning one copy and not telling anyone is unlikely, surely the thrill from the debated mentality comes from telling everyone that you have something they can never have? I don’t know, I don’t hold that mentality so I can’t realluy do anything other than guess.

I’m not that fussed about Dragon Hopper, it looked like a generic red and black Link’s Awakening clone (sorry!), but Zero Racers looked great. Maybe it was too slow and didn’t really work but I play Vector Racing a lot and love that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQGTS_J8TQU, so I’d love to see this (Zero Racers) one day on VB for real.

I actually think a home-coded version would actually be better than what is out there as well, as I imagine the documented game being as slow as Red Alarm to be honest. For a racing game that’s not fulfilling, but a talented coder could write new VB code that ran a lot smoother and faster (I assume).

Nintendo have a funny history of cancelling finished games – look at Starfox 2. Making a whole bunch of carts has a high cost risk if you can’t shift them late in a console’s life, or on a ‘doomed’ console, but I’m still surprised at the quality of some of the games that never made it to light.

On a similar note, I found out recenly that there was once a Micro Machines VB started, but I know with certainty that the code for that is long, long gone and was never much to begin with. Just a first playable test environment basically.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 10 months ago by L___E___T.
• This reply was modified 11 years, 10 months ago by L___E___T.

I’m really looking forward to someone doing a “Racers” ripoff (homebrew). May well be better.

And looking forward to playing ALL the homebrews hosted here — I’m grateful people are programming them, any/all.

L___E___T wrote:

I think someone owning one copy and not telling anyone is unlikely, surely the thrill from the debated mentality comes from telling everyone that you have something they can never have? I don’t know, I don’t hold that mentality so I can’t realluy do anything other than guess.

I definitely conclude that in the case of Dragon Hopper, there is at least one person out there hoarding it, and he truly doesn’t desire to make himself largely known:

In reference to a copy of Dragon Hopper possibly being in private hands, on July 25th, 2005, DogP wrote:

“I’ve heard from a reputable source that there is a copy out of N’s death grip, but they won’t (let) anyone within a 100 yds. of it”

When someone replied to this statement by saying it could just be a rumor, DogP responded:

“I’m sure it’s not a faker… it’s not anyone that I’ve met online, and I’ve never heard of this person bragging about it… I’ve found out about it through some of my VB contacts that were trying to get ahold of it, but apparently the guy’s not interested in letting it out of his death grip 😛 .”

Source:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?65530-Dragon-Hopper-(Virtual-Boy)

As I’ve mentioned on this site before, DogP revealed himself to be a person who knew a lot about unreleased Virtual Boy stuff, primarily because he had the only known working Virtual Boy dumper for a long time, and he had secretly dumped rare games for people while promising them that he would never release the ROMs. It also seems that there was a time when DogP was searching for people who had prototype carts of the unreleased games, so that he could dump the games for them to preserve the ROMs, so he very likely came across genuine contacts who had unreleased VB games, demos, etc.

Based on DogP’s above statements, I would say that he even knew the name of the person who had (or still has) Dragon Hopper, and I have no reason to doubt that he had full confidence of that person having the game. At the time he wrote the statements in 2005, it seems that DogP himself did not have access to the ROM of Dragon Hopper, but one just never knows what deals may have occurred in the time since then.

Benjamin Stevens
Based on DogP’s above statements, I would say that he even knew the name of the person who had (or still has) Dragon Hopper, and I have no reason to doubt that he had full confidence of that person having the game. At the time he wrote the statements in 2005, it seems that DogP himself did not have access to the ROM of Dragon Hopper, but one just never knows what deals may have occurred in the time since then.

That’s really stupid. I don’t know the technology used for the roms, but OTP eeproms have a LIFE — the stored charge will bleed off of the floating gates and eventually all cells will reset. Problem is that gamma-rays can screw with those charges and start zapping bits AT ANY TIME!

Even if it’s a more permanent ROM, there still is the possibility of the cart suddenly NOT WORKING — and then this person will be in the same boat as us:

“Gee I wish I had a copy of DragonHopper”!

Clearly he’s not psychotic about the glory of “one-upmanship”, so it’s very much in his best interest to allow it to be DUMPED and then he can have a spare copy!

It’s like in a programming class:
“Dude, you’ve been coding for FOUR HOURS! Don’t you think you should save what you’ve done?”

“Yeah, I guess I should; I just got on such a creative streak — all right, I’m almost to a place where I can…”

(Power to the whole building suddenly goes out…)

“Awwww, crap.”

The other thing that you have to consider is that the guy who has Dragon Hopper already has it as a ROM on his computer, so he doesn’t need anyone to dump it.

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
The other thing that you have to consider is that the guy who has Dragon Hopper already has it as a ROM on his computer, so he doesn’t need anyone to dump it.

It’s known that he has dumped the ROM?

So what possible reason is there for not letting a few other enthusiasts play it? We could have a group here not publicized, that agreed not to dump it.

Seems to go to a “value of life” question — at the end of time, when we look back on our lives, what’s the value of saying:

“Hah hah, I kept you from playing the rare game”?

And we’ll all say, “Yeah? What good is that now?”

Seems that would have a negative value, while letting a few vb addicts play it would definitely be positive.

:-/

having 1 group obtain access to the ROM and not letting everyone else enjoy it is just as bad as having the proto and not sharing the ROM.

Either, release it for everyone to enjoy or keep on hoarding it.

vb-fan wrote:

It’s known that he has dumped the ROM?

There are very likely people who know for sure about whether or not the one guy has the ROM, but I don’t know for sure. I was just saying that as a possibility. Thus, if the one guy has never tried to contact anyone to dump the game to preserve it, the reason COULD be that he already has the ROM on his computer.

The only things I’ve been able to find out about the guy who has Dragon Hopper are things buried in forums on various sites. There seems to be one guy who definitely has it and definitely won’t let anyone come near it, and then there are rumors of other people who have purchased the game, but I haven’t been able to find out in what form. It does seem that the ROM of it has been passed around very secretly, from what I can gather.

Lester Knight wrote:
having 1 group obtain access to the ROM and not letting everyone else enjoy it is just as bad as having the proto and not sharing the ROM.

Either, release it for everyone to enjoy or keep on hoarding it.

Can’t argue with “release it for everyone”.

Look, why was the game written? To make money, and to entertain people. It’s the same with TV and radio programming — make it good enough to capture interest, and you can sell product.

NOW — there is no “making money”, only the “make people happy” aspect.

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

There are very likely people who know for sure about whether or not the one guy has the ROM, but I don’t know for sure. I was just saying that as a possibility. Thus, if the one guy has never tried to contact anyone to dump the game to preserve it, the reason COULD be that he already has the ROM on his computer.

The only things I’ve been able to find out about the guy who has Dragon Hopper are things buried in forums on various sites. There seems to be one guy who definitely has it and definitely won’t let anyone come near it, and then there are rumors of other people who have purchased the game, but I haven’t been able to find out in what form. It does seem that the ROM of it has been passed around very secretly, from what I can gather.

So it’s definitely “one-upmanship”. In the final analysis, what’s the value of that?

I very much recommend a book, “Inside Gilligan’s Island” by Sherwood Schwartz. Towards the end he asks, “You look back in life and ask yourself if you’ve helped people, or hurt people. They put sex violence and profanity on TV telling that they don’t AFFECT anyone (just give them what they want) — and then they sell commercials to affect people. You can’t have it both ways.” The book is a very fun read.

This is the same thing; a group of people hoarding “Dragon” and “Zero Racers” and possibly others, thinking they have some superior position — but in the grand scheme it’s worthless, while the delight they could have brought to others had the value. It’s just a game, but it’s still “hurt people, or make others’ lives better”. What’s our point?

(Sigh.)

I got this idea while watching my pet hamster in the ball and thinking about the Maru-Mari “1st generation Metroid for all of you out there who’s not an old fogie like myself”. Anyway I thought that Maru-mari was a disgrunteled employee of NCL But I looked it up on wikipedia and found out that I was wrong. but the concept on how we can find the lost games is still the same. Anyway here it goes. for someone who has more time on their hands than me to go and look on youtube for some games that have endings around “95” and then look at some games around “96” and do an contrast comparison to see which employees might of left nintendo around the time of the VB. Then see if you can contact them somehow Myspace facebook ect. And find out what they know. I don’t know if you guys are already doing this or what, it’s just an idea.