Wow, I saw the news today for the first time and was shocked. Where in the heck did KR155E get his mitts on a copy of Bound High?! (Seriously, if you see this, I want to know where you got it.) Also, since I’m quite interested in the preservation of old games (and I want to play it) I want to know if or when he’s planning to dump the rom. I think it would be good if a ROM dump could be made, in case the cartridge fails. Since this is a significant find (unless I’m wrong, the only VB prototype ever found?) I think it would be good if the rest of the VB gaming community could play it. Anyway, I hope I get to actually play Bound High someday. 🙂

I too would like to know where he got it. He managed to get hold of Galactic Pinball prototype last year. A rom dump would be great. I wish we knew a cheap and easy way to make vb carts. Actually playing it on a vb would be amazing. Oh well. I could settle for some gameplay vids 🙂

Oh, right, I forgot about the Galactic Pinball and protos like that. 😀 I meant the only proto of an unreleased VB game ever found.

Heh, well if you think about it, I’m sure it’s been dumped, or about to be… If the person he got it from is crazy enough to send an original prototype through the mail, it’s going to be on an EPROM, and KR155E has an EPROM reader, so consider it dumped 😉 . If it’s not an original, he can probably still dump it, but then of course it was dumped before he got it.

Either way, I can almost guarantee you that the ROM won’t be released… if someone was to sell the game, It’d easily go for several thousand $$$… and remember that there still aren’t freely available dumps of the rare Japanese games, which some of them only go for a few hundred bucks.

There are several other VB protos out there, but unfortunately not enough 😛 . I REALLY want to see Zero Racers though 🙂 .

DogP

Faceball is out there too… and I’ve heard that there’s a Dragon Hopper also.

DogP

Well, even if it never is released, I’ll rest easier knowing there’s a backup dump somewhere. I still want to know where he got it though. 😀

And yeah, I want to see Zero Racers too. I just wish Nintendo (and other companies) wouldn’t destroy everything when they kill games. I hate how much stuff has been lost like that.

Okay, just a quick question. Now that PVB has ROMs up (I love this since some VB ROMs are rather hard to find) is there any chance that Bound High might be hosted here in the near future?

nope. 😉

That’s fine, just curious. 😀

But why ? Now that the FlashBoy has been announced it would be a shame not to take advantage of it to finally play this marvelous game. Don’t you agree ? Or maybe you could send a rom to people who’d like to got it, eh 😀 ?

It’s easy: because the original prototype cart would lose all its value. In fact, a prototype is an EPROM cart (worth 50-100 bucks) with prototype code in it (worth thousands). If you make the code publicly available, you would lose ALL your investment. And don’t misunderstand me, I would love to play prototype games in my Virtual Boy, but I understand why they aren’t dumped. In fact, I’m also starting to understand why ROMs of extremely rare games aren’t publicly available either…

But look at Starfox 2 and Earthbound Zero ; they both were private prototypes and now, anybody can dowload them. I suppose it’s legal (even if I bought Mother 1 just to have clear conscience 😛 ), since they have never been marketed and they really are excellent. Moreover, the owners who dumped the games may have lost their investment but they did won the players’ gratitude and are now well-known as heroes of the players community. They reached immortality in the heart of the curent and future generations of players and I’m convinced that it’s more valuable than what they paid to got the cartridge.

Ok JackFost, you spend the $3,000 (or more) in a Virtual Boy prototype, dump it and release the ROM to all of us so that you can gain immortality in my heart and in the hearts of the other members of the Virtual Boy Community 😀 Of course, I will really appreciate if you do so 😎

The persons who own a never released game HAVE TO dump it or to send it to someone who would be able to ; it’s a moral duty towards disappointed players and the development team.
Imagine you spent months creating a game and one day, your boss announces : “It’s over. The game is cancelled. Sorry 8-).”. How would you feel 😕 ? You put a part of yourself in the game, you invested your ideas in the project and you suddenly discover that it was in vain. I’d feel frustrated and even more if one of my collaegues stole the code just for personal profit. The person who dumped Starfox 2 was one of the development team member and he did it because he refused the game to sink into oblivion. Not to dump the game is a lack of respect towards those who made the game (of course, it’s the contrary if the game has been marketed 😀 )
You can’t buy a prototype cart as if you bought a common game, not only because it’s much more expensive but above all because it implies heavy responsibilities. Besides, a prototype cart is a piece of the development team soul and a symbol of hope for many players, this is one of the most important thing you have to remember by buying a prototype cart.

JackFost, I don’t agree with you, sorry. If I was involved in developing a game which was finally cancelled, of course I would be pissed off, but that’s how business goes. It has happened many times and it will continue happening. And you don’t know if the project will be finished some time in the future. Look for example at Grand Theft Auto for the GBA. It was a game which was begun many years ago, then the company got bankrupt and the project was cancelled. Then another company took over and recovered the code. Then it was left apart again, and it was finally finished and released several years later. If the code had been publicly released, we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the game now. Of course, all of this without mentioning the copyright and contract infringements in which the programmers would enter if they were known to release the prototype code they prepared. It’s not their code, but THEIR COMPANY’s code, and the company can do whatever it wants for the benefit of the company. The person who dumped Starfox 2 did it at his/her own risk, and if he/she got caught, the consequences could be terrible, since they could end up in jail for releasing a code worth millions if the contract estipulates that the code was to be kept private for the company unless the game was finished.

And for the fact that “The persons who own a never released game HAVE TO dump it”, I have to say that they are not obligued to do anything at all. They don’t own us anything. Another thing is how much you desire to play a prototype game, but they do not have to release it just for the fact that many of us would love to play prototype games in our Virtual Boys. Since I opened the thread of “making ROMs of extremely rare games available or not”, I have read expressions such as “have to dump/release”, “willing to dump/release” and similar too many times, and honestly, the more I read “have to dump”, the less I’m willing to do it (and no, I don’t own prototype games, but I do own rare games).

Back to your reply, of course I believe I can buy prototype carts as I buy common games. The only difference is the amount of money put on the table to buy the game. I don’t understand what you mean by “heavy responsibilities”, but if I were to buy a prototype cart, I don’t think it would imply heavy responsibilities, it would just imply having the money to buy it, nothing else.

If you don’t believe me, just try. Make a realistic offer. Put the money on the table and, if it’s enough, I’m sure you will have somebody who will sell it to you. It’s the same as with Virtual Bowling, SD Gundam, Virtual Lab, Space Invaders and such, with the only difference of offering “a little bit more” money. And by realistic I mean “several thousands”. I’m sure that if somebody offered, let’s say, $100,000 for Zero Racers (and it was a realistic offer, not someone saying this as he would say hello), the word would spread out as fire and it would finally be known in the circle of the people who know where the code is and how to dump it. But of course, I don’t have $100,000 to spend on any prototype code, so here I am, “divagating” about prototype games without any chance of owning them 😕

You can be sure that if I won the lottery, the first thing I would do would be to submit a news on this website saying : “To anyone who owns a virtual boy prototype cartridge, I offer you to sell it to me. Please, contact me and we’ll negotiate the price”.
Sorry, I’m a dreamer 😛

Prototypes by nature are prototypes – not perfect.

As much as I love to play games early (thinking of my PS3 protos/betas that i have) I believe that prototypes shoudlnt be dumped for the sake of it.It definately lowers the value in my opinion. I personally own an internal pre-release of Rez for PS2 (dreamcast port) that I won on ebay for WAYYY to little ($10 last year) and if this was released public it would lower the value hence lowering the value it has to me.

For instance – my car is one of only 15000 ever made and was a limited production prototype. If they were to remake the car again it would loose all value to me (not to mention on the open market for an original) as I bought it because it was UNIQUE compared to everyday cars.

Rant over

Mintor, what car have you got? 🙂

I have a Toyota Sera – could you believe its 15 years old?

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