Personally… seeing items that were released just recently for the good of the community sold fore more than what was paid for them.. seems slightly shifty.

But it’s a seller’s market.

It is the way of the merchant, a concept I learned more from Runescape than education.

Buy low, wait for demand, sell high. Keeping a cart-only option in on-demand production may curb this problem. But when you set something up to have a very limited release, you automatically create a demand that inturn will bring inflated prices. Are these games worth the prices people will be asking? — no. Yet, they will sell for that because collectors exist, and gamers usually impulse buy without conducting enough research. Very few games these days are being released for retro systems without an accompanied ROM release. For those games you have no choice as they fall pray to limited releases, manufactured demand, and high prices. For all the others, a few minutes of research can usually uncover a [retro] Flash Kit solution that will allow you to enjoy not only that singular rare game, but hundreds of hacks, translations, import games, etc.

I feel for what you are implying about the morality of the situation. We can’t impose our beliefs on others. Someone will always see a limited reproduction run as a chance to make a quick buck.

I don’t think on demand cart-only releases will work. There is a limited supply of connectors that we have. I’ve been buying baseballs in bulk for awhile. I currently have over 300 of them I need to get the connectors out…and I’m sure that sounds like a HUGE number. But, we made 100 copies faceball: remastered…so 300 ..might just be 3 games.

There will always be a constant tug of war on where we put our resources. Do we deny late comers to the retro party the chance to own bound high ? Should we constantly try to restock that game ? What happens in the future when new releases cost way more to produce (because of shortages in connectors)…do we release fewer and fewer games ?

I can assure you, a limited supply was not intended or wanted. We are currently looking at restocking some of the order releases. I can’t confirm or deny any title :)..or talk numbers. But, we can’t do so indefinitely just to keep the after market prices low.

-Eric

There was some talk (I look to Ben to uncover the old threads — he is amazing at that) about custom connectors. I recall 1 person had considered 3D printing and another had uncovered a connector that seemed to be the correct fit. It would seem the connector is the most limiting factor. I was curious if anyone had more information on projects to build/adapt a solution?

Lester Knight wrote:
There was some talk (I look to Ben to uncover the old threads — he is amazing at that) about custom connectors. I recall 1 person had considered 3D printing and another had uncovered a connector that seemed to be the correct fit. It would seem the connector is the most limiting factor. I was curious if anyone had more information on projects to build/adapt a solution?

I remember that too. In fact I was wondering what happened to that idea.

Could just manufacture our own. Just sayin’. It’s a piece of plastic with some holes in it and wires coming out of it.

Guy Perfect wrote:
Could just manufacture our own. Just sayin’. It’s a piece of plastic with some holes in it and wires coming out of it.

Not quite. Each hole has a socket — that is, a two-pronged-fork shaped pin, two leaves closed with a spring force (picture your thumb & forefinger pinched together; your arm would be the pin soldered in the PCB). Each pin on the console connector inserts between those two leaves.

There are plenty of connectors on the market with I think 2mm spacing, with the right row & connector number; it’s a question of if they’ll work. I did acquire a couple extra consoles, I can disassemble and play with the main connector. It may fit directly; if the leaves are oriented horizontally (parallel to the connector length), it may allow a little play in the spacing. Gold plating preferred.

The VB connector is keyed; this is not a problem for making carts, the cart itself is keyed; impossible to insert upside-down.

Made a console connector from scratch once by plugging appropriate sized pins in a cart, then streaming epoxy over it; did this twice then glued the two strips together, and molded an “inline cart connector” out of epoxy putty. (Treated the cart first with paraffin to resist the putty.) The putty copied the keying of the cart perfectly.

I likely have the only “inline cable-mounted VB cart connector”!

Shame (for our copying) that they chose the console to be the plug-side and cart to be socket-side; but for longevity it’s clearly the best choice — the other way, every socket would get wear for every game-change. As it is each socket only gets used when that specific game is played. Pins wear much better than sockets.

So — how many people read this post and held up their thumb-&-forefinger???
😀