A few years ago I sold all of my Virtual Boy stuff and left the community. This post in particular was what pushed me to leave:

“Lets take a step back and look at some very important points.
There is a world of unreleased “items” for the Virtual Boy. They exist and you will now almost certainly not come to know their name let alone ever play them. Ever.

The VB inner circle is very tight, the people who are in it already know who leaked these and why. Now anything that is held even by 1 person will be held even tighter.”

If you’ll recall, this was back when the three rarest games were on the verge of having their ROMs released.

The fact that ROMs of these games existed, as well as a ROM for Bound High (which is now released), but that they were being kept by a Virtual Boy “Elite” upset me. The Virtual Boy community is so small already, so it made little sense to me to deprive others of a new experience. I thought that the community should be close-knit, not segmented.

Now, though, the three rarest ROMs are available. Bound High is available. Soon, Faceball will be available. This community has come so much farther from where it was a few years ago. Perhaps I’ll have to get myself another Virtual Boy.

damn straight.

StrayFelisCatus wrote:
This post in particular was what pushed me to leave:

“There is a world of unreleased “items” for the Virtual Boy. They exist and you will now almost certainly not come to know their name let alone ever play them. Ever.

The VB inner circle is very tight, the people who are in it already know who leaked these and why. Now anything that is held even by 1 person will be held even tighter.”

Believe me… it gives me GREAT joy to know that the Faceball inner circle, which had been in existence for the last 10+ years, has finally been brought down by Eric’s release of the ROM. Seriously… I laugh sinisterly to myself about it at times…

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

StrayFelisCatus wrote:
This post in particular was what pushed me to leave:

“There is a world of unreleased “items” for the Virtual Boy. They exist and you will now almost certainly not come to know their name let alone ever play them. Ever.

The VB inner circle is very tight, the people who are in it already know who leaked these and why. Now anything that is held even by 1 person will be held even tighter.”

Believe me… it gives me GREAT joy to know that the Faceball inner circle, which had been in existence for the last 10+ years, has finally been brought down by Eric’s release of the ROM. Seriously… I laugh sinisterly to myself about it at times…

My thoughts exactly.

StrayFelisCatus wrote:
A few years ago I sold all of my Virtual Boy stuff and left the community. This post in particular was what pushed me to leave:

You didn’t need to sell your stuff…

The VB inner circle is very tight, the people who are in it already know who leaked these and why. Now anything that is held even by 1 person will be held even tighter.”

Anybody on it from this site?

If you’ll recall, this was back when the three rarest games were on the verge of having their ROMs released.

I assume the third game is Space Pinball?

The fact that ROMs of these games existed, as well as a ROM for Bound High (which is now released), but that they were being kept by a Virtual Boy “Elite” upset me.

I thought they were found or kept by different people. Huh?

The Virtual Boy community is so small already, so it made little sense to me to deprive others of a new experience. I thought that the community should be close-knit, not segmented.

I completely agree with you.

Now, though, the three rarest ROMs are available. Bound High is available. Soon, Faceball will be available. This community has come so much farther from where it was a few years ago.

And I’m sure we’ll find the other two games eventually. 😉

Perhaps I’ll have to get myself another Virtual Boy.

No, you WILL get another Virtual Boy. Enjoying a system or not has nothing to do with an online forum. Thanks for supporting the Virtual Boy community though. 🙂

We’re also quite a bit more informed nowadays. Just check this out. (-:

http://www.planetvb.com/content/downloads/documents/stsvb.html

segagamer99 wrote:

If you’ll recall, this was back when the three rarest games were on the verge of having their ROMs released.

I assume the third game is Space Pinball?

No. The rarest three are Virtual Bowling, Space Invaders, and Gundam.

segagamer99 wrote:

StrayFelisCatus wrote:
If you’ll recall, this was back when the three rarest games were on the verge of having their ROMs released.

I assume the third game is Space Pinball?

I believe StrayFelisCatus meant to write the “four” rarest games, and he was referring to the “Big 4” commercially released games, which fetch the most money when they can be found complete in box. As far as how hard they are to find, with 1 being the hardest and 4 being the easiest, I would rank them in this order:

1. Virtual Lab
2. Virtual Bowling
3. SD Gundam Dimension War
4. Space Invaders: Virtual Collection.

Bound High!, Space Pinball, and Faceball were never commercially released, so they fall into a completely different category altogether. It’s possible that Faceball was being referred to in this original comment that upset StrayFelisCatus: “There is a world of unreleased ‘items’ for the Virtual Boy. They exist and you will now almost certainly not come to know their name let alone ever play them. Ever.”

If Faceball was indeed being referred to, then a smile comes to my face once again that this was proven to be wrong.

segagamer99 wrote:

StrayFelisCatus wrote:
The VB inner circle is very tight, the people who are in it already know who leaked these and why. Now anything that is held even by 1 person will be held even tighter.”

Anybody on it from this site?

It’s very interesting to read what all has been divulged on this site’s forum threads over the years. If there is one person on this site who can be considered a part of the “inner circle” that has access to still unreleased ROMs such as games, demos, etc. for the Virtual Boy, I would say that user: DogP is a good contender for that. I guess he can still be considered a user on this site, though he hasn’t logged in for quite a while.

If you read through his post history under his profile, you will find by reading his own posts that over the years, he had dumped ROMs of very rare games for people and made promises to them that he would never share any of the dumps with anyone. Evidently, DogP was the only person or one of the very few people who had access to a working Virtual Boy dumper for a long time, or at least he was the only person who made himself publicly known online as having a working VB dumper, namely via his own website and this one. One of the reasons he gave for not sharing the ROM dumps with anyone is because he wanted people to know that they could trust him, so that more offers for allowing more rare Virtual Boy ROMs to be dumped would come to him in the future.

Based on this info that DogP has made known in the forums, there is the strong possibility that some uber-collectors contacted him over the years to have the ROMs on their prototype cartridges be dumped for “preservation purposes,” and promises would have been made between DogP and the uber-collectors not to ever share those dumps with anyone else, lest the value of the ROMs should decrease over time – another reason DogP gave for not sharing the ROM dumps with anyone. Assuming DogP did make such dumps, it probably isn’t likely that he would have deleted the copies of the ROMs from his own computer and simply let the uber-collectors who came to him have the only copies of the dumped ROMs in their possession, but that’s just speculation… but good speculation nevertheless. Thus, one can only guess what unreleased VB ROMs could be in DogP’s possession.

Nevertheless, if DogP does have such, I certainly can’t blame him for making the promises. I would be much more disappointed in the people who came to him and forced him into such promises, whenever there is a whole community that would be willing to help pay them back or even pay them more than whatever they paid to get their prototype cartridges in the first place.

Hey all you uber-collectors, our dump-o-matic™ is at your disposal.

Contact Eric if you need your super rare carts dumping (please) 🙂

Yes i whas one off this persons that whas not happy whit this release off the 4 rare games.
this whas beacouse i whas afraid off the value will go down allot ( understand it in my eyes i have payed allot off money for this 4 games )
space invaders i have buy in my own country but the other 3 i have buy in japan myself
virtual bowling in a trader store on akihabra
sd gundam at the superpatato in akihabra
virtual lab i have buy it in a store in osaka
( very happy that i have find this one brand new old stock never ever have seen a athor new one )

so i have spend allot and then the roms get realesed i whas tinking value will go down allot.

but i am happy now whit it beacouse all have come fine and the games are still worth allot so i will say now that i whas wrong

mawa wrote:
Yes i whas one off this persons that whas not happy whit this release off the 4 rare games.
this whas beacouse i whas afraid off the value will go down allot ( understand it in my eyes i have payed allot off money for this 4 games )
space invaders i have buy in my own country but the other 3 i have buy in japan myself
virtual bowling in a trader store on akihabra
sd gundam at the superpatato in akihabra
virtual lab i have buy it in a store in osaka
( very happy that i have find this one brand new old stock never ever have seen a athor new one )

so i have spend allot and then the roms get realesed i whas tinking value will go down allot.

but i am happy now whit it beacouse all have come fine and the games are still worth allot so i will say now that i whas wrong

I’ve seen the thinking that dumps of rare games will decrease the value of the carts themselves many times, but I’ve never felt it to be true. The people that want the dumps are often not the ones that would be willing to buy the cartridges for exorbitant prices in the first place.

Some would, surely, but the vast majority of us who are enthusiasts just want to play every game that was released for the system but can’t afford many thousands of dollars if the super-rarities even come up in the first place.

I’m glad that you feel less bad about the releases now than you originally did. If I could afford top dollar, I’d certainly be willing to pay it to complete my collection. But as it stands, unless I win the lottery, I’ve just contented myself to never owning my own copy of Virtual Bowling. 🙂

For people with rarities, I think you’d be surprised to find out how much a community can put together to pay for the dump. That way you get your payday and get to keep your still-rare cartridge AND we get access to just a little bit more. It’s happened on other forums, for NES and Atari games mainly, but I think it could happen here, too. 🙂