I want to know what’s the general opinion of the people from the Virtual Boy Community regarding the dumping of extremely rare games and prototypes, specially from those who own the original carts and/or prototypes, and making them publicly available.
Overall, my opinion is that there wouldn’t be any problem in making those ROMs available for the general public, since with a flash cart it would allow people to play more games in their VB hardware, and the original carts wouldn’t lose their value (see Space Squash, it’s dumped and it still goes for a good amount of money at auction pages). But that’s my opinion, I’d like to read the rest of you and what you think about it. :question:
I’m a collector, I come to this boards and I would ALSO pay $1,000 for Zero Racers (but in my case I would pay for the ROM image in an EPROM cart, to play it in my Virtual Boy 😀 )
I don’t think that those who blow 400 $ in order to get Virtual Lab want to play the game ; mainly because it’s famous for being one of the most botched game ever. If I were to play it, it would only be in order to make sure of that. I believe that it’s value comes from the original cartridge’s rarity, the double mistake “Nintenndo” and “Ninntenndo” and the lack of password menu. Consequently a ROM would not discrease its value.
However, this theory concers only Virtual Lab and according to what said Fwirt here it’s illegal and immoral to dump or download a ROM, except if it’s Zero Racers or Bound High or an other prototype, since they have never been marketed. So please, somebody who owns one of the very rare prototypes, dump them 😀 (!)
Well being one of the people who spent $400 for Virtual Lab, I’ve gotta disagree. If I had the ROM, I would have spent maybe $250 on it. I was buying it mainly for collectability, but being a huge VB fan I decided that it was worth at least $150 to get to play it. And I was excited to try it out, so I wanted it right then… if I had the ROM I would have just bought it for my collection whenever I got around to it, and waited around for a good deal.
I agree with DogP. I spent A LOT of money in my Virtual Boy collection, and I would have spent A LOT of money even if the extremely rare game ROM’s were available, but the “lot” of money I would have spent would have been less than what I have spent on my collection up until now. How much less? I don’t know, but to be honest, it’s true it would have been less. Now I’m beginning to understand why ROMs of extremely rare games aren’t publicly available.
As for the prototypes, I would also love to play prototype games in my virtual boy, but if I had a prototype, I would never make it publicly available. The reason is simple: prototype game = EPROM cart (worth $50-$100?) + prototype code (worth $1,000-$2,000-$X,XXX?). If I make the prototype ROM publicly available, I’m losing 95 percent of the value of the cart. Of course, this doesn’t mean I wouldn’t dump the game, since the last thing I would want is to lose it, but I wouldn’t make it publicly available for sure. As DogP said, when the ROM is available, all the value of the item reduces to the hardware, which is a piece of plastic, chips and circuits. Also, it’s not only how much money would you pay for it, you also need a seller who wants to sell it to you (is anybody willing to sell a prototype? 😀 )
And don’t misunderstand me, I still have the same opinion as to if I would release the ROMs of the extremely rare carts or not, but I understand why, as of today, they aren’t available.
Are we sure anyone even owns these proto-types we talk about? I’ve been doing a lot of searching on the internet and have yet to run across anything indicating that somebody owns one of the highly desired games such as Bound High, Zero Racers, etc.
For all we know they are either tucked away somewhere in Nintendo’s secret archives or were simply lost in time.
You know everybody on here is right no matter what. If somebody had that special cart and it was worth $xxxx.xx It definitely would decrease it value… Personally I know for fact I wouldn’t pay a lot for something that I already can play. The other side of the coin video games are an art form and should be shared with the world not horded and kept under glass while the person that owns it throws his hands into the air laughing hysterically “it’s mine!” but I kid, I kid.
So yeah my opinion is everyone is right. I would love to have the Mario demo… ain’t gonna happen. Zero Racers would so cool and would it possibly be better than Red Alarm… Ain’t gonna happen.
A coin has a thin side and that’s where I’m gonna sit holding my wittle toesies hoping someday if it’s out there I’ll get to play the Mario Demo until then I’ll concentrate on bugging people to finish there home brew games so I can play those 😛
Trev wrote:
Are we sure anyone even owns these proto-types we talk about? I’ve been doing a lot of searching on the internet and have yet to run across anything indicating that somebody owns one of the highly desired games such as Bound High, Zero Racers, etc.
For all we know they are either tucked away somewhere in Nintendo’s secret archives or were simply lost in time.
They are definately out there, there are a few people on this site that have the bound high source code
Trev wrote:
Are we sure anyone even owns these proto-types we talk about? I’ve been doing a lot of searching on the internet and have yet to run across anything indicating that somebody owns one of the highly desired games such as Bound High, Zero Racers, etc.
For all we know they are either tucked away somewhere in Nintendo’s secret archives or were simply lost in time.
They are definately out there, there are a few people on this site that have the bound high source code
Well now that is definitely pretty cool… but something in a more playable form would be even better. 😐
Trev wrote:
Are we sure anyone even owns these proto-types we talk about? I’ve been doing a lot of searching on the internet and have yet to run across anything indicating that somebody owns one of the highly desired games such as Bound High, Zero Racers, etc.
For all we know they are either tucked away somewhere in Nintendo’s secret archives or were simply lost in time.
They are definately out there, there are a few people on this site that have the bound high source code
Well now that is definitely pretty cool… but something in a more playable form would be even better. 😐
DogP wrote:
There’s also value attached to being able to being in the elite group of collectors who own the game, which would be even more valuable when they’re the only ones who can play the game.
That is true, but it is kind of strange. Watch King of Kong to get a good idea of what that can be like.
I just said that releasing the ROMs will drop the price vs. not releasing them.
I don’t think in the case of virtual boy that there is a strong enough correlation to worry about it. The price of VB games has dwindled over the years, and not just on games that have roms in open circulation. The price of systems, accessories, and the four rare games have plummeted. If anyone is holding on to anything in order to sit on some money, instead of just loving the product, they are going to get a harsh wake up call one day.
But you’re right… this thread is pointless because collectors will do what they want, and I don’t even think many of the collectors come to these boards.
DogP
