[Schwanck]

Here you guys go, I am the one who got the Virtual Fishing off of eBay.
I’ve attached a zip file of the game and many padded copies too. Let me know what you find inside of it.

I just felt I had to do this and preserve it.

Other info: I bought it from Justin swegart, he didn’t want to sell it outside of Ebay, I believe he wanted to be anonymous from me but I guess he doesn’t realize PayPal still tells me who he is. Which is unfortunate soI had to pay tax and eBay fee.

He claims to have received this from a private collector from California. Thats all I could figure out.

-Also this was an expensive purchase so if you would be so great and generous I would appreciate any donations. I have Venmo @VB-Schwanck or message me for Anything else you want to tell me.

Again thank you if you do and if not Its okay too.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Schwanck.
• This topic was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Schwanck.
• This topic was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Schwanck.
• This topic was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Schwanck.

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1. virtualfishingprototype.zip

Internal photos

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That’s pretty cool. Will try to have a look tomorrow. Thanks for dumping.

It looks like it’s exactly the same as the final game.

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Thanks for sharing!

Please put some black electrical tape or something over those ROM chip windows. If they absorb enough light the chips will start erasing.

I plan to use a label maker to cover up.

Hope it isn’t a final version copy

[Hiccup]

Its possible there is some interesting data beyond the end of the Virtual Fishing ROM. Btw, could you post high resolution photos of both sides of the cart and pcb?

Also, its probably better to use something more substantial the label marker to protect the data.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Hiccup.

Can anyone explain to me why PCBs have those windows on them? Is there a reason they were designed to be so vulnerable to light?

[Yamagushi]

I missed that another prototype went up for sale. If you don’t mind my asking, it looks like it listed at $2000, did you make an offer or did you pay the full asking price?

@pinmagic – The hole is for erasing the data. Shining light into the hole erases the chip so it can be rewritten with something new. It’s a rather old method.

Also, I was thinking this was one of the known prototypes, but I was mistaking it for Virtual Bowling. You should definitely do some research on this one for values sake. There were some blank prototype carts that came out a while back and people just wrote random dumps onto them. It’s history will highly impact it’s value. There are seven known EP-ROM carts out there that are easier to verify due to their public history. Faceball, Virtual Bowling, Space Pinball, Jack Bros, 2 Panic Bombers, and Virtual League Baseball for known EPROM carts. There is also a Bound High Flash cart. It would definitely be worth your time and effort to try and establish some authentic history behind this one, the easiest way would have been some difference in the ROM, but it seems there isn’t any unfortunately.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Yamagushi.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Yamagushi.

[Yamagushi]

I was looking over the images and the chips. The chips on this prototype are Texas Instruments, which seems rather odd for a Japanese cart. Looking up the chips, the data sheets are from 1997, however I’m unable to tell if that’s when production started or just when this revised data sheet was released. The date code I believe is YMLLLS. Which would mean a year of 5, and a month of 3. This could be 03/1995, which would put it around what it should be, however it could also be 03/2005 which would mean the chips came much too late. Looking at the listings images, I do notice one of the chips use to have a sticker on it, which was removed. That’s also not a good sign, while it’s possible it was like that going back to development, it’s also possible it was removed to erase the chips and flash the dump onto the cart.

I would recommend contacting “Benjamin Stevens”. He’s rather knowledgeable on the prototype carts. He may be able to help you with verifying the authenticity of the cart. Here’s his profile. https://www.planetvb.com/modules/usercenter/index.php?section=profile&uid=1643

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Yamagushi.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Yamagushi.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Yamagushi.

The board is a official and genuine VB eprom board.
The Data on it… well it is hard to verify if it was flashed in 1995 or recently.
If the binary matches with the final version of the game you can not call that a prototype anymore. It would be more of a review version if legit.
With the final version of the game and no other content on it, the board is not worth 2000 USD. 🙁
The board alone maybe 350-500.
In my opionion, for that much money, the seller should have given much more proof of the content.

You should propably open a case in ebay.

That said, I dont think that even a real prototype (early version of the game) of Virtual Fishing would be worth 2000 USD.
That is way to much for such an “unimportant” title.
A prototype of Zero Racer or Dragon Hopper would be worth it or even some more.

I had to pay full price, offers was not an option on listing, and I had to pay tax and cover the Ebay fees too since he wouldn’t sell with PayPal only.

Oh yeah & he was from Columbus OH

Here’s some better photos

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If the binary matches with the final version of the game you can not call that a prototype anymore. It would be more of a review version if legit.

It’s still on a prototype cart. Whats on it beyond that just affects it value, not whether it’s a prototype or not.

With the final version of the game and no other content on it, the board is not worth 2000 USD. 🙁
The board alone maybe 350-500.
In my opionion, for that much money, the seller should have given much more proof of the content.

Sadly I have to agree, without any history on it, and with a questionable chip and dump, it’s worth much much less than the 2000.

That said, I dont think that even a real prototype (early version of the game) of Virtual Fishing would be worth 2000 USD.

An undumped prototype for Virtual Fishing would very likely be worth that if not more. Being undumped and unique makes it much more valuable for those with deep pockets.

But regarding the cart, it is still a very uncommon quite hard to find item. They rarely leave collectors hands, and when they do they’re likely to end up in the hands of someone who’s not going to part with it in the future. You’d probably have a hard time returning it, as it was still as advertised. And even if you did, it’s gonna be a while until another one, especially one of the few verified ones, pops up again.

Well, the BA3A board is not a prototype cart. It is a development and testing cart and not uber rare. I had 2 of these myself when I was collecting VB stuff.
This kind of cart was used by Nintendo and 3rd party companies mainly for testing since development was done on a debugger. Also such carts were given to magazines for review purposes.
The Virtual Boy died quite fast so it is possible that a review copy was left with the press and found is way to collectors over the years.
It is also possible that a testing copy of the final version of the game was left on the board after development of the title was done. Pack-in-Video Co. Ltd. made only this one VB game. Some time after that, the VB development stuff was propably put in trash and maybe one testing copy found its way to collectors.
I would call it a Testing or Preview Copy/Sample if legit and rate it with maybe 800 USD max.
Preview copies and Samples are a common thing on the SNES/SFC/Sega and they cost far less than unreleased stuff or real beta version.

The Texas Instruments Eproms are a bit strange indeed.
The game and its developer are japanese. The game was never intended for a US release. The origin of this card must be japan. A other eprom brand would sound more plausible but it can still be legit. If we can not verify the maker date of the eproms it will be hard to find out.
The fact is, with a BA3A board in your hands, you can basicially put anything on it if you know how to program eproms. The backstory of this card is really missing here.
BA3A boards were on yahoo auctions from time to time.
Some came with games, some were empty. It is very hard to say.

In any case, I admire Schwancks efforts but he also took a great risk here. For that price there are way to less information available and also the seller was not even covering the windows of the eproms. How careless is that?!? A real valuable beta/proto could have been damaged. Even if just a few bits get erased, the harm is done. The not covered windows could indicated that the seller knew that nothing special was on it or he has just no idea how to handle such things.

[Yamagushi]

Ah, well I can agree with you about the title of “prototype”, technically these are a developer cart rather than an actual prototype. But it’s the name that stuck, so in that sense, they are all refereed to as prototypes, the content certainly has a big impact, but it’s still a neat and rather uncommon item anyway.

I’ve heard of them selling a while back on yahoo auctions, but beyond that, I’ve only ever seen 3 of these for sale. The Virtual League Baseball one, which has an even more ridiculous price tag but it believed to be authentic, the copy of Panic Bomber (1 of 2 known and documented copies), and this one. I know of a 4th one that sold, but I believe it was a private sale, I never actually saw it for sale publicly. Even then, Virtual League Baseball might have never actually sold due to it’s price, though I haven’t seen it listed in a good bit now, prior to that it was listed for years. So even without something authentic flashed on it, it’s still neat as a generic BA3A cart. It still is a rather uncommon collection piece that’s missing from many really nice collections that I’ve seen due to it’s rarity.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Yamagushi.

Thanks everyone for your work and contribution. I’ll add these labels inside so in the future this could be prevented again.

Too bad I spent to much and the story wasn’t different. Gonna take a long time to pay off.

I have plans of what I’m going to do with it and should be done tomorrow.

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Schwanck wrote:
Thanks everyone for your work and contribution. I’ll add these labels inside so in the future this could be prevented again.

Too bad I spent to much and the story wasn’t different. Gonna take a long time to pay off.

I have plans of what I’m going to do with it and should be done tomorrow.

Eh, I wouldn’t bother with the stickers. For it to end up questionable again in the future, someone would have to deceive the next buyer, and if they are willing to do that, they’d just remove them.

Also, thanks to your pics, each board has tiny differences and your specific board is now distinguishable if anyone were to try and sell it as something different in the future.

Too much glare but I built a shadow box with the cart disassembled, so it will hang on the wall for display.

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Oh, please tell me you used antistatic foam??

Yes of course

Nice acquisition! The cart certainly has a lot going good for it, and it strongly appears that what you got there came completely from a development team back in the 90’s, so I’d consider it to be fully genuine, whatever designation one might want to give to the cart itself.

If you truly love collecting rare Virtual Boy items, I wouldn’t worry about what others have to say about assessment of worth. An avid Virtual Boy collector has no choice but to put a higher value on a rare VB item than anyone else on the planet, who might be interested in the item available at the time, if he or she wants to add it to the collection.

Nintendo Power Issue # 80 indicates that THQ had plans to localize Virtual Fishing for the North American market. Perhaps that explains why the chips come from Texas Instruments. Maybe this was a cart that came from the development team localizing the game for the USA, who would have ordered their own separate EPROM chips and would have had all the development hardware available to them, along with access to the original source code. They could have simply made the cart quick for demonstration, before having done any work on translating or other changes to the code.