That’s definitely the mosaic box, but I’ve seen a lot of both the mosaic and non mosaic boxes. I’m not sure that either one is harder to find, or that one was meant to be a demo.
Yeah, in my demo I basically converted a multi channel .mod file to the VB to get that song… there’s no need for the extra channels to get good sounding music, it just gives you more to play with.
And yeah, it has definitely been too quiet around here… hopefully some new dev’rs will show up when they get their hands on a flashboy.
Hmm… I’m not sure that I understand what you’re wanting. You can’t have more than 6 channels (4 regular + 1 sweep/mod + 1 noise) playing no matter what. IMO the best way would be to have the music and sound data in memory, and then have the interrupt service routine just load the next note (frequency, volume, etc). Of course you’ll need to use seperate channels for background music and sound effects, and also for multiple sound effects.
You’ll just need to set up your music and sounds to have a duration of a multiple of your interrupt (faster interrupt would give you the ability to change notes faster, but take more memory, longer notes would take less memory, but of course give you less control of the sound). You should be able to find a medium point that works well for you. And I don’t remember exactly how the interrupts work on the VB, but IIRC they can be triggered at a constant rate, regardless of how long the interrupt service routine takes (so just arrange the music using that as a base speed).
I’d limit background music to 2 channels max, which would give you 2 regular channels for sound effects, 1 sweep/modulation channel for speech, or it can also be used as another regular channel, and then one noise channel for random sounds like a helicopter or something.
Let me know if this answers any of your questions or if I’m not understanding what you’re asking.
Yeah, I remember a few years ago one of the smaller countertop ones went for ~$1600, but that guy was totally crazy… that winning bidder has definitely paid some of the highest prices for VB stuff. I’ve owned a couple of the countertop ones and IIRC the last one I sold went for around $400, but that was several years ago, and prices for rare VB stuff in general seems to have gone down.
Good luck with the auction though… I think that is probably the best way to go with it since there haven’t been many examples to get a feel for a price. And if you start it for $9.99 or less it’s free to list on ebay 😛 .
Yeah, that’s sweet… I wish i had a place for it. I’ve played that type in person and it’s really comfortable to play (as long as you don’t mind standing). And yeah, the light bulb shouldn’t be a big deal… IIRC I ordered one for mine from http://www.atlantalightbulbs.com .
Oh… cool, definitely post pics. I remember seeing a floor standing one on ebay a while ago… I don’t remember what it went for, but it’s definitely a cool item.
Nope… not until Spring… for some reason I’m almost excited about it though. I graduated w/ my BSEE last fall and decided I wanted to take a year off before going to grad school, and a few weeks ago I almost decided I wanted to start this semester. Luckily I hadn’t put in my application and it was past the due date, so I couldn’t talk myself into it 😉 .
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.
Back in 95 when it was released I was interested, but didn’t want to spend the $180, so a friend and I rented the console from Blockbuster and played it a ton, but decided it still wasn’t worth the price. I played it whenever I went to a store that had one on display, but then when they were put on clearance for $25 we both bought the system and all the games we could find (at first we thought we could link them, but even solo it was worth the cheap price). We went to Toys R Us, Blockbuster, Electronics Boutique, KB Toys, etc and bought up all the cheap games from the bargain bins.
It had always been a fun console to me, but I didn’t really get back into it until around 2000 when I started collecting some of the games I hadn’t picked up, and also begain looking into hacking the system. That’s when I really got hooked.
As I’ve said many times, there is a value attached to the collectability of the game, and there’s a value attached to being able to play the game (complete games add to the collectability). When the dumps and means to play it are available, the collectability (and possibly convenience) becomes the only value in the game. THEN you can compare games to hardware, because then that’s all the cart is. 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.
And I didn’t say palacios wouldn’t want to finish his collection, I just stated what he said that he wouldn’t be willing to pay as much to get them (which is my whole point). I’m not saying that the price can’t go up if there are more collectors interested in the VB, I just said that releasing the ROMs will drop the price vs. not releasing them. With more collectors and the ROMs staying unreleased, the price would be even more. I guarantee that none of those games are good enough to bring more collectors to the VB. And the collectors paid big bucks for the carts, so they’re free to do whatever they want… but I really don’t think they “owe” us in the community anything.
And I’d be willing to pay $1000 for just a ROM dump of Zero Racers… I’m crazy about VB games and that’s one that I’d LOVE to have.
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.
Like palacios said… if he had the ROMs and a cart, he wouldn’t pay as much for the games. This is my point… I’m not saying they’re going to become worthless, just worth less than they currently are because there won’t be as much of a reward of getting the game. And I already said that art is totally different than games… and comparing hardware doesn’t make sense because obviously that’s solely a collecting piece (nobody buys a golden C64 to play). These games become solely a collecting piece if the ROMs are released, compared to being something to collect, but also a way for people to play the games.
And once again, to make any comparison you have to find a similar situation… I’m not saying that games that are publicly downloadable can’t sell for much (I believe Video Life for 2600 is downloadable, and they’re worth a TON, along with some crazy AES stuff), what I’m saying is that making them publicly downloadable will decrease their value because then it just becomes a collectable piece of plastic. Go over to http://www.digitpress.com/forum and do a search on releasing ROMs and you’ll see what I’m talking about… and there’s a lot of hardcore collectors over there and they agree that releasing ROMs decreases the value. Look at some of the stuff http://www.lostlevels.org has released… they even say that they spend lots of money to find the stuff and then release it and devalue their own carts, but they’re about getting the games out for people to play (which is cool, but they’re in the minority of collectors willing to do that).
If you guys are so sure it won’t devalue the carts, go buy the games, dump/release them, then try to sell them again. If you’re right, you’ll have lost no money and gotten the ROMs. If you’re smart you’ll dump the games, sell the games, then release the ROMs (and screw the people who bought them from you).
I wish I had some nice code, but for the most part all of my sound programming code is really ugly. If you haven’t already, read through the sound chapter in the official development manual. It’s not particularly difficult to program, there’s just no functionality like “play this sound” or “continuously loop this song in the background”, etc. It’d be possible to make a function that does that, but nobody has AFAIK. I don’t think anyone has made any functions to convert audio files to work on the VB either (like the BMP to VB converter in VIDE), so you’ll have to compose your music from scratch or make a converter.
But what games for other systems fetch $1000? And what’s the last time a new dump has been released where a previously undumped commercial game had been selling for that much?
I’m not sure if this is what you were going for, but yeah… the homebrew scene is cool… if you can’t buy the game, make it! It takes a lot of effort, but if it’s fun I don’t really consider it work.
And yeah, I don’t expect that Virtual Bowling and stuff would drop to less than any of the publicly available games, but I’d expect Virtual Lab and Space Invaders to drop below $200 and SD Gundam and Virtual Bowling to drop to around $300-$400. And like you said, the VB community is small, which is why it WOULD make a big splash. If there’s 5 people crazy enough to buy a game to play it, and then the ROM gets released and it can be played for free, then there’s only 2 people that want it, and they probably only want it add to their collection. With a system like the NES, there’s many more collectors, so there’s probably more crazy people willing to spend crazy amounts of money.
I don’t know anything about Panzer Dragoon Saga, but $200 for a rare commercially released game doesn’t sound very far out of line. The problem is the Japanese VB games that sell for ~$400 (VL and SI), and the ones that sell for ~$800-$1000 (SDG and VBowl). Who would pay that kind of money when they could buy a flash cart for much less and burn the game to it whenever they want to play. I guess I don’t really see why rare games would be any different than prototypes anyway… prototypes are just really rare games with a production number of only a few. Games are meant to be games… it’s not like art where an original probably wouldn’t be affected by people making printed copies.
palacios25: I assume you’re still looking for SDG and VBowl? If someone emailed you the ROM files and sent you a flash cart, would you still be willing to pay the same amount even though you already have the ROM, so all you’re getting is a physical cart to store somewhere? I know I wouldn’t, and I think most people would feel the same way… there’d be less demand for the game, so the prices would drop. Of course there’d still be a demand… it’s not like I wouldn’t take the game if someone was gonna give it to me, but getting the game is much less rewarding than if I’ve never played it before and there’s no other way to play the game.
I don’t mean to sound like I don’t want the ROMs released, because it doesn’t really matter to me… I’m just saying that it’s well known to most collectors that when dumps get publicly released that the value of the originals goes down, so finding someone to dump their expensive games to devalue them isn’t easy.
