GauBan wrote:
Just had a check on eBay and noticed that there are a number of auctions selling off items of for Uncle Tusks’ hard work at some amazingly high prices.

Bound High – $1,199.99
Faceball Remastered – $1,199.99
Blox – $1,199.99
INSECTICIDE – $1,299.00
Virtual Bowling – $1,299.00

Yep, and worse yet, I know of at least collector who didn’t do his homework and got duped into buying “Virtual Bowling” :/

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KR155E wrote:
Good idea, HorvatM! So, according to the usercenter, 50 users own V. Bowling, 52 own V. Lab. Lists attached.

Excellent, thanks very much guys! These lists are very helpful, but it must also be taken into consideration that some of these collector’s lists are not updated or current. (For example, I see the name of the collector who sold me their copies of the games is still registered on the site as owning them, so some may be double-registered etc etc). Still, a far better tool for approximation than a thread! Thanks again 🙂

pinmagic wrote:
I have a mint CIB VBowl. It is rare, but I would have to guess that VLab is much more rare. It came out just as the VB was being yanked from retailers in Japan, and most were returned to the distributor. Besides, it’s one crappy game, so it’s not like anyone said, “you really need to buy this.”

That’s the thing, there is anecdotal evidence and guesses all over. If I had to guess I’d say Virtual Bowling was the rarer game (since I’ve seen it for sale more seldomly than I’ve seen VLab), but again it’s just a guess. I want to try to accumulate some actual data, but I can see it’s not going to be easy. At this point I don’t know if either game had 20,000 copies produced or a single box of 20, and I’m trying to get a clearer picture of an approximation. Based on what I’ve seen in my several years of VB collecting and online research, it’s still a total mystery to me.

So, so far we’re at 3 confirmed owners! :p

Uh oh. Those things the light is projecting from are fingertips, complete with fingerprints. Please God, don’t let this announcement have anything to do with mobile phones + Virtual Boy.

mips5000 wrote:
So if I understand right, the original owner couldn’t justify the price/time of going to the boarder to pick it up, so just took it as a loss? It really sucks that given the circumstances, he couldn’t hire a person, or pay some fee to have it shipped out of there.

You are understanding it right. The seller was in the middle of a tornado trying to salvage massive losses from his business at the time, so this matter probably wasn’t at the forefront of his priorities at the time. This loss was likely dismal in comparison to the losses he faced when the roofs were flying off of his warehouses.

As for it sucking that he couldn’t hire a person, or pay some fee to have it shipped out of there…we’re in agreement there, that definitely sucks. Unfortunately when dealing with property seized by customs, those aren’t options and it’s just not that simple.
The only people allowed to claim seized property are the owners, or another party whom the owner has signed Power of Attorney over to (and we even discussed that option, which is a pretty desperate one). To add insult to injury I live maybe a 20 minute drive from the border crossing where the kiosk was confiscated, if there were no red tape to cross, I could’ve just driven down there and grabbed it. The loss was definitely not due to any lack of effort, if there was any option to make this deal work, we likely explored it. C’est la vie, I won’t spend too much time mourning over it. With any luck we’ll see it pop up on eBay someday, hopefully for less than 5 grand lol!

mips5000 wrote:
There must be some real honor amongst serious game collectors. What bugs me, is what actually happened to that first Koisk? They wouldn’t let you go and pick it up? Or arrange to have it shipped out of there? Did they consider it the drivers property? Maybe when he gets out of jail it’ll be waiting for him.

There was certainly some real honor between myself and the guy I made this deal with, and that’s really the most amazing part of this whole thing for me. You don’t often hear a story about a high-value deal dragging on all year long with nothing but problems, obstacles and excuses ending happily. I’m still very shocked and grateful for that. I had a hard lesson in accepting loss this year, and then after I learned the lesson, there wasn’t a loss after all!

Believe me, the fate of the first kiosk bugs me too. I’m just so relieved that this actually worked out in the end, that I don’t let it bug me too much. The most likely scenario is that it has been/will be auctioned off by the border/customs agency at a random place and time.

Basically once the rightful owner is determined (in this case the guy I made the deal with), they’re given a time window of 60 days to claim their items from customs. If the owner fails to claim an item within the allotted time frame, they lose control of the item and it goes off into the great unknown. We don’t know exactly where the kiosk was being held, and we no longer have access to any information about it. Where it will be auctioned off, when it will be auctioned off…nothing.

Believe me I’ve spent a decent amount of time on the phone in pursuit of this knowledge, but you can tell right away from the tone of the people on the phone that there’s no chance of getting any info about it from anyone. It could be in a warehouse locker somewhere, it could be sitting in someone else’ collection. I just truly hope it eventually winds up in the hands of another dedicated VB collector!

I’ll be there! Probably just on Saturday though, and I’ll likely just be trolling around the sales floor scavenging for decent deals lol.

Thanks very much for the kind words guys, believe me I’m still in disbelief that it all worked out the way it did in the end 🙂

Echoing what others are saying, I’m glad you made that release, and look forward to future releases 🙂

Wyndcrosser wrote:

NR20 wrote:
Got one… pretty crappy game actually, sorry 😀
But I like the music for the ant 🙂

I hope that’s sarcasm dude.

It’s not.

I’m sure you could have phrased that a little more gracefully dude, he put a lot of work into that game.

retronintendonerd wrote:
In my opinion that title goes to Virtual League Baseball. I absolutely HATE that game.

Blasphemy! :p

Virtual Lab is by far the worst VB game in my opinion. It looks like something a kid in junior high made in his computer class, and plays only slightly better than that.

Updated collection pic for 2018 🙂

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The misleading thread title Gods are not pleased.

So much false hope in the thread title for those that didn’t get a copy.

Please God and baby Jesus, allow this to become a physical release.

That poor handful of games that didn’t make the cut, lol

Sending best wishes and thoughts for a quick return to health!

Awesome, can’t wait to try it out!

VirtualChris wrote:
I thought this was pretty interesting:
eBay item #263608086487 is a Virtual League Baseball prototype. The guy selling it has no idea if there are any differences between this and the final version.

Scroll up a bit, this item gets tons of coverage in this thread.