Ok so there are two things going on: This maker of repro games does a lot for the VB community, and at the same time charges an exorbitant amount for a particular repro VB game, near certainly with the intention of fooling people into thinking they’re getting a copy from the original highly-sought after batch to justify the goliath price tag.
Can we all just agree on that? It seems like all the parties debating this are not acknowledging one of these facts or the other. We should all be saying “Thanks for all your hard work for the community Kevin, by the way that’s a shady thing you’re doing with Hyper Fighting.” It’s ok, that really seems like the fact here. Even if the creator of Hyper Fighting steps out of the shadows and settles any issues today, this should have been done before the very first sale if ethics were a concern.
DreamMary: That Virtual League Baseball proto has been on eBay for nearly two years now, we’ve discussed it in this thread before. tl;dr version: The owner has no idea of the value of the proto, and so is shooting for the stars basing the price off of TG-16 protos, which the seller feels are just as niche and desirable. As you can tell by the 2 year-old listing, his feeling is misguided lol.
Do I think it “could” happen? Yes, they could easily make a little lightweight plastic VR headset-type device with the entire VB library on it, include Bound High and Dragon Hopper on it, and charge about $100 for it. That would be a dream come true for many of us, and I personally would love to see it.
Do I think it “will” happen? I’d pretty much bet my life savings that it won’t. Nintendo already tried to give this system to the public back in ’95, and the public responded with a near-universal “no thank you”. The past success, library of hits, and loads of hype leading to launch are what resulted in the success of the NES and SNES Classic Minis. A Virtual Boy Classic would not be afforded those same perks and advantages. Even an N64 Classic (which is a system that was received by the public 1000000x better than the VB but still pretty lukewarm by Nintendo standards) probably wouldn’t invoke anywhere near the level of hype and fervor (and therefore sales) of the NES and SNES Classic.
What I could see happening way before we’d ever see a VB Classic, would be 3DS releases of Virtual Boy games, hopefully in a compilation, much like the Mr. Game & Watch DS compilations. That seems much more viable to me, and even that seems like a fading hope, given that the 3DS is currently a shadow walking towards the sunset.
JoePassive wrote:
Some games you all posted got an orange stickers on them. what is that? please let me know thanks
In Japan, unlike in North America, there was never a rental program during the commercial life of the Virtual Boy, whereby prospective customers could rent a Virtual Boy unit and/or games before buying them outright. Therefore, prospective customers had to play the VB games inside a retail store using the VB demo unit in the store, if they wanted to try them out before making a purchase. Six of the Japanese Virtual Boy games were sent to stores specifically for this purpose, and they each included a “Sample for Demonstration” sticker on their game boxes, which let the store know that these specific copies of the games were not to be sold to customers but were only to be used for the VB demo unit. The six Japanese Virtual Boy games that came in this “demo-only” form were Mario’s Tennis, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer, Galactic Pinball, Mario Clash, and Wario Land. On each orange sticker on the game boxes for these games, it reads “この商品は実演用サンプルとしてご使用ください”, which translates to “This product should be used as a sample for demonstration.” Finding copies of these Japanese demo games is extremely difficult these days for a few of them, especially Mario’s Tennis and Teleroboxer. Hope this info helps.
I have found in my years of VB collecting that Red Alarm and Mario’s Tennis are the hardest Japanese demos to find. I have looked for them religiously even after acquiring all 6 in the set, and to this day I’ve only ever seen 1 copy of Mario’s Tennis demo for sale, and I’ve actually seen 0 copies of Red Alarm japan demo for sale, but I was lucky enough to talk another collector into selling their copy. Perhaps I just got really lucky with Teleroboxer, I found a copy the very first time I ever looked for one, and really haven’t seen them for sale since either.
Also worthy of note is that the Red Alarm sticker looks different from the other 5 Japanese demos. 5 of the demos have an orange sticker on the upper right side of the box, while Red Alarm has a red sticker on the upper left side of the box.
Seam wrote:
.. I understand waterworld and jack bros of course and space invaders etc … but 3d tetris? really? give me a break
What is it you understand about the high price of games like Waterworld that you don’t understand about 3D Tetris? If one game’s price doesn’t make sense to you, it stands to reason that other games with high prices wouldn’t either.
As for finding copies for $12….well I’ve watched the VB since it was released and have collected for it for years, and I’ve never seen it for anywhere near that price at any time. Seems like an isolated case of extremely good fortune, not the norm.
I could maybe see it being super cheap around the period that stores were desperate to rid their VB stock and VBs were selling at Toys ‘R Us for $25, but not really any time outside of that period. CheapER, maybe, but never a cheap game.
retronintendonerd wrote:
Love the idea of this (and the rom you have)!
I don’t think I have anything THAT obscure other than my Virtual Girl and since I kinda made it, I don’t think that counts. Otherwise, I would have to say my SHARP NES TV is my gem. I haven’t set up my new game room but she’s at least out and on a TV stand.
Schwanck wrote:
I know I even contacted buyer right after it ended that moment and offered more but he said no :/
really tried to swipe it~
Just blatantly coming in here and admitting to trying to backdoor a deal (something that basically everyone views as shady practice and frowns on) might not be the most well-advised thing to do.
retronintendonerd wrote:
Holy shit! They are insane asking that much. Insecticide is a homebrew title. Uncle Tusk just recently released a batch of them too.
Yeah the Uncle Tusk batch is the only batch of these, this would be from that batch. Just somebody *really* stretching to try to capitalize on the VB completionist collector’s market. Since they likely got their copy through this site, there’s a good chance they’re reading this post. This message is for them:
Thanks for jacking up the perceived value of so many of the items I own, it’s truly nice of you to selflessly post these items on your own time knowing there’s no chance they’ll ever sell. Keep up the good work.
