the_wizard_666

I've been an "everything" collector the entire time I've collected. The most I've done was cut boxes and manuals out for some systems as they got prohibitively expensive, but otherwise nothing has really changed. I still collect for whatever i can get my hands on. There's just less chance of me finding anything I still need after 25+ years.

You know something? After all these years knowing about its existence and its rarity, I can't recall anyone ever asking this or mentioning it anywhere...

I'm the one that dumped the Tengen roms and compiled them for @Code Monkey, and I can certainly say that the Tengen rule is broken by a few of them. I won't go into any more detail than that, but rest assured they are not all near release versions. Some are early dev.

There's a section on accessories in the first Nintendo Game Secrets by Russel DeMaria that has some UForce settings. I don't know offhand if it's unique data or if it's from the manual, and I'm not at home to check, but I figure it's worth mentioning.

That's fair. Just throwing it out there. It's easy enough to download the patch and apply it to a ROM anyway.

The grey carts were officially licensed games. Tengen originally acquired the license so they could get access to the things they needed to reverse engineer the lockout chip and make their own shit. Nintendo ended up revoking the license because of this, which is why they don't recognize them as official releases. As for Tetris itself, Nintendo was beaten to the punch by BPS in Asia, which is why that license text is there - Nintendo had to license Tetris from Bullet Proof in order to release their version in Asia. The license has nothing to do with manufacturing at all. As an aside, if you've never played the version BPS put out, don't. It's the worst version by far.

Yeah, I'd go with the alt art option if you do replace it, but the game is common enough that you could just get a nicer copy, and popular enough that you should be able to flip it even with the damage. Some people just wanna play the game lol

I've played it, and I enjoyed it, but it's definitely not worth the price.

Okay, there's a few possibilities. The obvious is that they're fake. Another possibility is that the boards are real, but someone custom ordered the shells to protect them. Or it could be legit proto chips and everything else is fake. Or they could be fully legit. But a first party title seems weird to have in a Parker Brothers shell.

A closer look makes me wonder if that board even works. The MMC3 looks hand soldered, which means it could be an issue. It also appears to be missing a resistor and some caps. That could be the issue with CopyNES...the cart may simply not work.

It looks like instead of bending pins and rewiring them like a repro maker would, they instead modified the traces. The wires are connecting the pins to junctions along the board, and I would guess that the traces are cut as well. It's a bit messier that way, but it doesn't damage the chips.

He may have, but the market for final build protos is much smaller than if there were some bits still being worked on. Maybe he could've got more, but he may have been waiting a while for the right person to come along.

I have a few, but not any that I'd be willing to part with. I do have some spare discs and jewel cases for some of them though, so if you find any that are missing discs, let me know.

Wizardry: Knight of Diamonds. I know the game inside out. And after acquiring the mail in strategy guide, I also discovered how accurate my childhood notes were. I did a ton of number crunching on that game

I'm aware, but it's definitely misleading at a consumer level. As a kid i thought it meant the quality of the game, at least until I played a few turds, and I doubt many parents thought it was about the manufacturing.

I have a ton of great memories playing Mech Assault. Didn't play much of the single player mode though, so I can't way if its great or not. But it's cheap enough to be worth checking out, and probably the sequel too. Black Stone is a neat little Gauntlet clone with an anime skin. I'm probably in the minority with this one, but I really dug WWE Raw 2 as well. Especially since it's the only wrestling game I can think of where you can add in your own music for your entrance theme. The gameplay was average but the customization was unprecedented. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x had the levels from the first two games plus 5 new ones, plus some other improvements, so if you like those games I'd say get that too. Grabbed By the Ghoulies is also pretty awesome, though it can be skipped if you have a copy of Rare Replay (Xbox One). One feature that gets overlooked a bit is custom soundtracks. Having a game play your favorite songs in the background may be interesting enough that a non exclusive might be more appealing if it's utilized. Games will say on the back of the case if they take advantage of this, but it's definitely a highlight for many sports games in that era.

There's a translation patch on Romhacking.net so the text will be in English. It doesn't teach the game, but at least you don't have to learn Japanese as well. It's also a super cheap repro to make, as its a simple NROM game, if you wanna go that route.

Well, the seal shouldn't be a metric for a license anyway. The seal originally stated, and I quote, "This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product." Later it was shortened to "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality." Of course, Nintendo would only give you that seal if you paid their fees and towed the line. But it was meant to vouch for the quality of the game, not to denote the licensing agreement. That was the fine print on the back or the box and/or in the manual.

Except that's not technically correct. He owned nothing in the USSR because by their laws at the time, anything created by anyone there was owned by the state. Atari clearly didn't know that when they went and got the rights from the creator they were literally paying for nothing. Technically correct is the best kind of correct Oh, and I'm surprised the talk about Game Boy agates didn't end up leading to the SNES Majesco re-releases, which fall in the same category.

I've met him in person. He's either a human or an extremely convincing android. By that logic, every black box Canadian release was published by Mattel and not Nintendo. Hyundai didn't publish anything, they were a regional distributor, like Mattel was in Canada.

If you think NES collectors are bad, you should see Atari 2600 collectors. It's literally impossible to have a complete set because of the metrics they use...basically, if it exists in any form, it counts.

I don't think that's what it's doing. I have a feeling those links were referenced in the sources it found, so it quoted them without actually knowing the links were fake or no longer usable. Myriad 6-in-1 had no changes from Caltron 6-in-1 aside from the packaging and shitty new label. The carts are identical at the code level. Granted, it's a unique circumstance, but it's still a publisher change that didn't change the code.

Could be worse. If I were to ship a parcel with tracking from Canada to Greece, it'd be anywhere from $80-120 Canadian dollars. Not cheap to be an international buyer, that's for sure.

Total jealousy on my part. Just for the record. I wish I could stumble on something like that.