the_wizard_666

Yeah, but which one. One of us has a glorious dad bod. The other is a toothpick. Also, only one of us has had a date in the last decade

You're just not posting enough

They may have had an issue with the labels at some point and changed them. We don't even know which one came first. But it's entirely feasible that they had one run with colour labels, then another without. It's also feasible that they received a batch of colour labels, found a cheaper alternative, and then did the black and white. It could also have been that the black & white came first, and they sold better than expected, and had to source new labels, at which point they opted for a prettier colour label. But regardless of what happened, that's a whole other investigation. One at a time man

Clearly you've never seen us in person

Sometimes I wonder that myself You listed four "irrefutable" points that I proceeded to refute. And the fact is that his testimony isn't an eyewitness account. Unless he was in the order fulfillment department, there's no way he could have known what was and was not sent out the door. Whether they were intended to get out the door or not is irrelevant - they 100% DID make it out the door. I used the court analogy simply because even one's first hand experiences are tainted by bias and perspective. And since he's commenting on a department he had nothing to do with, that perspective is flawed by being considered secondary, or even tertiary, knowledge. He's likely not lying, but that doesn't make what he's saying true by default.

Also, something to remember:

Well speak up man! Jeez! Cuz THAT'S a solid rebuttal... All I'm seeing from you is a lack of any real desire to consider possibilities outside of your narrow field of view. Your flippant dismissal of my theories (which are in no way presented as truth), coupled with your inability to provide any sort of compelling evidence to support your position aside from hearsay, makes me feel like referring you to my avatar as well. But hey, if you weren't as stubborn as you are, you wouldn't be you man. Also kinda miss having these arguments in person...weekends are a bit boring now

To be fair, I don't think anyone else gives enough of a shit to even read the thread at this point

3 - That wouldn't be accepted in small claims court, nevermind the Supreme Court. Without some evidence to support the statements, unless he had literal first hand knowledge because he packed the orders, his recollection of events is simply not relevant. 4 - Action 52 came later, and was viewed (at least by Active Enterprises) as a premium product with an MSRP of like $200. That's a far cry from a $20 budget title put out earlier with far less marketing behind it. Precedents are only useful for guidance, not an absolute statement. And like I said, who's to say it wasn't just packed in a plain brown box and not repacked when shipped? A lack of a retail box doesn't mean it never came with one.

I would love to go over those thoroughly to see what the actual change was to warrant that change...unless the code WAS the change...

3 - Dude, who's first-hand info is it? Was he the guy fulfilling orders? No? Then his testimony is hearsay. It'd be like asking the guy running the company if he can remember what product they used to clean the toilets. 4 - Seeing as every other documented NES release was sold in stores at some point, they have boxes for a reason. Selling directly to the consumer could easily have been viewed as a way to cut costs and NOT sell with packaging. Or possibly the shipping box WAS the box. We just don't know. Suffice to say, not having a box for a mail order title is not the smoking gun you seem to think it is. It's a company that, to that point, had NEVER had anything to do with the NES market. And since such distribution was still commonplace with PC games at the time when sold via mail order. Couple that with the fact that discs were cheaper than carts by a wide margin, and to hit their $19.99 MSRP they would've likely needed to cut whatever frills were necessary from the process. And since most people just tossed the boxes, why waste money making them?

Yeah, sadly I didn't know about a cart variant, hence why nothing is documented. Sadly I don't have any of the old submissions to go back to, although maybe the Wayback Machine can find some posts on NA (or even pre-NA, not sure when that one was added either).

You may be disappointed - the one on the list right now doesn't even HAVE a Klash Ball poster. It came with a Fish Dude poster instead. Seems they may have used the Acclaim strategy of including posters for other games instead of the purchased game. Klash Ball - Cartridge (NES-4K-USA) - Box (NES-4K-USA) - Manual (NES-4K-USA) - "Fish Dude" Poster (SOF-4K-US) - Registration Card (SOF-NES-US) - Epilepsy Warning Sheet (NES-DOC-USA) - Nintendo Power Subscription Card (PMG-USA-1) - Flat Black Dust Sleeve

It may have been a necessary change in order to facilitate the stairwell changes. Remember, it's a hack and not a remake. Changing parts of the code can in fact fuck with parts unrelated to the changes.

3 - There is a reason that hearsay is not admissible in court - people's memories are flawed. I don't think he's lying, but he may have faulty knowledge of the situation, or is guessing, or any number of things that could invalidate the testimony. If he had hard data to back it up, then it's worth putting more stock into it. But without that data, there isn't a court on the continent that would admit that testimony as evidence. 4 - There is ZERO evidence that the mail order copies even shipped with a box and manual. And if they did, you would think that AGCI would have to EXIST before they made the boxes and manuals with their branding. The $10 increase in MSRP would seem to directly correlate to the cost of distribution increasing due to needing packaging material to sell on store shelves.

That's as it should be, but it depends on the evidence presented. Some of the Sachen games have some solid evidence to include them (Huge Insect is probably the most obvious example here). But part of it is people wanting a finite list. Why aren't homebrew releases counted? They should be - they were made for the US market, albeit in a limited form. But because they weren't made "back in the day" they don't count. At the end of the day, people are gonna collect what they want to collect, and that's it. No amount of trying to "change the list" is gonna change the fact that most people aren't gonna give a shit. That's clearly an end-of-run cost cutting measure, but it's also a cartridge variant that exists in sufficient quantities to warrant including it as a known variant vs a one-off. The only "full set" distinction for Impossible Mission II is the AVE vs SEI distinction, not which SEI version you own. Apples and oranges dude.

1 - Air Raid had far more carts known without a box and manual before any showed up. Just because it's not known doesn't mean it doesn't exist. However, the box and manual wasn't exactly required if it was sold through the mail anyway. Sharedata was known for doing shit on the cheap, so why would they have spent a penny more than absolutely necessary? 2 - Find the data to show the print run. That said, the number of people interested enough to order it would likely have fallen in the >1% range of total readers. Only accounts for a few hundred sales at most. 3 - So you're using someone's opinion as fact? Show me the documents man, this is hearsay and wouldn't hold up to any scrutiny. 4 - That's entirely irrelevant. Those carts would've had a wider distribution, and there was really no reason to alter the ROM itself. Indeed, they still used the Color Dreams boards, indicating they were using up existing stock rather than having to spend extra money. This fits perfectly with how Sharedata was run.

Why not? Start with titles that have definitive evidence of distribution in the US. There are a few IIRC that have surfaced over the years.

10,000 copies isn't all that much. Not every cart made has survived to today - most would be in landfills somewhere.

Exclusion until proven is the way it should be though. The inclusion should be a case-by-case basis, but everyone is focused on an all-in-one solution. With Sachen, that plain doesn't work. I think you'd have a better case if you were to argue each game individually with the evidence than to try and get all of them included en masse.

I didn't notice that. Naw, I was referring more to not having starting money and having to fuck around for a while to even be able to bust ghosts in the first place.

How does it kill the theory? Think about it - how many copies of Stadium Events are floating around for a game that likely sold in the 5 digit range...not many, less than 1%. So if even 1000 copies were made in Color Dreams shells, the fact that only a couple survived is not out of line. Stadium Events had the full range of distribution afforded to a Nintendo licensee. Sharedata Chiller would've had all the revenue generated from four issues of GamePro (which was still just getting off the ground at the time). I doubt they sold more than a couple hundred units over that span of time.

That quoted paragraph was my opinion based on what data is available, as noted by the statement "I think" at the beginning of it. The ads themselves were probably taken out in a chunk...it's cheaper to pay for multiple months in one go than to pay for them individually. They may have even been able to submit an addendum to the existing ad at no extra cost (the "coming soon" variation showing up two for the last two issues). The likelihood here is that they were trying to sell their first game, and it was far more cost-effective to pay for multiple months in advance. And since the ad appeared in the magazine in January (remember, magazines hit store shelves a month before the issue date, so February 1990 would be on store shelves in January), the first issue of the magazine came out BEFORE AGCI WAS INCORPORATED. As AGCI didn't exist before February in any form, there couldn't have been an AGCI variant available yet. The logo, cart design, etc, would've come up AFTER the company existed. So even if orders were fulfilled with AGCI carts at some point, the earliest orders would likely have been in the Color Dreams shells. Yet the price listed in the ad doesn't change. So again, my THEORY of events is simple - Sharedata takes out the ad, but sells very few copies via mail order. During that time, they created a subsidiary company to take over the NES side of the business, at which point they didn't pull out another advert because they were planning the relaunch under that brand. That relaunched version was likely sold in stores (find me a later advert that shows it available for mail order), and cost an extra $10 for unknown reasons, the likelihood being that there were increased costs associated with it. This is about the only logical conclusion I can think of that actually takes every factor into account. The question then becomes whether the Sharedata one would count as a separate release (like the AVE/SEI Impossible Mission carts, or Caltron/Myriad) or if it was simply a variant of the AGCI one. The fact that the ads were out prior to the incorporation of AGCI strongly indicates that the Sharedata variation was indeed an actual release. It likely sold very poorly, being an adult-oriented title being sold via mail order only, explaining the low numbers, but it definitely sold at least a few copies. On a related note, does anyone have any scans of any AGCI specific adverts to show when they may have began production? My guess would be that they would've appeared in late 1990 sometime...possibly even early 1991 issues. Also any relevant articles from gaming, business, or tech magazines might be of use. Anything that even mentions Sharedata or AGCI may have some useful tidbits.

That might help, but probably not all that much. And honestly, it'll take longer to heat up the iron than to actually reflow the solder.

Show me an AGCI board though. Bootgod shows a Color Dreams PCB. The thread that popped up about Chiller in this subforum is on a Color Dreams PCB. AGCI made cart shells, but did they ever make a PCB? Doubtful. It makes sense to visually differentiate between carts by using their own shells, but the internals wouldn't make a difference. Hell, even their back labels are Color Dreams backs and not AGCI specific. The ONLY unique part of the cart is the shell. EDIT: Referring specifically to Chiller. Shockwave and Death Race both have AGCI boards...but when you've already got the ROM working on one board, you don't try and make it work on a new one, you just stick with what works. Again, they likely just stuck the CD internals into an AGCI shell.