My Game Boy Tetris Minuet collection

[JVOSS | 1,762]

If your looking for the Tetris Minuet version look ebay this "Tetris 09 Game Boy"  a few sellers have this up for under 50 shipped..

[Ulrizza | 133]

I bought all my Tetris between 5€ and 15€, shipping included. I'm checking eBay every few hours all day, I'm looking for the ones noy listed as Minuet because I don't want to pay more than 15€ for one 

[Ulrizza | 133]

So I found 3 more, but one 23 et two 05, so the search is still ongoing

[RH | 4,903]

7 hours ago, Ulrizza said:

So I found 3 more, but one 23 et two 05, so the search is still ongoing

That one on the left looks quite nice. Congrats on the find.

[Ulrizza | 133]

4 hours ago, RH said:

That one on the left looks quite nice. Congrats on the find.

The top of the label is a little bit damaged but yeah overall it's in great condition

[Ulrizza | 133]

Hi 

I finally found the last cart that I was missing: the 20 imprint 

I've updated the first post so it's now up to date 

It took me some time to find those 4, I've only bought carts that was not listed as Minuet and made some pretty long collecting pauses. I collected a total of 23 carts and gave 2 away, leaving me with 21!

As requested by @JVOSS or @RH I don't remember  I took pictures of every cart.
There is a total of 5 pictures by cart: Front, Imprint, Mold number, PCB front, PCB back.

They are all ordered 
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XsxZeCW15lelKRxewcZm0H0CfxSM4Lnj?usp=sharing

[ninjistar | 517]

Very nice. I'll be adding one to my ever-expanding Tetris collection at some point  

[Tanooki | 4,932]

Necro time, not sure what made me think of looking this version up again and I found that sendico has a thumb into spots zenmarket doesn't.  Before I make any stupid moves, YEN to USD what would be a good price on one of the games alone, or complete in the box?

I've seen ebay shenanigans, I don't believe about $50 for a loose cart seems right but most trolls go there so I'm not.

[IllChamo | 0]

I just came across this post, and i am confused about something, i just bought TM cartridge #09. There is no way there are two copies with the same number.

[Splain | 2,561]

17 minutes ago, IllChamo said:

I just came across this post, and i am confused about something, i just bought TM cartridge #09. There is no way there are two copies with the same number.

That number indicates a facility code, so any two cartridges that were made in the same factory will have the same number. So there are likely thousands of copies with "09" stamped.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

Nice, I just grabbed one of these! Hopefully it'll arrive and the seller won't swap it for a different one.

[IllChamo | 0]

6 hours ago, Splain said:

That number indicates a facility code, so any two cartridges that were made in the same factory will have the same number. So there are likely thousands of copies with "09" stamped.

ah great info, thanks so much!

[RH | 4,903]

8 hours ago, Splain said:

That number indicates a facility code, so any two cartridges that were made in the same factory will have the same number. So there are likely thousands of copies with "09" stamped.

The more I've tried to think about this, I'm not 100% sure this is just a facility code.  A while ago, I speculated that this is more likely a production line number.  I would say it was a print run number, but we also know that there are a few numbers we keep seeing again and again, across several games like "21" and "23" but there are also noticeable gaps and other numbers I don't recall ever seeing.

I can't quite say what this number exactly is but I'm pretty sure it's tied to a facility + something else.  Part of it's reference point is likely an assembly, or final assembly, line.  Imagine you have a factory capable of assembling the individual components of Game Boy game parts.  However, since they were expecting to mass produce a lot of different games, maybe Nintendo had 5x GB production lines, each capable of making, say, 10,000 games a day.  That'd give Nintendo the ability to produce 50,000 games a day.  This is just a hunch.  Setting up assembly factories takes a lot of work and money.  It's easier to add a new line in one location for additional output than creating a new facility, however, we know that Nintendo definitely did that for the SNES in Mexico and, they had some stuff manufactured in China from time to time.

Whatever the two digit code is, I find it fascinating, and very thorough, that this code also represents a ROM revision on the cartridge.  If there is no letter after the two-digits, this is the first version of the game. If they had to patch the game due to some breaking bug, or possibly copyright change or for whatever reason, they put an "A" at the end of the code.  If they needed to make another change, it was incremented to a "B", and so on.  This method of using these two-digits plus a letter to mark the facility/line plus revision was common from the NES era up through the DS and maybe 3DS era.  Switch cartridges, however, do not have any such stamps on their labels.  But what this tells us is that the full production process for cartridges happened at one time, on likely one line for ALL Nintendo cartridge games.  Going back to the assumed controller machine, the probably had a machine where they could load a game ROM, enter a game code (something like "DMG-TM"), enter a revision "empty, "A", B", etc.) and then the system would get to work, flashing the ROM chips, putting the PCBs into the cartridge shells, screwing it shut, stamping the facility/line + optional ROM revision code on the label and then sticking this on the cart.  It might not have happened this way, but for accurate, quality control, I'm assuming these RAM chips were being flashed as part of the same assembly process as the sticker stamping and labeling.  Maybe not, but to assure accuracy, I bet it was.

I only point this out the say too two things.  This is definitely part of the lot-code marking info Nintendo would use for lot tracking because they've always had a high standard of manufacturing quality.  The fact that games like Tetris, which was a VERY high volume game, has probably 5-6 different stamps for a same label variant, I'm willing to assume Nintendo had at least 5 production lines available.  Switching games was probably a matter of loading game data via floppies into a controller machine, changing out the label rolls, pushing the start button and boom, the line goes from printing Tetris games to printing Baseball games, etc.

Another point to note, and this goes beyond just the cartridges, but at least for Game Boy, Nintendo did not fully assemble the games and packaging at the production facilities for the cartridges.  I know this because several years ago, I was able to speak to a guy who when he was a kid, his dad was a courier/delivery person for Nintendo.  Through some miss-shuffle, this guy had 3x boxes, each with about 80x cartridges of F-1 Racing.  The boxes had typical font-stamping and all of the carts in one box he had cracked open looked perfect and mint, so there was no way he was faking it.  I tried to buy one of the boxes off of him but he wasn't interested in selling.  The idea was, Nintendo of Japan would ship out the games to their respective regions in cartridge-only form, in their plastic dust shells, and then local packaging would assemble the boxes/manuals/etc.  This  makes sense because that printed material would add a lot of unnecessary volume to shipping, so shipping just the cartridges from Japan to the UK or Japan to Washington state would have made sense.

I know that's a lot of rambling but the TL;DR is that there's a lot about the manufacturing process we don't know about any game Nintendo made, but there are tell-tale details that give us some clues into the process.  That 2-digit code hasn't been 100% solved but we've  at least figured out it's tied to manufacturing and we at least know that if there's a letter present, you have a later ROM version of the game.

Edited April 2 by RH

[Ulrizza | 133]

5 hours ago, fcgamer said:

Nice, I just grabbed one of these! Hopefully it'll arrive and the seller won't swap it for a different one.

I still have some to sell if there is an issue with yours

[Tyree_Cooper | 752]

i've yet to find an "official" proof of what the double digit code is. can't be that hard to find an ex nintendo guy in japan or even usa or europe who knows that... until then, it's all speculation, though we're pretty close... would really like to have this confirmed one day.

here's a personal guess, but it's based on the front/back cart shell code, which supposedly follow the same concept (without A or B obviously):

i've opened many carts of the same region, and they all have 3X and 3X for the shell code (like F-33 and B-36)

so what i'm thinking is that the first number is a factory, and the second number... an assembly line inside that factory? only specific number are used for the 2nd number, for example 0 1 2 never show up.

exactly same logic for box inserts, i've done some checking on my wii inserts, and the same few numbers always come back for games of the same region, which most likely indicates a location - not a date for sure, since games from launch and 2/3 years later can have the same code.

also, the existence of 00 codes shows that they used hexadecimal base, but it seems they never needed to go higher than 9 anyway

Edited April 2 by Tyree_Cooper

[RH | 4,903]

2 minutes ago, Tyree_Cooper said:

i've yet to find an "official" proof of what the double digit code is. can't be that hard to find an ex nintendo guy in japan or even usa or europe who knows that... until then, it's all speculation, though we're pretty close... would really like to have this confirmed one day.

here's a personal guess, but it's based on the front/back cart shell code, which supposedly follow the same concept (without A or B obviously):

i've opened many carts of the same region, and they all have 3X and 3X for the shell code (like F-33 and B-36)

so what i'm thinking is that the first number is a factory, and the second number... an assembly line inside that factory? only specific number are used for the 2nd number, for example 0 1 2 never show up.

exactly same logic for box inserts, i've done some checking on my wii inserts, and the same few numbers always come back for games of the same region, which most likely indicates a location - not a date for sure, since games from launch and 2/3 years later can have the same code.

I can agree that it's 100% speculation but the conclusions I have come from working in manufacturing and working with QA departments.  Numbers don't just get stamped for no reason so when we see patterns arise and we know the purpose of most of this type of behavior in manufacturing, there's a lot we can assume and probably be 95% correct but, still, being very-likely correct is not a fact.

That said, anyone know anyone who is Japanese and knows there equivalent of LinkedIn?  I would LOVE to find an employee that would know about this.  Howard use to frequent Nintendo Age.  I wonder if he'd know but I doubt he's accessible now like he use to be.

[JVOSS | 1,762]

4 hours ago, RH said:

I can agree that it's 100% speculation but the conclusions I have come from working in manufacturing and working with QA departments.  Numbers don't just get stamped for no reason so when we see patterns arise and we know the purpose of most of this type of behavior in manufacturing, there's a lot we can assume and probably be 95% correct but, still, being very-likely correct is not a fact.

That said, anyone know anyone who is Japanese and knows there equivalent of LinkedIn?  I would LOVE to find an employee that would know about this.  Howard use to frequent Nintendo Age.  I wonder if he'd know but I doubt he's accessible now like he use to be.

The 3 factors no-one knows.  but do now..

1) there is one very very very consistent 2 digit code that is entirely printed/made/assembled/packaged from the same region/factory/same year.. 

2) there is 1 consistent NON-2 digit code that is entirely printed/assembled/packaged from the same region. 

3) there is 1 consistent NON-2 digit code that is entirely printed/made/assembled/packaged from the same 2 region. 

 

[fcgamer | 4,723]

Well I received my cartridge today, can you imagine the horror when I realized the seller pulled a switcheroo. For a moment I thought maybe I had made a mistake, so I went back and looked at the auction photos and indeed the guy sent me a regular Tetris as opposed to the rarer version. Surely this could be an accident, right? Well not really.

I went back through his listings to see if he had another Tetris for sale (regular version), well I did find another listing for a Tetris, though there wasn't a picture, and another person had left a bad review stating that he too had been searching for the special Tetris, bought the auction, then received the normal one. 

I'm in talks with the clown now, who tried acting all ignorant, saying "What do you mean the two cartridges aren't the same?" Seeing as this happened at least once before with this guy, no idea how it could just be an honest mistake rather than something more devious.

[RH | 4,903]

23 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Well I received my cartridge today, can you imagine the horror when I realized the seller pulled a switcheroo. For a moment I thought maybe I had made a mistake, so I went back and looked at the auction photos and indeed the guy sent me a regular Tetris as opposed to the rarer version. Surely this could be an accident, right? Well not really.

I went back through his listings to see if he had another Tetris for sale (regular version), well I did find another listing for a Tetris, though there wasn't a picture, and another person had left a bad review stating that he too had been searching for the special Tetris, bought the auction, then received the normal one. 

I'm in talks with the clown now, who tried acting all ignorant, saying "What do you mean the two cartridges aren't the same?" Seeing as this happened at least once before with this guy, no idea how it could just be an honest mistake rather than something more devious.

What service did you buy it through? If it was eBay, returns should be easy enough, even if he doesn’t accept it.

Hopefully, your outside the NA or Europe so I have no clue if they are as fair to the buyers in your region as they are elsewhere.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

Just now, RH said:

What service did you buy it through? If it was eBay, returns should be easy enough, even if he doesn’t accept it.

Hopefully, your outside the NA or Europe so I have no clue if they are as fair to the buyers in your region as they are elsewhere.

Unfortunately it's going to be a tooth and nail fight, quite similar to what we used to see twenty odd years ago on ebay.

I only paid about $6 so it's a loss I can accept, I just don't like that it seems as though the guy is clearly trying to do this to scam people. 

[Ulrizza | 133]

26 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Well I received my cartridge today, can you imagine the horror when I realized the seller pulled a switcheroo. For a moment I thought maybe I had made a mistake, so I went back and looked at the auction photos and indeed the guy sent me a regular Tetris as opposed to the rarer version. Surely this could be an accident, right? Well not really.

I went back through his listings to see if he had another Tetris for sale (regular version), well I did find another listing for a Tetris, though there wasn't a picture, and another person had left a bad review stating that he too had been searching for the special Tetris, bought the auction, then received the normal one. 

I'm in talks with the clown now, who tried acting all ignorant, saying "What do you mean the two cartridges aren't the same?" Seeing as this happened at least once before with this guy, no idea how it could just be an honest mistake rather than something more devious.

I'm really sad to hear that

I still have a dozen Minuet to sell so if you want to buy one from me send me a PM. I hope you will be able to have you money back! 

[Tyree_Cooper | 752]

Sounds like a lazy seller. Probably reusing an old photo for selling more copies without having to retake new photos because "it's the same game".

If he knew this variant was more expensive he'd price it... higher.

[RH | 4,903]

2 minutes ago, Tyree_Cooper said:

Sounds like a lazy seller. Probably reusing an old photo for selling more copies without having to retake new photos because "it's the same game".

If he knew this variant was more expensive he'd price it... higher.

At $6, I'd agree.  If he sold the cartridge for above $20, I'd think he was doing a bait and switch on the people that'd be inclined to pay attention to such things, but if this were a $6 item then yeah, he's just reusing the same photo cause that's easy.

Or, maybe he was aware.  Is there, by chance, fine print that says "You will get a copy of this game, but it may not be the one pictured".  I'd still consider that a little bit of a dirty trick if he intentionally selected a photo of a Minuet, but at least he'd be semi-honest in his details.  I don't mind sellers posting personal, stock photos so long as they state "You will not receive this item, but one similar to it."   I know all of the big, online resellers like JJ Games and DK Oldies do that.

[Tanooki | 4,932]

Wow nice, still a dozen Minuet left?  That's crazy you got so many spares.  They're nasty to try and get on even ebay now as everyone over there and domestic want to write MINUET on the listings and ask like what...10x the price give or take.  I mean i get it and not, the music is a cool footnote and it had a few other little quirks/bugs they hashed out at the 11th hours but still.  Ugh.

[Ulrizza | 133]

14 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Wow nice, still a dozen Minuet left?  That's crazy you got so many spares.  They're nasty to try and get on even ebay now as everyone over there and domestic want to write MINUET on the listings and ask like what...10x the price give or take.  I mean i get it and not, the music is a cool footnote and it had a few other little quirks/bugs they hashed out at the 11th hours but still.  Ugh.

Yeah I have to put them for sale but I never taken the time to do it until now... I need some cash at the moment so selling some of my collection that I don't want anymore is a way to make quick cash

I bought most of them from J4U, it was easy to spot them once you know what to look for, but I checked like every hour of every day for weeks and weeks to be the first to buy them