Khromak

Point: The line could be drawn anywhere, including obscure stuff, unofficial, unlicensed, pulled from store shelves, never sold to a human being, label revisions, code revisions, whatever items you wish to include. Counterpoint: A lot of people agree that "all the games released contemporaneously with Nintendo's approval and sold to consumers in the US". This includes SE. There is limited supply. There is demand because people want to say they collected the whole thing in the first sentence. If you want to try to convince the community they don't have a complete set of NA NES games because they don't have 3-screw and 5-screw versions of MegaMan 1 go ahead, but I don't think you'll make much headway. I think a decent rule of thumb is how insane you would look if you tried to explain it to a layman. Explain to your grandma that you're trying to collect SE because it was released to US consumers and there aren't a lot of copies, but you still consider it a US release, she'll be like "OK son, I don't agree with your purchasing decisions but I get it." Try to explain how your NA NES set isn't complete because you don't have a V2 copy of Castlevania with a bug fix on it, even though the games look the exact same, or you don't have a complete set because you don't have two copies of MegaMan with the same code in them, the same label, box, and UPC because they changed the construction method of the plastic shell, you're going to get some weird looks... If you want to collect a complete set which includes every game ever released for the platform, including every variant, go ahead, nobody's stopping you, everyone can set their own goalposts. As far as SE goes, that's the reason; it's a very clear, easy-to-explain, logical game to include in a set that lots of people are trying to complete, and it's rare. This topic deserves a video though @DefaultGen the people need it.

Working on The Bard's Tale right now, though not very deep into it yet. I have a few more on my list and then we'll see where I'm at/we're at. With all the tough stuff still on there, I don't think we'll finish the list this year, but I'll be doing what I can. Best to get as far as we can, so we don't look like slackers!

Stage 4-4 in Kiwi Kraze made me want to punch my TV. The mazes of spikes are insane and a lot of the platforming you have to do is so tight, and if you hit anything once you're dead. The enemies aren't even a problem in most of the game, I think I beat the final boss on my second try and after a little practice I rarely if ever died on any of the other bosses. The platforming though, damn. Some parts of world 5 were pretty tricky too. As far as the timer goes, I died to the "you're out of time" devil a few times, but for the most part once I had memorized the levels it wasn't too bad. It's more of a first-timer's trap. The first time you get to a few of the later levels, you're just gonna die while trying to figure out where to go. Once you've beaten each level once though, it's not too bad. It's an alright game, the levels are unique and all, but damn if the difficulty doesn't spike up at the end. Very short too, which I guess is part of the reason they felt the need to make it so damn hard. I had heard of but not played the arcade version, but I'm not surprised to hear it was better, as that was the case most of the time back then.

Great video! I'm in a pretty similar place with my NES collection, loved hearing your stories.

Somehow I didn't see this back in June when it was posted. I would've paid $10 but it's been reduced to $4 now. Maybe I'll pick up a couple extra copies to send to friends, if I can figure out which one of my friends on Steam would enjoy it...

Kiwi Kraze is done. The first few stages are relatively challenging action platforming. Stage 4 can go to hell. The swimming is boring, there are no checkpoints (except 4-4), and the challenge is ridiculous. Stage 5, oddly enough, is easier than stage 4, but still quite challenging. All in all, a fun game but not one I'm looking forward to playing again soon. Maybe another game to add to the "once a year" list

FWIW I would also love to pick up a large # of loose NES manuals. Once you're ready to start selling stuff, I highly recommend posting it on this site, it will get gobbled up by people very quickly, they will pay reasonable prices, and you shouldn't have to worry about the hassle of returns/complaints etc. from ebay, or having to offer steep discounts to sell in bulk at cons/swap meets/flea markets. At the end of the day, really depends how much work you want to put in (responding to PMs, putting packages together, mailing stuff, etc.) vs how much $$$ you want to extract from the items. If you're fine with selling at discount, you can put in a lot less work. If you want to get close-to-market rate, you have a little more work to do. Either way, this collection is completely amazing, I'm insanely jealous, I hate you, but I still hope it works out well for you. This community is amazing and will take good care of you, but will probably be a lot of work because it will turn into ravenous wolves over all them sweet, sweet vidya game tapes.

Sure, some companies have "allowed" piracy in the past. Or, it was too much of a pain in the ass in certain countries to try to enforce their IP because certain countries don't believe in IP, including their residents...That doesn't make it right to steal someone else's work and profit off of it. I'm still not seeing the point here. Some company has, in your opinion, strategically not enforced their rights in the past, therefore all companies should do it all the time, and work for exposure? Other points include: I make enough money, I shouldn't bother trying to make more? Again, in the case of these games: they actively sell the games, you can buy them 20 ways from Sunday if you want to play them. Therefore it is in their best interest to stop other people from selling their games, so that people who want to play them purchase them from Square, not from some other unaffiliated company. Here comes: but someone who wants to play it on SNES would NEVER play it on the other 25 platforms Square is selling it on. More copium and vast exaggeration. Even if you want to say that 90% of the people (an extremely generous guess) who bought this game would have NEVER purchased it from any other avenue that pays Square, that still means they stole that 10% of sales directly out of the mouths of the owner of the property, and the people who created the game. I guess this is acceptable because "WAH, I want a brand new SNES game in 2018! If they won't produce it, to hell with them and their rights!" OK.

Giving away free products to get "brand loyalty" or turning a blind eye to people stealing your IP because it might lead to future sales is all well and good, but it should be a decision made by the IP holder, not an excuse that thieves use to steal people's hard work. This is such a common excuse, that since the IP holder isn't actively selling a SNES cartridge of the game it's OK to create one of your own and sell it because they aren't losing a sale. I don't believe this for a second. They have the right to determine how the game is sold, on any and all platforms, because they created it. These games in particular are still for sale on Steam, Switch, Playstation, Google Play, and Apple store... If you wrote a book and someone created a digital version of it and sold it on Amazon with the excuse "Well, you aren't selling a digital copy of it anywhere, so I'm not taking any sales from you" I'd imagine you'd be pretty upset that they stole your entire work, whole cloth, and sold it for their own profit. Similarly, if you paid 20 developers $3m to develop a game and starting selling it on Switch, you'd probably be pretty reasonably upset if someone started selling copies of it for PS5, because "You aren't selling it in this format, so it's not a lost sale for you!" If you made this game for Wii U, but then stopped producing it 2 years ago because it's a dead console, then someone was making their own copies of the game and selling it for $80 on ebay, you'd probably be pretty upset that they were making a profit using your creative product. Inb4 "I'd just be thrilled that people were playing my game, and honored that people loved it so much it got a re-release". That's true as long as it's a basement project you spent your own free time on, and stops being true when yours and thousands of your employees' livelihoods is dependent on the sale of your games, which is your business.

Yeah, I agree. That's why I don't buy repros, and don't endorse or promote them. Unless a product got a license from the IP owner, I will not purchase it. Whether we like it or not, IP law exists for a reason. Nobody would spend $100m paying developers to make a game, including pay voice actors, animators, writers, graphical artists, etc. if they knew that anyone who could produce the disc and sell it on etsy for $20 could cut into their profits. Like it or not, when someone puts the effort in to make a thing, they have the right to determine how money is made off of their work. I, for one, am perfectly OK with that. Anyway these cartridges are neat and all, I'm sure plenty of people want to buy them and they're a neat little collectible, and certainly interesting from a historical perspective since this bootleg company gained some notoriety before they were shut down. Hopefully OP gets a decent chunk of change off these items, and they go to someone who can appreciate them.

TBF this isn't a matter of "a shiny license", this is literally IP theft. This isn't an "unlicensed" release, like Nintendo didn't give their official seal of quality to a company to release their game on a Nintendo platform. Square paid some people to make a game, they own the rights to produce the game, and another company made commercial releases of their IP. This isn't some administrative rubber stamp, it's literally a crime. Edit: just to be clear, I agree that bootlegs can have value, and some are better quality than others. But I don't think we should downplay the "unlicensed" part of this as just being some kind of manufacturer nonsense.

While we're on the topic of syrup, this is the correct answer.

Sometimes your opinions just aren't popular, and unfortunately we live in a democracy where people are free to tell you they disagree with you, or that you're a weirdo. Or maybe it was fortunately, I always get those two mixed up.

Fun fact: I've been nude every time I posted on this forum, including this post. Try to sleep now.

I thought this thread was about how if a post is locked you could still vote (in polls, or with reactions). There's absolutely no chance that we could vote on a thread lock scenario. There are plenty of times when conversations get derailed or inappropriate where the mods need to step in and don't have the luxury of time to wait to see what people think of it first. I think the mods do a great job of balancing between allowing conversations to continue and keeping threads on-topic. If anything, we get away with murder...proverbially speaking, sometimes. If you want to have a sidebar conversation about the appropriate syrup to put on your waffles, make a thread about it, don't post it in someone's FS thread or in a topic about the price of clamshells (video game or food)

I was about to pick up a dock but damn it was like $25 shipping within the CONUS

Rainbow islands was beaten, a first time clear for me! This one is fun, has great graphics and sound, and is really creative in the mechanics. I think I enjoy it significantly more than bubble bobble. If I had to complain about anything, walking on the rainbows can be frustrating at times because it tends to happen in segments which can get you killed. Some of the bosses and levels are quite difficult, this one took me the better part of a day, off and on.

Loop is done, this was a first time clear for me, I'd never played it before. Modes A and B seem like fun, though I didn't play for too long. C starts out fun, but gets really stressful at the end. Levels 41-50 are really brutal. There are a few gimmes in there, fortunately, but the hard ones are REALLY hard, at least for me. I probably should've come up with some kind of better system. All in all I appreciate what they were going for, but damn is it tough

Are you implying that somehow everyone else who opens a business is Kennedy, and you are the rest of the population, in this example? I won't try to pretend that enforcement of the law is 100% ironclad across the population, certainly there is racism involved and the rich and powerful have lots of advantages, but that's not really what's happening with your business venture. Anyone who wants to open a business and do (whatever kind of commerce you were involved in) has to pay (whatever amount of money it is). Sure, do rich people have an easier time doing that? Well yeah...not everyone has the same amount of money. This is also true of everything in the world, and we can't give everyone the same amount of money. At the very least, everyone has to pay the same $40 fine for parking in the wrong place, and they all get their registration revoked and that's fair enough for me. I'd love to see a progressive system like % of your income as a fine, to further punish rich people for flagrantly violating laws, but to say that things affecting poor people more than rich people is inherently unfair goes a bit far, IMO.

Sorry, getting back on topic: @Richardhead I think you're a dickhead (pun intended). This is not something you should be doing, you've recognized that. Stop doing it, immediately. If you feel such a strong compulsion to do things that are bad for your mental and physical well-being, you need as many therapists as will take the case, and some SERIOUS self-reflection. It's one thing to recognize a problem (your drinking is another good example) but it doesn't do you any good unless you also take actions in furtherance of solving that problem.

Should break up with them instead of cheating then. Just like the employer, if you aren't happy with your job, you leave the job, you don't start stealing hours from your employer and blame it on them. If you're unhappy in a relationship, you leave, you don't lie, hide things, and commit adultery, then blame the other partner for why you had to lie.

I think this is easy to say up until the point where you walk in on your partner having sex with a stranger behind your back. Sure feels like a bad thing then, I'd bet.

I think outwardly you present as someone who has changed a lot over the years and is routinely looking for ways to change his mind/see things from a new perspective, but at the same time you present your ideas from your perspective and resist others. For my part, yeah I agree morality is a social construct and varies from place to place, and frankly from person to person. I've stated my morality, I don't think you should cheat, steal, lie (as little as possible anyway), rules and laws should be followed. If you don't agree with a rule, law, or policy you should work on changing that, but until it is changed, it should be followed. Following that: I think that you and your friend are absolutely in the wrong in your business scenario. Rules are in place and are applied to all people equally. You chose not to follow those rules and to run an unauthorized business, and are suffering the (extremely mild) consequences of that. You could argue that cars don't need to be registered because it's an arbitrary regulation and that your car is perfectly safe, but that doesn't mean (in the US) you can just drive anything you want on public roads. We have these regulations for a reason (public safety) and everyone is held to the same standard which they should follow. Businesses have to be registered so that the government knows who is doing business, under what name, who are the owners, etc. in case of disputes amongst owners, complaints from the customers, etc. At the end of the day, all this societal stuff is just rules we all agree to follow, so it's totally arbitrary, fluid, and changes based on culture. That said, I have my opinions about it and that's what I'm giving. If you have your own go ahead, but I will still disagree with them. I don't think your arguments are very convincing on either topic.

I understand where you're coming from, but this is assuming the worst scenario for the western way, and the best scenario for the eastern way, so I think it's incredibly biased.

Sure, but there's no justification for immoral behavior in my perspective. If they're forcing you to work overtime you don't resort to stealing, you find another job. It reminds me of people who say they pirate games because they don't like companies' behavior/how they distribute their games/some other action they've taken. It's my opinion that there is no justification for stealing, cheating, or other immoral behavior. You could say that these are the reasons that someone did something, sure, but it's not a justification or an excuse and doesn't make it any better. If someone cuts you off and you chase them down and smash their headlights, you could say you were justified, or they had it coming, but you're still an asshole and did a bad, wrong, morally reprehensible thing, which you shouldn't have done. Maybe someone slept with your wife and you go to their house and piledrive them into the cement, you'd say they had it coming for sleeping with a married woman, but you still shouldn't hurt other people...it's not an acceptable excuse.