Dark Jaguar

Retail display.  Of all the things...

This may take me a while...  Alright to start with, 50% collection of US released Virtual Boy games.  Easy enough, I've got 8 and only 14 in this territory.  So far, easy mode.  Unless I need Jack Bros....  I'm never going to find that game for cheap.

 

Is there any chance we'll see badges for full game series sets, like a Mario or Mother or Megaman or King's Quest or Zelda set?  I remember those back in the Nintendoage days and would like to see them return possibly.  I recall the requirements were something like full mainline entries plus five "bonus fan" items, which could be spinoff games or things like audio CDs or magazines or things like that.

I found, or rediscovered, a page in the back of the Dragon Warrior II "Unveiled Secrets" guide that Enix made way back in the day.  On the very bottom, it said I could mail in "For Information About Dragon Warrior III" and they'd send a packet back.

Did anyone ever request this packet?  I did get a packet of information on Dragon Warrior II, and that one came with a letter and a map, so I wonder if the one for III had something similar.

I had a devil of a time finding any such serial number list, but I've managed to put together the start of my own to narrow down expected ranges:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kqD_tVXexAWnnoxhuVFg98on5q0BzGi0lkCmXNBbMHA/edit?usp=sharing

With what I scraped together so far, I think it's enough to inform anyone shopping online of just what board revision can be expected based solely on the serial number, barring a board swap.

I'll summarize here, but it's still somewhat rough and incomplete.  I'm giving rounded minimum ranges.

01 - Earliest run, likely between 0000001 and 0055000
02 - No data
03 - Between 0150000 and 0210000
04 - Between 0450000 and 1400000
05 - No data
06 - No data
07 - Between 3400000 and 14200000
08 - Between 15500000 and 17800000

09 - Between 18300000 and 21000000

10 - Between 22300000 and 27500000
11 - Between 29300000 and 33800000

I've been curious lately if there was ever good information matching up ranges of serial numbers with PCB board revisions (NES-CPU-0X).  I know that "dating" the consoles can best be done by looking at the chips themselves, but in this case I'm more interested in this for shopping reasons.  Online sellers rarely show pictures of boards and in-person sellers highly object to letting you disassemble their stock in front of them.  In this case, having a quick go-to like this could save people trying to buy a specific NES revision a lot of time.

Anyone with some information regarding this would be a big help!  Here's my own for example.  It's an NES-CPU-04 and it's SN is N1364815 .

I was utterly blindsided when Nintendoage died out, and for all this time I had no idea where to go as a replacement, but finally someone informed me people were relocating here.  It's a tragedy all those old threads are relegated to the wayback machine now, but I'm glad we've found a new home.  The speculator market is nothing but a cancer for collectors that do it for passion rather than money, so I'm glad to see we have a home here.