darkchylde28

I don't know that that counts, as Myriad not only didn't change any code, but they literally didn't even produce anything beyond their own labels and packaging materials. Every Myriad 6-in-1 is just a Caltron 6-in-1 with a Myriad label slapped on top of the Caltron one, then shoved into a Myriad box, with a Myriad manual. If it counts, I think it's the sole case in the entire vintage-era NES library, but I think it's really just its own weird situation due to the total lack of game manufacturing/publishing on Myriad's part. At best, they're a distributor with their own branding, really. Hey, the way he spends money on rare games, me might just get to that point! (After spending even more money in the classified ads of Guns & Ammo, of course.) Legit stuff or bootleg/pirate stuff? We were talking about the NES library, but I'm not opposed to expanding it into other libraries as well so long as we're sticking with actual publishers and not dealing with the 150,000,00 whack-a-mole, pop-up Asian pirate companies, because of course those pirate companies straight up copied other people's shit and put it out under their own banner.

I get what you're saying, but I've never seen an example where a publisher re-published another publisher's title on the same system and didn't include a code change to indicate the change of the publisher. IIRC, even the Mindscape Indiana Jones that's literally identical in every other way to the unlicensed Tengen version did that. So if the publisher actually changed, the code will change, thus making that differentiation a bit of a non-starter.

Dude, it's Gottlieb, stay far, far away.

If the title screen changes to show a different title, or publisher, or both, then the code changed as well, and thus should be important based on what you've laid down here. None of the game swapping between publishers that you pointed out resulted in a duplicate game, either under the same or different game title and is immaterial to what's being discussed.

That's because he still hasn't been able to come up with a better ending than the actual one he told D&D about then got roasted over due to how poorly the end of Game of Thrones went over. As long as people keep throwing money at him to do other things, he'll keep doing those other things.

I don't think anyone holds a grudge against the Chili Peppers, regardless of what you believe there.

Bingo. Bob in the warehouse didn't give a shit what pallets he was told to scoop up and ship somewhere else then, and especially not nearly 40 years later. Another way to look at it would be that no Kenner employees were reaching out to Star Wars collectors to deliberately share their stories or force upon them all of the various prototype toys, test moldings, etc. that have come to light over the years. Passionate collectors had to figure out who those Kenner employees were, then track them down and get them to talk to them in order to uncover all that. Were it not for the collectors doing the legwork and documenting everything as well as possible, most, if not all of those details would have disappeared forever. That same type of passion and dedication is sadly lacking in video game circles for the most part, even amidst the "historians" and "archivists." They absolutely did have the same sort of global shipping that we do today, just not in as great a quantity or as efficient/quick as we have now. A lot of those types of details were documented by me in the "separating the NES from the Famicom" debacle/topic a while back when I was trying to figure out how Nintendo could have delivered cartridges with the date codes we currently document as the earliest known in time for the official launch when accounting for manufacturing, assembly, packaging, shipping, etc. Back then, as now, if you had to have it fast, it was going to cost you an arm and a leg. However, if you had time to wait (as most game publishers did in those days), then ocean freight was more than affordable at the scale that those guys were operating at, even when having to return product. Yes and no. They're essentially the exact same game, but they have different titles, publisher information, etc., so are technically different games. In the same way that you need copies of Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt (or the first two + WCTM and SMB/DH/WCTM) in order to have a full set. If Nintendo had re-released Stadium Events as Stadium Events but just changed the label and the details in the startup screen, for sure, it's just a variant. But they did far more than that, and thus we're stuck with them being two separate, distinct cartridges despite being 99.9% the same damned game.

Dude, I'd vote for country and bluegrass over gangsta rap, and I hate those too, lol. Again, I get its cultural significance even if I think it's dogshit and just couldn't bring myself to vote for it. I honestly kind of figured I'd be the sole dissenting vote since I was the first to vote in the poll. Glad to see I'm not alone in my "heathenism." Yep. The decision was an admittedly overplayed original 80s classic compared to a kinda meh cover. No brainer, really. Now if it had been Epic versus Pour Some Sugar On me, you'd have likely found out exactly how many fish-murderer-endorsers there were on here, but alas, it was not to be. Story time followed by fun fact. So, before my last job, I worked as a top level repair technician and line lead for a cell phone refurb & repair company. As such, I had a little bit nicer equipment available to me, and a little more slack cut to me in regard to what I could and couldn't do while on the clock, so long as I got my work done. After hearing how miserable most of the techs were and how part of it was due to the fact that most had to work in silence since you weren't allowed to bring in any sort of electronics that might be able to smuggle phones out (basically all CD players and tape decks), I had an idea. A friend had given me a small FM transmitter that he'd lost for a year in his car and then rediscovered, only to find that the old batteries had leaked and totally eaten away the battery contacts. So, I brought it into work, disassembled it down to the board, then used a pick to dig out the traces that still existed within the layers under the missing contacts and soldered jumper wires to them. I then hooked it up to my benchtop power supply, adjusted it to the equivalent voltage and amperage of 2 AA batteries, connected my portable MP3 player (still kind of rare and expensive at that point) then flipped the switch. It worked! Over the next few days, in between actual work (typically while waiting for phones I'd repaired to finish up on the calibration equipment), I toyed with the transmitter to see what worked best. I discovered that the most power it would take was about 9 volts, and somewhere around 2 amps. Anything more in either direction and the signal started to become nothing but static very quickly, most likely pushing the cheap chips to their limit, but also giving the broadcast perfect sound as well as allowing people as far out as two rows in any direction to hear it via FM radio (either units they brought in themselves or using junked phones which had an FM radio feature that still functioned). After that, I started playing with the crappy 2" wire that served as the transmitter's antenna, eventually adding approximately 6 more feet onto the end of it, as well as a little metal "grappling hook" looking end made of soldered together paper clips at the very end. I ended up saying my net connection was going in and out, standing on my desk to check out the bundle coming from the ceiling, and concealing my giant antenna inside, with the "transmitter" tip keeping it from being dislodged or even moving around. The next day, I heard through the grapevine that suddenly the entire building could hear my little pirate radio station (doing the math, I'd apparently bumped it up to about 5 watts, seriously illegal for personal use), and anyone who didn't have a music option of their own were rapidly doing what they could to lay their hands on one of the broken FM radio phones or spending what little spare cash they had on whatever crappy single AAA FM radios they could. The second week I started taking requests, and by the third week it had become so popular and I was so jazzed about raising spirits that I made up call letters (which I no longer remember) and made up some "station identification breaks" to include in the shuffle (which I sadly no longer have). Every day for more than a year, I'd come in in the morning, use the alligator clip soldered to my "super" antenna to connect up the transmitter, then start up the daily broadcast for at least the next 8.5 hours, but usually closer to 12-14. Finally, at the end of that period, I, like many others, had had enough, and found myself another job. I felt sad about leaving behind the coworkers who I'd befriended and bonded with so tightly in that time, but felt even sadder about inadvertently taking away one of the only dependable things that brought any joy to many of the people who worked in the building (QC had apparently discovered the station at some point). So, for 13 of the final 14 days of my station's broadcast, the lineup was basically nothing but requests, often having me up at night trying to download whatever music I didn't already have just to make sure someone didn't get disappointed the following day. On day 13, I put up paper signs around my desk advising no requests would be taken that day. I told anyone who asked why that I had something special planned for my last day. And I did. Fun fact: The last day at that job, for the entirety of my 10 hour shift, my little radio station blasted "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta" by the Geto Boys nonstop. Pretty much everybody who worked there had seen Office Space, so people cracked up then started grooving along as they listened to my "F you, I quit" song all day. There were some more fun things that happened that day that made people lose their shit laughing, but I'll save those for another time. Needless to say, there were zero F's given that day, and I absolutely reveled in my freedom to no longer have to give a shit or hold my tongue. I've never again had cause or opportunity to experience such a satisfying and cathartic middle finger to someone/something that deserved it so much since.

FTFY. The vast majority of collector's don't grade or trust grading companies, and those that do use them nearly always have their ear to the ground for whatever news pops up in the hobby and are more than willing to turn their backs on companies who turn out to be sketchy or produce wildly varying results. At this point, I suspect anyone who still has "total faith" in WATA is either being willingly ignorant or is deliberately ignoring the ever mounting evidence against the company solely so they can misrepresent themselves as "collectors" and put a better face on their flipping business.

1121 #2 was rough, but I went with the song that I felt was more culturally significant, as everyone was listening to Bryan Adams shortly after its release. For #4 I recognize that Dre's song is considered a classic, but I've just never liked or been able to stand it, hence my reluctant vote for Ghost, who I also never liked but can at least stand to let keep playing in the background.

But how do they compare to cockroaches and shrimp? Should we have another poll?

You're really laying it on thick here, being argumentative for the sake of arguing. Based on what you're saying, and the amount of evidence required for you to accept that a game was sold at retail, we currently have just as much evidence in this thread that games like Metroid and Rad Racer were also in the same "Cheetahmen II" category that you seem to be trying to box Stadium Events into. Your apparent evidence requirements for retail distribution also firmly put Dino Peak back into conspiracy theory territory, as the only "evidence" that it was sold somewhere other than Blockbuster came from a couple of personal recollections of a couple of back-in-the-day owners buying it from some other stores. By your standard, we shouldn't be taking it as a 100% given that any NES games made it to retail, unless we've got enough proper, actual evidence of it. Presumably, this would have to consist of multiple photos and/or videos of multiple copies available at retail, as a single photo of a single location could indicate Nintendo just throwing out dummy copies for a photo op. Or should we be even more scrutinous, and require everyone to start digging up their ~30-40 year old receipts in order to provide an acceptable proof-of-purchase? If you've intentionally put on your trolling hat again, I urge you to remove it in this thread. If you haven't, the I urge you to back off your evidence requirements a bit, as many, many more games in both the NES and Famicom libraries would fail to pass that litmus test based on what little hard evidence still exists beyond Nintendo making some cartridges.

That's how it's supposed to work, if the grading company is actually doing its job. Clearly, in this case (no pun intended, haha), that didn't happen. Clearly, whatever "post slabbing" inspection of items that seems to happen didn't, or, again, this game got a "pity" grade due to WATA's own negligence and the latter inspection just ignored the glaring flaws in order to presumably "appease the customer." Since many WATA customers are slabbing simply to get a better price when flipping, I'm pretty sure that a better alternative than fake grading would be to provide them with some sort of financial compensation out of the perceived value "insurance" slush fund that they have versus wiping their ass on their own business model. 9.8 out of 100, rofl! What is this, a game that belonged to @Paul?

True, but he was able to state approximately how many units the MOQ was, and thus how many units would have existed. That's something solid, at least.

I'll start forgiving them for making mistakes when they start admit to making them and paying out people for the mistakes they've made at the same rates they're charging them for worthless "insurance" based on WATA's skewed valuation model. To date, I don't think we've ever seen WATA admit they've ever screwed anything up beyond that blatant fake Rondo of Blood PCE CD that they graded as legitimate. All of the damaged-by-WATA games whose photos have rolled through have thus far either gotten grades they didn't deserve (but likely did before WATA messed up the seals, games, etc.) or shrugged at by WATA as if they arrived in that shape (despite photos of the item pre-shipment and during the packing process almost always being provided).

I would consider it "insignificant" in relation to the supposed value of a mint sealed copy versus the massive number of copies it sold (~12 million). Many (most?) of the rarest and most valuable games in the collecting hobby tend to be "insignificant" ones I think there's fair comparison to be made about the realistic value of mint sealed examples of a popular but common-as-dirt game versus one that's significantly less known and loved, where the majority of its stock most likely had to get discounted several times while getting moved from bargain bin to bargain bin to finally get sold off. I don't think there's room in any formal grading structure for giving a game the top grade possible simply because it's the nicest one that's been seen. What happens when one that's in legitimately excellent shape comes to light? Do you suddenly invent an A+++ or A++++ simply to have somewhere to go? Or do you grade the game that looks like it was used like a playing card stuck in bike spokes the same as the one that's legitimately as perfect as the day it came off the production line? In regard to this game, I stick with my theories that this was damaged by someone at WATA and graded against what it should have originally gotten or someone at WATA simply wasn't paying attention the way that they should have been. Personally, I see the former as the more likely one, as I seem to recall several of these being mentioned previously in threads on here.

I mean, based on the production numbers, one could argue that Mario64 is an "insignificant" game as well. Common game + "perfect" grade = $$$ per the snake oil salesmen of our hobby, y'know?

@TDIRunner, here's the plans to make that totally functionally sweet, but totally ghetto looking digital antenna I mentioned earlier. As long as it's high up in a room and near enough to some windows for the signal to get through (i.e. not blocked by studs, wiring, etc.), it'll pick up great with no power amp required!

Blasphemy! He is the moustache twirling villain to Steve Wiebe's claim to that title!

Out of curiosity, where are you getting the fact and figures to support your belief/claim that Stadium Events didn't get a "full" release? Beyond the fact that we all know that Stadium Events got bought out by Nintendo and then re-sold as World Class Track Meet when they also converted the Family Fun Fitness Pad to the Power Pad, there's as much hard, factual evidence that Stadium Events released less than Nintendo's MOQ for games, was recalled, etc., as there is that Flintstones Surprise at Dinosaur Peak was a Blockbuster exclusive. Namely, none. Believe what you will, but without hard facts, figures, and proof, that sort of idea has no place in any sort of formal/official database. As a collector, as much as it would benefit me to write off Stadium Events as simply a "variant" or a "non-release," there's simply no actual proof of any such things happening to be able to do so.

It's not really decent of them, it's them doing their job as a seller and doing all they can to guarantee they won't get it returned to them after the auction for "item not as described." I mean, they are being honest about it all, but then again, as the seller, they're supposed to be.

Seems to either be a "pity" grade after WATA screwed the seal themselves or somebody there was just high as a kite when they were grading this and totally missed everything that the seller documents in their photos and then accurately writes about in the description. The only other explanation I can imagine is that someone figured out how to perfectly remove and replace a WATA seal and swapped in a game that's technically sealed but nowhere in the ballpark of the condition that the case states that it's in.

The digital converter boxes weren't propaganda. Any piece of metal that you properly connect to your antenna port on your TV will pick up a signal, but your TV still has to have the proper hardware to decode that signal into something you can watch and listen to. That's what those boxes did. They took the digital signal from your antenna and decoded it into an analog signal that the analog tuner in your older TV could understand and display. Some of the newer antennas are tweaked a bit to be able better and more reliably tune in the modern digital signals, but literally any pair of rabbit ears will be able to do it to some degree--it's still all up to your TV as to whether it's able to understand the signal and translate it into intelligible video and sound versus snow and static. To use something like the Game Gear tuner, you'd have to have a digital converter box hooked into something that would broadcast/rebroadcast an analog signal.

What he didn't mention was that he was also participating in the Cannonball Run, but just happened to pick up some bobbleheads at the same time.