Enternal

I unfortunately don't have a copy. A few years ago when I was trying to find more information on the games, I stumbled across a gamespot/IGN article again, memory is hazy here about wheere. It was one of the only articles that I could find that has information for the games. I saved the Samurai Shodown one. Off and on during work I've been trying to find that page on any archive site, hoping it would have pictures of other games but nothing. I did see that there is a Spanish Sink wiki website that mentions The Last Blade as having a Playphone game but the link for it is dead. Here is a 2004 gamespot article talking about the partnership but not the one I found the picture from. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-history-of-snk/1100-6089278/

Video of King of Fighters? https://youtu.be/wzcmJDOkH6Y?si=UlJpf1x5XUtZLoD7

This is to be taken with a grain of salt, but I thought there was another 2/pack with Centipede. But I could be mixing it up with the Asteroids one. There is a chance that I took a picture because a few years ago I sent a message to John Hancock on Atari Age asking him if he had seen them before and he hadn't.

I'm around 3000, not sure how that compares for my city/state. I'd like to trim it down to half, and try to only get games I'm serious about playing. Serious question, are some of you guys really selling because you are thinking you don't have much time left? I understand priorities and other life changes but being a future retired gamer sounds pretty fun to me. Can run around in a golf cart, hook up with some gilfs.

Crazy that this cart/ or related cart surfaced. I know @BlackbirdZero13mentioned he tried tracking people down, maybe the VHS has other information on the program or maybe it's just the cart running. I'm sure someone is still around that can be like, yeah we didn't make 10,000 copies but we made a few dozen to propose for a test market.

Wow thanks for creating this and linking it to me. Glad I jogged your memory. I don't remember seeing these back in the day. But found them a while ago in a box from a reseller that would buy storage units. There was a stack of 3+4 of these. Which I would have normally skipped over them (looking like budget of games) had I not seen King of Fighters which I purchased. Unfortunately I did not see Samurai Showdown or Metal Slug or I would have purchased those as well.

Went ahead and pulled my copy out. Rental link supported. I didn't even notice mine had a rental sticker under the game. I wanted to clarify that the sticker is on the insert in my original post I worded it weird. We will need maybe some other examples to. Maybe some people here have some of these in their collections that they can share. Though looks like in the imgur album some have the sticker on the outside of the case.

Adding Splatterhouse 3. I believe I remember also seeing Rolling Thunder 3 with a sticker but have been unable to find evidence.

Wow amazing work! Thank you for doing all that. When I was asking around and looking one of the responses I got on the Sega16 forums. Overdone @ Sega16forums "There was only one place that I saw that had a source of these when they were available bird, and that was Virgin Megastore. Fighting Masters was one of them, I know because I picked it up. I think I remember Rolling Thunder 2 being there as well but can't be sure. Interesting thread, probably not a lot of info about these stickered releases." @supergamboy It will be interesting to see how much more info on these will come out from the community hear, I think by far you have done the most research.

This is opening up another other rabbit hole of mystery that I have yet to see anyone tackle. Maybe perfect for someone in here? From my limited research there are a small number of titles let's say 25 (I'm guessing here) but you see the same ones, with Rolling Thunder 2 being one. They are Sega Genesis carts that got exported. These were possibly only distributed by Virgin Record Stores in the UK and Australia. And likely only games that did not get a mega drive release in their country. They were stickered prior to distribution then sealed and appear on the insert. (You can see this on the Ys III insert outside of the case) A related area of research is also needed to the Super Sega Rewards Club.

I have a sealed king of fighters cell phone game that I can barely even find any information on (I think 2 articles, never seen on eBay) see attached. I found this in a barn from someone that would buy storage units. A Samurai Showdown 3DO game that I think is a review copy. Doesn't look anything like the retail release and I can't find anything that looks like it. (In storage so don't have pictures) A Last Day Gears of War Cog Tag, these were randomly spread to different locations, random areas, some geo caching spots, and to press. They have different serial numbers and I believe unlocked information for everyone to see on the gears of war 2 website. Ive only see 3 in the last 10 years sell, 130, 500, and 2 days ago one of the press ones sold for 150. Here is one of the press ones.

Rolling Thunder 2 has a Gold sticker variant that is very rare. Similar to the Pac-Man 2 Lenticular it's stuck to the insert not the case.

Ah, yeah that makes sense to rebuild from scratch. Maybe to stop fights and disputes could just have Common, Uncommon, Rare. Instead of going on a larger individual 7-10 point scale. While that might make things like Jimmy Connor's Tennis and Caltron 6-1 have the same blanketed rarity. It would stop people saying arguing something like Sculptor's Cut should be a 6 and Super Bowling should be a 7. IMO i took the NA DB as an estimate of rarity.

I thoroughly used the DB, had my whole cart collection across multiple systems there, what I paid. And woke up one day to find it all gone, and the community scattered. I miss the place, miss the community. I used to be very active in the yearly NintendoAge group completion of the nes library. At least we have VGS and what remains of the community here. From my end, it seemed there was a synergy to all the events. NA goes to GoCollect, alternative physical investors start to come in to buy games, meanwhile longtime collectors start to leave the hobby. Game stores, flea markets, start to dwindle, physical carts become harder to find in the wild. Youtubers drop, or move on to other things. Feels like Thanos snapped his fingers and half the world just poofed. And since we can't travel back in time and take out GoCollect, or snap everything back to how it was, I'm on board for rebuilding it. I might possibly have captures of most of the NES DB and the rarities assigned to each cart. Can the internet archive / wayback machine be used to pull in stuff that we need.?

I wasn't taking a dig at the Neo Geo, and by Neo Geo I was referring to the AES and MVS. (Which I personally love and own both) The TS/OP asked the question are we in the last years of Atari and NES collecting. While I felt that starting to become true for the Atari I brought up reasons that I felt the NES had hope. The Atari and while I mean the 2600, we can include all their hardware and software. Doesn't have the strengths that Nintendo has for bringing in new collectors to the NES, again I'm answering ops question, I'm not trying to say the 2600 wasn't great. The newly released 50th anniversary was great for showing their legacy. And now back to the MVS/AES. SNK has faired lot better than Atari over the years, and even recently we have seen the popularity of King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown come back during the fighting game resurgence. But these games, a mini, and having active arcade cabinets, will do very little to bring Gen Z'rs and younger into collecting for the system. I wasn't knocking the system or its legacy, I was saying in the community the MVS/AES is niche, just like the other systems mentioned with it.