fcgamer

What are Hong Kong NES factory test carts?

Well I received a message from my new cycling partner this afternoon. Anyways he said he and his buddy (the other guy that joined us today for the ride, I guess?) want to ride from Taichung City down to Chiayi, and then back to Taichung City on the last Monday of this month. The distance is just over 200 kilometers, I'm not sure of the terrain.

I'm always scheduled to work on Mondays but the decision to join my friend or not was easily made after receiving an out-of-the-blue message today from my supervisor with a ridiculous deadline for some work. Fuck 'em, after sacrificing so much over the years to a management that only knows how to take, take, take, I think I'd rather flake out on work and go on the adventure of a lifetime. Not really feeling the distance, but I'm gonna feel awesome after conquering it!

27 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

Update:  I regret nothing!  My years of scoffs are justified with a BIG THANKS to @T-Pac. 

Dude sent a surprise package the other day.  Lo and behold, I now have my very own copy of Duck Tales 2 (au français)!  Along with a T-Pac original Robot Scrooge McDuck drawing.  So cool.  

 

That's awesome! 

Went out for my first ride of the season this morning. The owner of the coffee shop across the street from me, who is also a potential future bandmate, has been begging me for about two months to get out with him and a few friends of his.

Went out and bought two cycling jerseys yesterday at lunchtime, got my bike in order and went out this morning for a quick two hour ride before work. Woke up at 4:30, rode from about 5:40 to 7:40, now at work by 8:30.

We might try getting out in the mornings several times a week in the future. 

52 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

we plan on riding 100 miles in june together as a group, my riding buddies and i, hope we all make it

I hope so too, that sounds like it will be a fun time. 

1 hour ago, Jeevan said:

less for me to worry about and easier to go up and down the hills on dirt.  I told you I was training haha, so over 100 miles the last 2 days........I'm beat

That's good, if I can't do about 50 on a trip it's not worth going out.

2 minutes ago, Goldendark007 said:

Interested in all of it!!

Sweet send me a DM! I have no idea if the PS joystick works, the Wii stuff is brand new.

Heading out Wednesday morning before work with a new cycling partner, hopefully we make it back before I need to be at work, not that I really care at this stage in the game. Looks to be an easy ride, which will be perfect for my first ride of the season.

Free stuff, I'll offer these up until I manage to take it out to recycling. Could be this Friday, or next, or... well it just depends on my lazy ass. Recycling comes on Fridays, but it's in the morning so I'm usually more concerned about getting my ass into work.

We have a PS controller, though it's missing the chords / receiver, a Nintendo of Europe Mario display though some of the characters are missing or missing limbs, and some Wii bootleg crap.

All is free, you just pay shipping. For people I'm familiar with you can reimburse me for postage after it's been mailed, as a reference generally about one kilo of weight is $12 - $15 for shipping so it is cheap to mail.

Wouldn't say it was my best day, but November 14th was pretty legendary, about 18 years ago 

Every year there's a huge pilgrimage that begins in the city in which I live, here in Taiwan. Before I used to live right along the coast and saw the progression as everyone passed through the districts along the coast, but I've since moved downtown; however I've wanted to walk this pilgrimage for years. It takes about a week, as they take Mazu the sea goddess to a temple down south and back again, and I might try to walk the whole thing next year as I won't be working. This year though, I am content with walking for one day's length of the journey, joined by my father-in-law.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dajia_Mazu_Pilgrimage

Anyways just got home a little while ago. I'm quite sore after walking eight hours in 86F degree weather, also got sunburnt on my face, let's just say a lot of those folks never saw a red-faced white guy.

Overall it was quite an interesting day.

Called home to talk with my dad last night and my mom comes in saying that O J Simpson is dead. My dad's first response was, "Did somebody shoot him?"

Went to a local shop and got a nice lunchbox. The chicken is really good, though the shop also has pork chops. I think the shop is recommended by the tourist bureau as their logo is on the shop.

Yesterday I stopped by the post office to mail a few parcels, when I noticed a postcard inside my post office box. I was surprised, to say the least, but was stunned when I saw it was from none other than our very own @Ferris Bueller !

This made my day dude, really nice message on the back and a great surprise! 

On 7/20/2023 at 4:07 AM, Gloves said:

I almost wonder if it might help to have a little VGS weight loss group or something. Maybe a club or just a thread where we're incentivized somehow to post weekly or even daily about our progress, whether we did the thing we set out to do, stuff like that. 

I'm back to dieting and clean living for awhile. Did this weight loss club thingie ever happen, and if not, you guys wanna start something?

This is one of those situations where I personally just don't "get" the market, or the mentality for needing the item to be dead mint. I guess that my mentality sort of stands that while it may be rare for a copy of this game to be in this condition, the game itself (and even with a box and manual) isn't particularly rare. I have one sitting at home in the States, which my brother and I had as kids, for example. So when people talk about the rarity, I just can't help but to think to myself, "Sure, but this was a popular, mass-produced item."

Given my above personal feelings, I would much rather own a copy of Air Raid, despite not even being into Atari, as that is a game that is truly rare. Then again, general investors / pop culture guys are going to be more into the Castlevania for sure, but this just reflects the difference between the old generation game collector and those folks that are getting into this new sealed market.

Even the artwork market I can understand, as that is something that is one-of-a-kind, unique, and spectacular. A mint graded game just doesn't do it for me, at all. 

That said, I have a lot of respect for the buyer of this game, and think he's a great guy. So if he's happy with his purchase, I am happy for him, and similarly if the market dictates this sort of price, I am more than fine with that, though the whole pump n dump WATA / HA scheme I really wasn't too keen on.

So yeah, I don't understand the appeal of sealed mint games no matter what people say to me, but to each their own. 

On another note, just received another message from the seller today and am deciding what to do. In the previous message, the seller asked me where I saw differences between the cart that he sent and the one I received, acting as though they were indeed the same. Then after pointing out obvious differences, he responded today claiming that I did a switcheroo and that he did indeed send the minuet version initially, and that I shouldn't try to pull such a trick on him, before blocking messages from me.

I feel very angry about the whole state of affairs as this guy pulled this stunt before, I never did get the game I ordered, and I similarly worry that this type of scummy shit will try to start smearing my reputation or whatever amongst other local guys, despite him being the one pulling the tricks.

On the other hand, it was a $6 loss, Taiwan has very weird local laws regarding people and their reputations (so if I overstepped the boundary even accidently I could be liable, though not knowing all the rules myself, it would be much harder for me to open a lawsuit against him should he try to slander me), and furthermore, God only knows who the guy might know, and when you can cross the island in six hours, I really don't want to end up in a barrel thrown off the wharf into the sea. Paranoid, perhaps, but I've personally seen some foreigners that were taken to the cleaners here for fighting with the wrong people, and it's given me pause.

So what would you do, escalate with the selling app, or just walk away?

5 hours ago, Ulrizza said:

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

I might be interested in one, please DM me with details

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. 

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.

1 hour ago, wongojack said:

Thank you for all the suggestions.   Pre Famicom stuff is a great idea.  I quickly went looking for examples and found this photo someone posted on Reddit.  Lower left it shows some pong and breakout style machines.  That would certainly be interesting to bring back.  

Thank you to everyone for the excellent advice.

Yeah that's something I personally hope to get one of in the near future. It's unique, it's Nintendo and history, etc.

Nah I didn't feel it, though I did experience Taiwan's strongest earthquake in 25 years.

Here's what I would personally get, given the information you provided:

Buy a boxed Famicom (original model) and a stuffed Pikachu doll. Or grab one of those pre Famicom tv game machines that Nintendo did, again boxed. Throw in a set of Nintendo playing cards and a few brochures/adverts from the time you're visiting, featuring something Nintendo* related. Then call it a day.

If you like Nintendo, then imo this is likely what got you to where you stand with Nintendo. It represents the company, as well as Japan, is iconic yet would also be something that you'd likely use, which would then just bring back more memories from the fun trip you and your wife had.

*When I was in Japan, I happened to see some adverts at a train station with a Mario in a Japanese outfit or something like that, so I took a few. I also know often times there's cool Nintendo related stuff at the convenience stores.

2 hours ago, Mega Tank said:

You going to throw a fit when he says no? 

If you want me to, it can be arranged...

On 4/3/2024 at 9:38 AM, Ankos said:

I think you are joking, but since this kinda goes against my mentality when it comes to niche collecting, I'm going to respond anyways 

In my opinion it is more worth it to try and get more people into a niche you're trying to carve out. Ideally you can get some passionate people into whatever niche you're in and they can help document and discover new things. There's only so much info and stuff one person can find. It'll increase competition, but since it is a new category for collectors, the strategies are not as fleshed out as older categories. Therefore you can find good deals so long as you stay ahead of the curve on finding the stuff

Short Version: If a traveler never has anyone follow in their footsteps, then are they truly a pioneer, or are they a wanderer who disappeared in some unknown place?

I just can't get behind this way of thinking, sorry. It just leads to increased competition, smaller supply, higher demand, and then resellers and others jump on the bandwagon making it quickly turn toxic. 

I have no issues sharing information with friends who are also following such pursuits in a niche, or friends in other niches who won't be competing; however, posting ambitions, goals, and your "top tier" items for a bunch of randoms to see is just gonna be shooting your foot in the future, and that's something I personally try to avoid.

Edit: it does prove kind of funny though when I'm  inspecting something carefully like a date code or trademark, and the reseller squirms knowing I'm checking for something rare, yet has no idea what it is I'm possibly looking for.