Virtual Boy Reproduction Carts, unreleased games now fully enjoyable

chartube12

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Repro carts are nothing new either. There is an actually site out their selling service of "restoring" snes games. They take your game and "transfer" it into a repro cart, complete with flash chip designed to emulate the save battery. For the most part you can't tell the difference between the "restored" game and an brand new official game cart. For a little extra they'll even print you an instruction and make you a new box for it.

Personally I find it a neat little idea. However ever since I found this info out, I have to question how many of those never opened games on ebay are really repros.
 

cracker

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Repro carts are nothing new either. There is an actually site out their selling service of "restoring" snes games. They take your game and "transfer" it into a repro cart, complete with flash chip designed to emulate the save battery. For the most part you can't tell the difference between the "restored" game and an brand new official game cart. For a little extra they'll even print you an instruction and make you a new box for it.

Personally I find it a neat little idea. However ever since I found this info out, I have to question how many of those never opened games on ebay are really repros.

That's a good deal different if you actually send them your cart and they transfer the ROM and SRAM to a new cart. This could at least be justified by fair use in order to preserve a legit backup. I doubt they destroy the original to be completely bulletproof under the DMCA under the 1:1 copy rule but I think it would be hard for copyright holders to go after them nonetheless. However, shady dealing with these unreleased "repro" carts could cause them severe legal ramnifications and make their entire business look bad.
 

qwertymodo

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However ever since I found this info out, I have to question how many of those never opened games on ebay are really repros.
Far too many, I'm afraid. I'm not the kind of person to collect factory-sealed, new-in-box games, but to the people that do, the repro business has made collecting pretty dang awful. They'll take high-priced titles like Chrono Trigger or EarthBound, repro them, and pass them off as the real deal. I actually like seeing repros of unreleased games, or high-quality fan hacks (Zelda: Parallel Worlds and Metroid: Super Zero Mission come to mind), I just don't like seeing them sold at such ridiculous prices. I also don't like the way that they put up a shiny-looking website and actually make people believe that they are legitimate and legal, which further supports the general belief that their prices are fair, when in fact the prices are arbitrarily inflated, and only manage to stay that way because every n00b with a Willem who figures out how to solder the single chip it takes for most of these repros does so with the sole intent of making a bunch and then selling them at those same ridiculous prices. As far as the 'temp rules go, this is basically the same as flashcart sellers who pre-load the memory card with ROMs when they sell it to you, only it's just 1 ROM instead of a whole library of them.
 

Rydian

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Far too many, I'm afraid. I'm not the kind of person to collect factory-sealed, new-in-box games, but to the people that do, the repro business has made collecting pretty dang awful. They'll take high-priced titles like Chrono Trigger or EarthBound, repro them, and pass them off as the real deal. I actually like seeing repros of unreleased games, or high-quality fan hacks (Zelda: Parallel Worlds and Metroid: Super Zero Mission come to mind), I just don't like seeing them sold at such ridiculous prices. I also don't like the way that they put up a shiny-looking website and actually make people believe that they are legitimate and legal, which further supports the general belief that their prices are fair, when in fact the prices are arbitrarily inflated, and only manage to stay that way because every n00b with a Willem who figures out how to solder the single chip it takes for most of these repros does so with the sole intent of making a bunch and then selling them at those same ridiculous prices. As far as the 'temp rules go, this is basically the same as flashcart sellers who pre-load the memory card with ROMs when they sell it to you, only it's just 1 ROM instead of a whole library of them.
I haven't seen any of that linked. When we talk about repros or later-production runs here we're usually talking stuff like transferred rights/IP or projects where they made the ROM themselves.
 

Jayro

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Anyone knows where to buy virtual boy reprocarts nowadays?
I think your best bet would be to put in a request for Krikzz (krikzz.com) and Alex (insideGadfgets.com), respectively and respectfully. They're the only two madmen that would be crazy enough to do it. Imagine having 1 cartridge to run all 4 Virtual Boy games. <3
 

jnl1

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I think your best bet would be to put in a request for Krikzz (krikzz.com) and Alex (insideGadfgets.com), respectively and respectfully. They're the only two madmen that would be crazy enough to do it. Imagine having 1 cartridge to run all 4 Virtual Boy games. <3
Thanks for the hint! But looking at their portfolio they mainly sell flashcarts and not reproduction cartridges.
 

Jayro

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Thanks for the hint! But looking at their portfolio they mainly sell flashcarts and not reproduction cartridges.
Oh, my bad. I thought you wanted 1 cartridge to re them all. 😅

Give it a few months, I'm sure AliExpress will be full of virtual boy repros soon.
 

jnl1

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Well that is odd. I grew up with N64 and just recently bought a virtual boy and i am very impressed by the system. If I had have this system in my younger days back then it would have blown my mind.
 

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