Andrew

Looks great Thomas! Been checking out the ROM on my computer for a couple of minutes, can't wait for the finished version to come out. Keep up the good work!

Pretty funny!

It's not a true prototype. It looks like one of those CGE re-issues that they did a couple of years back. They took some unreleased games/prototypes and burnt some carts of them and added the nice labels and all so people would have a chance to play them. They did Dig Dug, Joust, and some others that I can't remember offhand. I know it's not nearly worth anywhere near the buy it now price, but if you were to snag it for around the opening bid, it'd be a good deal.

As for rare PAL NES games, these are supa-tough to find: Rodland (near impossible to find, only released in Spain and the UK) Mr. Gimmick (Europe only) Devil World (Europe only) Crime Busters (Brazil only) As for Maniac Mansion, I thought only the PAL-only release had the exploding hamster bit taken out, while it's present in all NTSC carts. I might be wrong, so can anyone verify this? Can you tell by looking at the carts which one is the hamster version? People also say that the Myriad version of 6-in-1 (which is the version with the Myriad label slapped overtop the Caltron one is tough to find, but these might just be overzealous collectors trying to increase their collection's values, i.e., the inclusion of the obviously foreign Sachen games in the new DP guide as U.S. releases)

I was/am quite impressed by the CGE Atari 2600 releases this year -- they've certainly maintained their level of excellence in the reissues. Hats off guys. And thanks to Holey Moley I finally have a game worthwhile to play on the kids controllers. Was kinda hoping to find some more NES releases there -- but did score some great stuff nonetheless. Couldn't stay too long at the show to meet everyone, and I will try and do better next year -- ended up hooking up with an old friend from undergrad whom I hadn't seen in since he'd gone onto med school so had to race uptown to catch up with him while we were both in town. The museum section was pretty interesting too -- it's great to see all that one-of-a-kind stuff, knowing that I'll never find it in the wild. Overall, it was a pretty good time and a great excuse for a weekend vacation.

Even though I have a Cuttle Cart, I'd be game for this as well.

How many copies of this is going to be made for the show? I'm dying to play this and I don't want to miss out. It looks really awesome Mike -- can't wait to get my paws on this!

This may seem kind of silly, but if you really want to get a good price on the Dreamcast lot... take some pictures of it when you post it? Since there are many auctions that sell copied games, if you can prove that your games are indeed original, then bidders will give you more for it.

Man... If I wasn't saving up for the CGExpo, I'd be all over this...

Do you know if its the games that aren't working or the system? Check the pins on the SNES -- look at them to see if any are misshapen, bent or broken off out of place. You can pick up the security screwdrivers (gamebits) at www.mcmelectronics.com. There are two sizes, a 4.5 mm gamebit and a 3.8 mm game bit which are as useful as any cleaning kit. What I recommend is getting a real soft eraser and rubbing the game contacts with that -- it will take off all the stubborn dirt on the contacts. I think that they require a minumum order price of around 20 or 25 bucks ( I can't remember offhand), which if you don't reach they will charge additional handling fees. They also sell new pin connectors for the NES and SNES there as well for pretty cheap (much cheaper than what they are on eBay). Sounds like a good deal for $15, which two games did you get with the system? Hope this helps Andrew

I try and make an effort to leave feedback for buyers and sellers that have lower numbers of feedback -- however it seems as if those with thousands and thousands of feedbacks never leave any. I'm at around 95% -- I've left 858 and only received 822. I really wish that eBay would modify the feedback and leave a number of the total transactions compared to the number of the feedbacks, so you can get an idea of how accurate the feedback is. It seems like people are frightened to leave negative feedback, even if it is justified, for fear of retalition. This seems to happen with those with thousands of feedbacks -- I've gotten the worst service from those with high feedback (an few negatives) compared to the smaller ones. I also believe that if a buyer does not pay a seller, and a seller files a non-paying-bidder request and gets their refund -- eBay should instill some sort of mark on their account so people can see how often they've not paid -- might even encourage people to pay their auctions more often.

The only problem with filing mail fraud complaints is that it might take a long time for anything to get done with them. From what I've heard, they will only look into things if there are a sizable number of complaints registered (how many, I don't know) -- so it probably wouldn't hurt to put that into motion. I have heard that the Internet Fraud Complaint Center is a pretty effective tool (http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/index.asp) and any contact from them might just be enough for the buyer to send out a refund. I don't think that is out of hand at all, if you were to file for it -- I strongly encourage it. This seller sounds awful fishy to me, I don't think it's any coincidence that the three games missing were the rarest of the rare. And when this seller closed out the auction page with your offer -- if he would have clicked on "close auction and sell to the highest bidder" link, you would have some recourse on eBay for the refund -- it sounds like he really knows what he's doing. Do you think this might be one of those hacked accounts anyway? There's a note on there to contact some other e-mail address than the one listed for eBay. I will be curious as to how all of this will turn out, do keep in touch with how it goes. Personally, I'm not a fan of sellers ending their auctions early for "private offers" because it seems like the same collectors always snatch up anything worth buying from unsuspecting sellers and then making a disgusting profit reselling the carts on eBay for inflated value. Out of curiosity's sake, how much did you end up paying for the whole lot? Andrew

I'm actually quite surprised at this getting pulled -- take a look at and Dreamcast auction that includes more than 10 games and there's a very high chance that all the games are nothing more than copies. I would think they would police the more obvious ones than RAM carts. Some of them blatently go out and say it too! [url="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1366162316"]http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...366162316[/url][/url]

So, eBay is only in this whole thing to make money aka "blind profiteering"? How is that any different than regular businesses? eBay, like many auction houses whom deal in mass volume, doesn't have the time or resources to validate every auction on their system. All they do is provide a service. And because of that, there will always be people trying to take advantage of the system. But what the real shame of that is, that people only act like that because they are taught that it is the American way. And it's a real shame too -- I've never found any more greedy people in the world than those that feel that the world truly owes them something. But I will say that eBay has drastically improved since it first started -- when they went live years ago -- there were literally thousands of more fradulent auctions than now. I'm not saying that they've all gone away, but eBay has taken the best steps that they can to prevent it. I'm not trying to be an eBay cheerleader here at all, I dig the service and have probably waste more time on it than I should -- but I leave it as tool to fuel my hobbies and nothing more than that. And in an especially wintery economical climate as we have now, it's especially useful for people to pawn off some of their goods so they can pay their bills.

To tell the truth, I'm addicted to 2600 Warlords so bad that I probably oughta get some sort of help or go to a rehab for it. I lie, cheat and steal however I can to get a serious drunken 4-player Warlords party going on. From the looks of this new version of Warlords, I'm pretty unimpressed. All the imagination and charm in the 2600 game is gone -- the backgrounds, though pretty, are too distracting. The only saving grace of this game could be some sort of settable computer difficulty. The game when played against the CPU is laughable -- but when you've got live players it's something else. Geez. I got into that much more than I thought. Might have to round up a Warlords fix real soon...