you sure as heck can't call it a variant - the very term implies a change to something which came before, not the case here.
Sorry, didn't mean to offend, this term does not imply this to me.. Comics these days are released with several "variant" covers all at once.. or two words are variant spellings of each other no matter which one came first.
I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't the original. I guess variant means something different to me than it does to you, of course, if you are looking only for the original version of each game, this wouldn't help you either.
A variant is a different version of the SAME game. All the SMB pirates do not count as variants, nor does Doki Doki Panic count as a variant to SMB2.
Anyways, I think there's little chance a shipping box still exists (I'm still hoping, though). The few shipping boxes that went out were probably opened for the copies that hit store shelves (there would be no reason for a store to keep the shipping box). As the game was recalled, there would be no reason for Bandai to keep any boxes either.
I've been toying with the idea of buying some satellite imagery of the landfill area and doing a hyperspectral analysis to try to find where the carts are buried... If what you say is true, the endeavor would be a lot more worthwhile than if I was just looking for some E.T carts!
If the alleged "SE Dump" was treated the same way as the ET's were, they were steamrolled and cemented over. Someone tracked the article down at AA a while ago, it's pretty clear that anything they dump they destroy to keep garbage pickers away.
I think Nick has the right idea by talking to someone at Bandai. The hard part is finding someone there who either has been there long enough to know the company history or has enough connections/clearance to track down this information. The only sources I can think of for this info would be Bandai, Nintendo, or Woolworths, and isn't Woolworths out of business? Besides for talking to PR at Bandai and Nintendo, or somehow tracking down a former Woolworths employee, are there any "experts" that we can consult with? Any "video game historian" out there want to weigh in on this sourcing question?
The Woolworth's thing came from DreamTR, who told me he got that information from someone at Bandai.
In that case...DreamTR pop your head in here, we need info!
You know I was almost reluctant to post this thread in fear of being told I was stupid and this has been discussed a thousand times, I'm kind of shocked to find how many respected members (even ones who own the cart) really lack the concrete details behind this game.
It's been 22 years, I think it's about friggin time some answers start to surface. Someone on here must know somebody in a position to provide answers. I've already been diggin around but no great luck...yet.
It's been 22 years, I think it's about friggin time some answers start to surface. Someone on here must know somebody in a position to provide answers. I've already been diggin around but no great luck...yet.
Well, we're still stuck with some elementary problems like "how were the first Black Box games sealed", so I will not be surprised if we can't dig much further into the SE question.
As was said I doubt Woolworths has the data but Bandai still might and I'm sure Nintendo still does. If they bought the rights I'm sure they were interested in the early sales data.
When I was working in California for a video game magazine and a lot more uppity on finding out about these types of things, I contacted Bandai since we had relationships with them at the time and the official word (them being in Cypress, CA I believe?) was that Nintendo bought the rights to repackage the whole Family Fun Fitness from them for North American markets and left it alone in Europe and Asia. It was on shelves in 1987 for a short while as was the FFF with Athletic World but disappeared pretty soon after that...I definitely don't remember seeing this anywhere myself other than Woolworth's, but Bandai stated that was the main buyer/distributor for that specific product....they could be misinformed, I don't know. I had to go through hell about trying to find out why Konami has ISS and ISSD with North American releases and all warranty info in the US as well, and the final word from them was for sale only in Central America (Mexico mainly) on those, but Nintendo only released by region, so technically it still came out in our region, but all that is besides the point. I think someone said they saw SE at Toys R Us but I never did. It might have been there, but the only place I have seen it for sale with my own eyes was Woolworth's and Bandai mentioned to me about what happened and stated Woolworth's was the only place but again, it could be misinformation. A pretty high up guy at Nintendo confirmed the EArthbound NES game was fake but low and behold it was not. So take all of that info for what it is worth. Only Nintendo and Bandai know the real deal with this.
I swear I read a post here or otherwise about people finding Stadium Events carts at US K-Mart stores back when they sold repackaged games.
It wasn't "carts", I only saw one. K-mart didn't have a lock down on loose SE carts (at least not that I know of). They were just selling random used carts, and they happened to have a SE.
When I was working in California for a video game magazine and a lot more uppity on finding out about these types of things, I contacted Bandai since we had relationships with them at the time and the official word (them being in Cypress, CA I believe?) was that Nintendo bought the rights to repackage the whole Family Fun Fitness from them for North American markets and left it alone in Europe and Asia. It was on shelves in 1987 for a short while as was the FFF with Athletic World but disappeared pretty soon after that...I definitely don't remember seeing this anywhere myself other than Woolworth's, but Bandai stated that was the main buyer/distributor for that specific product....they could be misinformed, I don't know. I had to go through hell about trying to find out why Konami has ISS and ISSD with North American releases and all warranty info in the US as well, and the final word from them was for sale only in Central America (Mexico mainly) on those, but Nintendo only released by region, so technically it still came out in our region, but all that is besides the point. I think someone said they saw SE at Toys R Us but I never did. It might have been there, but the only place I have seen it for sale with my own eyes was Woolworth's and Bandai mentioned to me about what happened and stated Woolworth's was the only place but again, it could be misinformation. A pretty high up guy at Nintendo confirmed the EArthbound NES game was fake but low and behold it was not. So take all of that info for what it is worth. Only Nintendo and Bandai know the real deal with this.
So by this, you mean Woolsworth was the main buyer, but there could be more?
I have a repro and a PAL version so I seriously doubt I'll ever own this game at the going rate. However, in light of two copies being found in the wild recently it's got me to thinking, how rare is this game really?
The first thing I want to know is, where did this production number of 2000 copies come from? Even if it was in print somewhere that just sounds like total speculation to me unless we know the actual persons mouth those words came out of, or we have a shipping order from Nintendo themselves.
Next, where did the claim it was only sold at Woolworths in the North East originate from?
It's not that I don't believe either of these things, but the fact that most copies found in recent years have been in varying places (Miami, Chicago,etc.) I'm curious if we have any concrete evidence of the claims that seem to be gospel about this game. I understand people move over 22 years though so it's not out of the question.
The other thing...does anyone think there is a small abundance of this game somewhere be it sealed or otherwise? It seems that at some point virtually every game has had at least a box of sealed copies show up somewhere. I have a strong gut feeling that someday, somewhere, somehow, a small amount of these will show up maybe 20-30 of them, and while they'll command a premium it will still be far lower than anything we've seen in recent years.
Just wondering what everyone's thoughts on this are, because I really feel as though something doesn't add up about this one. Because even if only 2000 copies of this game exist, think about that number 2000 that is A LOT when you really think about it. Where did they all go? I don't expect them all to show up on ebay necessarily but, you would think with the collector market scouring ebay and goodwill, game shops and yard sales, etc. etc. all over the world we would have already found at least a hundred copies of this thing floating around after all these years, but so far not even close. Something just seems a little off about the rarity of this game, I'm almost inclined to say there is even less than 2000 in existence or someone is sitting on a large amount of them and doesn't know what they have.
Mine was at one point owned by a rental store in suburban Chicago. It had rather nasty rental stickers on it. Could it have been bought second hand by someone from the Northeast and brought to the rental store. Sure, but that seems unlikely. I think it had a wider distribution (maybe less concentrated) than seems to be the accepted story.
Mine was at one point owned by a rental store in suburban Chicago. It had rather nasty rental stickers on it. Could it have been bought second hand by someone from the Northeast and brought to the rental store. Sure, but that seems unlikely. I think it had a wider distribution (maybe less concentrated) than seems to be the accepted story.
Well I'd say this certainly points towards it not being available only in certain regions...UNLESS Nintendo was the one who provided the games to rental stores, or if this was a chain perhaps their HQ or distribution was located in the North East. Either way this gives another piece of evidence to say it wasn't region exclusive (or at least NE only).
Mine was at one point owned by a rental store in suburban Chicago. It had rather nasty rental stickers on it. Could it have been bought second hand by someone from the Northeast and brought to the rental store. Sure, but that seems unlikely. I think it had a wider distribution (maybe less concentrated) than seems to be the accepted story.
Well I'd say this certainly points towards it not being available only in certain regions...UNLESS Nintendo was the one who provided the games to rental stores, or if this was a chain perhaps their HQ or distribution was located in the North East. Either way this gives another piece of evidence to say it wasn't region exclusive (or at least NE only).
Nintendo hated rentals. They actually tried to sue Blockbuster over rentals in the late 80s. It's possible it was bought from an NE distributor. But that rules out the whole Woolworths exclusive scenerio. Is it possible the rental store owner bought this copy from a Woolworth, yes. There were some in the area, but it's another unlikely scenerio.
Also this was a chain, but a chain with three locations all in suburban Chicago from the notes on the sticker on the back. In fact that chain was named after the street they were on. So.. it's possible they bought it from a distributor in the NorthEast, but this just further adds to the mystery.
I can't reconcile why a rental store would want to stock this. They would have to rent the pad out too (generic Power Pad did not exist at the time) and those flimsy pieces of junk would have been guaranteed to be returned in tatters from kids digging their steel-tipped boots into them.
I dunno, dan, you could rent out Zapper games without having to rent out a zapper. Granted, the zapper was more widespread than the novelty mat.
Alternately, they had no idea that you needed a mat to play it.
I've seen copies of Gyromite with Rental stickers too.
This leads to the question, who had Rob but not Gyromite and was the store renting the Robot too?
Not to get too off topic, but when I was a kid we had Gyromite but didn't even know ROB existed... one of us would control the professor and the other the pistons (either cooperatively or competitively), and it was actually kind of fun.
I dunno, dan, you could rent out Zapper games without having to rent out a zapper. Granted, the zapper was more widespread than the novelty mat.
Alternately, they had no idea that you needed a mat to play it.
I've seen copies of Gyromite with Rental stickers too.
This leads to the question, who had Rob but not Gyromite and was the store renting the Robot too?
Not to get too off topic, but when I was a kid we had Gyromite but didn't even know ROB existed... one of us would control the professor and the other the pistons (either cooperatively or competitively), and it was actually kind of fun.
same with me as well. didn't need that stupid slow ROB anywho.
Woo Hoo, I just received a call from John Bobbledyk, he's a big wig over at Bandai in San Jose. He had knowledge of SE, but didn't know any of the main details we are all curious about. On a high note he seemed very interested in helping me out, he said he will contact me via email shortly with all his contact info. He said he was "almost positive" he could find out more info from his colleagues.
Comments
you sure as heck can't call it a variant - the very term implies a change to something which came before, not the case here.
Sorry, didn't mean to offend, this term does not imply this to me.. Comics these days are released with several "variant" covers all at once.. or two words are variant spellings of each other no matter which one came first.
I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't the original. I guess variant means something different to me than it does to you, of course, if you are looking only for the original version of each game, this wouldn't help you either.
A variant is a different version of the SAME game. All the SMB pirates do not count as variants, nor does Doki Doki Panic count as a variant to SMB2.
Anyways, I think there's little chance a shipping box still exists (I'm still hoping, though). The few shipping boxes that went out were probably opened for the copies that hit store shelves (there would be no reason for a store to keep the shipping box). As the game was recalled, there would be no reason for Bandai to keep any boxes either.
I've been toying with the idea of buying some satellite imagery of the landfill area and doing a hyperspectral analysis to try to find where the carts are buried... If what you say is true, the endeavor would be a lot more worthwhile than if I was just looking for some E.T carts!
If the alleged "SE Dump" was treated the same way as the ET's were, they were steamrolled and cemented over. Someone tracked the article down at AA a while ago, it's pretty clear that anything they dump they destroy to keep garbage pickers away.
The Woolworth's thing came from DreamTR, who told me he got that information from someone at Bandai.
In that case...DreamTR pop your head in here, we need info!
Well, we're still stuck with some elementary problems like "how were the first Black Box games sealed", so I will not be surprised if we can't dig much further into the SE question.
The Woolworth's thing came from DreamTR, who told me he got that information from someone at Bandai.
He also said it wasn't recalled. But what do you know, everyone thinks it was.
http://sites.google.com/site/zayre88/woolworth
If you enlist the aid of a top journalist to write an article on this story you may just get your questions answered.
I swear I read a post here or otherwise about people finding Stadium Events carts at US K-Mart stores back when they sold repackaged games.
It wasn't "carts", I only saw one. K-mart didn't have a lock down on loose SE carts (at least not that I know of). They were just selling random used carts, and they happened to have a SE.
When I was working in California for a video game magazine and a lot more uppity on finding out about these types of things, I contacted Bandai since we had relationships with them at the time and the official word (them being in Cypress, CA I believe?) was that Nintendo bought the rights to repackage the whole Family Fun Fitness from them for North American markets and left it alone in Europe and Asia. It was on shelves in 1987 for a short while as was the FFF with Athletic World but disappeared pretty soon after that...I definitely don't remember seeing this anywhere myself other than Woolworth's, but Bandai stated that was the main buyer/distributor for that specific product....they could be misinformed, I don't know. I had to go through hell about trying to find out why Konami has ISS and ISSD with North American releases and all warranty info in the US as well, and the final word from them was for sale only in Central America (Mexico mainly) on those, but Nintendo only released by region, so technically it still came out in our region, but all that is besides the point. I think someone said they saw SE at Toys R Us but I never did. It might have been there, but the only place I have seen it for sale with my own eyes was Woolworth's and Bandai mentioned to me about what happened and stated Woolworth's was the only place but again, it could be misinformation. A pretty high up guy at Nintendo confirmed the EArthbound NES game was fake but low and behold it was not. So take all of that info for what it is worth. Only Nintendo and Bandai know the real deal with this.
So by this, you mean Woolsworth was the main buyer, but there could be more?
I have a repro and a PAL version so I seriously doubt I'll ever own this game at the going rate. However, in light of two copies being found in the wild recently it's got me to thinking, how rare is this game really?
Mine was at one point owned by a rental store in suburban Chicago. It had rather nasty rental stickers on it. Could it have been bought second hand by someone from the Northeast and brought to the rental store. Sure, but that seems unlikely. I think it had a wider distribution (maybe less concentrated) than seems to be the accepted story.
Mine was at one point owned by a rental store in suburban Chicago. It had rather nasty rental stickers on it. Could it have been bought second hand by someone from the Northeast and brought to the rental store. Sure, but that seems unlikely. I think it had a wider distribution (maybe less concentrated) than seems to be the accepted story.
Well I'd say this certainly points towards it not being available only in certain regions...UNLESS Nintendo was the one who provided the games to rental stores, or if this was a chain perhaps their HQ or distribution was located in the North East. Either way this gives another piece of evidence to say it wasn't region exclusive (or at least NE only).
Mine was at one point owned by a rental store in suburban Chicago. It had rather nasty rental stickers on it. Could it have been bought second hand by someone from the Northeast and brought to the rental store. Sure, but that seems unlikely. I think it had a wider distribution (maybe less concentrated) than seems to be the accepted story.
Well I'd say this certainly points towards it not being available only in certain regions...UNLESS Nintendo was the one who provided the games to rental stores, or if this was a chain perhaps their HQ or distribution was located in the North East. Either way this gives another piece of evidence to say it wasn't region exclusive (or at least NE only).
Nintendo hated rentals. They actually tried to sue Blockbuster over rentals in the late 80s. It's possible it was bought from an NE distributor. But that rules out the whole Woolworths exclusive scenerio. Is it possible the rental store owner bought this copy from a Woolworth, yes. There were some in the area, but it's another unlikely scenerio.
Also this was a chain, but a chain with three locations all in suburban Chicago from the notes on the sticker on the back. In fact that chain was named after the street they were on. So.. it's possible they bought it from a distributor in the NorthEast, but this just further adds to the mystery.
Alternately, they had no idea that you needed a mat to play it.
I dunno, dan, you could rent out Zapper games without having to rent out a zapper. Granted, the zapper was more widespread than the novelty mat.
Alternately, they had no idea that you needed a mat to play it.
I've seen copies of Gyromite with Rental stickers too.
This leads to the question, who had Rob but not Gyromite and was the store renting the Robot too?
I dunno, dan, you could rent out Zapper games without having to rent out a zapper. Granted, the zapper was more widespread than the novelty mat.
Alternately, they had no idea that you needed a mat to play it.
I've seen copies of Gyromite with Rental stickers too.
This leads to the question, who had Rob but not Gyromite and was the store renting the Robot too?
Not to get too off topic, but when I was a kid we had Gyromite but didn't even know ROB existed... one of us would control the professor and the other the pistons (either cooperatively or competitively), and it was actually kind of fun.
I dunno, dan, you could rent out Zapper games without having to rent out a zapper. Granted, the zapper was more widespread than the novelty mat.
Alternately, they had no idea that you needed a mat to play it.
I've seen copies of Gyromite with Rental stickers too.
This leads to the question, who had Rob but not Gyromite and was the store renting the Robot too?
Not to get too off topic, but when I was a kid we had Gyromite but didn't even know ROB existed... one of us would control the professor and the other the pistons (either cooperatively or competitively), and it was actually kind of fun.
same with me as well. didn't need that stupid slow ROB anywho.