March 28, 2024, 01:23:26 pm

Finds (NES)

Started by JC, August 26, 2006, 12:13:07 pm

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P

So which one is it?

Retrospectives

Quote from: P on July 15, 2018, 07:34:43 am
So which one is it?


ルーボスベ of course  ;D Or if we tilt head 180 it becomes = ベースボール = Baseball.

nensondubois

https://twitter.com/nensondubois_/status/1018964862800728064
Blue Famicom Disk offial Nintendo Super Mario Bros 2 Lost Levels. World's rarest variant Disk Writer Kiosk version. Galaga side B high score 49480.




https://twitter.com/nensondubois_/status/1018976708614148096

World's rarest Super Mario Bros. cartridge NES Famicom Box Business store Kiosk version. Plays in NES if CIC is disabled. I'm not damaging my NES. Cart and NES are in excellent condition.




https://twitter.com/nensondubois_/status/1018978521094508544
Kaettekita Mario Bros. FDS (Return of Mario Bros.) Disk Writer exclusive Famicom Disk in excellent condition / works. Very rare game as complete as it exists.




Retrospectives

Congratulations on very nice finds!

The Fax Disk is indeed very rare when it been rewritten. Back in day Nintendo if people live in remote countryside whereas Kiosks not existed, it was possible for them to send in to Nintendo Headquarters so Nintendo could overwrite certain disk for them. I am not sure this was the case with your version, but clearly is not common seing fax disk overwritten.

P

Didn't know that! Did the kiosks detect fax disks and refuse to write them, or why are they rare?

Besides the shutter and blue color, the only difference I know that the fax disks has is a certain byte in the header (which is set to $45 instead of $20 like for normal games), and this could be used to detect fax disks.

Retrospectives

Actually the Blue Disk can be re-written in same fashion as Yellow disk. But not the opposite. Is due to estetical difference where blue disk as shutter and the yellow has not. In theory you could probably re-write a yellow disk with a "blue game" but not in a disk writer. I remember each time we rewrite the game, store clerk used a pink disk to check if the re-write was successfull, and that pink disk is the exact shape with shutter as the blue disks.

Example, there are version of SMB I see that has blue disk, but reason it might be rare is that maybe it was not allowed for retailer to re-write the blue disks, or the fact they were not intented to be re-written due to it afterall being dedicated games, and not blank floppi like the yellow one. But I have seen some of them pop up maybe not frequently but I know for a fact these blue Fax disk can be re-written and that Nintendo used a service to re-write any disk for people living in remote island or just in countryside (think Aomori).

Fun fact. It was free to upgrade score in the competitions. Guess who went at least 4-5 times buggering the store clerk just to use fax kiosk to upgrade the highscore?  ;D Since it was free of charge, I guess many people did it, and probably the game shop became totally tired, but for me it was worth it since we won the Gold Punch Out  :P

nensondubois

Quote from: Retrospectives on July 18, 2018, 09:23:32 am
Actually the Blue Disk can be re-written in same fashion as Yellow disk. But not the opposite. Is due to estetical difference where blue disk as shutter and the yellow has not. In theory you could probably re-write a yellow disk with a "blue game" but not in a disk writer. I remember each time we rewrite the game, store clerk used a pink disk to check if the re-write was successfull, and that pink disk is the exact shape with shutter as the blue disks.

Example, there are version of SMB I see that has blue disk, but reason it might be rare is that maybe it was not allowed for retailer to re-write the blue disks, or the fact they were not intented to be re-written due to it afterall being dedicated games, and not blank floppi like the yellow one. But I have seen some of them pop up maybe not frequently but I know for a fact these blue Fax disk can be re-written and that Nintendo used a service to re-write any disk for people living in remote island or just in countryside (think Aomori).

Fun fact. It was free to upgrade score in the competitions. Guess who went at least 4-5 times buggering the store clerk just to use fax kiosk to upgrade the highscore?  ;D Since it was free of charge, I guess many people did it, and probably the game shop became totally tired, but for me it was worth it since we won the Gold Punch Out  :P


Wow congratulations on a Gold Punchout winner! My question is how were the disks sent to Nintendo. Where they just sent in a standard envelope (snailmail) or did you have to wrap it in a costly package along with a handwritten note to write whatever game you wanted? Was there a list on what games Nintendo had and where could you find that list? I assume it would have cost a lot for postage alone, much less Nintendo keeping track of all the disks people sent in sounded like a nightmare so I guess they had dedicated section of staff to handle disk writers.

Retrospectives

Quote from: nensondubois on July 18, 2018, 08:34:58 pm
Quote from: Retrospectives on July 18, 2018, 09:23:32 am
Actually the Blue Disk can be re-written in same fashion as Yellow disk. But not the opposite. Is due to estetical difference where blue disk as shutter and the yellow has not. In theory you could probably re-write a yellow disk with a "blue game" but not in a disk writer. I remember each time we rewrite the game, store clerk used a pink disk to check if the re-write was successfull, and that pink disk is the exact shape with shutter as the blue disks.

Example, there are version of SMB I see that has blue disk, but reason it might be rare is that maybe it was not allowed for retailer to re-write the blue disks, or the fact they were not intented to be re-written due to it afterall being dedicated games, and not blank floppi like the yellow one. But I have seen some of them pop up maybe not frequently but I know for a fact these blue Fax disk can be re-written and that Nintendo used a service to re-write any disk for people living in remote island or just in countryside (think Aomori).

Fun fact. It was free to upgrade score in the competitions. Guess who went at least 4-5 times buggering the store clerk just to use fax kiosk to upgrade the highscore?  ;D Since it was free of charge, I guess many people did it, and probably the game shop became totally tired, but for me it was worth it since we won the Gold Punch Out  :P


Wow congratulations on a Gold Punchout winner! My question is how were the disks sent to Nintendo. Where they just sent in a standard envelope (snailmail) or did you have to wrap it in a costly package along with a handwritten note to write whatever game you wanted? Was there a list on what games Nintendo had and where could you find that list? I assume it would have cost a lot for postage alone, much less Nintendo keeping track of all the disks people sent in sounded like a nightmare so I guess they had dedicated section of staff to handle disk writers.


Oh, that was simple. Except Disk Writer Kiosk there was also something called Disk Fax. So step was like this. 1, buy the disk (In this case Golf U.S course) 2, go home and play. 3, go to store and ask to register for competition 4, they register at store and put your blue disk into the disk fax machine, and the high score directly got faxed to Nintendo headquarters.  :) So no needing of sending anything to Nintendo, because the Disk Fax we could just go to the normal game/toy shop and they had it right next to counter with the Disk Writer.

Here is a picture of a disk fax I found online.

Ah if you refer regarding to the blank disk directly sent to Nintendo. Yes they had advertisement from what I understood, and then it was possible to send in a postcard with stamp or similar value to a blank disk + 500 yen or such and they send it back to you. Or if they sent to the nearest Nintendo retailer. Not totally sure because I never used that service myself since I grew up in big city, but indeed they offered the service. I will check later if can find more info about it.


P

Ah :diskkun: disk full of dreams! First time I actually heard all this from someone that actually experienced it back in the day. Information about FDS things are really scarce in English, even on this forum. Thanks for confirming lots of things!
Oh and yeah belated congratulations on the gold Punch Out! It's cool that you have it but ten times as cool that you are the original owner that won it! :D

Yeah I'm sure there are no technical reason why blue disks are not rewritten so often. It's either the clerk refusing, the disk writer refusing or just that people wouldn't want to rewrite a game that was probably only for sale during the event (or maybe not? They are not very expensive or rare). People rewriting at home of course could use it as any other disk.

I have a few blue disks but they all seemingly have their original content on them.

Retrospectives

Thank you very much P  :-[

Yes, is a bit vague memory but I never really see anyone copy a Fax Disk in a Disk Writer, but I have seen the same type of disk, but in Pink which they used everytime to make sure the yellow disk was written correctly. So it might be the disk writer detect as fax disk or not. In any way, is much more rare with rewritten fax disk compared to yellow which sold as blanks for 2000 Yen if remember correctly, then it cost like 500 to write game to it, plus additional 100 yen to get sticker/insert or such.

Regarding the tournament, I think there was around almost 80 000 people to participate in Golf US Course, I read somewhere, and I think around 10.000 Punch Out cartridge was awarded which make it a chance of 1:8 to actually win, but I am not sure how many of the Golf US Course sold totally, but is interesting history and I gladly share my personal memory.  :D

From what I remember reading/hearing there was the same price of around 500 Yen (sometime a bit cheaper/expensiver), to send into Nintendo to get game overwritten, but I am not sure if was only available to remote area or if anyone could do it. But the reason it existed is because of people living in remote area I believe. Anyway, I can research a bit and come back with better answer later, because I never used this service I cannot tell exactly how they did.

P

That pink disk is most likely the FMC Disk Card Checker. Vinnk on the forum apparently has it. It displays a large ring on the screen if the disk passes the test. Although it is of course very rare, it has been dumped and I guess you can probably use it with FDSStick by hot swapping to the disk drive when checking the disk.


I'm curious if you often overwrote your disks when new games came or did you get new empty disks written? One purpose of the FDS was supposedly that you could get new games cheap by overwriting games you got bored of, but personally I have a hard time seeing myself delete games I paid for just to get new ones cheaper, especially now when I'm an adult and have money, but I guess it might be different as a kid.

Retrospectives

Yes is the same pink disk I was referring to. :D  I never owned one. Are they very expensive? I am not that interested to get one but would be interesting know the price because I can figure that perhaps only a few hundreds nowadays exist.

Yeah, sometime I overwrote disk. It was cheap way getting the latest and most popular game, and in many way main motivation of course was in school people talk about topic of "you played this game?" and if not played it, many people would go and get it, and for parents I suppose they rather get overwrite than buying a whole new disk. But yeah, I get your point, as adult I would not do it, but compared cartridges the disk re-write was very very cheap.  :P

I found picture sheet of example what to fill in when want Nintendo headquarter (or nearest retailer from what I understand) to re-write disk. Side A/B or both sides. I suppose this might be explain why some Fax Disk got overwritten. Maybe. Maybe clerk did not do it normally but when people send in they did? Honestly I have no idea.




P

So writing any one game was 500 yen. 1000 yen for two one-side games and 500 yen for one two-side game. Thanks for digging this up. :)

I guess clerks might have allowed writing on blue disks as well no? It sounds like a waste of opportunity to sell more games by refusing to overwrite the blue disks.

I have no idea how much you have to pay for a FMC disk checker but yeah they are supposedly not very cheap. I imagine that Nintendo generally take back these kind of things and possible destroys them as a company policy (to protect company secrets and such), so I think it must be rare that the pink disks get out in the wild. And since the disk is a bit more than fun trivia since it's useful to check disks with, I guess it might go up to a similar price as prototypes maybe?


One other thing I wonder is if the disk writer and fax kiosks was seen by the customer normally? As I understand it they where not used as vending machines, but the store clerk did all the job of operating it and providing a manual and such. But could you see it when they were writing? Since it had a cool video and cool music supposedly ran by a Famicom (and I guess FDS to get those peculiar sounds) I guess it must have seen by the customers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKN3uWZ5lrQ

nensondubois

Quote from: P on July 22, 2018, 03:44:10 pm

One other thing I wonder is if the disk writer and fax kiosks was seen by the customer normally? As I understand it they where not used as vending machines, but the store clerk did all the job of operating it and providing a manual and such. But could you see it when they were writing? Since it had a cool video and cool music supposedly ran by a Famicom (and I guess FDS to get those peculiar sounds) I guess it must have seen by the customers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKN3uWZ5lrQ


That is a very unfortunate company policy. I have doubts Nintendo destroyed them and possibly just stored them in a warehouse. If the Disk Writer Kiosk is actually a modified Famicom then I'm curious why the Disk Writer BIOS hasn't been dumped. I know there are two different NSF covers and the Nintendo sound museum CD Disk Writer so I assume someone has access to a Disk Writer kiosk other than Nintendo. It is well-known that they have one in storage, possibly more than one for reasons more than preservation like giving companies access to recordings and documentary lisencing.

Retrospectives

Sure, no problem  :D

Yes, it might had been possible. I have no idea and just speculating haha. Is possible that people just thought that blue disk had higher value since they were retail rather than re-write, but at same time, they are kind of rare in overwritten form, so there must be some type of explanation, but which one is really hard to say.

I think so too. Not to talk about the novelty factor would be very high for a collector, so somewhere around the price as the early proto I would assume. Really hard estimate a market value of something so rare and not showing up more than once in maybe like every two-five years (or more) but the demand could be calculated as high, based on fact people like collecting everything, and the demand is very high for early Nintendo things so yeah, pricey we can totally assume  :-[

In my local Toy/Game shop the Kiosks were located just behind disk counter. If wanted re-write, submit score or such, just tell clerk which one, and they did it manually for you. It was not allowed to touch it, and reason I think is because is such fragile with floppy and that some people might not know how to operate it even if given instruction, so yeah, visually available in most store I think, but not physically available to touch it except the clerk who obvious had gotten instructions of how to operate it.  :D

I remember they stored disk under the disk.  ;D As I mean like, they had cardboard boxes with blank yellow floppies under the clerk desk, they just took if someone wanted to buy one, and then they ask what game and such, and they write it to you, put the label and case (might have been in the case from beginning, not remember sorry), and then it was finished.

However, later I remember in LAWSON they had Game Boy and SFC ATM, and that was manually operate by customer. It looked very similar to normal ATM. But that's totally another story eheheh.