Rarest thing you own thread

Ive got a Gamboy color lamp with a gameboy running a demo cart thats never been dumped I'm told.

 

I'd like to think my Sn Systems N64 Dev cart is my rarest thing I own. I'd like to get going but no scsi card & power adapter.

I also own a PS2 test, a PS2 debugging station, PS1 (Blue) Debugging station, SN Systems PCI CD/DVD Emulator board for a PS2 tool & a CD64.

 

Tales of Phantasia Super NES

This is truly the rarest thing I own as there is literally only one of them exactly like it in existence. Of course I understand that it's not very valuable because it's not exactly a commercial or collectable product, but I'm still really proud of it.

Sorry for the length of this post. If you want to hear the story of one gamer's nearly unhealthy obsession with a game, then read on - otherwise ignore the text and enjoy the pretty pictures.

I really enjoyed Tales of Destiny on the PS1, but had no idea of its lineage until around 2003 when I downloaded a full set of SFC/SNES ROMS, and English patches. I literally didn't have any idea of what I had. I patched several of them just to play through the first few minutes and see if anything captured my interest. When I tripped over Tales of Phantasia, I was mildly impressed when I heard the opening monologue. it was cool, but it had been done before. After a bit, I found myself tapping my toes to the opening song. It was about 30 seconds into the song when, with a shock, it dawned on me that there was a real voice singing along with the music. I was completely blown away by that - I didn't think it was even possible, and Tales of Phantasia instantly shot to the top of my list of favorite JP-only titles. It was so beautiful. It struck a chord in me that few things ever have.

I was so excited when the GBA release was announced for the U.S. I rushed right out and pre-ordered it. I eagerly awaited the day of its release - I couldn't concentrate that day at work because all I could think of was getting home to dive into that game. I drove my co-workers nuts, incessantly humming the catchy opening tune.

I remember racing to Gamestop, then racing home and popping it in to my Gameboy Player. My heart sank to my feet when I heard the depressingly mundane plink-plink-bleep of the overworld music where the opening song should have been. It felt like someone had poured icy cold water over my nice warm daydream. I know this is crazy, but the disappointment was so great that I felt like I was going to vomit.

I couldn't play the game because I got so angry every time I tried, that I got sick to my stomach. I emailed my friends at NCS and asked them if the JP version had the vocalized opening song intact and they assured me that it did. I raged against Namco, and Namco told me that it was Nintendo's fault because they were the publisher. I actually wrote snail mail to Nintendo and Namco. I chewed Nintendo out for destroying a beautiful piece of art, and I chewed Namco out for not protecting the integrity of their brands better. Surprisingly both of the replied, but they were generic meaningless apologies "we're sorry you were disappointed, but we can't murder the ones responsible, and we can't divulge their names and home addresses" (I didn't actually ask for that stuff, but you get the idea). I posted on blogs and forums everywhere trying to stir up ire, and get Nintendo to recall and fix the game, but in the end no one seemed to care but me. Not a single person took my side in the matter. Gamestop would not refund my money for the game because I had opened it. Nintendo would not fix it (and I never truly expected that they would, but I didn't know what else to do with my anger and disappointment), and most of the replies I got to my posts were people telling me that I was being too harsh (and, in retrospect, wanting whoever made the decision to remove Yumei wa Owarenai from the game to lose his/her job and spend the rest of his/her life as a unemployable hobo was probably taking it a bit far).

When nothing got me any closer to vindication, I got desperate. I remember downloading a ROM of both the U.S. and JP versions of the GBA game, loading them into a hex editor, and, knowing effectively nothing about how the data was structured, trying to figure out how to restore the missing song in the U.S. version, or replace the text in the JP version. I spent several futile hours, examining machine-code gibberish and moving chunks of code, creating useless ROM images before giving up.

I explain all of this to paint the picture of my obsession.

Ever since first coming across it, I have always wanted to get a "real" copy of Tales of Phantasia in English. I realize that the DeJap translation wasn't exactly biblically accurate, but they left Yumei wa Owarenai intact, and, well, I've sort of explained my affinity for that already.

It took a lot of time and work, but at long last, I have the closest thing I ever will to the real thing.



I had the cart made by GameReproductions.com and the box made by UncleTusk.com, but I designed the cart label and the box art myself.



The box took me many hours to complete because I had to fabricate a lot of the elements myself - I simply could not find anything on the Internet that was high enough resolution/quality.

The purple blocks, triangles, and orange dots were pretty simple. I just used several actual boxes to get the sizing and orientation.

Nintendo didn't start using the "Official Nintendo Seal" until well after the SNES was retired so it wouldn't be "period accurate" to put it on there. I made my own "Seal of Quality" from an HQ version of the one that just says "Official Nintendo Seal" - and I used a website called What The Font to find a font that was nearly identical to the original. The ellipse of the seal had to be adjusted to match the original.

The "Super Nintendo" logo was something I made from a piece of official art that I got from a link on the cover project - I had to scale it and touch it up by hand.

The game art itself I got from a dump of the official Tales of Phantasia artbook.

The game's logo I got from a hi-res scan of the GBA release. I had to fight with it for a while to scale it without introducing a lot of ringing - there was a massive amount of touch-up.

The Namco logo, I made myself - I couldn't find a "period accurate" logo in sufficient resolution so I used an official logo from Namco themselves and carefully drew the oval around it.

I found the screenshots all over the web - had to pick 4 out of about 30.

The image of Cress/Cless on the back also came from the original artbook.

I had a lot of trouble finding an ESRB logo that was "period accurate" and finally found one on a raw scan of a Saturn game on The Cover Project.

The bar code on back is a direct copy of the bar code for the GBA release.

The blurb about the game on the back, I totally made up.

I fabricated the recycle logo partially from a hi-res logo I found on the web.

The copyright info on the back was a combination of the original copyright info from a random SNES game, what was on the GBA release, and stuff I looked up on Wikipedia.

The button silhouette that appears on the flaps, front and back, I fabricated - it was a major PITA because GIMP isn't really designed for that sort of thing. I used a hi-res scan of a real box to verify accuracy.


Being a perfectionist, I still see everything wrong with it, like how something went goofy with the purple triangle and rectangle bits, and the colors being slightly off when they were printed, but overall, I'm very happy with it.




I had a hard time getting the above shot without glare - it really looks a lot better in person.




I tried to be as true to the real thing as possible - even putting the product codes on the inner flaps (shown above), and the warranty info on the side.

In the unlikely event that anyone wants a copy of the original template used to print this, please message me and I'd be happy to provide it.

 

^^^^^ Wow, incredible work!!!!!



My brother owns (and I totally could have owned, if we had each picked up each other's stack of football cards at a garage sale about 15 years ago) a full set of Mars Attacks cards from 1962.

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_tr...w=mars+attacks+1962&_sacat=See-All-Categories

All of his are mint or near mint, and include an unmarked checklist. I think he payed about 50 cents for them.


The set was only out for a few months apparently, removed from shelves because of the violence and resemblance to missile crises and such going on in the world right at that time.

 

Why are so many great games (and TV shows for that matter) ruined when they get brought from Japan to the US?

 

Damn, people are crazy...

http://cgi.ebay.com/1962-Prototype-...aultDomain_0&hash=item4cf1775f1a#ht_500wt_928

 

Thats a bargain!!! Let me just go get my 185 million...:thumbsup:

 

Thousand*

 

Read a comma as a full stop

 

Home Computer 3600 (Famiclone)

Hi,

That's a console I got in 1992, from Saudi Arabia, I was 11; well,
the SNES was just out at that time and I didn't have it,
I did have something completely different, though ...

There was Master Fighter in it but SF2 was out so it wasn't
exactly the same experience but it was fun nonetheless.

I don't have the box anymore but I remember seeing it on the net,
years ago. Mine was written PAL.




The pads seems to be oxydizing or whatever, I don't really know what
to do about it ... any ideas ? the plastic went much softer also.




I think I did change the layout of the buttons years ago ...




The gun has a target and it does some sound, exactly the same as
the toys there was where there are like 10 buttons which triggers a sound,
explosion, alarm, etc ... you surely have seen some of those
if you born in the 80s






Now the funny part, it was supposed to work through antenna as well,
I guess in the desert there's not much noise but over here, in Paris,
it was very noisy, years later I found out there was composite too.
Also, I've never been able to find a TV that gets it in color since,
only the Philips one I had, with red knobs on the side,
it could decode almost any color system, depending the channel
you set it on, and I remember it being the n° 7.

I did some searches and it looks like it's PAL B, I found out some
converters that might do the job but I heard there was a nice free
composite to RGB fitted in each European NES, I might try this
for even a better quality.









As it's said, there is 3000 games inside
Never found that ROM, it's called 3000 in 1 and has the same exact
menu as the other pirate carts like that.




Much of the games are duplicates, but each are hacked in some way,
speed, starting level ... There was Mario in it but it was slow, I guess
that's 60Hz roms but running at 50 Hz, the music is, well, different














I have read recently that Master Fighter is sort of a cult-game now,
would have never thought of that ...






Here we are,
Friends I had were jokin' about it because of Master Fighter,
the SNES etc ... but there was that Robocop 3 game which was
shutting everyone's mouth because it was just incredible after
you've seen the games inside.

15 years later I found out it's nothing more than Tokyuu Shirei Solbrain,
thanks to someone on the web, well even today I think it's one of the
great games of the NES, remembering me the same kind like MegaMan.

But at this time and age, no idea of what this game was,
no one else either.

Most names of the games are changed and copyrights removed.


























I remember getting a nice shock while unplugging it before going to school,
thanks to the bad design of the adapter ...




The fix with the extender that was with it,
you know, insanely long cords should you live in a castle in SA






Wrath of Black Manta









The 3000 games ROM

Anyone knows how I could dump this ?












I hope you enjoyed it, that's the rarest item I have !

 

That is a very nice item mate, congrats :thumbsup:

That Fighter II cart will look great in my SF collection ;-)

 

Do you have any pics of your collection ?

 

An original pressing of Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath.

 

I bought one of these from a market in Beijing back in 2008, was boxed and brand new and there were plenty of them. Not pissing on your fire and saying they're not rare, just it's amazing they're still making them.

 

Yes that's incredible, I think they are more common to find out on the place you said, though.

I've seen that they're even teaching kids about malaria, today, on Famiclones : http://playpower.org/

 

The rarest thing I own would be the copy of Red Alert 3 Premier edition on PC that was sent to me by the then community manager at EA, Aaron Kaufman (people who ran websites or were otherwise top community people got sent copies)

I got sent a copy because I run a C&C website and because I was (and to some extent still am) very active in the modding community for the C&C series.

The premier edition isnt that rare but the fact that the plastic sleeve on my copy has a message something like "keep up the modding" (or something similar) and has Apoc/Aarons name on it (I think its just a name not a signature) might make it rarer.

 

i guess my rarest item would be the dreamcast BBA

 

The most rare item i own is a cell and scetch from the movie Akira, i also have cells from heavy metal.. as far as video games go, i would have to say my x'eye.

 

Mine would have to be Epoch game pocket computer or zeldas adventure on cdi.

 

I may have the wrong end of the stick here but on wiki it says the following:

Audio

The original game soundtrack was arranged by veteran composer Motoi Sakuraba, as well as Shinji Tamura; these two have been the primary music composers for the series since then. Sakuraba has a cameo appearance in the SNES and GBA versions of the game; when you visit a major city, you can meet him and get him to play the theme of the game on a piano.
Also, there a few vocal tracks associated with the game or anime:

• "Yume-wa Owaranai" (夢は終わらない?, lit. "The Dream will not End") – First heard in the Super Famicom version, it was featured in the original animated opening to the PS1 remake (this opening was reused for the PSP port). It was performed by YO-MI (PS1/PSP versions) and Yoshida Yukari (Super Famicom version & GBA versions). The Super Famicom version was arranged by Hiroya Hatsushiba.
• "Hoshi-wo Sora-ni" (星を空に?, lit. "A Star in the Sky") performed by Yoshida Yukari. This is the PS1/PSP ending
• "Yume-no Hate" (夢の果て?, lit. "The Dream Ends") performed by Masami Suzuki. Tales of Phantasia THE ANIMATION's opening song

• Prière (“Prayerâ€￾ in French) – performed by Masami Suzuki. Tales of Phantasia The animation's ending song

Yume wa Owaranai was removed from the western GBA versions.

So if its the just the opening song (after what you have said I will be checking it out) it can be heard on the PSP version of the game.

I like the dedication you have to theis series.