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Own Every SNES Game Ever Made For $24,999
An anonymous reader writes "BSNES author and game collector Byuu has decided to put his entire collection of SNES games up for sale — at the low price of 24,999USD. The collection covers *every* game ever made for SNES, all in the original covers. From the article: 'The seller, who goes by the name "Byuu" on Reddit, says that every single game in the collection comes with its original box and approximately 85 percent of the games come with their original manuals. The collection does not include unlicensed games, and every game has been professionally cleaned and tested. "They all work perfectly," Byuu says.'"
Slightly more restricted than "every SNES game", it's actually every regular-release SNES game sold at retail in the US, Canada, and/or Mexico. He bought them to improve the emulation quality of his emulator, bsnes.
He says he'll use the proceeds of this sale to purchase other SNES games he doesn't have, such as assembling the complete collection of games released in Europe.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
He says he's dumped them all (made copies), and now is looking to sell them. Doesn't anyone see the legal issue here?
Legal issue, yes. Ethical issue, no.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
It's a licensed retail only set. Donkey Kong Country Competition was another game sold only after a Blockbuster competition. Mountain Bike Rally + Speed Racer was another game that was only sold by mail order for $200 after you bought a $4,000 exercise bike. Noah's Ark 3D was an unlicensed game sold in Christian book stores. MACS was a training game designed for use in the US military. Powerfest '94 and Campus Challenge '92 were produced for their respective competitions, and were supposed to be destroyed (two of each were not.) SNES tester decks existed only inside Nintendo repair centers. This can pretty much go on forever, so you have to draw the line somewhere. However, many can legitimately say it's not a complete set if their definition includes any of the above.
I haven't distributed any of the images, only SHA256 checksums (here), and I promise that I'll delete all the ROMs as soon as the set sells ;)
The PCB contacts were scrubbed with sodium hydroxide (to remove oxidation) and isopropyl alcohol (to remove residue.) Took about five minutes per cart. Which is about 60 hours of labor. Not a whole lot, it just ensures that every game will turn on with your very first try, and you won't dirty up your SNES connector on these carts.
About a dozen were unfindable, I had to trade three of mine to get unfindable boxes, too. The rest were unaffordable. I completely maxed out my 401K loan, and my savings are empty. I can't continue buying until this set sells. Otherwise I would have loved to have listed it as a 100% CIB set. Probably could have made 50K just from some rich person not wanting to spend a decade searching. Note: only one person in the world is known to have a 100% CIB US set, DreamTR.
I agree with you completely. Read up on what Rufus Pollock, a Harvard professor found after doing research on copyright. The optimal length is 14 years, of which all SNES games have passed. Anything longer is corporate greed.
As far as letting someone read them, that is exactly why I bought them in the first place. I read every one by hand with my own custom hardware (here is a picture of my setup.) This allowed me to image the entire function of the PCB, not just the ROMs like current dumps. I also scanned every box, cartridge and PCB. I then put up all the information in my online database here. I can't distribute the ROM images for legal reasons, but by comparing my SHA256 hashes to yours, you can verify your ROMs are legitimate and unmodified, clean dumps.
Per the auction details, "All 721 games sold at retail in the United States, Canada and Mexico are included. What is *not* included is any not-for-resale, unreleased, and unlicensed games."
That statement is factual. I ran out of space in the title to add the latter part, but it's at the very top of the auction details. Missing games are Mountain Bike Rally+Speed Racer (mail order only), Donkey Kong Country Competition (some Blockbusters sold their competition carts instead of destroying them), Star Fox Super Weekend (Nintendo Power sold off its surplus by mail order), Noah's Ark 3D (unlicensed game sold in Christian book stores), MACS (only used by the US military, never sold and the only copies remaining are stolen from the US government), Campus Challenge '92 (destroyed after competition, only two survived), Powerfest '94 (same thing as Campus Challenge '92), and various hardware testing carts (used by Nintendo repair centers.)
Everyone has their own opinion of what comprises a complete set. Some people further insist on having every revision of every game, and every alternate box art and manual printing. Some people include prototypes (where it's impossible to own all of those), on and on. You are welcome to your opinion that this isn't a complete set per your definition. It is per the definition I am going by.