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Own Every SNES Game Ever Made For $24,999

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-I-want-for-christmas dept.

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.'"

22 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. These belong in a museum! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These belong in a public museum, not some private collection. I hope that somebody who is rich and who appreciates video games makes the purchase, and donates them to the Smithsonian or some other reputable museum so that they can be publicly displayed for all to see and to experience.

    1. Re:These belong in a museum! by UltraZelda64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As a gamer, I actually strongly agree on this... they should be taken care of, preserved, ba a part of a museum. That's lots of history he's selling.

      BSNES is awesome, by the way.

    2. Re:These belong in a museum! by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are plenty of extant copies of any of these vintage (not even antique) consumer goods. I agree that these are as culturally important as anything else in an art museum, but this sale doesn't in any way hinder industry.

      Besides, even if you ignore these games entirely, byuu has done far more than $25,000 worth of work preserving these games. Bsnes is arguably not just the best snes emulator but the most accurate emulator ever, which is likely to survive much longer than the cardboard, plastic and silicon being sold.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    3. Re:These belong in a museum! by byuu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The thing I disliked most was the way emulated images do not come with any box art or instruction manuals. That was always part of the fun as a kid for me.

      Ironically, you can consider my effort to be undermining the very value of owning the set: I've scanned all of this stuff in at high resolution so it'll be available long after the games are gone. That's why I bought them in the first place. I'm only selling them so I can buy more games from other regions to do the same.

    4. Re:These belong in a museum! by spazdor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're doing God's work, Byuu.

      I mean, that's a cutely hyperbolic and very Internet thing to say, but seriously, kudos. It may otherwise become impossible to find the material which you are preserving for us.

      --
      DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
    5. Re:These belong in a museum! by byuu · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    6. Re:These belong in a museum! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you give them to the Smithsonian, they're going in storage. They've only got so much display space. But they would likely be well preserved.

    7. Re:These belong in a museum! by byuu · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    8. Re:These belong in a museum! by rolfwind · · Score: 4, Insightful

      These belong in a public museum, not some private collection. I hope that somebody who is rich and who appreciates video games makes the purchase, and donates them to the Smithsonian or some other reputable museum so that they can be publicly displayed for all to see and to experience.

      Museums are for conservations of material goods. Libraries are better to spread ideas in whatever form they come in.

      Museums are not lacking in material, I can assure you. Smithsonian only displays a tiny, tiny fraction of its inventory at any one time, and a smaller amount on tour somewhere, much of it is in warehouses, many never to see the light of day in my lifetime for want of display space. Many people I know who donated anything from their great-great-....grandfather's civil war canteen to their grandfather's US Army uniform to a local Museum often were shocked to see that stuff put up for auction from same museum. Because the museum preferred the money for budget/projects rather than common to even somewhat rare (but not especially valuable) items. It's even known some curators of smaller museums that even deal in/steal/pilfer goods and replace them with copies.

      Maybe, sometime, somewhere a super nintendo with a super mario cartridge belongs in a museum somewhere. But certainly not the whole collection. It's just going to collect dust and not going to introduce more people to the joys of that era. Private collectors would be great to care for that.

      That makes about as much sense as giving books to a museum to spread ideas. That's where a library is more appropriate. If you really want to get that, you would call for liberalizing copyright law. Tie it to patent length or something and only keep trademarks as ongoing. That way it would be legal to have the entire library up and served on the internet for generations to come and have people actually play them, if they so chose.

      I don't think it's going to be much of an experience in 100 years to go to a museum, and look at video game and dvd titles, that you may play for 5 minutes because of a line or see for 5 minutes in some demo. That would surely be a stunted experience.

  2. pedantic correction by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  3. Re:HOLY FUCK! HOLY HOLY HOLY FUCK! NO SHIT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Holy crap

    someone didn't take their meds today...

  4. Re:HOLY FUCK! HOLY HOLY HOLY FUCK! NO SHIT! by Zalbik · · Score: 5, Funny

    this is Slashdot. Stupidity is not tolerated here

    +1 Funny

  5. Re:Um, he admits he's breaking the law by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  6. eBay link by byuu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    [ eBay Link to auction ]

    I am probably underselling myself here, but I would likely accept the first serious offer for $20K or above.

    That may seem like a lot, but if you do completed auction searches on eBay, you will see that the top dozen or so games (EarthBound, Hagane, Harvest Moon, Incantation, Aero Fighters, 3 Ninjas Kick Back, Metal Warriors, Mega Man X3, ...) routinely sell for $400-1000 a piece when complete in box. The next four dozen easily command $100-350. That leaves you with about $5 per complete in box game for the rest, in a market where the prices have continued to rise steadily for the past several years.

    1. Re:eBay link by adisakp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Have you thought about an Indiegogo campaign or Kickstarter to fund your effort for European and Japanese cartridges?

      Crowd-funding of projects is hot right now and it might be easier to find thousands of people who think your efforts are worth $10 to them than to find a single person willing to part with $25,000 for old game cartridges.

    2. Re:eBay link by byuu · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  7. Re:One missing game... by byuu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:Um, he admits he's breaking the law by byuu · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 ;)

  9. Re:Cleaned? by byuu · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  10. Lyeing to us all by tepples · · Score: 5, Funny

    The PCB contacts were scrubbed with sodium hydroxide (to remove oxidation)

    That's a lye, and you know it.

  11. Re:Meh by BPPG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But you can't download an arcade where every game is 25 cents to play, not counting the many many gameovers that leave you needing more. You can't download that first gameboy your older cousin lent you for the week to play Dr. Mario over and over again just so you could beat his high score. You can't download the way it made you feel to finally get to the third stage of a boss that had kept illing you over and over before you knew how to time your attacks while avoiding theirs.

    And twenty years from now, gamers from today won't be able to download the group dynamics of their MMO clan, won't be able to download the step by step evolution of Minecraft indev with it's back and forth between Notch and the smaller community. They won't be able to download all the achievements, trophies, ranks, and golden guns from their favorite FPSs. They won't be able to download the connection made between shiningly creative Little Big Planet level authors after wading through the seas of shoddily-made CoD clones and Mario levels.

    I just recently got a smartphone capable of playing these old SNES games. I might download an emulator and play some games. But gaming on a touchscreen smartphone will never be the same as sitting on the carpet with my siblings, racing through the ghost levels on Super Mario Kart and figuring out exactly where to use my jumping feather to get an edge towards victory.

    --
    What's the value of information that you don't know?
  12. Re:ROMs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope you have to write software to deal with other people's legacy crap some day, so you can know how it feels to be continuously cut up by hacks that have become standard practice before you.

    FYI, cartridge folders will not be required for a later version of higan/bsnes. The intention was not to make it difficult to use ROM files, just to get ROM loading hacks out of the emulator. In the next version, in fact, you will be able to load .sfc files without problem.

    And if you're going to complain about having to have your ROMs in an extension that makes more sense, that's your prerogative. Likewise if you insist on having a 512 byte header that is not actually part of the ROM nor any standard that contains no useful information. But don't go around preaching because people aren't doing things your way. Just because your 15 year old emulator supports it does not mean it is a good thing to support.

    If renaming a file is too much work for SNES emulation, you clearly don't give a fuck about quality in your software. Go grab an old copy of ZSNES, a juice box and get back to those Super Mario World rom hacks.