That’s me. I’m ridiculous.
I spent my entire weekend photographing packaging for Game Boy World 1990 Vol. 1, the kind of exhausting endeavor that makes you clutch your head at the end and say, “What in god’s name am I doing with my life?” But hey: Now you can look at photos of the packaging for every Game Boy game released in all territories through the beginning of July 1990. So… that’s something.
Here’s a real delight:
Ninja Boy. It’s terrible! As in, I actually feel a little angry that this game exists. But it’s super hard-to-find, and at the time I purchased it for video capture and scanning there hadn’t been a complete copy up for sale anyone online that I could find in the previous six months. So I paid a ridiculous amount of money for the pleasure of playing this terrible game and taking this photograph for you. I will have to sell approximately 75 copies of Game Boy World 1990 Vol. 1 in order to pay for this game. That is probably 25% of all copies it will sell in its lifetime, if I’m lucky.
Anyway, yeah. Thanks to everyone who supports this nonsense via Patreon, because I sure as heck am not getting rich here. I am deeply grateful to everyone whose contributions prevent my obsessive-compulsive tendencies from impoverishing my family. In return, I will give you scans and photos of a trashy Game Boy games.
What the hell has our civilization come to.
I admire your dedication and enjoy your work. I sincerely hope it doesn’t leave you broken and committed.
I hear you, been doing the same thing with sealed Famicom Disk Games to get solid scans and proper dumps cataloged. Not fun to buy a sealed game only to render the manual worthless and cut the game value down to nothing. I too wonder how much longer I’ll be able to convince myself to do it due to the time and money investment. But somebody has to do it! So keep up the good fight :)
Oh my god! That’s where this picture is from! In the 90’s when I was a kid there was a video and game rental store called “Ninja” in my neighborhood here in Brazil, in the middle of nowhere, and on the outside there was a mural with this cover art painted. I’ve been there more times than I can count and I never knew here the original source came from.
The more you learn, you know?
I was under the impression that you sold these game when you were done with them. Is that not the case? I would think you could get back most of your money by doing that; it’s possible that you could even sell it for more money than you originally spent because you presumably have a larger social media presence with potential buyers.
Regardless, thank you for doing this service. Some of us really appreciate it.
I’m doing catch-and-release with GB stuff, but it’s a money-losing proposition. People very rarely put up these old games for auction when they’re complete — they just put them up for sale with a fixed price, and those will often sit unpurchased for months at a time. That means no one else wants to pay that asking price, but I don’t have much choice unless I’m lucky enough to spot an auction for something I need. When I’ve put stuff up for auction, I’ve usually been able to recoup only about 2/3 of what I had to pay to get them in the first place. In the case of Ninja Boy, a single copy sat up for sale at $800 for months and months, the only copy available. I managed to talk the guy into selling it for less than half that, but it seems that transaction inspired other people to put their complete copies up for auction to get rich quick… but those auctions only went for about half of what I paid. Anyway, point is, I’m not making money by flipping games here.