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Post by mpanayiotakis on Nov 5, 2009 1:05:42 GMT 2
Hello and welcome richy.. I agree with you that the front and back of the game (even the battery cover!) had to be painted seperately. But all parts probably used to go through the same painting machine so I'm not sure this helps at all as we still can't rule out painting problems.
Paul, I thought you had seen your feedback and didn't email you about the package. Thanks for everything!
Aris, it's best if we keep this thread focused on the supercolor games. For other serials you should start another thread. I can offer the serial of my lion game. I haven't kept any of my silver or other gold games I'm afraid. About the picture in my faq, unfortunately we don't know the year it was taken. I'm sure that as years passed, the manufacturing process got more automated. It is a possibility that early games were assembled entirely by hand but production numbers indicate that this wasn't the case in later releases. Although I'm sure that some people would still be involved in the process for quality check and box packing.. I doubt though that the serial number was added manually. As you said it's very difficult to be precise and you risk bending/destroying the sticker if you do this by hand. There was probably one serial sticker machine that applied the stickers on the back of the games as their assembly process was completed. Since each game was created in batches of tens of games, they would get consecutive serial numbers and the next batch (which could be any other game) would get the subsequent numbers..
Michael
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Post by andycole on Nov 5, 2009 12:20:55 GMT 2
Interesting stuff! It's certainly providing clues about how these games were assembled and produced, but I can't put these clues together to help us with the white mystery. I have a theory that could explain the strange mixing of serials within boxes: The fully assembled, serialed and boxed games came off the end of a conveyorbelt. At the end were 2 or more people with empty shipping boxes. Each of those people reached across and grabbed each game as it came off. The games could have been coming off in serial number order but were mixed at this point. But then why do we see fully sequential boxes? Perhaps on that day there was only one 'shipping box' person? I don't think I've ever seen the photo of the production line. Or if I have, I've forgotten it. I tried to download the PDF the other day and nothing happened. Can we see the photo here? I don't think we can make any assumptions at all about the accuracy of the japanese hand to apply a sticker straight, or about whether people were allowed to go to the toilet during the day It certainly helps to do so, as we can't theorise without it, but those theories are pure speculation. One more thing, about serial numbers for all the other series. From what I saw in Pat's database, some serial ranges even crossed over between series, and I've even seen different games share the same serial number, although that should be impossible. For this reason, I would repeat my warning about not assuming anything! This does make it very confusing as there doesn't appear to be a system, per se, for these serials. I mean, it's not likely that you'll find two (or more) different Silver games with consecutive serial numbers, but, it does look like some runs could have been as small as five or ten thousand for one game, then crossed over to a completely different game and continued from there for 5 or 10 thousand games, then.... went back to the first game, for 5 or 10 thousand more! Even considering what I said about assumptions, this is highly likely. They wouldn't have had 59 different assembly lines. On any given day, they probably only produced one game at a time. They may have done 5 different games in a day, but they would be in order, with one game only starting production once the other one was finished, or else there would be a danger of things getting mixed up, like a vermin LCD being put in a fire case, etc, etc. Later on, once they had several series on the go, they could have been producing batches of games from all the series in the same day, and the serial numbering would have been partially mixed, where those series shared a range. We of course know that some series had their own ranges, like the MVS and the Supercolor, but we can see evidence that silvers, golds and early widescreens shared ranges. I don't know about the other series, but it is quite easy to tell once you look at the spreadsheet from the database. Andy
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Post by bacco on Nov 6, 2009 0:08:37 GMT 2
Hey Arthur, I don't remember seeing the game you're describing, and it doesn't come up on Patrick's database either.... There is one NOA CG game that sold for $788 USD back in June of 2007. Here's a pic of it: I think this must be the one you're referring to Arthur, as it meets the price and, more or less, time frame you indicated. The only thing is, it's not a WCG game. My guess would be that an NOA WCG does not exist, but, one never knows.... Are you absolutely certain it was white AND in an NOA box? I can't see Patrick missing it if it was, especially since it went the full distance of the auction, and was not BINNED before others could see it. AC I;m pretty sure this isn't the one and I'll tell you why. June 07 I wasn't on ebay as much due to getting married, honeymoon, etc. Another reason is that you could easily find a standard NOA CG in electronichandhelds ebay shop for around that price during this time (and still do). I am not 100% sure but I am adamant that the game was on ebay in 2008, It definitely sold for in the high 700's early 800's and it was white. I also think that it was won by someone who is\was a member of this forum because at the time you could see who the winning bidder was and I remember the name of the ebay winner used the same name (or similar) here in the forum. Which reminds me when did ebay start hiding the winning bidders ID? Maybe we can get a set time period from that? Maybe i'm just imagining things.... Mike is there a way to go back to the archives of what we have noticed lately and possibly see if this game was highlighted at the time on the forum?
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Post by Aris on Nov 6, 2009 8:50:49 GMT 2
Andy,Exactly! We don't know where these white SS & CG "originally" came from (and I don't mean where did Paul, Taki, Mike, James, Andy and Northfrost, but instead, where did the people that sold these games to Paul, Taki, Mike, James, Andy and Northfrost get their games from? And if it was from a flea market, where did the flea market get it from? Basically, when these white Supercolour games were sitting on a store shelf, ready to sell to the public, where were these store shelves located? ) I'm sticking with the concept that the game, originally, did not come in an Italian box. I can't prove it, and I may be wrong, but, whoever put it in the Italian box did so to make it appear like a limited edition Italian release of a white SS game. The only way, I know of, to look at really old ebay auctions, is by using Patrick's site. Pieter,Thanks for the serials on your Supercolour games! I've added them to the database, and I've actually created a thread called GAME & WATCH SERIAL DATABASE here: mpanayiotakis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=2253&page=1so, if you have any more serial numbers, please post them there so I can update my spreadsheets. I wonder if we will ever find out why these white units were made? Does anyone know where Nintendo produced all their G&W games? Were there production factories throughout the world, or was there just one in Japan and one in the USA? Too bad there isn't an easy way to find "former Nintendo employees from the 80s"!!! If only we could find one person who worked on the assembly lines, they could tell us so much about the entire manufacturing process!!! Paul,Sorry dude, haven't heard a thing back from Olivier since explaining the situation to him and making him that trade offer. He's either going to do the "I'm just not going to respond, that way, he'll stop bothering me" tactic, or, he's mulling over the offer. I hope it's the latter! Thanks for the serials by the way. When you get a chance, please provide me with the serials on the rest of your games, here: mpanayiotakis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=2253&page=1Runepune,Wow, that is quite the spread! I'm thinking your shipper was tampered with. How could there be such a spread if they're being boxed right off the line in groups of 10??? Your first and last serials are off by nearly 5999 units!!! But the weird thing is some are consecutive.... If you have any other serials to provide, please add them here: mpanayiotakis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=2253&page=1 Richy80,Thanks for your input, and of course your high SS serial number. You actually narrowed our "possible range of white SS games" by 36 units. Yes, I concur that everything is painted prior to assembly too! I don't think the "plastic models" theory applies because, while the parts of the front of a Supercolour game, and the entire back (including the battery cover) are all silver painted, the insides of the front and pieces are white. (I just took mine apart to make sure ;D ) So, it's not a scenario where they would have to paint BOTH sides of the back piece, and both sides of the front piece. If you have other serial numbers for other Game & Watch games, please add them here: mpanayiotakis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=2253&page=1Mike,Yeah, no problem, I'll try to keep the serials of other games within the thread I already started on the serials database titled: GAME AND WATCH SERIAL DATABASE here: mpanayiotakis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=2253&page=1And yes, please post any serials you have for any G&W games there. I'll add them to my spreadsheets as time permits. Everything you've described about the assembly line process makes sense to me Mike. It more or less describes the image I have in mind when I try to picture how things were done back then. Andy (again),My theory on mixed serials within a shipper is much simpler, I think they were mixed by the person/people that bought them! ;D Even if your theory were correct, in Runepune's case (no pun intended) or even Paul's the gap between some of the serials is way too large to be a mix up attributed to workers standing at the end of a conveyor belt. I think there were two photos. They were black and white, and if I'm remembering them correctly, they were of women manually piecing together G&W games. Okay, I found them. They're right at the very bottom of Mike's FAQ! I can't add them here, as I'm not able to copy them at all! Two DIFFERENT games sharing the same serial number? How dumb is that??? I would have thought that would be impossible!!! You saw if for sure Andy? I wonder if one game had a fake serial number on it? Why would Nintendo put the same serial number on two completely different games??? Well, if anyone, at any time, would like to see the spreadsheets for these games, just let me know, and provide me with your e-mail address, and I can forward them to you. Arthur,Hmmm... it's strange that it's not on Pat's database, especially since it went full term on the auction. Well, if someone here did win it, it would be nice if they came forward and provided the serial number of the game. As for checking archived "WHWNL" auctions, yes, it can be done, simply by clicking the "ARCHIVE" link at the top of the feature, but, I just tried it now, and it's not working. I wonder if that's what Mike was referring to when he posted a comment about some changes he was making..... I can't remember when ebay made the changes that prevented us from seeing bidder's IDs, but, I think it was at least a year ago. Paul again,Okay, you're messing me up here!!! You've provided three shippers full of serials, but, depending on which of your two posts one reads, "that's how the DK Hockey box rollse out" but then in a subsequent post, you said your earlier post was for your shipper full of DKH games.... So, can you confirm are they both DKH, or is one DKH and the other is DK3? If they're DKH and DK3, please confirm which is which. AC
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Post by andycole on Nov 6, 2009 11:41:03 GMT 2
Andy,Exactly! We don't know where these white SS & CG "originally" came from (and I don't mean where did Paul, Taki, Mike, James, Andy and Northfrost, but instead, where did the people that sold these games to Paul, Taki, Mike, James, Andy and Northfrost get their games from? And if it was from a flea market, where did the flea market get it from? Basically, when these white Supercolour games were sitting on a store shelf, ready to sell to the public, where were these store shelves located? ) Andy (again),My theory on mixed serials within a shipper is much simpler, I think they were mixed by the person/people that bought them! ;D Even if your theory were correct, in Runepune's case (no pun intended) or even Paul's the gap between some of the serials is way too large to be a mix up attributed to workers standing at the end of a conveyor belt. Two DIFFERENT games sharing the same serial number? How dumb is that??? I would have thought that would be impossible!!! You saw if for sure Andy? I wonder if one game had a fake serial number on it? Why would Nintendo put the same serial number on two completely different games??? Hi Aris I've lost track of what post of mine you're replying to with 'Exactly!' but your following paragraph just highlights what an impossible task tracing the games back is. I already asked my seller where he got his 2 white games and he couldn't remember. We can trace Ramrodius game back 2 owners to ebay but without seeing a record of the auction again, we don't know who the ebay seller was, so there's another dead end. You could ask Taki where he got his from but I expect he's already been asked and he doesn't know. We'll never trace these back unless we see a NOS one being sold by the original owner. As yet, Devster's NOS CG is the closest thing, and the seller didn't have a clue. Collectors mixing up games within a shipper? That just doesn't add up. First of all, if they had a sequential shipper, mixing it up would take at least 25% off it's value, so I can't see that happening. So what about finding 10 separate NOS games and then adding them to a shipper? Hardly! But then again, I can't explain such a large gap in numbers in the same box. More questions than answers! The duplicate serial numbers were in Pat's spreadsheet, take a look. All I did was sort the sheet in serial number order and get Excel to compare adjacent cells. I have found 40 occurences of duplicate serials. My first theory was just a typo when Pat entered his findings into the database, but there are at least 2 occasions where that theory is in question - the same duplicate games appear more than once each on ebay, so it would be highly unlikely that Pat made the exact same typo two or more times. There is one occasion where a Goldcliff and a DK2 share a number, and the DK2 has appeared twice and the Goldcliff 3 times, so Pat would have had to make the same typo at least twice, possibly 3 times. The chances are billions to one! To prove this one way or another, we'd need to see the auctions. The other day, I tried requesting a MHT file from the database but it never arrived. I don't know if that is still available, but the information in those files would be invaluable for lots of reasons. Ash888 had that room full of DKH shippers, he's your best bet at the moment for looking at sequential serials. Andy.
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Post by ash888 on Nov 6, 2009 14:09:44 GMT 2
Hi Andy,
I mentioned this on the GAME & WATCH SERIAL DATABASE thread.
I copied down all the serial numbers before selling those shippers. I must have about 200 on file.
And as I mentioned in the other thread, none of the shippers had serials in a perfect sequence. They were all similar to what Paul and Runepune has.
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Post by Aris on Nov 6, 2009 17:16:28 GMT 2
Yeah Andy, I'm lost too!!! I think I was responding to your comments about tracking down which boxes the white Supercolour games came in. It was the post just before Pieter's. I've sent Taki the e-mail asking about where he got his White games from, so, hopefully I'll hear from him soon, and I'll update everyone here once I do hear from him. So, what's our status on white SS serials? We're still waiting on Taki's. And Andy, we're still waiting on the "other one" the guy you got yours from still has, right? Well, prior to Ash's post about having 20 shippers all mixed up, I was just thinking that people with multiple shippers full might have taken the games out of the shippers, to try and sell them individually, then, when they weren't selling that well, decided to put them back in, but, messed up the sequences. Or, maybe they had some damaged ones in each shippers that they swapped out.... You know, things like that. I wonder if this random run of serials within a shipper only occurred with DKH shippers??? About the duplicate serial number issue, I still think it's stupid that Nintendo let that happen! I know when I was working on the serial numbers that Pat sent me, I came across duplicate serial numbers for SS games, but, that had an easy explanation, I just figured the game changed hands more than once, like how Taki's white SS comes up twice in his database, once when Mike bought it off Taki, then again when Paul bought it off Mike. It will interesting to see if the database we're working on turns up duplicate serial numbers for different games. AC
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Post by mpanayiotakis on Nov 6, 2009 20:25:01 GMT 2
Hmm.. a few things to answer in here. First of all, there's the archive section of the what have we noticed lately section. There's a link for it in the header, try it out Arthur! Some of the images don't work for the moment since geocities has closed recently but I've got a local copy in my hard drive so let me know if you can't find the image.. I'll fix the game&watch list and the archive soon.. Andy, are you sure the download link for my pdf of the faq doesn't work? Because I checked it recently and there were no problems! Anyway, here's the two photos Aris mentioned: I'm sure Nintendo had different assembly lines for different games at the same time. Don't forget that at some point Nintendo were releasing a lot of wide screen/multi screen games during the same period. Alternating a single assembly line wouldn't be cost-effective and probably be counter-productive, not to mention that Nintendo wouldn't be able to ship out thousands of games each week! Multi-screen games differ a lot in design from the wide screens so I can't imagine a single assembly line handling them both! And yes Andy, these are assumptions but assumptions based on what I've seen in factories so they are based on something and they aren't just products of my imagination.. Michael
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Post by andycole on Nov 9, 2009 13:00:50 GMT 2
Hi Mike
The FAQ has downloaded OK now, I dunno what the problem was the other day. I've read it before definitely, but I'll give it another good read now! Are you interested in pointing out errors? I just found one - descriptions of safebuster and bombsweeper mixed up!
You know, I can't even remember what I was talking about when I mentioned a single assembly line, there's been so much discussion already. I guess that as there were separate serial ranges, there were separate lines. I expect that at some point 2 or more ranges did share the same assembly line, though, as the serial numbers are slightly mixed, mostly in the early wides and silver/golds.
Andy
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Post by mpanayiotakis on Nov 9, 2009 20:22:38 GMT 2
Andy, as soon as I can find some free time I'll update the faq. There are a few errors in there and there's some new information I'd like to add so if you have found something that needs to be altered, please, let me know!!
Michael
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Post by pheldge on Nov 11, 2009 0:28:44 GMT 2
Hi all, Long time no see. Job found, job lost, new house bought, old one not sold yet. Very short time to come on the board. And it took me the evening to read this post ;D. So first of all, here's my only serial help : SS (silver of course) S1155652 bought on ebay in october07 from benoitshiva27 (as far as I can remember, it was a belgian seller. I guess it's not important, but I want to help as much as possible ). The serial is maybe already in Pat's DB, as at the time, I filled all my s/n on his site. Now just a few thoughts that came to my mind while reading the thread. Can you figure that all s/n were not following a constant pattern, even from japanese workers ? Can you figure that the white series could have been made as a joke, even from japanese workers ? Are you 100% sure that it's impossible to peel off a silver SC to get a white game ? If I look closely to the edges of my SS, it's already peeled, and the "bone look" (mentionned by Arthur I think) appears clearly. I guess that the key is to find the right method, or more exactly the right product (some kind of solvant) to go everywhere in the small corners between the embossed letters for example. I must admit that the most difficult point would certainly be to remove and replace the serial sticker. Could you imagine that some big resellers could have had huge amounts of shipping boxes and maybe (for some obscur reasons) opened them, swapped games, and then repacked boxes with mismatched serials ? I know that such idea can be difficult to figure, but who knows ? Just have a thought of what can happen sometimes. Even remember of what you've seen, maybe in an ancient job, or when you were student in a company and did something strange, because a pallet had been opened or so... About same serials for different games, just think that some sellers steal pictures or description from other auctions. I won't detail all these thoughts, because I'm a bit tired, and not fluent enough in english to correctly argument and explain everything ;D. To end my message, I think that all the energy that have been spent in this post by all of us posters is more than the energy that have been used to produce these white SC... ;D . So find an 80's Nintendo worker, and you'll surely gain time and money ;D ;D
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Post by andycole on Nov 11, 2009 12:29:30 GMT 2
I just looked back at the "book" thread and Florent claimed to have met and interviewed lots of nintendo employees. Unless they are hidden there in french and nobody's bothered to mention it, we didn't hear any big secrets or useful nuggets of information. If Florent is still in contact with these people, they could be the best chance of getting some concrete facts.
Andy
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Post by mpanayiotakis on Nov 12, 2009 0:51:10 GMT 2
Yeah, it'd be interesting to know whether Florent asked them about certain stuff, like the white spitball sparky for instance, if the 20,000,000 greenhouse still exists or other rare releases.. While I got Florent's book, I can't read it but Aris knows a bit of french and can take a look in it! Michael
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Post by Aris on Nov 12, 2009 6:06:25 GMT 2
Yeah, it'd be interesting to know whether Florent asked them about certain stuff, like the white spitball sparky for instance, if the 20,000,000 greenhouse still exists or other rare releases.. While I got Florent's book, I can't read it but Aris knows a bit of french and can take a look in it! Michael Ha! My French is only slightly better than yours Mike. It's nowhere near good enough to be able to read Florent's book. I'll have to remember to bring the book with me to my friend's house, as she's fluent in French, and I can get her to skim through it and let me know if there's any discussion with former Nintendo employees. Sorry guys! AC
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Post by andycole on Nov 12, 2009 11:25:09 GMT 2
Surely we would have heard directly from Florent if there was any big secrets in there! Or perhaps he is keeping the contents a mystery so that we all buy copies. Then again, many of his target audience got free copies!
Even if he didn't get any of the answers we are looking for, I still hope that he is in contact with these people, it's never too late to ask those sorts of questions.
Andy
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