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Finnish one-sheet manual for NES Dracula fetching crazy price at an auction

http://www.huuto.net/kohteet/nes-peli-bram-stokers-dracula/296641643

At the finnish equivalent to Ebay, Huuto.net, there's a copy of NES Bram Stokers Dracula for sale. It seems to include finnish one sheet manual which seems to be uber rare. It's now at 888 euros.


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Only background info I could find was this: http://www.nesretro.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1375263330/0

Dracula's manual in finnish has not been found. The existence of the finnish manual for Dracula has in fact divided finnish collector-scene into two camps, of which the first one is certain that the item exists but has not been found yet, and the second one is certain that it has never even existed. Smiley

Kinda crazy for a one page A4 photocopy but hey, rare games!
 

sakipon

Member
The two highest bidders seem to have 0 feedback, could be bidding without intent to buy. Third bid with 666 euros is probably legit (or a shill bidder, who knows).
 
The two highest bidders seem to have 0 feedback, could be bidding without intent to buy. Third bid with 666 euros is probably legit (or a shill bidder, who knows).

The other buyer with 0 feedback asked a question about the paper the second the auction started, third bidder is most definitely legit
 

kick51

Banned
pretty sure these insane collectors get screwed regularly by people who make fakes. Can't be too hard to trick someone who thinks a one page typed manual to a video game is a "holy grail" of any sort.
 

Chumpion

Member
Typo spotted: "verohimoisia lepakkoja". Instead of "bloodthirsty" bats, Dracula seems to have "tax thirsty" bats. Appropriate localization though...
 
pretty sure these insane collectors get screwed regularly by people who make fakes. Can't be too hard to trick someone who thinks a one page typed manual to a video game is a "holy grail" of any sort.

I collect records but top for me has been 100 dollars... fakes are usually easy to spot on the well known obscure records, but even the biggest collectors get scammed every once in a while. For instance, buying a original flyer that in the first place was a photocopy, a fake can be noticed from a different type of paper used, even if the reproduction was top notch. The insert on that NES game does look very legit though (for seeing many others similar to it in my childhood :) ) and the seller is clearly not a scammer...

Typo spotted: "verohimoisia lepakkoja". Instead of "bloodthirsty" bats, Dracula seems to have "tax thirsty" bats. Appropriate localization though...

lol. The "työvoimatoimisto" in the back of the manual is kinda funny too :p
 

bjork

Member
Wait, someone fill me in here: the box says "cannot be used with the Mattel or NES versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System."

What was the console, then?
 

andymcc

Banned
Wait, someone fill me in here: the box says "cannot be used with the Mattel or NES versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System."

What was the console, then?

Mattel distributed the NES in Europe prior to Nintendo entering the market there.
 

-KRS-

Member
Yeah those "A4 manuals" can be really expensive. I think it's a Scandinavian-exclusive thing. Towards the end of the NES era, it became too expensive to print and manufacture games exclusively for the Scandinavian region. So the local distributer here, Bergsala AB, imported copies from other European countries such as Spain, and then put a sticker on the back of the box with Swedish etc text to cover the Spanish text and included an A4 manual instead of a proper manual. I know the A4 manual for the very late prints of Zelda 1 can fetch around 2000 SEK or more. That's about $300.


Wait, someone fill me in here: the box says "cannot be used with the Mattel or NES versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System."

What was the console, then?

As the others said, Mattel distributed the NES in the UK among some other countries. But Europe was kinda weird when it comes to the NES because there were actually two regions. The so called PAL-A and PAL-B regions. PAL-A is the Mattel-distributed versions while PAL-B was the others. In Scandinavia we have a local importer/distributer of Nintendo products to this day called Bergsala AB, who were part of the PAL-B side. Other countries probably had their own importers. The PAL-B region was actually even further divided into smaller regions. Games from Scaninavia tend to have the region code EEC or SCN, while Spanish copies of games have the ESP region code and France and Germany had a couple of different region codes including FRA and DAS. All of these smaller regions were compatible with one another, so one could buy a German game and play on a Swedish NES etc. But PAL-A and PAL-B were NOT compatible with one another unless you do the region mod on the NES. It's pretty confusing.

The game in this auction is a PAL-B game, as can be seen by the "B" in the lower right corner on the box. PAL-A games have an A there.

Oh and as you can probably imagine, because of this, collectors in Europe often like to collect specific regions. There were around 210 games released in the SCN region for example and there are many Scandinavian collectors whose goal it is to collect all of those and don't really care about the other regions. So in Scandinavia, games that are marked SCN will usually fetch a higher price than those that are marked something else.
 

bjork

Member
So if Nintendo AND Mattel made NESs, that means it doesn't work on EITHER of them?

WTF.

That's what I'm trying to sort out, like if it's a different housing or something?

As the others said, Mattel distributed the NES in the UK among some other countries. But Europe was kinda weird when it comes to the NES because there were actually two regions. The so called PAL-A and PAL-B regions. PAL-A is the Mattel-distributed versions while PAL-B was the others. In Scandinavia we have a local importer/distributer of Nintendo products to this day called Bergsala AB, who were part of the PAL-B side. Other countries probably had their own importers. The PAL-B region was actually even further divided into smaller regions. Games from Scaninavia tend to have the region code EEC or SCN, while Spanish copies of games have the ESP region code and France and Germany had a couple of different region codes including FRA and DAS. All of these smaller regions were compatible with one another, so one could buy a German game and play on a Swedish NES etc. But PAL-A and PAL-B were NOT compatible with one another unless you do the region mod on the NES. It's pretty confusing.

Sheesh, that is definitely confusing. Do they look the same as the NES of other regions?
 

-KRS-

Member
That's what I'm trying to sort out, like if it's a different housing or something?



Sheesh, that is definitely confusing. Do they look the same as the NES of other regions?

Yes the consoles themselves look identical as does the games. The only thing that differs is the 10NES lockout chip which is different between PAL-A and PAL-B.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Fuck, I think I did the Finnish A4 manual for Iron Tank and couple of other NES games. They looked nicer than this though, logos and all. Now I'm kinda wishing I would have kept a copy or two!
 

kick51

Banned
NES collectors are like the furries of the videogame collecting scene. They are so.. bizzare


nothing is more bizarre than the price first party SNES games go for, despite millions upon millions of copies being in the wild.
 
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