Parcels with cartridges, some of which — relatively expensive rarities (Castlevania IV, Castlevania: Vampire’s kiss, first samurai, The Firemen, Demon’S Crest, Mega Man 7, Mega Man X, Mega Man X2, Mega Man X3, Ninja Warriors, Incantation, the developer was sent by a collector from Frankfurt. Sent was carried out by the German International DHL Service. The first batch of hundreds of games successfully reached the addressee, and the second was lost. After unsuccessful attempts to find it on February 14, he published his joyless story on a personal website.
The second package was sent on January 5, and by February 14 did not arrive at the department. According to Byu, she was stuck in one of the divisions of New Jersey. At the same time, the first reached for some ten days.
«I think they either lost the parcel or stole, because for so long it cannot go, — He wrote. — Of course, I will not be able to prove this, and indeed, I heard stories about people who were waiting for the parcels for six months. But this is hardly my case, so I will not amuse myself with hope. I also will not sit and wait — the longer you are inactive, the higher the probability that nothing will change anymore».
At the end of January, Byu tried to contact DHL, but did not receive an answer. The service representative called the unfortunate only after he spoke about the incident on Twitter. In the local department, the programmer agreed to issue a statement about the disappearance of the parcel, but over the past 15 days, no changes occurred from that moment on. The call to the US Held Department of the United States also did not help to correct the situation: after the hour of waiting, the operator replied that he could not help.
Desperate, Byu turned to friends on social networks, and also left a link to his entry on Reddit and various forums. But even after this miracle did not happen: the developer could not even get the contact information of the head of the post office in New Jersey, which interrupted the intercontinental trip of the cartridges.
February 16, US postal service staff found… empty packaging. «Your employees opened the packaging and stole a package for $ 10 thousand.», — wrote byu in his microblog. One of Twitter readers said that he had recently seen a large selection of cartridges on Ebay, but the collection has already been sold, and the page has been removed from the auction archive. Insurance payments will be in total €1,000, which is much less than the cost of rare cartridges.
Nothing but torn packaging and a written apology for the inconvenience caused, the addressee did not receive.
For thirteen years, during which Byu is developing an emulator, he acquired 725 games for SNES — All that are sold in the USA. It cost him $ 10 thousand. After digitization, he sold the collection and, adding another $ 10 thousand. From personal savings, I bought all 1,450 cartridges available in Japan. According to the programmer, he does not spread images of games, but only creates their hash-smoke, so his activity is completely legal.
BYUU refused to be a personal visit to Germany for several reasons. Firstly, he is afraid to be in the country alone due to ignorance of the language. Secondly, the cost of such a trip is not so small. Thirdly, digitization of all cartridges would take 400–600 hours, and he cannot afford such a long absorption. Fourthly, he would have to carry a computer and other equipment with him.
The sender planned to borrow 400 cartridges to the developer, but due to the Byuu incident, he announced the project closed. Now the only purpose of the second — Complete the collector losses. Reddit commentators invited him to try to collect the necessary amount at the venues of public financing. He has already opened a reception of donations on Patreon, but so far he collected only $ 76.
«Trusting mail services was a big mistake, — The programmer admitted. — I will never risk other people’s games again».
Higan Snes Emulator is considered one of the best of its kind, and Nintendo itself uses the fruits of the work of emulators developers. So, recently, Eurogamer, Chris Brett found that the version of Super Mario Bros. For Virtual Console — In fact, a copy of the pirate image.
Source:
- Kotaku