2 questions about Magical Chase

Peluso8 · 05/03/2008, 01:35 PM

1. Does anyone know how many were made?

2. How much are the hucard, manual and box worth individually?

Thanks.

MurderDate · 05/03/2008, 02:27 PM

Specific info regarding US Turbo Grafx production run is a highly guarded secret. No one knows, no one will say.

Peluso8 · 05/03/2008, 03:19 PM

Quote from: MurderDate on 05/03/2008, 02:27 PMSpecific info regarding US Turbo Grafx production run is a highly guarded secret. No one knows, no one will say.

But someone surely has an opinion, right?

nat · 05/03/2008, 03:51 PM

Magical Chase had a run of 3,000+ if I understand correctly. Not really any rarer than, and somewhat less rare than, most of the end of life TG-16 releases.

esteban · 05/03/2008, 03:55 PM

Quote from: Peluso8 on 05/03/2008, 03:19 PM
Quote from: MurderDate on 05/03/2008, 02:27 PMSpecific info regarding US Turbo Grafx production run is a highly guarded secret. No one knows, no one will say.
But someone surely has an opinion, right?

8,000 HuCards were manufactured. 2,000 Manuals were printed. 0 TurboPoints were redeemed.

MurderDate · 05/03/2008, 03:55 PM

Wow. What's your source? I was asking questions like that a few months ago and no one had any answers for me.

nat · 05/03/2008, 04:02 PM

I'm pretty sure Steve is pulling those numbers out of his ass as "opinion" as I see little reason they would produce 6,000 more HuCards than manuals. Not to mention 8,000 was way too high for such a late game.

3,000 is probably in the closer ballpark. Most of the end-of-life games had runs in that general vincinity, while some only got 1,500 copies pressed (Dynastic Hero, etc). This comes from a guy I know that used to work for Hudson.

Sparky · 05/03/2008, 04:19 PM

Quote from: Peluso8 on 05/03/2008, 01:35 PM2. How much are the hucard, manual and box worth individually?

Thats a good question on indivdually... i will take a shot at this, for a fair price my thoughts are...
loose hucard... $150 (high end $200)
box... $50-60
manual...$30-$40

and this would be for very good shape.

again i would pay those prices, but i am a bit crazed

I have a minty complete one with the plastic wrap still there except on the one opened end... i wonder what that plastic wrap is worth

nat · 05/03/2008, 04:21 PM

I paid $165 for a "complete" MC (game+manual) in mint condition. I personally wouldn't pay more than $100 for a loose cart, but that's just me....

Sparky · 05/03/2008, 04:36 PM

Quote from: nat on 05/03/2008, 04:21 PMI paid $165 for a "complete" MC (game+manual) in mint condition. I personally wouldn't pay more than $100 for a loose cart, but that's just me....

ya great price nat, is it with the box & plastic tray?

Magical became that last game i needed which everyone seems to end up missing in the end most of the time, when its your last game you need you get a little too damn hungry for it!!!! In the end for me it was traded to me

i got a minty complete MC (game,box, tray, manual, plastic wrap

) and i traded the other guy an Atari prototype box of the Incredible Hulk (just the box) this was the most exciting trade i have ever made.

CrackTiger · 05/03/2008, 06:24 PM

Quote from: Peluso8 on 05/03/2008, 01:35 PM1. Does anyone know how many were made?

2. How much are the hucard, manual and box worth individually?

Thanks.

999 copies were made.

The HuCard and box are worth $500 each. The manual is worth $100 on it's own and the sleeve is worth $1.

Altogether the complete game is worth $5000.

I wish this was as much of a joke as it should be.

esteban · 05/03/2008, 09:29 PM

Quote from: nat on 05/03/2008, 04:02 PMI'm pretty sure Steve is pulling those numbers out of his ass...

And here I was worried that my comment about the TurboPoints would give it away...

geepee16 · 05/06/2008, 09:39 AM

magical chase and order of the griffon got low print runs of 3,000 (as far as i can recall). it wasn't just because they were late releases but also late hu cards. with the express and tg 16 on their way out and the cd and super cd seen as the way to go, i think tti saw very little point in getting too many of these out there. i should point out that i have also heard 5,000 copies of magical chase. not sure which is correct.

it's not that it's rare / underproduced. it's just in-demand because it's such a good game.

nat · 05/06/2008, 10:55 AM

I'd lean more towards 3,000, but I think you were the one that told me that figure initially George so now I don't know WHAT to believe, haha.

That's interesting Order of the Griffon had such a low print run also, I had no idea.

SignOfZeta · 05/06/2008, 12:59 PM

Wait, is geepee16 George Palamara?

spenoza · 05/06/2008, 03:01 PM

If he is that would be sweet, because he'd be the only user I recognize here from the Turbo List.

(Well, that and I met George once when I was in Japan from 98-99. He was a nice guy.)

nat · 05/06/2008, 03:05 PM

It's George Plamantouras, he is also on the Turbo List, and something of a pal of mine.

Quote from: guest on 05/06/2008, 03:01 PMhe'd be the only user I recognize here from the Turbo List.

I've been a member on the Turbo List since 1996.

Needless to say, it was a little more active back in those days. I didn't post as much as I do here though, I mainly used it for sales and looking at other's sales. Around '99/2000 Eagan Rackley and I did a PC port of Keith Courage, you may remember that if you were a member back then.

SignOfZeta · 05/07/2008, 01:03 AM

Which one lived in Texas?

nat · 05/07/2008, 01:26 AM

You're probably thinking of Palamara, since I don't think the George I know ever lived in Texas.

geepee16 · 05/07/2008, 06:03 PM

i think i have just been paged. not exactly on topic but since we're on the subject...

OK. let's see if we can clear this up: especially since i am now confused. i am not george palamara but george plamantouras. this was something of a mix-up years ago too. it became even more of one because most of us came to know of george palamara either through the TML (of which i am also a member) or via his excellent sales on his long-gone website (geopal@gol.com [??]). he conducted his sales from japan. this was confusing because around a year or two after he left japan, i moved there and while i didn't run a website of sales, i did a lot of shopping for members of the TML. we have been mixed up over the years.

as far as i know, he never lived in texas. he was from new york, if i'm not mistaken. he had a great story to tell here on pcengine-fx.com which i am certain aaron still has posted here somewhere. actually, i think he had two memorable stories: one about meeting a designer of the pc engine who found his website and the other about trying to buy turbo express units when they debuted at fao in new york. his website and (chris@superfami.com) were the best of the private sellers living in japan at the time. george was an incredible seller and had one of the greatst collections of turbo and pc engine/ pc-fx stuff out there. he made a profit but his prices were so fair. his sudden departure from japan (i think he was a mortician) and subsequent disappearance from the turbo community were a little confusing. i would love to know what he is up to these days. there have been many great members of the TML and he was one of them.

as for who lived in texas, the only active TML member i remember from those days was Paul England who i beleive also lived in japan. he was another great trader on and contributer to The List.

now, what i'd like to know is this: who is spenoza? when i went to japan in 1999, i met up with two different Listers (Kris [perhaps the only female member of the List] in Tokyo and Takumi in Kobe and Osaka- good times indeed. spenoza, are you one of them? i later met up with a few other Listers in 2001 and several more again after i moved to tokyo in 2003 (though aaron and i were in tokyo at the same time we unfortunately didn't get to meet up).

geepee16 · 05/07/2008, 07:26 PM

and my friend nat is correct, i think it was i who had the number 3,000. i don't know where the number 5,000 came from but it was back in the early days of the list when lots of tti people were still within reach.

i also remember something weird about hu-card production. they had to be ordered/pressed in batches of 500 or something like that. sega had a similar rule with the dreamcast that gd-roms were only available in batches of 50. in any case, as they were more costly to produce than cds and obviously inferior, ordering too many of them was not warranted.

if you're wondering (as i often used to) why a game like magical chase didn't get a second print run, there are two reasons for that:

1. second print runs were rare in those days and for much of the 90s. it's why games like radiant silvergun and sapphire remain so hard to get. that they sold out only meant to the publishers that they had had their run in the market and if they had truly been in demand, they would have sold out immediately instead of just steadily. the first notable exception in north america i can think of was panzer dragon saga which had an initial run of 11,000 games and a later run of 4,000. japanese publishers were even stricter when it came to print runs and some of you may remember ncs' description of what they were like in their strictness. the biggest fear among publishers and retailers was overproduction and excess inventory. given tti's horrible budget, they must have been terrified of having yet more unsold hucards when there were still so many unsold even prior to the release of games like OotG. i'm willing to bet games like somer assault only got runs of 10,000 or 20,000 tops though i obviously can't prove it.

2. as i have already mentioned, the tg16 was all but gone. tti was even making exchange offers by offering some kind of credit ($50? per tg16 unit) for duo purchases. they were trying to re-equip the userbase. this left the express as the only other use for hu cards in north america. with super cds kicking in and taking over as the dominant format, the early death of the sgx, the 'underuse' of the arcade card [the poor thing but wonderful thing] in japan and lots more factors and NEC's opting against backward-compatibility on the FX (believing that most would-be FX owners already owned pc engines and b/c would only make the already expensve fx even more expensive), the hu card was rendered useless as a viable medium (though i fell they could have done much more with it e.g. street fighter ii at 20 megs and the ten no koe memory banks). the moulds for hu cards back in japan were destroyed in the mid-90s and that came from steve and a few others in the know at the time.

in any case, whether at 3 or 5 thousand copies (if those numbers are even correct), magical chase and order of the griffon never sold out. lots of turbo games wound up getting bargain prices. i was working at toys r us when i heard about the death of the duo and within days i had quite a few turbo games (including exile, exile 2, vasteel, cosmic fantasy 2) for $10 each.

not to put another question mark into the mix but it really is amazing thinking back to 94/95/96. magical chase, ys, godzilla, dungeon explorer ii and many other hard-to-find games were sold everywhere on the internet. ebay and generations of new gamers and international gamers/collectors have just increased and put more miles between copies of each to the point that you almost feel as though they were hardly produced at all. my personal suspicion is that magical chase in particular had to have had more than 3k copies. with like 600 toys r us stores alone carrying the line- as well as the sears caalogue and some radio shacks (both in the duo days) not to mention a few other toy stores and some kmarts (of which there were between 1500+ at the time, i have to believe that magical chase got a little more shelf presence. but, then again, there was alot of stuff that never got out of tti' s warehouse and wound up buried (sniffle). maybe that's just painful thinking though.

spenoza · 05/07/2008, 08:35 PM

Gee, now I don't know if it was you or Palamara... I was there from fall '98 to spring '99, and I met George (one P or another) and some other fellow once in Akihabara to find some of the more under-rated stores. Only at the time I didn't have a TG-16 any longer and was just kinda looking in general.

In fact, Spenoza isn't my normal forum handle, but it was part of the first email address I ever used to join the TL, so I used it here for nostalgia's sake. I don't at all remember what email address I was using during the later years on the list. And I know I was back and forth between the Turbo List and the Saturn List quite a bit.

Welp, I think I've gone WAY off topic at this point, so sorry 'bout that.