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by busterarm 1831 days ago
It hasn't happened in a while that you know of.

There are a lot of rare things that are completely unavailable only in the hands of a sole collector (usually Japanese). Then they'll mail it around to friends under a strict "no dumping rule". They like showing off what they have.

Now of course those "no dumping" rules have been violated over the years and usually to disastrous effect but also you have situations where the rom dump is ALSO only in the hands of a few people.
1 comments
matheusmoreira 1830 days ago
> usually to disastrous effect

Like what? I honestly don't see why these collectors have enough leverage to impose any disastrous consequences. The rare stuff is in most cases merely a curiosity. In the long run it doesn't really matter if those things are preserved. It would be nice but it certainly doesn't justify bending over backwards for a collector and their "rules". Devkits for example would be extremely important items but I don't see people talking about stuff like that very often.

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busterarm 1830 days ago
When Labyrinthe/Horror Tour 3 leaked, the collector went absolutely apeshit and stopped giving anyone access to anything. And that was a ROM collector downstream of the collector with exclusive physical copies. It was someone who wasn't supposed to have those dumps and probably burned a lot of (if not all of) their connections. https://kotaku.com/collection-of-rare-japanese-games-leaks-o...

Keep in mind that a lot of the rare stuff ends up helping contribute to emulator development/accuracy.

The importance of devkits (and these are still hotly collected) only goes so far as decapping ICs is hard work. A finished game might show you new valid opcodes or undocumented system call you weren't aware of.

Keep in mind that the way collecting works in Japan is more about archiving and a rare few people get things into their collection because they are trusted. They're trusted to preserve it, but also entrusted not to make it available to everyone who wants to download it for free. Creators revisit prior works (or make available for resale) far more frequently than we tend to here.

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