Discussion Just finished another Dreamcast DCHDMI install. :)

[CZroe]

This one was a pain because the original kit was defective (old version with bad HDMI transmitter) and I had to do the hardest parts twice. Also, the pico-PSU that the owner bought from Australia with a 3D printed DC piece was missing the nut which forced us to redesign the only customized part. He would have been better off getting a standard pico-PSU since we had to redo the only thing he paid extra for!

System has DCHDMI, GDEMU, pico-PSU, Noctua fan, 3D printed GDEMU shroud, custom/unique power jack (designed by Ichinisan), and more.

Maybe Ichinisan can post better pics later.

 

[Ichinisan]

Yes, brother. Your pictures suck.

https://imgur.com/a/ufuswCr

 

[Sonikku]

Should have sold my VGA cord adapter I got 20 years ago for $200 when I had the chance.

 

[Ichinisan]

Should have sold my VGA cord adapter I got 20 years ago for $200 when I had the chance.

Yup! I found myself in the same situation with Gamecube Y/Pb/Pr component cables while Gamecube HDMI mods were being released. Previously the cable would sell for well-over $300 easily. I listed mine for bids and, if I recall correctly, I believe it sold for slightly under $300.

DCHDMI reportedly works with a mini-HDMI to VGA adapter cable, so the it would be pretty great for analog CRT VGA monitors too.

 

[CZroe]

Yup! I found myself in the same situation with Gamecube Y/Pb/Pr component cables while Gamecube HDMI mods were being released. Previously the cable would sell for well-over $300 easily. I listed mine for bids and, if I recall correctly, I believe it sold for slightly under $300.

DCHDMI reportedly works with a mini-HDMI to VGA adapter cable, so the it would be pretty great for analog CRT VGA monitors too.

They sold for $265 with the original “Genuine Nintendo Spare Parts” baggie topper + bag. It was a bit low compared to others at the time but I was still happy with it.

Hoping they drop with all the GC solutions out there today since I’d like to have them again in the future.

 

[nakedfrog]

I've still got a VGA box for my Sports edition DC

 

[CZroe]

I've still got a VGA box for my Sports edition DC

Speaking of the Sports Edition console, the last DCHDMI I did (a few days ago) had a custom aftermarket shell with an unpainted black controller port block... meaning the owner sacrificed a Sports Edition for his custom console. D:

He was particular about the condition too so I doubt it came from a poor condition console. Still hoping to find a good deal on one of those myself so seeing one wasted just for the controller ports was kind of disheartening.

That VGA box was so ahead of its time!

 

[Sonikku]

Yup! I found myself in the same situation with Gamecube Y/Pb/Pr component cables while Gamecube HDMI mods were being released. Previously the cable would sell for well-over $300 easily. I listed mine for bids and, if I recall correctly, I believe it sold for slightly under $300.

DCHDMI reportedly works with a mini-HDMI to VGA adapter cable, so the it would be pretty great for analog CRT VGA monitors too.

You made out better than I did. I think I only got $222 before fees for my Gamecube component cables. I think I only paid $30 for them too. I should have bought every set they had off of Nintendo.com.

Speaking of the Sports Edition console, the last DCHDMI I did (a few days ago) had a custom aftermarket shell with an unpainted black controller port block... meaning the owner sacrificed a Sports Edition for his custom console. D:

He was particular about the condition too so I doubt it came from a poor condition console. Still hoping to find a good deal on one of those myself so seeing one wasted just for the controller ports was kind of disheartening.

That VGA box was so ahead of its time!

God it was. I remember playing Shenmue and Soul Calibur on my computer monitor with the vga cord in 480p and friends feeling pretty proud of their new playstation 2 and Dynasty Warriors 2 game would look at it and be like WHOA.

 

[CZroe]

You made out better than I did. I think I only got $222 before fees for my Gamecube component cables. I think I only paid $30 for them too. I should have bought every set they had off of Nintendo.com.

God it was. I remember playing Shenmue and Soul Calibur on my computer monitor with the vga cord in 480p and friends feeling pretty proud of their new playstation 2 and Dynasty Warriors 2 game would look at it and be like WHOA.

LOL! We almost weren’t even able to get those. Our original set was stolen from us along with the entire Gamecube collection back in 2004 (thieves wouldn’t have even known what to do with them). When we got around to ordering more they were listed as “Backordered.” It stayed that way for many months before changing to “Discontinued” or something, but that was also when we finally got a shipping notice. We barely squeezed in with the last US batch.

Would have ordered more if we knew they’d never be back in stock again!

 

[darkswordsman17]

You made out better than I did. I think I only got $222 before fees for my Gamecube component cables. I think I only paid $30 for them too. I should have bought every set they had off of Nintendo.com.

God it was. I remember playing Shenmue and Soul Calibur on my computer monitor with the vga cord in 480p and friends feeling pretty proud of their new playstation 2 and Dynasty Warriors 2 game would look at it and be like WHOA.

Oh man...I sold my entire Gamecube setup for like $200 on here. Dumb, since I'd probably still play it regularly these days, and I don't think I bought anything worthwhile with the money. Honestly, I feel like the Gamecube was the last system I really enjoyed (I had fun playing systems later, but it was the last one that I feel really nostalgic about).

I don't even want to think about what it'd be worth if I'd kept it and sold it at more optimum time. I had the component cables, several games (Wind Waker with the OoT Master Quest disc, think maybe some other somewhat rare-ish games like Ikaruga, think I might've had a special edition of Metroid Prime 2).

Oh, had the Game Boy Player (or Game Boy Advance Player?) for it too (I think I played Metroid Fusion on it mostly).

I have a weird fondness for the Dreamcast as well, although I didn't actually enjoy it that much (I'm not really into the Arcade style games, and fighting games do very little for me outside of Smash Bros, although I had fun playing 4 player Dead or Alive 3 on the original Xbox; I like Sonic Adventure and Shenmue ok, but think I played Tokyo Extreme Racer and Record of Lodoss War more than any other games on it; maybe not as we played through House of the Dead 2 a bunch). Ended up giving that to my older brother when I got a PS2.

Oh, I had Skies of Arcadia Legends too. And Phantasy Star Online Ver I&II (talking about for the Gamecube, but thinking about the DC reminded me).

Not sure how good this site is for valuations, but man...
https://www.racketboy.com/retro/the-rarest-most-valuable-nintendo-gamecube-games

I actually still have my original Smash Bros (the black label version?)! Maybe I should look at selling it. Hmm, nevermind. Mine isn't the original (think I got another copy for dirt cheap from a used game store when I had a Wii). I bought my Gamecube when Smash Bros came out (so I know I had the original, I bought it for that game, bought it and 3 extra controllers to play multiplayer in December of 2001), but this one has a gold "Best Seller" icon on the front (its not the Player's Choice one). Er, ok, not sure what's up with that. So there were "K Mart" versions of some of the other games, and I bought it at K-Mart so maybe that's why? But I'm almost certain I bought it at launch (or near enough to it, that it shouldn't have had "Best Seller" on the sleeve (its not a sticker, its actually a different sleeve printing) already.

 

[Ichinisan]

... this one has a gold "Best Seller" icon on the front (its not the Player's Choice one). Er, ok, not sure what's up with that. So there were "K Mart" versions of some of the other games, and I bought it at K-Mart so maybe that's why? But I'm almost certain I bought it at launch (or near enough to it, that it shouldn't have had "Best Seller" on the sleeve (its not a sticker, its actually a different sleeve printing) already.

I saw the "best seller" version at Target and Circuit City also. It's because the game continued selling well, even while it was priced $10+ more than a typical "Player's Choice" title.

 

[CZroe]

Oh man...I sold my entire Gamecube setup for like $200 on here. Dumb, since I'd probably still play it regularly these days, and I don't think I bought anything worthwhile with the money. Honestly, I feel like the Gamecube was the last system I really enjoyed (I had fun playing systems later, but it was the last one that I feel really nostalgic about).

I don't even want to think about what it'd be worth if I'd kept it and sold it at more optimum time. I had the component cables, several games (Wind Waker with the OoT Master Quest disc, think maybe some other somewhat rare-ish games like Ikaruga, think I might've had a special edition of Metroid Prime 2).

Oh, had the Game Boy Player (or Game Boy Advance Player?) for it too (I think I played Metroid Fusion on it mostly).

I have a weird fondness for the Dreamcast as well, although I didn't actually enjoy it that much (I'm not really into the Arcade style games, and fighting games do very little for me outside of Smash Bros, although I had fun playing 4 player Dead or Alive 3 on the original Xbox; I like Sonic Adventure and Shenmue ok, but think I played Tokyo Extreme Racer and Record of Lodoss War more than any other games on it; maybe not as we played through House of the Dead 2 a bunch). Ended up giving that to my older brother when I got a PS2.

Oh, I had Skies of Arcadia Legends too. And Phantasy Star Online Ver I&II (talking about for the Gamecube, but thinking about the DC reminded me).

Not sure how good this site is for valuations, but man...
https://www.racketboy.com/retro/the-rarest-most-valuable-nintendo-gamecube-games

I actually still have my original Smash Bros (the black label version?)! Maybe I should look at selling it. Hmm, nevermind. Mine isn't the original (think I got another copy for dirt cheap from a used game store when I had a Wii). I bought my Gamecube when Smash Bros came out (so I know I had the original, I bought it for that game, bought it and 3 extra controllers to play multiplayer in December of 2001), but this one has a gold "Best Seller" icon on the front (its not the Player's Choice one). Er, ok, not sure what's up with that. So there were "K Mart" versions of some of the other games, and I bought it at K-Mart so maybe that's why? But I'm almost certain I bought it at launch (or near enough to it, that it shouldn't have had "Best Seller" on the sleeve (its not a sticker, its actually a different sleeve printing) already.

Well, at least the ‘cube itself is cheap and the cables have finally been reverse-engineered.

Most people prefer a Wii with component cables but the output isn’t quite as good and it doesn’t work for GB Player. The drop in component output quality is something I noticed day 1 when the Wii launched November 19th, 2006. That’s because Zelda Wind Waker in progressive scan showed strange moire patterns in the dithering on my Sony XBR910 when using a GameCube but not with a Wii. Granted, the Wii looked better without the artifacting but that was really the TV’s fault and it didn’t do it on the Wii only because of softer output that blended the pixels before the TV’s image processor got a hold of it.

Speaking of rare GC stuff, we sold a sealed brick of 6 Zelda Master Quest discs several months ago and it went for something like $2,400. It was never supposed to be sold in stores but I paid $10 per copy from Toys R Us!

 

[CZroe]

I saw the "best seller" version at Target and Circuit City also. It's because the game continued selling well, even while it was priced $10+ more than a typical "Player's Choice" title.

Our second copy of Smash Melee (after the launch copy) from the Target 2002 Black Friday Gamecube bundle was a “Not For Resale” copy.

 

[Sonikku]

Well, at least the ‘cube itself is cheap and the cables have finally been reverse-engineered.

Most people prefer a Wii with component cables but the output isn’t quite as good and it doesn’t work for GB Player. The drop in component output quality is something I noticed day 1 when the Wii launched November 19th, 2006. That’s because Zelda Wind Waker in progressive scan showed strange moire patterns in the dithering on my Sony XBR910 when using a GameCube but not with a Wii. Granted, the Wii looked better without the artifacting but that was really the TV’s fault and it didn’t do it on the Wii only because of softer output that blended the pixels before the TV’s image processor got a hold of it.

Speaking of rare GC stuff, we sold a sealed brick of 6 Zelda Master Quest discs several months ago and it went for something like $2,400. It was never supposed to be sold in stores but I paid $10 per copy from Toys R Us!

Do you mean the 480p Ocarina of Time 2 pack that had the base game and master quest? I have that! Plus a black label Smash Bros and a Kmart edition Mario Sunshine. Maybe it's time to sell.

 

[CZroe]

Do you mean the 480p Ocarina of Time 2 pack that had the base game and master quest? I have that! Plus a black label Smash Bros and a Kmart edition Mario Sunshine. Maybe it's time to sell.

Yes, but the novelty with Master Quest here was that it was a brick of 6 sealed together in a shipper pack:

Looks like I typo’d the price though... it was closer to $1,400 considering the shipping involved (degrades cellophane was very delicate!).

It was still the only official way to play Master Quest before the 3DS game and it’s worth more than your average GC title. I was selling sealed individual copies for about $120 even though I see BIN listings for well under $80. Long story short: We came across a lot of them in our quest to get another back when we lost everything. We didn’t buy used games back then and we kept everything we bought (no trade-ins), which made it pretty difficult.

IIRC, the copy of Sunshine I lost when the whole collection was stolen was the K-Mart edition. We also had K-Mart Edition Warioland and Animal Crossing. I recall a K-Mart Edition Metroid Prime as well. Some were bundled with guides and some were bundled with Wavebirds. Ended up getting the Sunshine bundle from Nintendo Power to replace it, since that also netted me a $10 coupon toward a replacement Wavebird.

From what I can tell, Mario Kart Double Dash and Smash Bros Melee never had a yellow label even though Nintendo’s website clearly listed them with the Player’s Choice series titles. They also never dropped to $20 MSRP like most of the games I needed to replace. They just added a small “Best Seller” badge and dropped MSRP to $30.

For most of the games I replaced MSRP dropped to $20. The Best Buy Gamers Gift Card coupon trick let me repurchase those at $15. For Melee and Double Dash I waited until the Best Buy ad said “All Greatest Hits, Player’s Choice, and Platinum Hits titles: 2 for $30,” then I printed out the list of Player’s Choice titles from Nintendo and went to the store. They balked but soon agreed that these were Player’s Choice titles and they sold them to me half-price.

The thieves left our dual-disc case for Mario Kart Double Dash but I still had to get the replacement bonus disc from someone (trade). Target had a dual-disc variant of Rogue Squadron III Rogue Leader with the preorder disc so that’s where I replaced both of those (hot the “Target Exclusive Toadstool Tour” version of Mario Golf too). Walmart has a dual disc variant of 1080 Avalanche with a bonus mini DVD so I nabbed that too.

Going for variants was fun except for the whole “motivated by losing our whole collection” part.

We used to have a Target variant of Metroid Prime too (bundled coupons) but we gave that one to a friend (sealed) and got our replacement bundled with the replacement ‘cube and a Prime 2 Echoes bonus disc. The console was a DOL-101 so we had to do the swap with Nintendo for the DOL-001-only component cables.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I missed out on the VGA adapter for the Dreamcast (think I had to settle for S-Video on Dreamcast). I got a 3rd party one for I think the Xbox (or maybe it was one that converted component to VGA).

Do you mean the 480p Ocarina of Time 2 pack that had the base game and master quest? I have that! Plus a black label Smash Bros and a Kmart edition Mario Sunshine. Maybe it's time to sell.

Yeah. I can't remember if it was the really rare one (in that link I had) or if it was the separate one (I think it was the latter). I did get it with Wind Waker (as part of the pre-order I think?), but I seem to recall it being a separate case. Honestly, I think at the time I was more interested in it as I hated the Wind Waker graphic style and wasn't that interested in playing it as the sailing didn't really interest me (have since completely flipped and love it for the most part, although I do like Breath of the Wild's style probably even more). I think I had some metal box version of Metroid Prime 2, but it wasn't in that link so not sure if I'm misremembering or if it just wasn't special/rare. Had Eternal Darkness (which doesn't seem to be that rare either), and the Resident Evil Remake and RE4 (the black label one) neither of which seem to be rare either. And then Mario Kart Double Dash and Tales of Symphonia were I think the other games I had for it. I don't believe I bought too many GBA games (did get the two Metroids), but I did have a regular and then SP GBA.

Still not sure what's up with my copy of Smash Bros. I see some pics of it on Google Image Search but no details on why its different and it wasn't listed as a K-Mart version on some site that mentioned there being K-Mart versions of some of the games (like your Mario Sunshine).

I see Gamecube stuff from time to time at Goodwills, but its usually beat up. Saw a Wavebird recently, but the joysticks were in bad shape and looked like someone's dog got a hold of the controller (had bite marks) and I think it might have been missing the battery cover. I might've still bought it to salvage/repair, but even on sale it was still like $6. Probably still potentially worth it (wasn't too torn up and think the main joystick was the only really bad issue with the buttons/sticks), but since I didn't have other Gamecube stuff decided to pass.

 

[CZroe]

I missed out on the VGA adapter for the Dreamcast (think I had to settle for S-Video on Dreamcast). I got a 3rd party one for I think the Xbox (or maybe it was one that converted component to VGA).



Yeah. I can't remember if it was the really rare one (in that link I had) or if it was the separate one (I think it was the latter). I did get it with Wind Waker (as part of the pre-order I think?), but I seem to recall it being a separate case. Honestly, I think at the time I was more interested in it as I hated the Wind Waker graphic style and wasn't that interested in playing it as the sailing didn't really interest me (have since completely flipped and love it for the most part, although I do like Breath of the Wild's style probably even more). I think I had some metal box version of Metroid Prime 2, but it wasn't in that link so not sure if I'm misremembering or if it just wasn't special/rare. Had Eternal Darkness (which doesn't seem to be that rare either), and the Resident Evil Remake and RE4 (the black label one) neither of which seem to be rare either. And then Mario Kart Double Dash and Tales of Symphonia were I think the other games I had for it. I don't believe I bought too many GBA games (did get the two Metroids), but I did have a regular and then SP GBA.

Still not sure what's up with my copy of Smash Bros. I see some pics of it on Google Image Search but no details on why its different and it wasn't listed as a K-Mart version on some site that mentioned there being K-Mart versions of some of the games (like your Mario Sunshine).

I see Gamecube stuff from time to time at Goodwills, but its usually beat up. Saw a Wavebird recently, but the joysticks were in bad shape and looked like someone's dog got a hold of the controller (had bite marks) and I think it might have been missing the battery cover. I might've still bought it to salvage/repair, but even on sale it was still like $6. Probably still potentially worth it (wasn't too torn up and think the main joystick was the only really bad issue with the buttons/sticks), but since I didn't have other Gamecube stuff decided to pass.

The Wavebird receiver alone is worth that. Pro Smash players refurbish original GC and Wavebird controllers because they were better made than the new ones they sell today. Used originals are surprisingly valuable even in poor condition as long as the potentiometers haven’t gone slack.

When the thieves stole our GC it was decked out with four Wavebird receivers but they left a few of the controllers so I’m still short a few receivers today. One of the first things I ever 3D printed was a replacement battery door for a Wavebird but I also had some NOS battery packs that leaked so I turned them into replacement battery lids:

Yeah, Master Quest was a Wind Waker preorder bonus that came in it’s own case and was supposed to be given out before launch. There is a double-disc variant that was included with a Wind Waker Gamecube bundle at Walmart but the stand-alone version was only supposed to be a preorder bonus.

That said, our closest Toys R Us didn’t have them during the preorder campaign, forcing us to preorder somewhere else. When that copy got stolen we checked back at TRU and they seemed to have found the case of Master Quest discs. Of course, the preorder campaign was over but when I inquired they rang up for $100! The employee incorrectly surmised “oh, that’s the cost of a Gamecube so you must get one of these when you buy a Gamecube.” I checked back and it dropped to $50, which was still too much for me since Best Buy found one in their stock room and priced it for a penny (yes, $0.01). Since I had already secured a replacement for myself I just kept checking back at TRU until they dropped to $10 and I bought all that remained. Even back then I was selling individual copies for over $100 simply by printing out the PDF Player’s Guide that Nintendo had up for download and including that as a “free” bonus.

Metroid Prime Trilogy for Wii originally came in a “Steelbook” metal case and was getting pretty expensive when GameStop got an exclusive plastic case reprint years later. I don’t know how that affected the value but I’m sure the Steelbook copy is still the more valuable/desirable one.