Open Apology to Community

[Tacitus]

I'm not afraid to admit that I would be terrified right now in his position, especially at the thought of having to come up with all that cash, and explaining to my family why we 'have to take out a substantial loan'. I'm sure that the prospect of relentless attacks for weeks, maybe even months to come, has him feeling defeated.

This is exactly correct.

When I did the container buy, I took a considerable risk of handling tens of thousands of dollars that were ultimately my responsibility, sending it to a supplier, sight unseen across the globe and getting 21 good, working arcade machines back.

When they didn't load on time, I was FUCKING TERRIFIED. I dont scare easily... I don't sweat under pressure. It was fucking harrowing. I was now on the hook for a metric fuckload of money with not much recourse.

I felt I had protected myself as much as I could and the risk was minimal. (It ultimately was)

I didn't sleep for days until it loaded.

In that situation, the last thing I wanted to do was come here and have 14 people ready to lynch me for something I had no control over and harassing me for money I didn't have. I have 10+ years here, I may be hated by some, but I have an
excellent rep and I pride myself on helping and volunteering my time to others here, regardless of personal vendettas or grudges. I stood here and was ready for the beating.


It worked out in the end. I'm glad, but I would never do that again.

Imagine how Tonk feels right now. He's in the same position for much more money and possible criminal and civil action. He was a proud member here, had a ton of respect from even his enemies and He prides himself on being the scam buster.


All that is weighing on him.... How would you handle yourself?

Until anything is certain, he probably shouldn't reappear. I dont blame him. If he lawyered up, they probably told him the same thing.

It may be a PR nightmare, but your opinions probably don't matter much to him right now.


I hope this thing works itself out and everybody walks away satisfied and/or vindicated.

 

[Lum]

Reality is, he's probably spent enough of the money by this point that he has no idea how he's going to pay it back. It's probably why he's unreachable right now. I'm not afraid to admit that I would be terrified right now in his position, especially at the thought of having to come up with all that cash, and explaining to my family why we 'have to take out a substantial loan'. I'm sure that the prospect of relentless attacks for weeks, maybe even months to come, has him feeling defeated.

Well yeah. When it's so much money one could buy likely upwards of two dozen MVS cabs with the game, even the buyer doesn't look much better for different reasons than whoever scammed them.

 

[aria]

[I removed all the extraneous posts by and replying to 94TC. Be advised I will issue some short term bans if this continues. Please do not reply to this post.]

 

[galfordo]

Reality is, he's probably spent enough of the money by this point that he has no idea how he's going to pay it back. It's probably why he's unreachable right now. I'm not afraid to admit that I would be terrified right now in his position, especially at the thought of having to come up with all that cash, and explaining to my family why we 'have to take out a substantial loan'. I'm sure that the prospect of relentless attacks for weeks, maybe even months to come, has him feeling defeated.

lol, is this what's passing as a valid excuse these days?

sorry dudes, spent it already! take it easy bros! lol

 

[NeoCverA]

You know that secret storage unit that's hard to get to?

It's called a container.

 

[SNKorSWM]

Wouldn't be surprised that the middleman disappeared because someone abducted him and sold his kidneys to recover that sum.

 

[evil wasabi]

lol, is this what's passing as a valid excuse these days?

sorry dudes, spent it already! take it easy bros! lol

Later,
David0

 

[malignantpoodle]

Imagine how Tonk feels right now. He's in the same position for much more money and possible criminal and civil action. He was a proud member here, had a ton of respect from even his enemies and He prides himself on being the scam buster.


All that is weighing on him.... How would you handle yourself?

Until anything is certain, he probably shouldn't reappear. I dont blame him. If he lawyered up, they probably told him the same thing.

It may be a PR nightmare, but your opinions probably don't matter much to him right now.

Seriously, who here really gives a fuck? I mean, I would really like to know. Honestly.
If he fucked up so bad that it warrants him retaining an attorney that is telling him not to talk THAT IS STILL HIS FUCKUP.

I mean, shit like this goes down and you're nowhere to be found, the reason really isn't important. Even if he came back and made everything right to have buyers holding the bag and sweat for the time being is shit and anybody else would be hunted down for it.

I mean shit, if that's how we're to look at this, hit me up. I have a Gururin AES for sale.

 

[galfordo]

Later,
David0

lol

 

[16-bit]

Bobak is 100% right. If the game is fake, chamane and every other buyer deserves a 100% refund because it is a fraud. Period, end of story.

BUT that doesn't give him the right to blame everyone besides the SOURCE of the fraud for his problems. The fact is, I didn't defraud him, neither did Billy, and neither did Mike. Mike never knew these games to be fake, none of us did. In fact we believed the opposite to be true. It might take people time to eventually accept that. But again, its the truth.

Had Power Spikes II never been announced the legitimacy of AF3 might still be debated a decade later much like the NGF KOF2K US, and easy to move via private sale since many serious collectors are well known in the community.

Until it more details are known, it is very possible that the price you paid for AF3 was a thank you for being part of a machine that helped sell 75-90K in fake carts. Were you offered the cart while the game was on the open market or after they were all claimed to be sold?

If the later, wouldn't it seem quite suspicious if after Tonk claimed they were all sold (and more surprises promised in the pipeline) that you were offered an AF3 at a significantly discounted price?

 

[CaseyTappy]

I probably missed it but I always understood there where 3 games , then I learned the 3 guys that " helped with the sale " also received 3, surely Chamane and the other 2 actual buyers where informed about this by those guys before setting the price ?

 

[DreamTR]

I've been silently following all this and I have to say this is EXACTLY why I stopped collecting US home carts and went to Japanese this year. It makes absolutely ZERO sense for what is the same exact game internally to go for so much more money because of an insert, sticker, and a manual. The region is decided by the system, and as far as I know this is the only system like this so I basically cashed out as much as I could and traded down all these expensive US games are ended up with 5 figures and the same exact games in Japanese format and I only sold a few games....

Regardless of where these came from what anyone believes, etc, it is HIGHLY unlikely you have a guy who somehow had multiple copies of Aero Fighters 3, Power Spikes II, and KOF 2000 and "who knows what else" is behind the curtain.

I mean, take a step back and think about that a second.

Who does that?

Who magically has all these games and MULTIPLES of them and they never trickled out? Early test games, etc, whatever you want to call them, if you seriously think about it a second, it makes absolutely no sense.

As much as I worked in the industry and kept a lot of stuff and bought a lot of games and picked up a bunch of development stuff (as an understatement) over the years, never ever ever ever would anyone in their wildest dreams have stuff like this at all, it does not pass the "too good to be true" test at all.

I think the issue lies in how this was originally handled, what looked like one big giant "in your face" post to NGF has brought Dion back to the site with open arms because of it and it's making Tonk look extremely bad.

I don't know whose fault any of this is, I like Tonk and I don't think he meant anything bad in regards to this, but I know that the "best" feel/eye test on games were from Arcade! even though Ray didn't produce any "fake" carts as far as I know, but his conversions felt like the same quality, and we all know there are some just as close that are hard to tell that came from TTF many many years ago, but this whole thing has made me shake my head and just puts a distinctive exclamation point of me doing the right thing and switching out of the higher end US stuff to Japanese for Neo.

 

[SSS]

Does anyone know if Ray Young's name was really Ray Young? Or was that an alias too?

 

[kernow]

Seriously, who here really gives a fuck? I mean, I would really like to know. Honestly.
If he fucked up so bad that it warrants him retaining an attorney that is telling him not to talk THAT IS STILL HIS FUCKUP.

I mean, shit like this goes down and you're nowhere to be found, the reason really isn't important. Even if he came back and made everything right to have buyers holding the bag and sweat for the time being is shit and anybody else would be hunted down for it.

I mean shit, if that's how we're to look at this, hit me up. I have a Gururin AES for sale.

Remember, you fuck up once - that's it. These are his own words, and I would call this the mother of all fuck ups. I am fully expecting him to come back as a damaged martyr into welcoming arms though.

 

[Yodd]

Wouldn't be surprised that the middleman disappeared because someone abducted him and sold his kidneys to recover that sum.

I LOL'ed at this.

 

[Geddon_jt]

Had Power Spikes II never been announced the legitimacy of AF3 might still be debated a decade later much like the NGF KOF2K US, and easy to move via private sale since many serious collectors are well known in the community.

Until it more details are known, it is very possible that the price you paid for AF3 was a thank you for being part of a machine that helped sell 75-90K in fake carts. Were you offered the cart while the game was on the open market or after they were all claimed to be sold?

If the later, wouldn't it seem quite suspicious if after Tonk claimed they were all sold (and more surprises promised in the pipeline) that you were offered an AF3 at a significantly discounted price?

The first 2 copies of the game sold long before I typed a word of my report (back when we only thought there were 3). Im pretty sure the original copy i looked at was one of these, i had to ship it off and just work off my notes and pictures when typing my report. These first 2 were bought by collectors who have not yet come forward publicly. As for whether there were others available when I bought mine, I don't think I even asked, so I don't know. I wasn't involved with the daily communications between mike and David regarding which ones were sold, to whom, etc.

EDIT to add -

Also, to answer one of chamane's point, yes one of the original 2 buyers contacted me with some observations of the game that I had not previously noticed. Now, this was PRIOR to me publishing/completing my report. This had to do with the gold ring on the inside back cover of the manual being yellow compared to the gold in other versions of the game. I spoke with this person about that anomaly and then also spoke with the second buyer, both of whom already had their cartridges. Based upon my conversations with them (and concurrent with their opinion) I concluded that the anomaly was more likely a result of a lack of red being used in the printer, which was observed consistently in all paper products of the game... I was told by one of the buyers that this is a plausible explanation and does not in and of itself mean these materials were scanned. In light of all the other evidence I saw, also the similar printing anomalies with other versions of different games of the era, led me to the conclusion I did. I mentioned the lack of red quite clearly in my report...

 

[malignantpoodle]

Remember, you fuck up once - that's it. These are his own words, and I would call this the mother of all fuck ups. I am fully expecting him to come back as a damaged martyr into welcoming arms though.

You're probably right. It's kind of funny and weird that his fan base would deliberately ignore his advice simply because... they like him so much?

Heh, some real mental gymnastics. Think about it.

 

[Lum]

I've been silently following all this and I have to say this is EXACTLY why I stopped collecting US home carts and went to Japanese this year. It makes absolutely ZERO sense for what is the same exact game internally to go for so much more money because of an insert, sticker, and a manual. The region is decided by the system, and as far as I know this is the only system like this so I basically cashed out as much as I could and traded down all these expensive US games are ended up with 5 figures and the same exact games in Japanese format and I only sold a few games....

Many systems have the ability for system region to change games. Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, GameCube...
But yeah. In practice it isn't near as major as Neo. Other factors like cartridge shape or region code limited practical use.

 

[Rade K]

TonK, c'mon! Need input! /johnny5

 

[Lee Gray]

Would be good to hear from him.