Racermate Challenge II for NES + Story

[blissfulnoise]

I know there is a Weekend Finds thread, but I figured this one may qualify for those "special" cases.

First of all, it's not in the DP guide (well, the print one anyway, the online one is down right now).

Looking through some old threads regarding this cart, it seems that these carts were available for purchase through Racermate as recently as last year, but they went for $175 for just the cart.

Well here it is, purchased today during a Flea Market run:





Here's the story, as I was walking up to a booth, a guy was purchasing a top loader (loose) with this in it. Needless to say, I was pretty peeved since I had literally missed out on a top loader by seconds.

His buying price was $7.00 (who said deals in the wild are dead?)

Seeing the cart in the NES, I told him I was into NES stuff and had never seen anything like it. I asked if I could take a look at it. He agreed (and was a very nice guy all around!).

Now I consider myself pretty a pretty savvy collector. Some consoles more than others, but I pretty much know the NES rarity list by heart. I had never heard or seen anything like this for NES. I expected it to be some pirate game or something but it looked perfectly legit.

I told him I was a collector and would be interested in buying the cart w/ the adapter from him. He said he was getting out of collecting but still checks for deals and wouldn't mind selling it to me. I offered $25.00 for the cart and adapter and he accepted.

He came out with a Top Loader + $18.00 for having met me and I came out one Racermate Challenge 2 cart richer.

So the question becomes, just how rare is this thing? Also, was a box and/or manual available for this? I know it originally came with exercise bikes that could attach to the NES through the adapter, but that's about ALL I know.

Since it's not in the DP guide, that may say something about it in itself.

I know the Myriad 6 in 1 and Cheetamen were still around for some time after the "life" of the NES expired. The back of the cart says "6554NES" on it. I assume this is a serial number.

The guy running the booth didn't speak much English but I gathered that he didn't acquire the cart first hand. He didn't have any exercise bikes there either.

Any insight would be valuable. And if this post doesn't warrant a unique thread, I apologize in advance.

[qbertandernie]

the racermate actually came with an adaptor to fit your own excersize bike with, so you could train on your own bike. people who race bikes dont like to train on a different bike than they use in races. anyway, this cart is very rare, and retailed originally for around $1300. portnoyd may have some more info, and there is a thread around about this cart.

my uncle has one and has given away a recermate 1 cartridge, so i have some background. he trains for Iron Man, so felt it necessary to shell out that kind of cash for his training. as far as he remembers, it simply came in a regular brown shipping box. the nes had to be modded to use the cart(as far as i know), because you had to either ship your NES to them or purchase one they had. unless he just bought one of theirs because he didnt want to use his kids....he doesnt care about the history of it, so his memory isnt exactly the best.

the cart he gave away apparently has not been used, hes trying to remember who he gave it to....hopefully ill be able to track it down and acquire it if he can remember the name.

awesome score! ive seen them on ebay for as low as $300, but a $25 find is about as good as it gets!

[blissfulnoise]

I can say for realtive certain that it doesn't take a "modded" NES.

I can load up the cart fine in my existing toploader, but I can't do anything without the controllers as they were.

And the adapter fits into both controller ports and has two jacks on the side, a bit bigger than a headphone jack. I assume this is where the bikes plug in.

[Player-2]

I have a couple of these carts, plus I have "the whole set up". It is very heavy...I guess to hold up the bike. And, I too, thought it could only be played on a modded NES. In fact, one of my carts (the one without the bike attatchment) came with the mod chip. I assume it was to be installed. The other cart came with a modded NES....and that NES specifically says on a sticker that it has been modded for this cart system. The carts are pretty hard to find. And twenty five bucks was a steal.

[blissfulnoise]

Now I'm pretty curious; maybe the game can't actually be played without a modded system?

The game seems to boot fine, I get to a screen that has the two cycles side by side, but without a bike to test it with, I can't be sure if it will really do anything.

Or maybe the company was slapping a sticker on an NES in an effort to increase the cost of the product?

[qbertandernie]

i think the mod simply allows for the hookup to the bike unit. if i remember correctly, the NES tells the bike unit to apply pressure to a wheel (which the users bike rests on), increasing resistance when the on screen character is going up a hill. this way you can train more realistically than just riding on flat areas, like we have here in NW ohio .

if im not mistaken, this is the same idea for the exertainment systems for snes. anyone?

[zerohero]

Very interesting find. I wonder how many of these things were made.

[qbertandernie]

i actually have a demo video for this system i forgot about. ill dig it out and see if it tells anything about the system requirements...

[jasonlotp]

I'm pretty sure that you don't need a modded NES for this as they started selling them with unmodded toploaders, basically the console just needs to be able to fit their special 2 controller port hookup (like the plug for the 4 Score or Advantage).
Probably the only mod needed on the toasters was to remove the security chip since this isn't to my knowledge a liscensed game.
The cart alone doens't sell for a whole lot since it is relatively useless by itself but if you get a the controller adapter and the rest of the setup it will fetch a pretty penny.

[sniperCCJVQ]

Are the ROM from the Racemate I and II have been dumped ?

[jasonlotp]

Are the ROM from the Racemate I and II have been dumped ?

First, I don't believe anyone has ever seen any Racermate I, nor have I seen any reason to believe it exists.

Second, I'm pretty sure there is no single ROM for the Racermate II carts, it seems that almost every cart I've seen has a different revision number on the title screen. I'm assumming since they weren't mass producing these either(the original unit was in a >$1000 package so there can't be too many) that they just continually made updates to the cart as they saw fit and perhaps changed the tracks. So by no means has every version of Racermate II been dumped. But I can't say (since I haven't looked) if any of these versions have ever been dumped. Nor can I say whether there is any real difference between any of the versions.