Obnoxious, Evil Chinese Pirate on eBay

[Epicenter]

I found this auction, in Hong Kong, on eBay. It's for a clearly-pirate Famicom system .. note the jacks in the back, the way the controllers are hardwired INSIDE the system, and how he wants *$62* to ship it to the States when the actual cost for that would be under $20. More like $13. Not only this, but it's a general rule that if you buy it in Hong Kong, odds are 15:1 it's not official.

So I contact this cockmaster and ask him quite politely, if he is making these machines, what's with the exorbitant shipping fees, and if he WAS making them, if he'd answer some questions about pirate hardware production. Useful info for my site's pirate section. Reasonable requests, I thought.

The answer I got was:
"Are you threatening me or something? I think I will report you to ebay as a SPAM, becasue I don't understand what you said. - cy"

Oh, that makes sense. "I don't understand you, so I'll report you."

Well guess what fuckface, you're reported for fraud and your auctions will magically jump up to ridiculous amounts, courtesy of a mysterious new eBay account that was just registered, should you not decide to be more civil than this.

Are there any decent merchants in China? Any at all? (Don't even get me started on ToToTek ..) :P

[jonjandran]

It looks just like my Famicom.

And my controllers are hardwired also.

And he says the jacks in the back are because it's "custom a/v"

I really don't see it as a pirate Famicom.

[Epicenter]

Real Famicoms have jacks on them for controllers .. 2 normal, 1 lightgun. They are not hardwired. I wouldn't doubt yours is pirate too, there is no system pirated more. :P As for the 'custom AV', this is the kind of ghetto design crappy HK pirates are known for. And his extreme hostility in the face of someone being civil is a CLEAR sign he is a pirater-- they always get VERY defensive and VERY suspicious when anyone knows what they are up to.

[jonjandran]

Woo Hoo , I have a Pirated Console !!!!!!!!!!!

My first one. I'm so proud .

[Epicenter]

CLASSIC way to tell:

Open it up, and check the board.

REAL: One big PCB with lots of properly soldered, big chips.
FAKE: 1-3 small boards with shoddily soldered ribbon cable (gray usually), one central chip (NES-on-a-Chip) held in place with a blob of black epoxy.

The design I just described is very common in pirate famicoms as it's cheap as hell. But it's also easy to break as the ribbon cables are shoddily soldered to the parts.. my friend Jose's "plasticom" (Famicom clone w/ NO metal) uses that.

Plasticom:
http://www.epicgaming.net/pirate_nes...isassembly.php

[jonjandran]

I'm confused.

Every one that is sold on Ebay as a Famicom has hardwired controllers, and one controller port on the front.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...100340978&rd=1

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...090718321&rd=1

[Epicenter]

I could be wrong, but I recall rather distinctly that there are ports on standard machines. But there are so many pirates it gets hard to distinguish after awhile. At any rate, I just have a wierd 'pirate sense' and this machine strikes me pretty hard.

PIRATE SENSE TINGLING!!

[video_game_addict]

I had an original Famicom and it looked just like the one you're calling a fake. Hardwired controllers and all. Only port up front was for the db15 zapper. The design of the famicom is even molded to hold the controllers when not in use. I've never seen a Nintendo Famicom with detachable controllers. The later models maybe and the clones typically do, but not the Famicom.

[crashdummycow01]

lmao.. and u got pissed at him for no reason lmao.... when u asked if they were pirate, he prolly thought u were accusing him and just got defensive.. o well

[Epicenter]

That's a big part of why I am suspicious. It looks ghetto, and ghetto + HK = Pirate. He reacted in a RIDICULOUSLY hostile fashion. Pirates ALWAYS do that. Or they recoil in terror and give you whatever you want to make you shut up. A few times now, I bought pirate games (knew they were unofficial) to add to my collection .. paid $14 each. Then e-mailed the seller, feigning rage, demanding $7 back plus shipping or I blow open his scheme and tell all related Software companies about it. All 3 caved in and refunded my cash, so I had the games for $7. Then I sold them later to EB Games for $15. ;D

God, I'm a bastard ..

[davidleeroth]

That looks like a legit Famicom to me. I have a legit one and it has hardwired controllers.
I have pirate ones, too, one with exactly same box but" Nintendo" has been omitted from the corner of the box.

I see no signs of pirate console here and only a complete fool would put a label "Family Computer Nintendo" on their pirate console. Also, he might have gotten your message wrong as english isn't so well understood in the east (which he has proven in his reply).

[PhoeniX]

I just returned from Hong Kong where I scoured the town for console games, Famicoms are hard to find (real or pirated) almost as a rule the pirated famicom consoles I came accross look nothing like an actual famicom. Moreover, the "pirates" themselves where all very nice whether they were hawking the current console cd "backups" or even the GameBoy advance games none tried to misrepresent thier products. In Hong Kong a multitude of console game related stuff is readilly available, the people who sell the stuff (barring perhaps the people on the street e.g. markets) are very knowlegable. Top on the list of things a wanted to bring back was an original Famicom, everyone I talked to said they could easily get me a pirated one and many even tracked down and provided quotes on legitimate ones. If you can speak the language finding games--real ones-- in Hong Kong isn't much trouble. Invariably the patrons let you examine the products. I was allowed to open up an old Japanese Atari console to see if it was fake (looking for tell tale symptoms). Bootlegs do come a lot from Hong Kong (especially from the famicom era) but people are removing a major comodity exchange of good videogame stuff to be unreasonably wary of stuff from Hong Kong. E-bay as a whole is much more repleat with pirates and bad sellers than what I experianced in the whole of Hong Kong. Buyers, all buyers would be wise to remember the addage caveat emptor (buyer beware) but eroneously assuming that a person who is gouging you is also providing an illigitimate product is unwise, after all what does one expect ITS EBAY, most things are overpriced--especially the shipping.

[rbudrick]

Fact#1: Original Famicoms have hardwired controllers. Peripherals are used through a 15-pin port on the front. I did that same AV mod to mine.

Fact#2: The revised AV version of the Famicom has ports much tlike the American/PAL versions (this model looks like an American top loader).

Fact#3: The Famicom in that auction is 100% legitimate. The guy kinda had a right to be mad at you. I would apologize.


-Rob

EDIT: Oh, and that price for shipping is because the unit is at $49. A boxed, complete, modded Famicom generally fetches about $110 to $120 shipped, so that is a pretty standard price....just a sneaky way of pricing it hoping someone bids by accident w/o looking at shipping.

[Daria]

This topic had me laughing my ass off... poor guy. You know it always helps to inform yourself about a product before going off and reporting an innocent seller. :P
________
MFLB PRICE

[esquire]

This topic had me laughing my ass off... poor guy. You know it always helps to inform yourself about a product before going off and reporting an innocent seller. :P

You know the old saying, "Better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

[Naiera]

The only thing wrong about this guy is his ridiculous shipping prices. He wants $42 to ship a Neo Geo controller by AIRMAIL. Walk on over to, say, hit-japan, and they'll charge you $30 for EMS shipping.

I don't like the guy. I've seen his feedback go from next to nothing to 100 in a very short while. It's sad that people actually pay these outrageous shipping fees.

And to answer something else mentioned in this thread: I've bought LOADS of stuff from Hong Kong sellers. All of these games were legit. Give credit where it's due, there ARE legit "Chinese" eBayers. There are even decent HK sellers who don't f*ck you in the *ss on shipping.

[Aussie2B]

Haha, practically the one and only Hong Kong eBay seller who doesn't sell bootlegs, and you try to get him banned from eBay. Just shows how the innocent guys get picked on (like when my auction for a Super Famicom converter was taken down), while the big shot pirates make a fortune selling thousands of bootlegs at all times with no one hindering their "business".

[sisko]

[quote="rbudrick"}Fact#3: The Famicom in that auction is 100% legitimate. The guy kinda had a right to be mad at you. I would apologize.
[/quote]

I agree.

The only thing atypical about this famicom is that it has been modified for AV output (an RF jack should be where that rather poorly placed DIN jack is)

[Ed Oscuro]

Welcome to the club, Epicenter! Though for sure I've never gone after a seller for selling something I thought was fake; but there've been enough instances of myself being wrong about something here at the forums =P

[Epicenter]

It's a good idea to be suspicious about anything from HK, however. :P Some pirate Famicoms (a LOT of them) are near indistinguishable from the real deal untl you see the system malfunction, fall apart, or crack it open and look at the PCB(s). Others, you just need to FEEL them-- i.e. my friend Jose's Famiclone (Plasticom as I call it) which weighs about 1 oz. because it has no metal in it except the surface mount components. The wires were poorly soldered, there were broken off chunks of solder waiting to short the board, no heatsink on the boiling-hot voltage regulator .. et cetera.

I've got photos of it disassembled here:
http://69.93.226.156/host/epicgaming...isassembly.php

I didn't really go off on the seller; I more wanted to hear a pirate's side of the story. I'm yet to find a pirate I can interview about the nonsense they put on the market.

My suspicions stem from that EVERYTHING I have bought from HK was pirate. This includes 3 GBA carts, my friend's Famiclone he got .. varying anime posters sold by a Chinese guy at a convention (mis-cropped, serial #s in the bottom corner in the same style used by famicom pirates) .. et cetera. And corrupt business is nothing unusual in China either either, apparently. Shipping scams and other such nonsense are extremely common in my experience. People from HK are always trying to rip others off, it seems. I'm not being racist, this is an economic observance. :P

Given that, I'm sure ya see where I am coming from.