First of all, orri, as anyone who has argued with me on these boards knows, my nitpicking and being an ass is just a tactic. It's nothing personal. I'm sure you know that, but I just want it clarified. You're still a-ok in my book, I'm just a prick.

Second of all, I just want to point out to buyatari that some of Sachen's packaging is rather attractive. I don't have any examples on me at the moment, but I'll try to do so soon. I'd argue that Sachen's releases circa 1993 are far better looking than anything Color Dreams did.

I'm going to skip right to the most recent reply. Dr. Morbis, we're still questioning what you consider a "release." Yes, they're an Asian company that made games for an Asian market. This was their primary business. They also expanded internationally, and at the absolute worst case scenario ATTEMPTED to sell their games to American retailers.

I've often theorized that Panesian was nothing more than a pseudonym for Hacker International, a Taiwanese company who worked closely with Sachen (we have ROM dumps of games co-credited to the two!). If such is the case, and it very well may be, the only differences between a Sachen game and a Panesian game's "legitimacy" is the number of units sold in the United States.

I will admit something that I now realize I haven't made perfectly clear: NOT ALL Sachen games were manufactured and sold prior to 1995. The multicarts, for instance, have no copyright date, and I suspect they were hand-made and labeled "American" the moment Video Game Connections ordered them.

This is 9 out of 65, however, and for me to separate these into a separate category seems kind of messy. Where would these GO? They're non-pirated, they're specifically manufactured for and sold to an American audience, and they're not "homebew" by any means. By default, I've placed them alongside everything else intended for American audiences.

By the by, if Sachen has indeed finally kicked the bucket, these handmade multicarts are the rarest NES games in existence...I'm pretty sure Mike and I only ordered a combined total of five of each, meaning there are only about ten of them out there!

Anywho. With a possible "timeframe" differentiation with the multicarts, there is absolutely nothing that can legitimately prove that Sachen games can not be included in the same list as Panesian games and Cheetahmen II.

In FACT, if we count Cheetahmen II, which was not "released" until well after the system's demise, than we have to count the multis as well.

Buyatari's right on, I really don't see how this can be proven otherwise. I'm the editor of the NES section of the Digital Press Collector's Guide, and I want to make sure these things are represented correctly, objectively, and to the best of my knowledge. If you can show me that Cheetahmen II and the three Panesian games can "count" as an American release and that the Sachen games can NOT, I'll separate them accordingly. I don't see how this is possible, however, and I really have no idea where I'd put these things if they're not American releases. "Prototypes and One-of-a-Kinds" for Cheetahmen II and "Non-US" for Panesian?