Pirate imports

[maxlords]

Now here's something I don't know a ton about. I know that there are TONS of pirate carts out there, especially for Famicom and Mega Drive, but I'm not really familiar with how prevalent they are, where they come from, and what other systems have pirates or unlicensed games.

To my knowledge, there are TONS of Famicom pirates, some inexpensive Mega Drive ones, and a few unlicensed PC Engine CD and huCard games (mostly hentai). There's also a burgeoning pirate market in South America via Tectoy and other manufacturers. What do you know about import pirate carts?

[GaijinPunch]

I know almost nothing. These things don't surface in Japan for the most part. There are too many collectors vs. poor games that would settle for any of that. I believe Korea is the same way, from the little I know.

I saw a ton of pirated Gameboy games in Thailand a couple of years ago... they were right next to the totally legal $3 DVDs of movies that were still in the theatres. :)

[Funk Buddy]

Well I'll tell you that I have been offered GBA games from a seller in HK. He claimed his friend makes them. I said no thanks, and never bought another GBA game from him... just to be safe.

[jaydubnb]

I'm particularly interested in spotting bootleg NEO*GEO AES carts. For all the money that people spend on them, finding out that you have a knock off of say "Mark of the Wolves" may cause them to go postal.

[DDCecil]

They make some unlicensed adult games for the Super Famicom. The only one I can recall at the moment is one called Reverse Kids. It uses the same system as Super Noah's Ark 3D (You have to put a normal cartridge on top of it to make it work.)

[maxlords]

A buddy of mine bought that new Shining GBA game from a guy in Europe and it ended up being a cheap pirate as well. Faked box, manual, and even cart label. I've also seen a lot of pirate GBA games, especially ones like Pokemon Green and other games that don't really exist.

And don't forget people, multicarts are pirate games too! :)

[Bighab]

There are a few cool Famicom pirates I am trying to track down. I have seen a famicom version of Shining Force and I have heard of a Phantasy star 4 famicom version too. I am kind of wary o fbuying any GBA game from Hong Kong since they tend to be pirates.

[Mr-Monday]

I collect Megadrive pirates carts. Most have 2 games on one cart but others have 4, 5, 10 or even more. Probably the best one to look out for is the System 16 conversion of Tetris as is was never officially released.

[sisko]

I have one SNES/SFC bootleg cart.

Its a 5 in 1 cart that has DBZ 2-4, Smurfs, and Ranma.

Its fairly obvious to tell that it is a bootleg because

1) No offcial seal (!!!!!red flag!!!!!!!)
2) No care label on back
3) Label is peeling off
4) Very poor quality label images
5) It is a multicart with very different games from several different developers (duh)
6) The plastic is different. It has a finer texture, is not as reflective, and is darker than an official cart.
7)It is an actual SNES shaped cart, but none of these games were released in the US, at least, untranslated.

I originally bought the cart because it had a few of the games I wanted on it, but it also taught me how to distinguish authentic games from pirate carts.

I'd love to crack this thing open to see what the chipset looks like, but I don't have that special tool :/

[kai123]

I have one for the megadrive that has Storm lord and double dragon on it. Pretty cool little cart.

[Atari7800]

I've got Sonic 4 for the SNES (really just a hack of Speedy Gonzales with different characters) and Tekken 2 for the SNES (appears to be a real game, not a hack... the fighter selection screen is almost arcade-perfect, but the gameplay is 2-D and sucks pretty hard.)

These came from Brasil.

[sisko]

I'm working on a trade that will include these games:

http://www.guitardigest.com/famicomcarts.JPG

For some reason, it just screams out "PIRATED!!" to me.

Honestly, it really doesn't bother me, but I do know that it will lower the value of the carts.

Most everybody here has more famicom experience than me (I've never seen one, let alone held one), so I would like to get your feedback on this.

(I am almost positive that that 20-in-1 is a pirate though) :)