Unlicensed collections

[LimitedEditionMuseum]

besides tengen, who here collects these games? i looked on tube and saw a lot of reviews and even though the games dont look that good, they are cool to collect. i got tired of every reviewer going out of their way to bash the games instead of talking about the game. if there are any unlicensed collectors here, can you show them off ot talk about them? thanks

[Kitsune Sniper]

*raises hands*

Though my collection is mostly bootleg movies and music, I have a few game-related oddities, like some DVDs with cutscenes from Final Fantasy X / X-2.

[Ozzy_98]

Most of the Camericas are not that bad, I like B-52. Many of the Color Dreams games and American Video Entertainment games were programmed by other companies, with Sachen\Thin Chen being the company who made the most\worst crap.

[Tanooki]

Aside from Tengen Camerica (aladdin enhanced or not) made some quality stuff in some of their releases. Beyond that I won't touch the stuff outside roms as the Color Dreams/WT, AVE, HES, etc stuff is at best mediocre being generous and mostly awful where they should pay you for the pain and suffering involved.

I grabbed a Micro Machine game over the weekend and it's surprisingly fun. I wanted it to see how things were shaking out on the R5 having heard Camerica games had problems or just didn't work. I'm thinking I may scramble for a copy of Linus Spacehead as I heard it's ok too. I know where to find an aladdin version of it within the adapter for like $20, probably a good deal but I wouldn't know as I don't price those things. :P

[LimitedEditionMuseum]

i just ordered the bee-52 game, it looks fun. actually, they all look fun in their own way. i want to get Chiller next.

[Tanooki]

Pawn shop around the corner has been sitting on a Bee52 game for awhile now. I was told the game sucked, but I never really looked into it as I'm not a fan of unlicensed other than Tengen stuff.

[Rickstilwell1]

I absolutely love The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy and BigNose the Caveman. Both are Camerica releases and have similar graphics and sound styles. I didn't like any of the other unlicensed games quite as much except maybe the Tengen Ms. Pac-Man and Tetris. I prefer the official Nintendo Tetris over the Tengen though because of the colors/more individual square look of the blocks and the music.

[8-Bit Archeology]

I have 2 camerica games that are fun. Big Nose is my favorite of the two. The other is a plane game Mig (something) its named after the plane but the gameplay is very touchy to me. Big Nose on the other hand is a really fun platform side-scroller comparable to Adventure Island. Great for high score battles.

Im sure a few of my 2600 games are not licensed but I am not near my collection so I couldnt say.

I know tengen is not interesting to some but I still find it neat that my tengen pac-man is in a standard grey nintendo cart unlike the rest of my tengens.

I have seen and played Action 52 for both the NES and Genesis. The carts looked cool. The nes is clear and the sega cart looks like it has a tall growth on the top. Hah. Havent seen any others lately. I do like finding unlicensed games. They seem harder to find than very rare titles.

[Tanooki]

You know what happen to be kind of fun, the unlicensed slid by Sega conversions both Sunsoft and Tengen did for the NES/Famicom. We got a few, but more were stuck over in Japan like Fantasy Zone 2, Altered Beast and Space Harrier. I have Afterburner here and I've had Shinobi before which is decent too.

[Ozzy_98]

I know where to find an aladdin version of it within the adapter for like $20, probably a good deal but I wouldn't know as I don't price those things. :P

You can get the enhancer and ALL games for it, sealed in box, for about $100 on ebay.

[Tanooki]

I know, but are any of them even really worth it other than maybe Micro Machines and Mig29. Dizzy I can't stand as it's too open world, easy just to go in circles on that one and Linus Spacehead sucks. Bee52 isn't bad but gets repetitive quickly and I'm not familiar with the others. $100 isn't a small thing to me these days either.


Going off of unlicensed stuff I made a trade for it, but I have Qwak for the GBA which is really fun.

[Ozzy_98]

Do you think there would be sets of 6 unopened nes games on ebay for under $100 if they were worth a damn? :P

Still, they all blow away the color dreams crap. F-ck you, level two of sunday funday.

[Rickstilwell1]

Going in a circle around the world in Dizzy is kind of the beauty of Dizzy. Once you know where all the items are and what they are used for, there are so many paths you can take to try and get the game done more quickly. Depending on how good you are at dodging certain obstacles, one route may be safer for you to travel more often than another. And the cool thing is that the NES and Aladdin cart versions are different making it worthwhile to play the other if you've mastered one. Of course you can get the more common Genesis version and only spend a couple bucks on it but the graphics and audio will be much different. All the sprites are smaller and I like the music less than the NES version.

[Tanooki]

Ozzy and Rick no doubt.

Ozzy, I know and it makes total sense and you're right, the stuff they did blows the socks off Color Dreams/WT/Bunch Games, AVE and the rest. They're at least functional and at some good level entertaining to a point and at least had some thought put into proper stage design.

Rick I agree with you that much, but if you don't and you're new it can be very discouraging going around in circles with no clue without feeling lost for a long time or cheating and using a guide and stuff like that is a put off to me. I think the trick with the NES games audio is the fact you're going from some badass demoscene type chiptune works of music to bland reprocessed/converted fm synthesis and it just doesn't work out so well.

I wont' hide it, I'm not familiar with unlicensed NES stuff very much other than the basics. I never sought it out in the 80s, 90s and beyond and it goes back to the lies Nintendo and NP Mag spewed in the era about how unlicensed games being able to break down on your and the games could bust your NES too. They in particular went after Game Genie for it which is crap but I didn't know better until the internet came around for me in the mid 90s. At that point other than bagging some Tengen games I just didn't bother because what I could read they were more or less unanimously pieces of crap outside of a few select things like Micro Machines. The odd thing was even back then I remember getting Road Runner as a gift and worried it would jack the system but as it was a gift I played it and shock, it was fine.

[tom]

Does a license make a good game? I doubt that, look at the whole Famicom/NES library and all that shovelware.
On the other hand, look the the VCS games, none are licensed, but look at the beauty of Activision, Coleco, Imagic, Starpath, Xonox, Parker, Tigervision, Spectravision, Sega, Konami, Mattel, 20th Century Fox and others. Gems
Licensing doesn't make a good game.

[SparTonberry]

I thought lack of licensing (or SOMEONE making SOME attempt at quality-control) on VCS (and its competitors) is what CAUSED the crash. :P

Though its true the licensing system on the NES, while intended to force third-parties to release better games, still let a lot of shovelware through.

[Tanooki]

THe lack of licensing did help the crash as so much turds were shoved out at little to no cost, confusion, flooded piles of crap, a heap of systems, more confusion yet again, and pop.

NIntendo went all gestapo on it with their licenses and scare tactics away from those who wouldn't even saying their shit would break the NES. THey also forced game makers into a 6/yr setup which helped keep more turds off the market because they had to pick and choose what to bring. Few bucked it, KOnami invented Ultra to double their pool to 12/yr max, and Tengen went all sciency and reversed the lockout and did their own thing after being a licensee. Shovelware turds got through still, but I'd argue the amount was lesser than it would have been by far with all those recently screwed companies who would have probably tried to shovel their earlier 80s wares to make some cash again.

A lack of licensing more or less in the NES period kind of meant you were more likely to get pure crap, but it wasn't a guarantee as Tengen and Camerica had some decent things to share, but you'd be hard pressed to find much fun out of Color Dreams, Bunch Games, AVE, HES, and the terrible one offs like the Myriad/Caltron and the Action52.

[Ozzy_98]

I got $5 in the mail from Nintendo because they're crooks. But I had to spend in on a new nes game costing $60, so some how because they broke the law, I had to spend $60 to get $5...

[SparTonberry]

Some say Nintendo loosened their licensing rules on 3DSWare (compared to Wii).
I read the RPGamer review of Grinsia and the reviewer says the game crashed 60 times in 20 hours. That's one spontaneous crash every 20 minutes.
I've played the game (though not finished) and so far I haven't had as bad of luck but that is certainly there. You just walk along and then out of nowhere the game just stops responding until a few seconds later the firmware tells you the program hit an error and needs to close. At least the entire console is prevented from locking up. Don't like I have to save every few minutes for fear of the crash ninja. Seems like a decent if unremarkable game otherwise.
I've heard of reports of other Nicalis ports being as bad. Might explain why La-Mulana took YEARS to get released on WiiWare, and even then by a different company, I think (though I bought but haven't played it yet myself. Wanted to work on its inspiration and maybe even the original PC game first, haven't decided).