N64 1:1 (exterior) looking bootlegs are now a thing

[Tanooki]

Seems the Chinese finally figured out how to make a board loaded with chips that works with real games on n64 and can sell them at a decent (but still kind of high) price and to the ire of those who want to see these high prices, they're US versions, 1:1 quality looking stickers, and us N64 game cart shells too.

http://s9.zetaboards.com/Nintendo_64...pic/7458262/1/

Caught on about this over on a reddit thread. You can see the board in one of the pictures there and it appears there's stuff for Clayfighter, Bomberman Second Attack and likely more. They're trying to call it the Dark Age of N64 collecting, hell I'd call it leveling the playing field. Anything that makes it harder on the scalpers who try and price up stuff, good. Problem is the games still are like $80~ in value which is high on a bootleg. If they could 1/2 that I could see it working out much better for those who would rather go that route than an everdrive 64.

[bb_hood]

how is buying one shitty chinese bootleg game a 'better route' than buying a flash cart?

if someone has issues with owning a flash cart why would they not have a problem with buying an overpriced chinese bootleg?

[Aussie2B]

Yeeeaaahhhh.....I'm all for games dropping in price, but mixing a bunch of shitty bootlegs into the marketplace is not a positive way to go about it, sorry.

[Gameguy]

Tanooki is always pro piracy and pro bootlegging, I try to ignore his posts on it. Fake handbags or watches never reduced the price of the originals, it's stupid to assume fake games would lower the price of real copies. All they accomplish is ripping off the people who can't tell they're fake and still pay full price for them.

[Tanooki]

The better choice would be personal taste or reasons obviously. I know and expect not everyone to agree but in this case I'm happy about it. I'm not always pro bootleg but with games being scammed over these days with inflated prices anything to hurt those people I like. It goes back to being a kid and having two hobbies of mine being ruined by the same greasy tactics which caused me to stop. I'd rather high quality fakes be there as a noted option than no choice but emulators and flash kits being it.

[Zthun]

The better choice would be personal taste or reasons obviously. I know and expect not everyone to agree but in this case I'm happy about it. I'm not always pro bootleg but with games being scammed over these days with inflated prices anything to hurt those people I like. It goes back to being a kid and having two hobbies of mine being ruined by the same greasy tactics which caused me to stop. I'd rather high quality fakes be there as a noted option than no choice but emulators and flash kits being it.

Inflated prices aren't a scam. You don't have to like people who scalp or sell at a high price, but they're not doing anything wrong.

[Aussie2B]

The better choice would be personal taste or reasons obviously. I know and expect not everyone to agree but in this case I'm happy about it. I'm not always pro bootleg but with games being scammed over these days with inflated prices anything to hurt those people I like. It goes back to being a kid and having two hobbies of mine being ruined by the same greasy tactics which caused me to stop. I'd rather high quality fakes be there as a noted option than no choice but emulators and flash kits being it.

So it's not at all a "greasy tactic" to make bootlegs and profit off of a product you have no ownership over? And what about that the fact that bootleg goods are often not produced by one single individual but rather associated with organized crime? You're cool with possibly funneling money into the Chinese mafia?

That's all preferable to a rare game being expensive on the used market because that's what collectors are willing to pay for it?

[Niku-Sama]

well it didn't take long to find the seller of these online and N64 games aren't the only thing they are doing HOWEVER....

they are not 100% reproductions, some of the things the seller has are translated versions of Japanese games in American carts, some of them are hacks or mods of popular games, and most of them are cheap examples of a game that is way over priced to begin with. not saying that whats happening here is right but at the same time i'd be willing to pay some of the prices of the SNES games they are asking since they are approx. 1/8th to 1/3rd the price of the real deals.

heres the kicker that they are not 100% true to the original 1:1

the SNES games shown are clearly visible and I imagine the N64 games wouldn't be any different but the SNES games that are being reproduced command much higher prices than the N64 ones hes doing.

the SNES games have plastic molded security bits, suggesting to me they made a mold of a US market game with the game completely intact and used that as their master, cleaned it up injected molded it with some equally higher quality plastics and bam. its probably been modified that clip together around the sides kind of like if you've ever taken apart a cell phone or old dvd player, how the front comes off.
that or the screws are just plain plastic.

i'm not going to post links but it wouldn't take much to find the seller, I am considering getting some of the SNES bootlegs just to have a version of the game to play with out running me dry. I still have about $300 left over from PRGE and I got paid today too. if I take the plunge I'll post pics, dissect, what haves you

seller has good reviews atleast, people seem happy knowing what they are

[Zthun]

I don't understand the logic of buying bootlegs over flash carts. You're spending 60-100 for a non authentic copy rather than buying a cart that can play all the copies of nearly everything you want which are also non-authentic.

Roms labeled with [!] are verified dumps that's a 1:1 copy of the game. Older systems generally have full sets or nearly full sets of these. Why spend 60-100 for a fake copy? Is the artwork on the fake really worth that much?

[celerystalker]

I don't understand the logic of buying bootlegs over flash carts. You're spending 60-100 for a non authentic copy rather than buying a cart that can play all the copies of nearly everything you want which are also non-authentic.

Roms labeled with [!] are verified dumps that's a 1:1 copy of the game. Older systems generally have full sets or nearly full sets of these. Why spend 60-100 for a fake copy? Is the artwork on the fake really worth that much?

This is extremely accurate. If you're buying a pirate, it isn't for collecting, so there's literally no advantage.

[Zthun]

In your post about the games, you said if they were half price you would think that's a good deal right? I'm going to round the games to $34. Since there's only 3 of them that you think are interesting, then the total comes to $102. The everdrive 64 v2.5 is $99. Even if you only wanted worms and bomberman at half price, that's still only $30 less than the flash cart. You're not saving much money. Of course, if you only buy one game EVER, then I can see your point, but the moment you get a 2nd game or a 3rd game, you've overshot the overall financial worth.

I thought about your 2nd point that it gives you value to encourage you to play the games. I would think that if you were truly interested in the actual games, the monetary value would be irrelevant and you could simply play them on an emulator. What I'm deducing is that you don't seem all that interested in playing the games, but more so in trying to punish those that caused the inflation in the first place.

The only reason I can see the argument from my standpoint is if you're trying to gather up pirate carts for the fun of collecting pirate carts. That I can see as everyone has different reasons for collecting what they collect. But the outlandish claims that it's cheaper is almost guaranteed to be false in the long run.

[BetaWolf]

To be honest, I wish the seller would invest in putting rom hacks and translations on cart, making a custom label, and selling them as repros. I don't think there are common tools to do that yet, unless someone buys one of these flash carts to reverse engineer it. I'd love to own a translated Doubutsu no Mori cart that didn't require a mutilated legit cart. There's much easier justification in that than a bootleg of a domestically released game.