Cartridge killers

[celerystalker]

One thing that has really started getting to me lately is reproduction/conversion carts, and they need to stop.

Now, I'll say, the first time I saw repro carts, I thought it was amazing, and I bought a couple even (Sweet Home and Earthbound for NES). However, that was before I realized that donor carts had to be used.

This is hardly a new conversation, but what needs to be lumped in here as well is the even worse Neo Geo conversion carts. If you don't know the scene, it's where a common AES cart gets destroyed in order to place a re-wired MVS cart into the shell, completely killing the MVS cart while removing another AES cart from circulation, essentially killing two legit carts to make one bootleg. Even the first time I saw this around 2001 or so, I called bullshit. Nowadays, people tend to mercifully kill only one AES cart, burning new ROMs and soldering (or gluing as bootleggers love to do) in some jumpers where needed, but they're still removing shit that's already hard to come by in the first place.

The side effect here is that common SNES sports games are becoming increasingly scarce to become donors. Common AES games like Samurai Shodown and Fatal Fury are becoming more scarce. In the Neo Geo scene, it's even worse due tothese conversions often being passed off as legit games, making it a real chore to purchase anything but the most common games online with any confidence at all.

I know it's nothing new, but seeing a shitload of conversion carts on ebay earlier pissed me off, as lord only knows how many legit games were killed off in the process. "Conversion" is no more legit than a Famicom bootleg, and at least those used newly manufactured parts.

If you're gonna make repros and homebrews, use new parts and stop killing old games, or do like Guntz, who just swaps translated ROMs into legit carts, but saves the originals so they can be changed back if desired. This shit is more of an epidemic on old carts than know-it-all YouTube channels parroting Wikipedia are to misinformed younger gamers. Stop killing innocent carts, dicks.

[Aussie2B]

I've heard that repros/homebrews/etc. are more and more using new, original parts, which is good, but yeah, I hate the practice of destroying legit carts just to make a fake. I don't even care if the donor carts are common. The more they're sacrificed, the less common they'll become, and there are already cases of donor games becoming more expensive on the used market because of diminished supplies.

[jb143]

Many years ago, I was making a homebrew GBC game and ran into this problem(though I never actually got to the point where I needed any carts). My solution was going to be to buy a lot of the GBC N'Sync games; which the common consensus was that it would be a positive thing for the hobby. But yeah, I saw someone else at the time had a tutorial for making their own GB cart and they used Super Mario Land 2

It's not that expensive to get custom injection molded or similarly manufacturers parts these days, but the only issue is that you have to buy in bulk to get decent price points, which makes your initial order a whole lot higher than tracking down a few dozen sports games.

[bb_hood]

Yeah, its like if someone can make some 'easy' money scrapping chaep games and making repros, people will. Ive heard of people scrapping Batman Return of the Joker for nes to make Mr.Gimmick repros. How stupid is that? Scrapping a rare nes game to make a bootleg. Also, Mr.Gimmick CAN be played on a flash cart but Batman RotJ currently can not (the mapper isnt supported).

I think its more of a 'buyer beware' situation, lots of people buy them, but they are just bootleg trash. A nes or snes flash cart will play any rom that a repro can, and they only cost 2-3 times as your average repro cart. Plus with flash carts you dont have to worry about the batteries dying in repros and losing your saves.

I feel that people can do whatever they want with their property. I have enough authentic nes/snes carts to be satasfied with so its hard for me to care. What pisses me off is when the people who make these games act like they are some sort of tech-wiz. Especially when most repros are of poor quality with ugly labels. I just wish people would wake up and realize that buying repros is the basically the same thing as buying roms.

Making homebrew carts is one thing but selling stolen roms is just taking advantage of people that dont know better.

[Greg2600]

I would concur, most are using original parts now. They're cheaper, they're plentiful in most cases, and a LOT easier to assemble from scratch.

In terms of sacrificing original carts, to be honest, very few of those were not uncommon, so it's not a huge loss in that sense. The only time I did it was I sent out a 7800 Ballblazer, which CPUWIZ (AA) converted to Klax for me. I've sacrificed some common cases for flash carts in the past as well, but not many.

[Aussie2B]

Making homebrew carts is one thing but selling stolen roms is just taking advantage of people that dont know better.

And then you've got an extra layer of stealing in the case of fan-translated repros. Repro sellers very rarely contact translation teams and ask for permission. So you've got translations that fans sunk a huge amount of work into, not seeking any profit either, yet others are stealing their work and profiting off of it.

[SparTonberry]

The problem is if you're doing fan-translations and you start accepting payment from unauthorized repro makers, then technically you're no longer doing "fan" work but helping to create bootlegs. Which could be "crossing the line" to some companies. I don't know if I'd try that with Nintendo these days.
(yes, I'm aware of repro sites that routinely create Nintendo-IP repros, but I was referring to the C&Ds of the last year. Especially Pokemon Prism, a ROM hack that would seem relatively harmless to them.)

As to 7800 Ballblazer, isn't that the game that also gets cannibalized for its sound chip?

[Aussie2B]

Yeah, I definitely don't think fan translators should be getting compensated either, since what they're doing is illegal too. I just think, at a bare minimum, repro sellers should be asking fan translators if they mind their work being used in the repros, and if they say "we don't want anybody profiting off our work" (which I think more fan translators than not would say), then the repro sellers should respect that. Because, let's be real, nobody would be buying repros of untranslated text-heavy games. The repro sellers are making money on those kinds of games purely because a fan translation exists.

[Cornelius]

This kind of reminds me of the story I was told about the Beatles "butcher" cover, which I never checked on because I don't care much, but seems plausible. So I guess it goes like this: The butcher cover of Yesterday and Today album was banned, so they were all just glued over with a different photograph. So the butcher cover was rare and really expensive until everyone started restoring the glued over copies back to the butcher, and now the glued over version is more expensive.

I figure the market would correct things with donor carts, too, eventually, but it sounds like new stuff is fixing the problem already.

[goldenband]

A nes or snes flash cart will play any rom that a repro can

Sadly there are a few exceptions to this, StarFox 2 being the biggest one. The SD2SNES doesn't support the Super FX, SA-1, or SPC7110 enhancement chips, so it can't be used to play StarFox 2 or a few translated JRPGs like Tengai Makyou Zero or Marvelous: Mouhitotsu no Takarajima. (Other games too, but no one's likely to repro those.)

Not coincidentally, StarFox 2 is one of a very few* repro carts I've ever bought, though I've never actually gotten around to playing it -- and now the SNES Mini has mooted the less-complete version on my repro cart. Oh, well.

(And the joke's on me, as I'd like to buy Winter Gold but its use as a repro donor for StarFox 2 has driven up the price...)

Meanwhile MMC5 games are still unsupported on the EverDrive N8, with the exception of Castlevania III. Of the rest, Just Breed is the only one likely to get repro'ed, maybe Uchuu Keibitai SDF too since that's playable without a patch but has gotten expensive. The others are Koei games that no one's likely to repro, plus Laser Invasion, some mahjong game, and finally Metal Slader Glory which hasn't been translated yet AFAIK.

A couple Magical Taruruuto-kun games are also unplayable, and a few others like Alien Syndrome (EDIT: there's a mapper hack to make this one work), but overall EverDrive N8 compatibility is really quite good (though the expansion audio needs more work).

*(unless you count all the Intellivision ones, which probably should count...sigh)

[SparTonberry]

Yeah, I definitely don't think fan translators should be getting compensated either, since what they're doing is illegal too. I just think, at a bare minimum, repro sellers should be asking fan translators if they mind their work being used in the repros, and if they say "we don't want anybody profiting off our work" (which I think more fan translators than not would say), then the repro sellers should respect that. Because, let's be real, nobody would be buying repros of untranslated text-heavy games. The repro sellers are making money on those kinds of games purely because a fan translation exists.

I think it's ridiculous repro sellers are even repro-ing stuff like Goonies 1. It's like a $5 (or it was last I was paying attention) import with little or no Japanese text but people feed the repro sellers because they just HAVE to have it on an *NES* cart.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Many years ago, I was making a homebrew GBC game and ran into this problem(though I never actually got to the point where I needed any carts). My solution was going to be to buy a lot of the GBC N'Sync games; which the common consensus was that it would be a positive thing for the hobby.

[Bratwurst]

Yeah come on, there's a ton of sports games on the Genesis nobody cared about, plus the new shells & circuit boards make this a moot issue anymore.

[celerystalker]

Yeah come on, there's a ton of sports games on the Genesis nobody cared about, plus the new shells & circuit boards make this a moot issue anymore.

I said as much in the OP about the new parts, but those Genesis sports games that used to cost nothing I'm seeing at stores now at $10, and I can't help but think it's related. Still, it's the Neo Geo conversions that got me going here, and that whole area is still cart destroying bullshit that's making things more expensive and full of counterfeits.

[Greg2600]

As to 7800 Ballblazer, isn't that the game that also gets cannibalized for its sound chip?

That's correct, the Pokey. Technically you can buy them from places like Best Electronics, but they're much more money.

I think it's ridiculous repro sellers are even repro-ing stuff like Goonies 1. It's like a $5 (or it was last I was paying attention) import with little or no Japanese text but people feed the repro sellers because they just HAVE to have it on an *NES* cart.

The repros, especially on NES, sell quite well. I can promise you that. Personally I am not a fan of it, although I have bought a few that were made off a prototype that the owner would not share. If the ROM is out there, I will NEVER buy a repro. There's no point.

I said as much in the OP about the new parts, but those Genesis sports games that used to cost nothing I'm seeing at stores now at $10, and I can't help but think it's related. Still, it's the Neo Geo conversions that got me going here, and that whole area is still cart destroying bullshit that's making things more expensive and full of counterfeits.

Yes, systems like NES, SNES, Genesis, repro makers now are often using entirely new PCB's and chips and 3D printed shells. That's become the cheaper method. Neo Geo is another story though.

[jb143]

As far as creating new PCBs...I could potentially see an issue with some being slightly too thin or thick, having them cheaply manufactured somewhere the tolerances could be way off whereas cannibalizing an existing cart wouldn't have that issue.

those Genesis sports games that used to cost nothing I'm seeing at stores now at $10, and I can't help but think it's related.

If that's the case, then problem solved...for Genesis sports games that no one wants anyways.

[Tanooki]

I've got a MVS conversion cart of sorts, just not by the way you're thinking as no AES was brought into it.

What I have are a set of legit SNK boards that had a wrecked set of chips and they were removed, and those were replaced by some arcade supplier with gated EEPROMs with another game installed. That though interestingly is put into a modern black clamshell (not an original of the 90s) and has a decent quality replacement sticker on the front. It didn't cost me much at all which was fine by me as Nightmare in the Dark isn't cheap. At least mine recovered 2 boards and cannibalized nothing.

[celerystalker]

I've got a MVS conversion cart of sorts, just not by the way you're thinking as no AES was brought into it.

What I have are a set of legit SNK boards that had a wrecked set of chips and they were removed, and those were replaced by some arcade supplier with gated EEPROMs with another game installed. That though interestingly is put into a modern black clamshell (not an original of the 90s) and has a decent quality replacement sticker on the front. It didn't cost me much at all which was fine by me as Nightmare in the Dark isn't cheap. At least mine recovered 2 boards and cannibalized nothing.

Yeah, that's a clean salvage project. Nightmare in the Dark is great!

[Tanooki]

Yeah it is, and I learned of it due to that crappy 161in1 I have, which I as of this month learned can in theory break your arcade/home hardware because of the way it is setup to bypass security having something to do with screwing with voltage sent to the boards(system) which can potentially fry it. That along with the knowns of it too fat widening pin slots, the audio problems, a few betas, a couple broken titles, etc.

I started out with 9 games plus that, and now I'm over 30, the latest being Shock Troopers and Top Hunter.