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Thread: interesting bootleg/unlicensed games

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    ServBot (Level 11) Edmond Dantes's Avatar
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    Default interesting bootleg/unlicensed games

    So recently, I've been hitting up the Emulation scene again, and while doing so I wound up getting a glimpse of just what the Chinese piracy scene is doing. It's some amazing stuff, some of this I'm surprised even effing exists.

    Here's three I found while perusing just the NES/Famicom library.

    Biohazard

    When I saw that title, my first thought was that, like the Genesis game Bio Hazard Battle, this probably had nothing to do with the Resident Evil series (which is called Biohazard in Japan) and was probably just a coincidentally similar title.

    Nope. Its a demake of the original Resident Evil, ported to the NES. I don't know Chinese but I recognized the scenes early on from just the visuals, and I got as far as the first zombie encounter, in which I discovered this port, though telling the story of RE1, is actually based on the engine (or at least borrows the combat mechanics) of the Gameboy Color game Resident Evil Gaiden! Unfortunately, I didn't play much longer than that because the music was ear-piercingly bad.

    Harry Story

    I wasn't surprised to run across a Harry Potter bootleg--I had seen a SpaceHamster video that covered several of those. But I double-checked his video, and this is one he actually does not mention.

    If Harry Story is a spritehack, I'd love to know what the original game was, because its pretty fun (and no, its NOT Panic Restaurant--that's one of the ones SpaceHamster covered). It's a side-scrolling platformer, but it has a Gradius-style upgrade system where magic wand icons move the indicator: The first two slots are weapons--one a music note that you lob like a grenade and the other a beam that shoots straight ahead but I think takes a moment to fire. Third slot gives you a broom that allows you to slow your descent a la Mario 3's raccoon and tanooki suits, except its far more generous here. Fourth slot refills your health. The first level starts off in some mountains with a lot of rolling boulders and rock dudes, and you collect gems in addition to magic wands.

    Truth is I almost got addicted to this game, which is another reason I'd like to know what its a hack of... if its even a hack of anything.

    Tiny Toon Adventures 6

    Yes, Six. Another case of them slapping a random number onto an entry I guess.

    As seems to be the trend so far, I loaded this up expecting a simple sprite hack, but to all appearances its not--its an actual new Tiny Toons game as far as I can tell, and even more impressively, all the text is in English. The storyline concerns Babs wanting to take a trip around the world and Buster and his pals are, I guess, trying to clear the way for her. The gameplay style is similar to the first NES Tiny Toons game, but you can take more hits and switching characters happens at a predetermined point in each level as opposed to by picking up an item (and the character in question is also predetermined). One thing I did find a little odd is that Buster can throw carrots as an attack (they're limited by the way, but jumping on heads is more reliable anyway) and to get items out of blocks you have to hop on TOP of them, so that aspect is sort of a reverse-Mario. In fact there's a couple of Mario-esque elements such as pipes you can enter to go to secret areas or treasure hordes, which I don't remember being a part of Konami's games.

    Tiny Toons 6 is clearly not as polished as the licensed classics, but it overall still struck me as a fun and enjoyable game, arguably it could almost be a a well-done fangame if I could at all confirm that the programmers were fans of the franchise. If there's a repro cart of this, I would totally buy it.

    Yu-Gi-Oh

    My jaw dropped that there was a goddamn Yu-Gi-Oh game on the NES, and dropped even farther when I saw that it wasn't a card game, but rather seemed to be some sort of RPG that roughly combines the Capsule Monsters stories from the manga with the Monster World chapters--you get monsters from a CapMon machine but the battles seem to play out using the percentile die mechanics of Monster World.

    Truth is, what most impresses me is not only does a Yu-Gi-Oh game exist for a console that was dead in the water when this manga began, but that this game takes inspiration more from the early chapters before the manga was totally dominated by the card game (which was technically introduced very early on but only became the focus of the series with the eighth graphic novel). Yes, I'm a huge Yu-Gi-Oh nerd... at least for the manga. The real-life trading card game can go screw itself.

    So you start out in the lobby of some building (which makes me think this is based on the Death-T story arc), Jonouchi makes a comment, then Seto Kaiba comes up and says something and Yugi turns into Yami, then you can walk around and talk to people but every person I talked to initiated a monster battle--it's literally like an RPG with your party being your capsule monsters, I'm not sure if they level up or anything, and without knowing Chinese I wasn't confident enough to play further. If I ever win the lottery I'm definitely gonna pay someone to translate this.

    These are just some games I discovered I wanted to give people a "hey, heads-up, these exist!" about.

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    Cool write-ups! Yes, when it comes to pirate/bootleg games there's some amazing stuff hidden amongst the trash, especially on the Famicom.

    Did you see the recent translation patch for Biohazard at ROMHacking.net?

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    Quote Originally Posted by goldenband View Post
    Did you see the recent translation patch for Biohazard at ROMHacking.net?
    Was just about to say that when reading the OP. Link is here: http://www.romhacking.net/translations/3388/

    If anyone is interested in scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to bootleg / unlicensed Famicom games, last May I covered fifty-five unlicensed Nice Code Software games in my multicart column for The Retrogaming Times. - http://www.classicplastic.net/trt/issue008/ - They're all titles that are on the CoolBoy 198 in 1 multicart.

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    I'm also fascinated with bootleg games. The first ones that really grabbed my attention via emulation in the 90's were Donkey Kong Country 2 for the NES/Famicom and Kart Fighter for the NES/Famicom. I knew that they weren't official, but they were fun yet flawed experiences. I love collecting bootleg original pirate carts. It's a little harder these days to collect them because of the proliferation of reproduction carts of these games, but not impossible.

    If you want more info on bootleg games, check out this site- http://bootleggames.wikia.com/wiki/BootlegGames_Wiki

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    Quote Originally Posted by InsaneDavid View Post
    last May I covered fifty-five unlicensed Nice Code Software games
    Good Lord, did the cops ever find the people that did that to you?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Az View Post
    Good Lord, did the cops ever find the people that did that to you?
    Ahahahaha, oh man, that cracked me up! A while back (for reasons I now can't recall) I decided that I wanted to do condensed reviews / profiles on every game on the 198 in 1 multicart, fifteen games per issue plus one of my choice from the 400 in 1 counterpart. When approaching the block of Nice Code games on the cartridge I decided to just bunker down and get though all of them in one shot, figuring I wouldn't have much to say about each of them anyway.

    ....aaaaaaaannnd yeah, it about broke my mind playing all of those, trying to keep straight what was a clone of what, deciphering differences between different games that used the same base and so forth. In all, there are a few decent games from them on there. Air Alert is a pretty decent conversion of Astrosmash and Hexapod New is a good conversion of Buzz Bombers, both reworks of Nice Code's Intellivision to Famiclone ports. Lunarian is an alright arcade style single-screen shooter and plays better than Nice Code's other games that use the same base programming. Season Garden is the best of their whack-a-mole games and honestly a fun little distraction. I also thought The Archer was a reasonably entertaining original title, simple as all these games are.

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    I did NOT know about the Biohazard translation, thanks for the heads-up!

    If there's ever one for the Yu-Gi-Oh game, let me know ASAP, please?

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    Just further exemplifies China's corruption; a country whose storied legacy dates back millennia would rather make an illegal profit off of Japanese and Western developed intellectual property than to create original and interesting video games for a Western market whose unfamiliarity with Chinese culture and history would likely be far more lucrative (and may even lead to better relations with the Western world) No wonder China is secretly ignoring international sanctions by selling oil to North Korea.

    The problem is twofold though, and the people paying for these knockoffs are just as culpable in my eyes. if no one was buying this crap, they'd be forced to create something of their own.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gbpxl View Post
    Just further exemplifies China's corruption; a country whose storied legacy dates back millennia would rather make an illegal profit off of Japanese and Western developed intellectual property than to create original and interesting video games for a Western market whose unfamiliarity with Chinese culture and history would likely be far more lucrative (and may even lead to better relations with the Western world) No wonder China is secretly ignoring international sanctions by selling oil to North Korea.

    The problem is twofold though, and the people paying for these knockoffs are just as culpable in my eyes. if no one was buying this crap, they'd be forced to create something of their own.
    Is an unlicensed YGO game really a symbol of a corrupted government infrastructure...?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bazoo View Post
    Is an unlicensed YGO game really a symbol of a corrupted government infrastructure...?
    I never said that it was a symbol of corrupt government infrastructure, just that it's an example of how shady their culture appears to me, as a foreigner. Their exports are fake, their Olympic Games ceremony was fake, their promises to the rest of the world are fake, hell ever their skyline is fake

    EDIT: I just Googled "China fake" and see what comes up.

    Fake Paris

    fake butterfiles

    fake Washington Post
    Last edited by gbpxl; 01-10-2018 at 07:50 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gbpxl View Post
    I never said that it was a symbol of corrupt government infrastructure, just that it's an example of how shady their culture appears to me, as a foreigner. Their exports are fake, their Olympic Games ceremony was fake, their promises to the rest of the world are fake, hell ever their skyline is fake

    EDIT: I just Googled "China fake" and see what comes up.

    Fake Paris

    fake butterfiles

    fake Washington Post
    Wow, you are going even bigger than the Chinese government, and indicting the whole culture! That's pretty bold, considering how big, varied, and ancient China is. Also considering you (presumably) come from a culture that brought us stuff like The Bachelor, American Idol, and, I don't know, I've never watched a full episode of "reality" TV, but you get the point. Bold, man. And to quote Back to the Future III(?), all the best stuff is made in China! (okay, I think it is Japan in the movie, but whatever). I mean, haven't pretty much all game consoles been made in China since the Atari 2600? So to say their exports are fake... Bold!

    I don't have any particular love or hate for China, but those are some pretty broad strokes. That's my only point.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cornelius View Post
    Wow, you are going even bigger than the Chinese government, and indicting the whole culture! That's pretty bold, considering how big, varied, and ancient China is. Also considering you (presumably) come from a culture that brought us stuff like The Bachelor, American Idol, and, I don't know, I've never watched a full episode of "reality" TV, but you get the point. Bold, man. And to quote Back to the Future III(?), all the best stuff is made in China! (okay, I think it is Japan in the movie, but whatever). I mean, haven't pretty much all game consoles been made in China since the Atari 2600? So to say their exports are fake... Bold!

    I don't have any particular love or hate for China, but those are some pretty broad strokes. That's my only point.
    Why do you only hear about stuff like I mentioned coming out of China, and not India, Japan, Malaysia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Mexico, (pretty much anywhere else that has similar manufacturing capabilities as well as sizable population)

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    Quote Originally Posted by InsaneDavid View Post
    Ahahahaha, oh man, that cracked me up! A while back (for reasons I now can't recall) I decided that I wanted to do condensed reviews / profiles on every game on the 198 in 1 multicart, fifteen games per issue plus one of my choice from the 400 in 1 counterpart. When approaching the block of Nice Code games on the cartridge I decided to just bunker down and get though all of them in one shot, figuring I wouldn't have much to say about each of them anyway.

    ....aaaaaaaannnd yeah, it about broke my mind playing all of those, trying to keep straight what was a clone of what, deciphering differences between different games that used the same base and so forth. In all, there are a few decent games from them on there. Air Alert is a pretty decent conversion of Astrosmash and Hexapod New is a good conversion of Buzz Bombers, both reworks of Nice Code's Intellivision to Famiclone ports. Lunarian is an alright arcade style single-screen shooter and plays better than Nice Code's other games that use the same base programming. Season Garden is the best of their whack-a-mole games and honestly a fun little distraction. I also thought The Archer was a reasonably entertaining original title, simple as all these games are.
    I went through and played a bunch on those chinese multicarts after I got them, tbh some of the simple games aren't bad for some mindless atari 2600 type gameplay, I thought the battle city clone was pretty good, I actually played that for a good while (I forget the name).

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