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How to Tell if SNES/Super Famicom Games Are Pirated?


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I live in a country where most of the NES games you'd buy were pirated (cheap Chinese knockoffs that had hundreds and sometimes thousands of games.) Although that was the perfect way to get to know games that were never released officially by Nintendo here, I simply detest to collect pirated games, so over the years I started amassing a collection with the real thing. A few days ago, I came across a post on Facebook of someone selling a lot with 9 SNES and Famicom games. I have no experience with the console, since it was never officially released here, so I wanted to check with some of you before making an offer. I really want to get those games because you never find them where I live, so that solves paying to ship those games, but I want to make sure they are the real thing and that I'm not paying my hard earned money for nothing. How do I detect pirated games? Oh, I'd also appreciate it if you could tell me how much you'd pay for them. Thanks in advance!!!

 

These are the games: Batman Returns, Super Street Fighter (Super Famicom), Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Sonic Blast Man (Super Famicom), Clay Fighter, Taz-Mania, Demolition Man and Daffy Duck: The Marvin Missions.

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post-45416-0-66071600-1531326122_thumb.jpgpost-45416-0-54977400-1531326136_thumb.jpgpost-45416-0-46203500-1531326150_thumb.jpg

 

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I'm not amazing at this, but most of these look awful sketchy. Are these supposed to be Japanese or European?

 

  • The MKII having the character selection on the cart seems odd.
  • Taz-Mania seems to cut off the "Super Nintendo" words at the very end.
  • Batman Returns doesn't look legit at all (based on the cover art).

 

The only surefire way is to open them up as you can confirm based on the PCBs, but I don't think these are legitimate.

Edited by KeeperofLindblum
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I'm not as up on the non-US stuff, but your first picture are a pair of obvious fakes. The others, at a fast look I'd say look to be a mix of real and better faked, at least the plastic and stickers.

 

You can usually look up on google the product code on the sticker and then compare to a real one. The SHVC-XW for Super Street Fighter II pulls it right up as does Sonic Blast Man and they match.

 

EDIT: Taz is a fake, that's a US sticker on a non-US game and cut off. The Clayfighter is missing vital info and looks wrong too, a fake. Demolition Man they didn't even try, also a fake. MK1 and Daffy are butchered US stickers, also fake.

 

At best 2 real and 7 fakes from the look of it. The 2 Super Famicom releases are legit, the rest appear to be garbage.

Edited by Tanooki
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Taz-Mania is a fake, the shell is an EuroJap one, and the game reference says "USA".

Euro games always have a "graphic chart" with the Nintendo and developer logo.

So the Batman returns game is fake as well.

I don't remember that Mortal Kombat II sticker, and again, Nintendo references missing, fake.

 

Mortal Kombat, Daffy Duck and Clay figher looks beter, but they use the USA Seal of quality. The European one is round. I can't rule out a graphic chart mistake, I already saw a very few European game using the US Nintendo seal of quality, but it's rare, so those are certainly fake, although with an "original" sticker and not just a made-up one.

 

I cn't say anything about the Japanese ones, but given that all the others are fake... Sonic Blast Man might be genuine, it's an uncommon game and not a highly look after one. Street Fighter II is dirt cheap in Japan, so maybe it's only the sticker that was poorly applied...

Edited by CatPix
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PCB checking all the way. I bought a bagful of GBA games a while ago for dirt cheap, but (kind of expected) turned out only a couple were legit even though labels were decent. I also have fake SFC games with very good labels, opening them up was the only sure way to be sure.

Edited by Newsdee
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Just out of curiosity, where are you from?

I recognize the Б from the price sticker, but I don't know which money that is. Unless I'm wrong, not the ruble, and whatever is written on the sticker is latin alphabet...

I'm pretty sure that the ruble is noted with P; the latin alphabet could indicate Serbia, but agein, pretty sure that the serbian dinar doesn't use Б.

I don't remember is being used in Ukraine or Belarus, so... that's where my knowledge of cyrillic Europe and their currencies runs out :P

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The only 2 that look even remotely legit is street fighter and sonic. However that street fighter from what I can tell should have screws and it doesn't. It looks like the SF2 label may have been swapped to a diff. shell. In my opinion they are all fake or half assed pieced together at best.

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Just out of curiosity, where are you from?

I recognize the Б from the price sticker, but I don't know which money that is. Unless I'm wrong, not the ruble, and whatever is written on the sticker is latin alphabet...

I'm pretty sure that the ruble is noted with P; the latin alphabet could indicate Serbia, but agein, pretty sure that the serbian dinar doesn't use Б.

I don't remember is being used in Ukraine or Belarus, so... that's where my knowledge of cyrillic Europe and their currencies runs out icon_razz.gif

Hi! Thanks for all the replies. I'm from Argentina and as far as I know, there's never been a strong "Nintendo presence" in the country. Most of the genuine NES, SNES and other consoles we get here are imported and most sellers ask a lot of money for them. At least we got Nintendo Wiis at local Wal-Marts, but thjat's about it.

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Nintendo basically blew off anything much south of Mexico over the years other than if some third party didn't get a deal going to peddle their stuff as a middleman for asinine high prices. Sega was the one who went south and got a lock, especially in a few places thanks to TecToy.

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Hi! Thanks for all the replies. I'm from Argentina and as far as I know, there's never been a strong "Nintendo presence" in the country. Most of the genuine NES, SNES and other consoles we get here are imported and most sellers ask a lot of money for them. At least we got Nintendo Wiis at local Wal-Marts, but thjat's about it.

Small world... are you from Buenos Aires? I grew up partly in Rosario. It was indeed hard to get anything official unless paying scalper prices.

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I completely respect your desire to have the genuine article. Having said that, if you lived in the US, I would be advising you to go the flashcart route unless you're rich... given your situation, that advice is even stronger. SNES collecting gets very expensive very fast.

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Small world... are you from Buenos Aires? I grew up partly in Rosario. It was indeed hard to get anything official unless paying scalper prices.

I'm from a small city near Buenos Aires (around 250 miles from BA.) Now the easiest ways to get retro games is online, but the prices are steep. I use Facebook groups a lot, but you run into a lot of pirated or sketchy games sadly. I've always wanted to visit Rosario, looks like a cool place!

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  • 2 months later...

I'm from a small city near Buenos Aires (around 250 miles from BA.) Now the easiest ways to get retro games is online, but the prices are steep. I use Facebook groups a lot, but you run into a lot of pirated or sketchy games sadly. I've always wanted to visit Rosario, looks like a cool place!

Rosario is fairly quiet, but is a nice place. I try to go once a year if I can... but is a looong trip from where I live.

 

To go back on topic, I would recommend using a game bit screwdriver to open the carts... but I suppose you may only be able to do that once you got them, which is too late.

At least you can separate the true stuff from the bootleg... I usually tag the fake ones with dash from a red marker so I know which ones they are.

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