fcgamer

Well I wrote it wrong, it was an earlier post on this very thread that you had been reading! Also I've been a member here since 2015, though I browse quite a bit I just rarely post.

Oh I feel the same way in regards to AI. There's a lot of unethical profiteering going on there.

Guy made a NES game from scratch but used the Larry IP without having the rights. How do you feel about such projects as this?

Dude, I already mentioned in an earlier thread that someone had bootlegged some games I made... How's the Xbox market in Russia, btw. Is that market quite robust then? Is that the market that is giving you the most royalties?

Also @Pitfall Harry as a litmus test, how do you feel about the Nintendo Leisure Suit Larry homebrew game? Please tell me where you stand on that one.

Dude it possibly could be, I have no clue. All I know is that I've been collecting since 98, and have been researching gaming in underprivileged areas since then too. I mean, Konami... ... ... what else can we say?

I would like to apologize for this lapse of judgement. As an American that doesn't even reside in America, I literally have no dog in this game...

lso Also, why the need to bring politics into things? I don't like Trump, but at least he knows his ass from his elbow, Biden has mental issues and has no idea what is going on. Making such statements as you did just further reveals the ignorance you have on such matters.

You know what, go on Ben, go on preaching high and mighty as you are, refusing to even acknowledge the points that others have made. This reminds me of the situation of the Morman colleague of mine who got bent over the working conditions of our old job, citing how it was wrong, yet at the same time he was shagging a prostitute and had a masturbation addiction... You get back to me when you grow up and read what I have written, then we can discuss it further. As said previously, Konami, Microsoft, SNK etc are in on / realize the benefits of the bootleg situation, I'd honestly trust them over ignorant folks as yourself.

Oh and Ben, I made a video and dedicated it to you - you should feel honored. The video helps demonstrate that legit companies were in on the game too.

Hi Ben, I could respond with some snark to your snobbish response, but that would likely lead nowhere, so I'd rather try to make you a bit more informed, as this is likely an area that I am more knowledgeable of than you. I'm not trying to be arrogant when saying that, but I am one of the world's foremost of third and fourth generation unauthorized video games / gaming. I'll address your points one-by-one. No, there was nothing particularly wrong about your sentence aside from the erroneous nature of its contents. Another member of this forum showed me the contents of this set of cartridges, and aside from a few of the titles in the lot, most of these are not dime-a-dozen bootlegs, rather it is just the perception that you hold as someone that does not collect or research these things. That GeGeGe no Kitarou cartridge? I've never seen that before. The Wrecking Crew next to it? I have no idea what region in the world used that sort of shell design, a design that is missing from my 144+ page book on Famiclone cartridge shells and their evolution. The NTDEC Super Mario Bros. 3? Again that's quite a banger. Only Baseball and B-Wings are what would be considered dime-a-dozen junk. Heck, I'd buy a set of games with that composition and wouldn't even care if they didn't play. People aren't buying these bootleg games to play, at least a lot of us aren't. Well that's quite odd, as the majority of Famicom collectors online are collecting bootlegs, aside from the Japanese. Some Americans or Westerners might dip their toes into it by picking up a few games here and there, and they'll take official cartridges, but they don't generally go for collecting huge swaths of games and full sets and all of that stuff, in Famicom format. It's generally just picking up favorites or titles like Lickle (Little Samson), which got stupid expensive in the West. This is a very complex topic and I agree with you on one point, which is that copyright holders will not get the revenue from the copied games. Here's the rub though: copyright holders wouldn't have gotten the revenue anyway, even if licensed games were being sold. We see this situation in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and India in Asia. We also see this situation in South Africa and in Poland, just to name a few regions. Nintendo marketed official games in all of these regions. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and India even got their own official gaming machines (Famicom or NES) released there. Official software was also sold in these regions, and also in places such as Thailand. It did horribly and didn't sell, and Nintendo likely backed away from some of these regions afterwards. Why? Was it because of greedy thieving bootleggers? No! It was because the average person was poor and couldn't afford to purchase such luxuries, unlike us. If we flashforward to today though we will see something very interesting has occurred. Aside from places like Aliexpress, bootlegs just aren't prevalent anymore. Taiwanese, for example, go to normal game shops and purchase legitimate Nintendo Switch games. They buy new entries in their favorite series' such as new Mario games, Castlevanias, Pokemon, etc. Why? Brand loyalty. Since these people grew up with these games, they love the characters and also have a fondness to support the companies that make the games that they love. Why aren't these people buying bootlegs anymore? It's the same reason we had the natural progression of downloading music via Napster to downloading and paying for it, to streaming services, etc. In the end as these markets matured and people then had money, piracy just disappeared too. To contrast things, Microsoft threw tons of money at the Xbox market in Taiwan, even advertising Halo in a music video from one of the popular local bands. It was a much harder sell to convince people to go for such a machine as there was no brand loyalty - no familiar characters or franchises. I heard that in Japan the X-box really didn't do well at all. Sure, they weren't a hotbed for piracy in the 80s and 90s, but my point is that it's a hard sell when there is no brand loyalty, and that can't be built up if people can't afford the products. Microsoft themselves even recognize this. This is the reason they turned a blind eye when their Windows products kept getting copied and bootlegged in China during the 90s and early 2000s. When the time came that people could afford the software and pay for it, they would. And they'd choose something they were familiar with over something new that they weren't used to using. There's nothing wrong with holding a different opinion, but at least try to see the forest instead of the trees. A few more points to wrap things up: 1. There's a ton of Atari homebrew that uses IP that the developers didn't have the rights to use. Unauthorized = garbage, right? Those authors are just vile bootlegging thieves perhaps? 2. Konami and some other companies were selling their PCBs in bootleg shells, likely to tap into the market and develop brand loyalty, as they knew most in those regions couldn't afford to purchase the official copies anyways. So much for your argument about revenues and criminals. 3. Dumping and distributing ROMs is illegal. It is bootlegging. What is your stance on those so-called video game preservationists that were responsible for things such as dumping and releasing the unreleased NES Sim City game? Unauthorized = garbage? Criminals? Lock em up and throw away the key? I don't want to start an argument, but I think having an informed discussion is quite useful. -Dave Edit: Also thought I should mention that I am the author / developer of about eight different Famicom games. Someone did dump and "preserve" a few of them without my permission, and my feelings on that are quite mixed. That being said, the above is written from someone who actually had his product ripped off...mind blown?

Bump! I just added a lot more items, and have a large batch of Famicom / Sega games that will go up sometime this week! Until then, the boxed Ending Man Famiclones and brand new Magic More Famiclone might strike someone's fancy, same with the Bit Corp Creator machines. Sign up to the mailing list for a 10% off coupon, too! Thanks for checking us out.

Actually you are quite wrong on the bolded bits. This is just the mindset of a majority / dominant culture writing the history (i.e. American and Japanese gaming = good, unauthorized = garbage). Fortunately, some people are finally starting to realize that the less dominant and so-called fringe areas of gaming also deserve a voice, and have rich gaming cultures worthy of documentation and preservation. Asia (all regions outside of Japan), Central / Eastern Europe, South America, and even parts of the Middle East / Africa - these games are highly collectable, with prices that reflect the collectability of these games. There are a lot of bootleg games for Famicom worth over $100, a few that hit upwards to and sometimes over four figures, and even for the more common items, we are way beyond the days of $5 a game. $10 minimum for most games, generally somewhere between $10 - $25, with better and rarer games listed above that range. Clone machines, once again quite collectable. Boxed is king here though, starting price for an old boxed (not modern crap) clone machine is gonna be $100... I'm just throwing this out here not to get into an argument or anything, rather to inform. For the outsider, it is easy to assume that these types of items are worthless and not desirable, but that is quite far from the actual truth.

Here we go!

Hi everyone, thanks for the interest, questions, and PMs. I'll respond to everyone in a bit, and I'll also take more pictures, load the games up, etc tomorrow too. Unfortunately I've been under the weather this week, have to work Saturday as well, and have a ton of stuff to finish for an indie gaming convention on July 1, so I've been extremely busy and stressed. So tomorrow I'll take more pictures. I've been living in Taiwan for over a decade, and I found the games here locally. I found another t-cart around 2014, I am guessing these carts would have been manufactured here. Regarding the NTSC versus PAL situation, I assume they would be NTSC, but I'm actually not sure. How would one go about determining this? I'll take abs upload some videos too, tomorrow, with gaming footage. Regarding cash versus trades / partial trades, I primarily only collect odd ball machines (Super A'Can, Game King, Gamate, etc) and Famicom /Famiclone/bootleg stuff anymore, but I have more or less a full set of licensed Famicom games. I know some of you guys have some really massive collections too, so while I suspect that there won't be anything I need, who knows, anything's possible!