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How to Spot FAKE Nintendo Games (Video)


Metal Jesus

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Kelsey owns two retro gaming stores in the Seattle area and deals with counterfeit, fake and reproduction Nintendo games all the time. In this video she gives you some of her best tips and tricks for determining if a Nintendo game cartridge is real...or FAKE! This video is a must watch for any serious Nintendo game collector!

 

 

What other systems do you often see or hear about fakes? Are Atari 2600 fakes even a thing?

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I'm not all the way through yet I would just like to point out that many people including myself upgrade old cartridges w/those battery holders shown in the snes cart. That is just so the average customer who can't solder can replace the batteries on their own in the future. I wouldn't even consider that battery holder as a sign of a fake personally.

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While I'd agree anyone telling you you can't open a game because it will decrease the value is a little fishy, some games like Tengen NES games have one of the screws hidden behind the warning label on the back. You have to poke a hole in the label to get the screw, in theory that could lower the value.

 

For NES you can't just bring a gamebit and tri wing (unless a tri wing works on flathead screw, don't think it does) because some NES games did use small flat head screws--so maybe that is not correct for some NES games like Metal Storm, but it is for others.

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For NES you can't just bring a gamebit and tri wing (unless a tri wing works on flathead screw, don't think it does) because some NES games did use small flat head screws--so maybe that is not correct for some NES games like Metal Storm, but it is for others.

 

For the early games they used regular screws. I do not believe there is any game that would be faked from that era.

 

edit: I would not consider a flat screw as faked though, because people swap backs out, and may prefer a flat head over security and such.

Edited by icemanxp300
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For the early games they used regular screws. I do not believe there is any game that would be faked from that era.

 

Well...on Ali Express I've seen repros of Bayou Billy, 3-D Worldrunner, even plain ol' SMB1. Not that these are flat head or not originally, I have no idea without looking at them, but just saying some things get repro'ed that you'd never think was necessary.

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Well...on Ali Express I've seen repros of Bayou Billy, 3-D Worldrunner, even plain ol' SMB1. Not that these are flat head or not originally, I have no idea without looking at them, but just saying some things get repro'ed that you'd never think was necessary.

 

LOL who in the hell would buy those games fake. Unreal lol. Then again for those games, the shells and labels should be dead give aways anyhow. Nobody using real donors would fake those games.

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I'm not all the way through yet I would just like to point out that many people including myself upgrade old cartridges w/those battery holders shown in the snes cart.

 

Good to know! And it just illustrates how difficult it is sometimes for stores to identify a real or fake cart...they need to look at several things!

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Man, I've been burned with Nintondos even back in the early 2000s. That's what the fake GBA cartridges say on the back... Nintondo, with an extra "o." For some reason the Game Boy Advance was a big target for counterfeiting, possibly because of the popularity of Pokemon and the Super Mario Advance games.

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Oh man, I remember when I pointed out your copy of Doom II for the GBA was a reproduction. I felt really bad for you, and I sure know how it feels since I got duped by a fake copy of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap that I picked up from a local game store a couple years ago. Luckily for me I noticed some tells on the label half an hour later when I was trying out the game over lunch and was able to return the game to the store for a refund. They were totally cool about the whole situation and really apologetic for letting the fake slip through and wind up on their shelves.

 

I've also gotten duped by a fake Mario Kart DS on eBay, which was sold by a US seller with 100% positive feedback and thousands of sales. It was sold as new/sealed and it sure looked genuine from the outside. The case and artwork looked identical to the real thing, the shrink wrapping was spot on to the wrapping that Nintendo uses, and it really wasn't until I opened the game to play it that there was any clear indication that it was a fake. The pages in the manual were slightly blurry and overly glossy, the cartridge label was blurry and miscut, the font of the engraving on the back of the cartridge was off, and the cartridge itself was about a millimeter too wide to easily fit in a DS system. I really had to force it to get it in the cartridge slot, and getting it back out was no easy task.

 

After that experience I've never bought a sealed DS game on eBay again, unless it was one of those really obscure and dirt cheap games that wouldn't be worth the trouble faking. Any DS collectors looking for sealed games though should definitely be wary of buying popular titles on eBay. Sometimes it really can be almost impossible to tell if your game is a fake until you open it, such as in the case of the Mario Kart DS copy that I got duped by.

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Fakes are the entire reason I stopped collecting sealed and why I stopped collecting rare games. It is not worth it. Fakes are the sole reason I started making reproductions of rare games. At least that way I was putting marked games out there. I know people frown on it but fact is people are going to buy them from someone and that someone likely will not mark them.

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One time I remember some noob coming on #rgvc bragging about how he bought a "rare" unreleased protoype of Earthbound Zero and even provided the store's link. He actually paid $50 for a repo cart with a translated ROM of Mother thinking it was real, so yeah...

 

I can understand repo carts are the only way most people can play protos, translations and other rare games on real hardware, but they need to be marked as such so they would never be confused as real carts. Honestly IMHO the money could be better spent on a EverDrive cart instead.

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Good video, maybe put an annotation at the end there. Saturn discs themselves cannot be faked. As the security ring was pressed in at the factory. No one has been able to replicate it. A burned saturn game won't boot on a stock system without aid.

 

Thank you for this- since I do intend to have a Saturn at some point, it's good to know I shouldn't be too worried about buying very expensive fake games.

 

Also, these last couple posts remind me- I should look into prices for my sealed Minish Cap again. I always half-planned on selling it, buying a used copy and pocketing the difference, but I keep forgetting I even have it.

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Great video. Given this topic is a lot of anecdotal and as you go learning it would probably really benefit from a group discussion style video at some point. It's really refreshing to see something that's not a "let's play" or 'stuff I found' video. I don't say that to be critical, I enjoy your videos, but it's especially cool to see something like this.

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Regarding Saturn bootlegs:

I have heard from a couple friends that there are Saturn bootlegs out there. It sounds insane though.... a spliced disc. Basically a place would cut the security ring from the platter of a different game (something super common, cheap, or unwanted, like sports games), and then use that security ring in the manufacture of a new bootleg press.

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Regarding Saturn bootlegs:

I have heard from a couple friends that there are Saturn bootlegs out there. It sounds insane though.... a spliced disc. Basically a place would cut the security ring from the platter of a different game (something super common, cheap, or unwanted, like sports games), and then use that security ring in the manufacture of a new bootleg press.

 

Don't think their is any bootlegs that run without modding the Saturn

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Regarding Saturn bootlegs:

I have heard from a couple friends that there are Saturn bootlegs out there. It sounds insane though.... a spliced disc. Basically a place would cut the security ring from the platter of a different game (something super common, cheap, or unwanted, like sports games), and then use that security ring in the manufacture of a new bootleg press.

 

I've heard this 2nd hand account of a 2nd hand account before, however, I've never seen or heard of an actual example of someone finding one. So my statement stands, you won't find saturn bootlegs floating around. Not only is there a security sector on the outside of the cd, but on the inner portion as well.

 

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/saturn-copy-protection-and-cdrs-the-conclusive-end.50295/

Edited by keepdreamin
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Pretty sure their is tons of Sega Saturn Bootleg's out there due to Modded Consoles

Don't believe anyone created a Playable Saturn Disc outside of Sega for Non Modded System's

 

 

Also lately their been a lot of new knowledge learnt on the Saturn lately from VCD hacks

 

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/07/after-20-years-a-new-hack-gets-around-the-sega-saturns-copy-protection/?comments=1

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