Any other well known fakes besides Sapphire and Tobias?

[johnnykonami]

Got me thinking that I should watch out when buying sealed games.  I figure most aren't high profile/value enough to bother doing this with.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

Besides Tobias's stuff, I know of no other bootleg CDs.  There's several different bootleg hueys from back in the day, but they're generally pretty easy to spot (wrong shape and/or changed company names on artwork).

[PukeSter]

Space Fantasy Zone was unreleased, but some of the copies are actually real. Most of them are booties though.

[CrackTiger]

We recently saw a repro Duo Ys I & II on eBay and in the past someone from an Asian country was selling a unique looking Drac X bootleg.

Many resellers are now selling loose Turbo discs with repro packaging and passing it off as original.

[johnnykonami]

Hmm, any giveaways with the repro packaging?

[Nazi NecroPhile]

We recently saw a repro Duo Ys I & II on eBay and in the past someone from an Asian country was selling a unique looking Drac X bootleg.

Weren't both of those CDRs?

Many resellers are now selling loose Turbo discs with repro packaging and passing it off as original.

Yarr, there's plenty of that.  It's not something that can be easily spotted in the usually crappy ebay pics, but it should be obvious when seen in person.

[CrackTiger]

We recently saw a repro Duo Ys I & II on eBay and in the past someone from an Asian country was selling a unique looking Drac X bootleg.

Weren't both of those CDRs?

Many resellers are now selling loose Turbo discs with repro packaging and passing it off as original.

Yarr, there's plenty of that.  It's not something that can be easily spotted in the usually crappy ebay pics, but it should be obvious when seen in person.

I don't remember if the forum member who knowingly ordered a Drac X bpotleg posted what he got. But copies like that Ys Duo version are still made to trick buyers and whether it's pressed or burned, it's still a fake you're stuck with.


After recently buying a sealed copy of Sapphire, I double checked Tobias' second version bootleg and found that it and SFZ and Rockman don't bother with a peel away strip.

[SignOfZeta]

Space Fantasy Zone was unreleased, but some of the copies are actually real. Most of them are booties though.

That makes no sense. It either came out or it didn't. *




* it didn't.

[CrackTiger]

A group of collectors bought a cdr copy of SFZ from someone in Japan who was supposed to have worked on the game. They made a pact to never let the game ever fall into the hands of game players and only kept one cdr copy of the copy for each of themselves. One of them betrayed the rest and destroyed the investment value of the copy of a copy. The betrayed proto hoarders serious hold a grudge to this day.

I was one of the few early on who got a copy direct from the betrayer, so mine is more valuable than anything beyond third generation copies of the dev team member's copy. Someone with a third gen copy eventually shared it around and years after everyone had played it, Tobias decided to make cdr copies of his own with "fancy" packaging and passed them off as yet more original "long lost" copies, like his "second run" Sapphires or the actually legit lost-to-a-library copies of Circus Lido. He made thousands of dollars selling a steady stream of them over Yahoo Japan Auctions until he made them available direct from his latest rebranded site/identity, as "25th Anniversary Editions", for the low price of $200 each. He never once made mention that they or Rockman are actually cdr discs.

[Psycho Punch]

A group of collectors bought a cdr copy of SFZ from someone in Japan who was supposed to have worked on the game. They made a pact to never let the game ever fall into the hands of game players and only kept one cdr copy of the copy for each of themselves. One of them betrayed the rest and destroyed the investment value of the copy of a copy. The betrayed proto hoarders serious hold a grudge to this day.

I was one of the few early on who got a copy direct from the betrayer, so mine is more valuable than anything beyond third generation copies of the dev team member's copy. Someone with a third gen copy eventually shared it around and years after everyone had played it, Tobias decided to make cdr copies of his own with "fancy" packaging and passed them off as yet more original "long lost" copies, like his "second run" Sapphires or the actually legit lost-to-a-library copies of Circus Lido. He made thousands of dollars selling a steady stream of them over Yahoo Japan Auctions until he made them available direct from his latest rebranded site/identity, as "25th Anniversary Editions", for the low price of $200 each. He never once made mention that they or Rockman are actually cdr discs.

Only thing that is greater than that, retardness-wise, is the RE 1.5 beta drama that is like decades old (and still ongoing lol). I guess I'll never understand the hoarder portion of the beta collector community.

[esteban]

I do not think Tobias ever used any scans from old PCE magazines to prop up the legitimacy of the Space Fantasy Zone bootlegs he was selling, but Space Fantasy Zone was advertised (page 5, lower-right corner):

https://archives.tg-16.com/GEKKAN/1992-12/page_0004.jpg

https://archives.tg-16.com/GEKKAN/1992-12/page_0005.jpg

[CrackTiger]

Since SFZ was advetrised next to Monster Maker, I used MM's jewel case design as the basis for my SFZ case.

[geise]

A group of collectors bought a cdr copy of SFZ from someone in Japan who was supposed to have worked on the game. They made a pact to never let the game ever fall into the hands of game players and only kept one cdr copy of the copy for each of themselves. One of them betrayed the rest and destroyed the investment value of the copy of a copy. The betrayed proto hoarders serious hold a grudge to this day.

I was one of the few early on who got a copy direct from the betrayer, so mine is more valuable than anything beyond third generation copies of the dev team member's copy. Someone with a third gen copy eventually shared it around and years after everyone had played it, Tobias decided to make cdr copies of his own with "fancy" packaging and passed them off as yet more original "long lost" copies, like his "second run" Sapphires or the actually legit lost-to-a-library copies of Circus Lido. He made thousands of dollars selling a steady stream of them over Yahoo Japan Auctions until he made them available direct from his latest rebranded site/identity, as "25th Anniversary Editions", for the low price of $200 each. He never once made mention that they or Rockman are actually cdr discs.

Man, people are fucking stupid.

[IvanBeavkov]

A group of collectors bought a cdr copy of SFZ from someone in Japan who was supposed to have worked on the game. They made a pact to never let the game ever fall into the hands of game players and only kept one cdr copy of the copy for each of themselves. One of them betrayed the rest and destroyed the investment value of the copy of a copy. The betrayed proto hoarders serious hold a grudge to this day.

I was one of the few early on who got a copy direct from the betrayer, so mine is more valuable than anything beyond third generation copies of the dev team member's copy. Someone with a third gen copy eventually shared it around and years after everyone had played it, Tobias decided to make cdr copies of his own with "fancy" packaging and passed them off as yet more original "long lost" copies, like his "second run" Sapphires or the actually legit lost-to-a-library copies of Circus Lido. He made thousands of dollars selling a steady stream of them over Yahoo Japan Auctions until he made them available direct from his latest rebranded site/identity, as "25th Anniversary Editions", for the low price of $200 each. He never once made mention that they or Rockman are actually cdr discs.

Only thing that is greater than that, retardness-wise, is the RE 1.5 beta drama that is like decades old (and still ongoing lol). I guess I'll never understand the hoarder portion of the beta collector community.

I just can't understand the mindset of people who buy beta/unreleased games and don't share them either. That is some "I got something you can never have!" elitist BS right there. You would think that being the hero who found and saved a game from being lost forever would be some incentive. I understand they are sometimes shelling out a lot of money for them but, there must be some kind of ethical way to reimburse/support the cost of the purchase. Even it the game got released there would still be some value in having the proto rom or disc anyway, just for the uniqueness of the physical item. The value of a painting does not go down because I can buy a $10 reprint.

In my magical fantasy land where I have millions of dollars. I would buy as many of these as I could and once I had them release them all just to enjoy their tears. Oh, and I would make a video about it just to rub in in that much more.

[EmperorIng]

You don't understand the mindset of some hardcore collectors, especially of unreleased/rare games in Japan. From what I've read, it takes someone on the outside years to get inside those circles, and if they have one whiff of someone "betraying" their trust you are out, done-zo.

It's more a case of being part of a club, or niche group, that prevents wider sharing. In these cases, the things that do get out are precious indeed. Getting ultra angry at things is not worth it though; just enjoy what trickles out because these are long, slow affairs (one person confided in releasing roms at a process that takes years in order to remain undetected).

[ClodBusted]

There is a group of X68000 fans at NFGworld that actually did/does group buys of rare games and release them to the public for everybody to enjoy, if I understood the situation right.

[IvanBeavkov]

You don't understand the mindset of some hardcore collectors, especially of unreleased/rare games in Japan. From what I've read, it takes someone on the outside years to get inside those circles, and if they have one whiff of someone "betraying" their trust you are out, done-zo.

It's more a case of being part of a club, or niche group, that prevents wider sharing. In these cases, the things that do get out are precious indeed. Getting ultra angry at things is not worth it though; just enjoy what trickles out because these are long, slow affairs (one person confided in releasing roms at a process that takes years in order to remain undetected).

That is crazy, do they think they are some sort of video game Illuminati? I just can't comprehend that.

[esteban]

I don't know if folks should tell Ivan about the PCE/TG-16 games that are imprisoned in private collections.

Dare we list them?

[IvanBeavkov]

I don't know if folks should tell Ivan about the PCE/TG-16 games that are imprisoned in private collections.

Dare we list them?

Do you want to make a grown man cry? Because that may happen... or irrational rage, it could go either way.

[Samuray]

Is is very difficult to make repro HuCards? I wonder why....there are loads of bootleg GBA and SNES and Mega Drive carts....why no Hueys?

I would have expected to see a bootleg "Magical Chase" by now, be it JP or US reguon, but so far, I haven't. Too small a market?

[SignOfZeta]

It would be pretty hard to make an authentic looking fake HuCARD. "Player's copies", sure, but something that could fool the experts would be very tough.

[Samuray]

It would be pretty hard to make an authentic looking fake HuCARD. "Player's copies", sure, but something that could fool the experts would be very tough.

Okay, sure, but why no "player's copies" then? There are boatloads of cheap Chinese bootlegs of Mega Drive shmups where the carts even feel different than the real ones....those wouldn't even have fooled my mom. Still, they exist.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

Unlike other systems, hueys aren't standard eeproms soldered to a pcb, so it's not a simple task to repurpose some common game into teh rarez.  Even if you could easily swap the eeprom, you'd still have one hell of a time disassembling/reassembling the huey and replacing the label.  It'd be easier to make all new hueys, but the investment costs would be in the tens of thousands.

As for 'players copies' that work but don't look original, they exist.  Of recent times, there's chueys; back in the day, there were several different styles of professionally made boots.

[Samuray]

Unlike other systems, hueys aren't standard eeproms soldered to a pcb, so it's not a simple task to repurpose some common game into teh rarez.  Even if you could easily swap the eeprom, you'd still have one hell of a time disassembling/reassembling the huey and replacing the label.  It'd be easier to make all new hueys, but the investment costs would be in the tens of thousands.

I see. Although it seems those Chinese Mega Drive games are made of all new components, but...maybe not. Or they are easy to copy, hardware-wise.
It's really interesting that Hueys are so much more complicated.

As for 'players copies' that work but don't look original, they exist.  Of recent times, there's chueys;

And that's a term really tough to google.
CHueys....some kind of flash thingy, I suppose? Without any kind of label print on them?

back in the day, there were several different styles of professionally made boots.

There were? But where are they now? Did they self-destruct due to low quality?
Or were there so few that they are all simply gone with the wind by now?

[CrackTiger]

I think that if someone scanned in a SFII'-style HuCard bump cover and 3D printed replicas and stuck them on those French HuCards that you put your own rom chips on... That it woukd look convincing enough to too many collectards. Especially if you repro'd a Magical Chase manual and maybe even a box to match.

But given the ignorant, yet MIB-obsessed nature of collectards, the cheapest and easiest and fastest way to get rich off of the naive would be to just pack repro MC boxes with any old game and shrink wrap them. VGA is so incompetent that you could get them to grade them 95+ and add a plastic layer of subterfuge.



Samuray: the pirate HuCards haven't gone anywhere. You can usually find them on eBay and they've been discussed in many threads.

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?action=search2


Videogameden has a nice section coverinv many of them.

[BigusSchmuck]

You don't understand the mindset of some hardcore collectors, especially of unreleased/rare games in Japan. From what I've read, it takes someone on the outside years to get inside those circles, and if they have one whiff of someone "betraying" their trust you are out, done-zo.

It's more a case of being part of a club, or niche group, that prevents wider sharing. In these cases, the things that do get out are precious indeed. Getting ultra angry at things is not worth it though; just enjoy what trickles out because these are long, slow affairs (one person confided in releasing roms at a process that takes years in order to remain undetected).

Yeah just talk to the guy who supposedly had a prototype of the PCE/turbo version of Marble Madness. Need I say more?

[esteban]

I'll be nice:

http://www.videogameden.com/article.htm?list?hu_sp

(Interesting list of "Special HuCARDs" )

[Samuray]

Thanks fellows, I'll take a look at that!

I'm still surprised though there aren't any faux "Magical Chases" flying around, whether with an actual bootleg of the game inside or an old potato chip.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

There are bootie hueys of Magical Chase.  Here's mine:

[johnnykonami]

There are bootie hueys of Magical Chase.  Here's mine:

At least it's obvious when you see it.  I bet even one of those is pricey nowadays, right?

[Opethian]

free with a purchase of chopsado

[Nazi NecroPhile]

At least it's obvious when you see it.  I bet even one of those is pricey nowadays, right?

They're pricey compared to a flashcart that can play any game and not just the one, sure.  I don't think the boards are still available, but when they were they were $10 or $15 each plus the cost of the eeprom and someone's time to flash it, mount it, and make a nice sticker.

[Samuray]

I love how it's clearly a reproduction and doesn't try to pass itself off as real!
If I ever came across one of those, I think I would maybe even consider getting it, just to tide me over till the day I can get the real one.

They're pricey compared to a flashcart that can play any game and not just the one, sure.  I don't think the boards are still available, but when they were they were $10 or $15 each plus the cost of the eeprom and someone's time to flash it, mount it, and make a nice sticker.

Asking who on here could do that would probably be an unpopular question, I suppose?

Anyway, thanks for the picture!

[Nazi NecroPhile]

It's no secret.  Chops made it (hence the name "chuey"), and he made some Coryoons too.  He didn't design or make the pcb, though.  Those came from some euro dude.

[TurboXray]

http://www.retrogamer.ca/hardware/dbcard-from-db-electronics-promotes-homebrew-on-turbografx-16-pc-engine/