Reproductions: What is our community ok with?

[MrPopo]

Translated games that never saw a release here...I appreciate the novelty of it, but we have to lose a game in the process, and there is nothing stopping someone from taking it and making unethical claims which can end up hurting collectors.

That's why when I commissioned Ziggy to do my repros I provided him with original JP copies of the games I wanted translated. Rather than losing a game it just morphed.

[Tanooki]

I concur 100% (and then some) with Westane's approach entirely from top to bottom, you're not alone if you're feeling that way dude. I know I've said I'd pay for a 1:1 copy of Little Samson on here before too, much like the beautiful copy linked days earlier from aliexpress which is nice to see.

I know it's unpopular as well to those who have dollar signs in their eyes, but to anyone else who just wants something tangible, singular, and on their shelf that looks right, you got to do what you got to do, and despite selfish reasons of internet police types it can be for personal use and can be responsibly resold if that day ever comes. I have no appreciation nor will to help maintain the inflated prices of games now arbitrarily boosted by a collaborative effort of flippers on and offline. It is why I basically stopped buying NES/SNES stuff online over 2 years ago.

And believe it or not, you can make a really affordable bootleg of any US (or whatever) region NES or SNES game with just that kazoo writer and the INL carts from infinite nes lives. I got one made of Earthbound along with a solid label by a local that looks like it's right out of 1991 and no one would ever know without a kit to open it up and see the INL board inside and it was done for a little over $20 (not including the cost of the writer which is another $20-30 depending on slots added.) The sticker process is easy too once you have it down and know where to get the supplies and they can be done on a business/higher end quality desk jet no less.

I started buying old games in 1995 and up until 2011-12 it didn't become a money game. Fine I'm lost in that era, so be it, but I don't view them as scalper income, but as games, and since I prefer them on my TV I'll get them somehow. Sell to get, find cheap, trade, or if need be, make a bootleg since I'm not a fan of flash kits (I got gamer ADHD with them as I'll load it up and play nothing longer than 5 minutes until I get bored and sell it.)

The thing is people who lie and call a copy of a game, regardless of the region or if it was translated, a reproduction is a swindling piece of crap in denial in my book. A bootleg is a bootleg. You can point at a puppy and tell me it's a cat, but I know better and you're full of it. Details matter. It's all warez like it or not.

If this site is going to draw lines, they need to be hard ones in the sand. It's not ok to sell seiken densetsu 2 or final fantasy 5 english on SNES, just as much as it wouldn't be right to peddle a bootleg version of Earthbound. You can't pick and choose, then you get into looking like hypocrites. If someone should be allowed to make/peddle US versions of Terranigma or Last Bible 2 on the GBC(it exists) on an english cartridge, then they should also be allowed to do Hagane and Shantae respectively as there is no difference -- all are bootlegs. The only hard line would be as someone said just before, someone unknowingly sells a copy -- it can happen, and exceptions should be made to be fair.

[mjmjr25]

I have no appreciation nor will to help maintain the inflated prices of games now arbitrarily boosted by a collaborative effort of flippers on and offline.

You must have come to this conclusion after you listed your rare SNES stuff ON THIS FORUM at ebay buy now prices.

[Erik_Twice]

Bootlegs of Shantae, EarthBound, etc. are designed to appear like the real thing, and the possibility of those entering the secondary market on a grand scale is a nightmare for collectors and those who value the real thing.

It's inevitable that some bootlegers will try to pass video game reproductions as the real thing as they already do so with any other products. This shouldn't be a knock on reproductions made with ethical use in mind, which ideally should have a mark on the product to be able to tell at a glance that it's not an original copy.

Translated games that never saw a release here...I appreciate the novelty of it, but we have to lose a game in the process, and there is nothing stopping someone from taking it and making unethical claims which can end up hurting collectors.

I don't think it's anymore of a novelty to play translated games than to play any other kind of game on actual hardware.

I, personally, would love to own and plan to own a translated version of the SNES Fire Emblem games and if I could translate them into Spanish that would be even better.

[Ziggy]

Then a forum member here bought one of his repros of Starfox 2 and put it up on eBay claiming it was a real prototype, asking for something like $500. Partly as a result(he was also concerned about cannibalizing games), Ziggy quit making repros.

Not exactly what happened.

At the time, people were asking me to make Star Fox 2 carts for them left and right. We did find out that a forum member listed one of mine on eBay. Actually, two different forum members listed my Star Fox 2 carts on eBay IIRC. But neither was claiming it to be a real prototype, and neither had it up for anything like $500. They simply listed them as "Star Fox 2 SNES cart in working condition," not claiming that it was a prototype, but also not detailing that it was a "repro" (aka: bootleg) cart (most likely because eBay would take it down). They were both auctions (not buy it nows) and the bidding was over $100. I don't know what they sold for, I just know they were over $100 when we found them.

We (the community here) were mostly upset because it wasn't specified as a repro cart, and were concerned about people not in the know thinking it was a real prototype because of the lack of a description. I was personally upset because I was making those carts as requests for members here. I was doing them in my spare time, mostly as a hobby. There were plenty of other people on the forum that were asking for them at the time, those two carts should have been sold on the forum here, for the same price I originally sold them for, if only to pay it forward. Selling it for more than it was bought for, and profiting on my favor, is pretty lame. Although there's plenty of people that would say I shouldn't have made a dime on the cart originally, because I don't own the game and translation patches (and tons of bug fixing in Star Fox 2's case) are hard work and are released for FREE. But that's a whole other can of worms.

But you're right about the cannibalizing part, that's mostly why I quit making such carts. Around that time, I was actually working with Jeffro on making SNES carts from scratch. They'd use all brand new parts, so no games would have to be destroyed to make them. We were also gonna implement things to make them apparent that they're not genuine, since you can't stop someone from putting Earthbound (for example) on the cart if they really wanted to. We stopped working on it for various reasons, but it hardly matters to me now since a bunch of other people have done (mostly) what we were wanting to do. Tanooki mentioned the INL carts, which is almost exactly what we were aiming for. There's a few other people doing similar things right now too.

Bootlegs like the linked Earthbound cart really suck, but at least they're not destroying real games. With all the dev carts and flash carts available today, the whole "donor cart" thing should be a thing of the past. Making bootleg games is one thing, but making bootleg games while destroying real games is so much worse.

[alienjesus]

Whilst we're on the topic of repros that don't destory games, there are quite a few PC Engine CD game repros about now that I've been looking at. What do people thing of those?

It seems the company makes sure they stamp the discs with their logo nowadays after the issues they had with people selling their copies of Sapphire as genuine.

I've been tempted to pick up Dynastic Hero and Bonk 3 for a far mroe reasonable price for usre.

[Tanooki]

I have no appreciation nor will to help maintain the inflated prices of games now arbitrarily boosted by a collaborative effort of flippers on and offline.

You must have come to this conclusion after you listed your rare SNES stuff ON THIS FORUM at ebay buy now prices.

No before that. I'm just not going to sell it for what I think it should be worth so someone can turn around and flip it on ebay. I don't care how bad that sounds, but it's the truth. I did it a few times before elsewhere(easy guess where), learned that lesson that people will say 'oh it will go in my collection' when it means 'oh it will go in my collection of ebay sales' so I quit. I'll just sell them for a little under the going rate so there's no margin for a flipper.

[Ghudda]

My main concern with repros, which may have already been discussed in this thread, is how they're now inflated just because they are a reproduction of a really expensive game. I have a local game store that has sold a Parallel Worlds reproduction for $200, which I can't even fathom. I understand that some reproductions do actually require more resources to produce, but when the supply and demand for a reproduction runs the cost of it up ten fold, it's pretty frustrating.

Whilst we're on the topic of repros that don't destory games, there are quite a few PC Engine CD game repros about now that I've been looking at. What do people thing of those?

It seems the company makes sure they stamp the discs with their logo nowadays after the issues they had with people selling their copies of Sapphire as genuine.

I've been tempted to pick up Dynastic Hero and Bonk 3 for a far mroe reasonable price for usre.

PCE Repros are great, especially when companies ensure the use of quality CD's and print nice labels, packaging, etc. The cost of some of those PCE repros though really kills it for me though. The PCEWorks sets are pretty insanely priced. I admire the work they put into it, but I really don't see the 119 EUR price tag justified here. I really do like repro disc based stuff, like Bleemcast, for example.

[marurun]

Be careful with those PCE repros from PCEWorks, or whomever. A couple of his releases were community-translated and he knocked them off. Basically, the community produced a translation (in the case of the Mega Man port, a perfect NES knock-off on the PCE) and he sells it without having ever asked the translators or programmer if they were willing to have their work distributed commercially. And lets be honest, a CD repro is as simple as burning a CD. No chip-swapping or ROM programming or whatever. The community views this guy as extremely dishonest due to this behavior. He's not helping folks out in the least. He's profiting off a community that explicitly frowns on that kind of behavior.

[Ziggy]

Be careful with those PCE repros from PCEWorks, or whomever. A couple of his releases were community-translated and he knocked them off. Basically, the community produced a translation (in the case of the Mega Man port, a perfect NES knock-off on the PCE) and he sells it without having ever asked the translators or programmer if they were willing to have their work distributed commercially. And lets be honest, a CD repro is as simple as burning a CD. No chip-swapping or ROM programming or whatever. The community views this guy as extremely dishonest due to this behavior. He's not helping folks out in the least. He's profiting off a community that explicitly frowns on that kind of behavior.

To be fair, the same can be said about repro carts (as I hinted above). But yeah, burning a CD isn't an extremely hard task... But IF I were to buy a repro CD game, I would never buy a burned disc. It would have to be a pressed disc or nothing. I can burn and label a CD myself (who can't?).