PIRATED SNES CARTS

[Alpinex2]

Was at the flea market yesterday and ran into some super nintendo games at a "Dealers Booth" And I saw a few games and then saw the prices and was like wtf. Earthbound 24.95, Chrono Trigger 24.95, and Final Fantasy 3 14.95. Then after checking them out for a sec the label was a hardcore fake. The label was faded looked like printer paper. Are fake cartridges common?

[emwearz]

In China they are!

They could have been real with home printed labels to replace worn out ones... I doubt it though. I never see them in the wild, on eBay from time to time I do.

[Ziggy]

Maybe you could request to open one of the carts up? Pirated carts will for sure use EPROMs and not mask ROMs.

[weasels]

just out of curiosity, will these games work?

[Dylan]

just out of curiosity, will these games work?

Depends on what you mean by "work". I believe that pirated Earthbound carts freeze right before the final boss battle, and then delete all your saves when you reset the game. If there was any game that'd be programmed like that, it'd be Earthbound.

[weasels]

just out of curiosity, will these games work?

Depends on what you mean by "work". I believe that pirated Earthbound carts freeze right before the final boss battle, and then delete all your saves when you reset the game. If there was any game that'd be programmed like that, it'd be Earthbound.

well that answers my question! thanks.

[Dylan]

No problem. I actually looked into pirated carts myself because of the prices, but after hearing about Earthbound I decided to drop that notion.

[Hobie-wan]

If they had just been reprinted front labels, you can check the back label if its there. Real Nintendo carts will have a 2 letter/digit code stamped into the back cart label for NES/SNES/N64 and GB/GBC/GBA carts will be stamped on the front.

[Ack]

Hell, I've got two pirated GBA carts that say "Nintondo" on the back. There might be some obvious flaws like that somewhere on them.

[Erik_Twice]

Depends on what you mean by "work". I believe that pirated Earthbound carts freeze right before the final boss battle, and then delete all your saves when you reset the game. If there was any game that'd be programmed like that, it'd be Earthbound.

Nah, it checks several times during the game, that's only one of them albeit the most famous.