A question to pirate famicom collectors

Hi! I'm new here and I've got a question for those who consider colecting pirate famicom carts.

You probably know about Mortal Kombat II Special cart. (This one http://www.famicomworld.com/Pirated/Mortal_Kombat_Two_PIR.htm)

Also there are two hacks of this game - the first one - Mortal Kombat III Special 28 peoples, which has "II" on a title screen hacked into "III", three background stages from MK1 added and characters portraits doubled. And the second one - Mortal Kombat 3 Special 56 peoples with different title screen and quadrupled character portraits. These two hacks are pretty common and can be found easily. But how common is the original game? I'm asking this because it seems that all the newer produced bootleg carts are the hacked versions. Is the original one rare? Any chances to find one in a good condition at a reasonable price?

 

Looks like they used sprites from the gameboy MK2...

 

They definately did. They didnt even do a good job of adding color to them:lol:

 

There are several MK pirates:

Mortal Kombat II: Midway
Mortal Kombat II: Special
Mortal Kombat II: Turbo
Mortal Kombat III: Extra 60
Mortal Kombat III: Midway
Mortal Kombat III: Special
Mortal Kombat 3: Special 56 Pepoles
Mortal Kombat III: Turbo
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat 5
Mortal Kombat V: Turbo 30
Mortal Kombat 6
Mortal Kombat Trilogy

From everything I've read and seen, I think MKII: Midway is the Famicom original. But, I could be wrong about that. MKII-III are mostly hacks of the original, while 4-6 and Trilogy are mostly unique.

 

JRC, well since I kinda interested in fami pirates I know about the most of pirate MK's I'll try to explain:

First, we have three games made by J.Y. (the guys who also converted snes aladdin and super mario world to fami)

1) Mortal Kombat II: Midway and its hacks (Mortal Kombat II: Turbo, Mortal Kombat III: Midway, Mortal Kombat III: Turbo) - this is the conversion of snes Mortal Kombat 1, and not a bad one. It is probably the first game using J.Y.'s fighting engine.

2) Mortal Kombat II: Special - the one I'm searching for (hacks are Mortal Kombat III: Special and Mortal Kombat 3: Special 56 Pepoles) - it is the converion of Mortal Kombat II, and in my opinion is one of the best pirate fami games.

3) Mortal Kombat 4 - also one from J.Y., this one is the MK3 conversion, and is a little inferior to previous J.Y. games. Also it uses very strange soundtrack with kinda familliar tunes, I just can't remember where they are taken from. There is one strange hack of this game which cuts the half of caracters from tha game (I mean real characters not their portraits)

All of the above games use the same J.Y. engine which is also used in some other pirated games (ex. Kart Fighters and Garou Densetsu Special)

4) Mortal Kombat V: Turbo 30 - this is Mortal Kombat 1 conversion from YOKO. Not the worst one, but worse than any of the J.Y.'s games.

5) Mortal Kombat 6 - this is actually YuYu Hakusho hack with MK title screen so not a mortal kombat game

6) Mortal Kombat Trilogy - the conversion of MK3 with trilogy title screen. This is the most ugly and unplayable pirate fighting game I've seen.

7) Mortal Kombat 3 (hack Mortal Kombat III: Extra 60) - this one is from Super Game (the guys who converted some sega genesis games to fami). It's a strange hybrid game - characters from MK2, backgrounds from both MK2 and MK3, and sountrack is from Mk3.

So, not counting YuYu game, we get SIX different pirate original MK games and their numerous hacks.

 

Most of these pirate fighters are too hard to distinguish, but it seems you've been able to map a lot of for MK games. As for Mortal Kombat II Special, the one you see on my site came from S. America, Brazil or Argentina. I've found more MK pirates in S. American than in Taiwan or Hong Kong, where, presumably, they were developed and manufactured -- at least originally, knowing that Industria Argentina reproduced many pirates.

 

industria argentina just means made in Argentina. parts minus the shells are imported and everything is assembled in Argentina. it's cheaper that way. still - the older games - the one's that tend to be more interesting, where brought over as carts back in the day (before glob tops and all that stuff)

 

I'll I know is it was a popular game I didn't know it had been hacked.

Thanks for the interesting infor Orchid,

My friends use to play that game I never did. I kinda thought it was a weird game, Oh well each to his own! OH:

I guess if I need to know anything about the above game I'll call the expert Orchid. You know away more than I do thats for sure!

Thanks!

 

Good to know; It didn't occur to me. I often get the same flimsy, tan carts with the same "Industria Argentina" on the back. I've also gotten a lot of MK carts with "Nikita" on them, which seem to be good but cheaply made, some with wood pieces glued inside. Not sure if that's a company thing, or something some individual gamer did.

I'm still suprised by how much easier it is to find MK's in S. America, certainly as single-game carts. I've come across JY Company multicarts with MK in Taiwan, though. My collection's still missing a few single-game MK carts.

If Mortal Kombat II: Special is by JY Company, do you know the code?

 

I have a green famicom multi cart that has a Mortal Kombat 3 game which plays the superman music at the title screen with each character multiplied several times on the selection screen. Which version is that?

 

JRC, Mortal Kombat II Special's code is JY-029

Gamemaster14XIV, that's the JY's Mortal Kombat 4... I always wondered where are the other tunes in this game from))

 

Ah...someone's been trying to sell me JY-029:

 

ME WANTS

So... are there any ways to buy one without actually visiting South America or China? Any online shop selling pirate fami cartridges? Since it is 2008 now I don't think that it is illegal :nod:

Also, any way to learn the year the game was created? Just curious.

 

I bet devilredeemed, who posted above, can find it. He's found some great carts for me in the past. Or, track down others who live in these places -- Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Taiwan, Hong Kong.

(I hope my buddy still has this JY-029; I haven't talked with him in two months. Should've just bought it back then.)

 

I would like to get a copy of JY-029 too. Hook a gamer up?

 

I might be able to give you a hand guys, pirate Famicom games were pretty easy to find back in the time down here. Not so easy now, but still good chances of finding them.
I used to have tons back then, gonna see if I can find them.
Anyway they are by far much easier to find than pirate Super Famicom games, so if anyone's interested just PM.

 

Uruguay and Argentina are pretty much the best places for pirate famicom stuff in south america by far, Urugay has the edge over us in general for quantity of retro gaming stuff though.

 

I have a famicom cart containing Mortal Kombat II. It is a multicart. Is it use to anybody?

 

Don't forget Paraguay, there you can get tons of pirate Famicom and Super Famicom games. As well as some pirate N64 games (though not hacked roms for the N64, just cheaply cloned games).

In Paraguay I bought my DKC 2 "Supreme Edition" :lol:
Which consisted on a hacked rom of DKC 2 where you got all of the levels available and playable, excluding the secret ones. And of course you couldn't save the game lol.