They are are. there's 2 sellers on Yahoo Auctions selling those Chinese carts that come with paper cases. They are charging around 2000 yen each game as well.
Yeah thats the thing thats been putting me off till now. Easiest way around something like that is a prepaid credit card. Us Aussies can grab them pretty easily from post offices, not to sure what the options are for other countries. Does seem a shae though as im sure paypal would really benifit the aliexpress sellers no end.
Oh yea? Didn't think/know of that, that is a great idea. Is it a use once thing or be able to top it up?
one use thing you can use it for 1year or till all the money is gone from the card it does cost $5.95 for the card http://auspost.com.au/finance-insurance/australia-post-visa-prepaid-cards.html
yeah those are the things. life saver if you want to buy off a site and you arnt sure about how legit it is.
Well, my 10 repro Mega Drive games arrived yesterday. They all work, all have the correct labels and are all the correct games that I ordered. Free UPS shipping that took 5 days to reach me from the order being made. All is great. Well, almost all. Being order made fake shit from China I wasn't expecting high quality but I did expect cartridges that wouldn't fall apart or break. Yes, the actual Mega Drive cartridges while molded very well are unfortunately made of the cheapest plastic I have ever seen. This stuff is so shit that I can break parts off the cartridge case with no effort at all. I mean, they really are poor. But I don't care because I bought a set of 10 Japanese Mega Drive games complete with cases for only 1000 yen. My plan is to open up all the carts, throw away all the shitty sports games that are in them then clean off the stickers. Insert the fake Chinese games, print off some high quality cartridge labels and print out high quality cases inserts. End result, pretty legit looking games (minus manuals) which would sell for about 90'000 yen if they were original. Total price paid by me, 2130 yen. RESULT!!
I have also bought a bunch of stuff from AliExpress, video game stuff, clothes, watches, etc.. Never had an issue with shipping or an item not being what I ordered. The escrow system they use also works well and serves to protect seller and buyer alike.
Just make sure you have some original cartridges to put the Chinese PCB boards in to because the ones they use really are awful. They don't even fit in to the Mega Drive well. I'm still going to give the seller a good feedback because all I really wanted was the PCB with game on and that's what I got I'm happy with what I bought plus it's sort of like making your own repro with the PCB already supplied
That's good to know especially since i got all those jpn games recently. What sort of paper to use for the labels/case insert?
I'm using Epson Super Fine matt paper. You don't really want to be using thick paper for the covers but you also need quality paper that won't just absorb the ink like a tissue. For the labels I'm using a strong high dpi label printing paper by Kokuyo. This stuff looks great on games. You can see in the picture two of the ten carts I got. Notice the shitty print on them and that one of them is broken? I did that to the cartridge with one hand and almost no force. They really are shit. Here's my official Mega Drive carts all with their labels removed. They're still wet in this picture but nice and smooth even if they don't look it. I'm making all the covers and cart stickers in Photo Shop. Since I want nice quality I'm having to build most of the covers due to there being no quality scans. The Cotton one here is made of 3 different images. The cartridge stickers are all going to be as close to the originals as possible. Again, all built due to the lack of high quality scans on the net. Uploaded with ImageShack.us
The finished product. Now that the PCB is in a real Mega Drive case it actually fits in to the Mega Drive now without having to jiggle it about and force it in. I think the real game has the title in katakana along the top of the cart but I've missed that out on mine. Also, the real game comes on one of those funky Sunsoft squarish MD cartridges. Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Well, very nice work! I was going to package up all those games i got from Japan recently. Will keep 10 aside (plenty left). Are these carts glob tops or eproms?
They are glob tops. They seem to be the norm now. It's like a very tinny PCB stuck on to some plastic holder which will allow it to fit in to the cartridge case. Every Chinese fake I've had in the last few years has been like this. It may depend on which store you are ordering from and what service they use for shipping.
Well the proof is in the pudding as they say. I think @Yakumo may have convinced a few people with his results apart from me. I think ill be hitting Aliexpress up in a couple of days to get a few games myself. Now where did i put that hacked rockn roll racing rom..?
I'm wondering if the company that made these PCBs can do requests? There's a few Homebrew and other games I'd like on dedicated carts.
Perhaps I can chime in. For Chinese websites like these, there is generally a higher level of care for transactions. Because if a complaint is filed against you, it hurts you (Your account standing) way more than say 'eBay' would. It also doesn't help that the Chinese government knows who you are, so if your doing something illegal (especially to foreigners) they can always get all your personal information at any time. By that same token, there are also an equal amount of people who abuse the system too. Perhaps not blatantly obviously, like failure to ship anything, but things like mis-representing products are fairly common. For example, listing a product and showing a pristine stock image of it, only to receive a used item later. Or an item of vastly poorer quality. Essentially anything that could be argued or debated on. If they can cut corners to save money, they'll do it.
