Guide to making reproduction cartridge games

Recently with the price of some games being really silly I’ve been making repoduction versions. I’ve also been making repro games for titles that never got a Japanese release such as Calibur 50.

Below is my guide on how to make reproduction Mega Drive games. Note, these are not intended to be sold as original fakes. They are intended to be for my personal collection.

Stuff you will need
Printing paper. - For the covers I like to use Epson Super Fine grade paper. It’s got a nice thickness to it and is good enough for high quality prints .

Sticker labels - I use a gloss super fine sticker sheet that I buy from the 100 yen store (3 A4 size sheets per pack). These are very powerful so you don’t want to make a mistake when applying them. On the plus side they’ll never peel off either.


Glue remover – I use a product called De-Solv-It. The main base is orange but man, this stuff is amazing. It can remove the most stubborn of sticky glue and even marker pen from cartridges!


Game PCBs – I order my game PCBs from a dealer in China. Buying just the PCBs is great as the prices are cheap. I could pay a little more and get them in a cartridge cases however the quality of Chinese plastic is bloody awful.


Step 1
Get yourself a load of cheap games. I bought this box of 20 odd titles for the price of two days lunch (about 1700 yen). It may seem wrong to throw away the covers and manuals but these are very common and in a few cases pretty crappy games anyway. Think of them as the Japanese versions of Electronic Arts sports crap.


Step 2
Gut the cartridges and soak in water for a hour then peel off the main sticker. The main sticker is very easy to remove in one go but leaves the white backing on the cartridge. This is where our De-Solv-It comes in. Put all the cartridge case shells in to a bowl and spray them with a generous amount of De-Solv-It and leave overnight.


Step 3
Take all the soaked cartridge cases out of the bowl and place in to the kitchen sink or something similar. Start to rub the soaked cartridge white areas with your finger. You’ll see the white paper easily rub away along with all its nasty backing glue. You may need to add a little more De-Solv-It to remove any stubborn glue.



Step 4
Once all the glue and paper has been removed, rinse the cartridge shells in warm water. Place them in a bowl and leave to dry for a day. Or if you are in a hurry you could dry them off with a towel.



Step 5
Design your covers and case labels. I do all of mine on Photo Shop. None of the covers in this feature are simple cover scans printed out. They are made from various sources in an attempt to recreate the original or an all new design. For example, the Ristar cover and cartridge case are all built from scratch and look like the original until you take a closer look. The Ristar character poses of on the cartridge label are actually different than the official game.


Step 6
Place your PCB in to the now dry and super clean cartridge shell. Screw it back together and place on the sticker. Remember that the chip or epoxy should be facing the front of the cartridge. You don’t want to put the PCB in backwards!


Step 7
This is actually optional but I think if you are going to the trouble of making good looking reproduction cartridges then you should also put them in to clean cases. You’ll be surprised at just how dirty these cases can be even when they look clean. I give each case a wash using normal hand soap. Rinse well and leave to dry. It’s also a good idea to insert a normal tissue in to the case to absorb any water that may be along the sides of the case were the plastic cover is attached to the case.


Step 8
Stand back and admire your handy work.



I’d say that the case cover and cartridge label design stage are the most time consuming. You could just look for scans on the net but in most cases they are either too low in resolution or look total crap thanks to poor jpeg compression. This is why I built my own from various sources. The end results are much better.

EDIT

All new section added - Super Famicom cartridges

So the first few steps are the same as the Mega Drive when it comes to preparing the cartridge shells as is the actual printing of the labels. What you have to be careful of is that unlike Mega Drive cartridges, the chips on Super Famicom games face the back, not the front as you can see below.



There are two ways to make a Super Famicom game box. First way is to use an excising box and attach your printed label to it. The second and more time consuming way would be to make your own box. I'm going to show you the latter.

First print your cover on to sticky gloss paper and attach it to some 2mm card.


Once cut out attach double-sided tape to the joint areas.


Stick the front and back cut outs together. Make sure you don't do them upside down!


Simply score the back of the card where the flaps should bend and fold.
There you have it. One reproduction of Magical Pop'n that craps all over those ones you can buy on the net with their ugly US cartridges and deformed artwork because they've stretched it out of shape.


Just in case you are wondering, the cover I used wasn't a scan of an original but hand built from various images.

 

Great tutorial !
Now we should get a guide to making quality Nintendo cardboard boxes, that would make collecting so much easier.

 

Might do that in the near future as I've made a few in the past.

 

a lot of these could definitely pass as originals, and are definitely well done. The only one that I would consider having another attempt is the magical girl. Mainly because it is obvious(to those that have played the game) know it is the metallica/metallia and the 100 knight from the witch and the hundred knight(魔女と百騎兵）That is just a small lil thing I noticed, but overall fantastic tutorial. Maybe something to look into since I am thinking about starting a MD collection.

 

He he he, well spotted on the Magic Girl cover. Actually I could claim this as a typical Chinese MD cover as it uses stollen artwork from something unrelated I'd have to make it look a lot worse though.

 

Beautiful! I guess you self-burn the eeproms too, mate?

 

*Looks at Step 1*
Are you insinuating Puyo Puyo is a crappy game!?! BLARGH
Seriously though your reproduction are awesome.
However part of me still mourns for the gutted cartridges...... T.T

 

No mate, I' buy then from China. Really cheap. They guy offers sets of 100 PCBs per order but because I was ordering from him before he went big time he still allows me to place small orders of 10 or so PCBs.

Crappy or ultra common Puyo Puyo is a great game but over here finding a Puyo Puyo game is just like finding some EA sports crap in the west. It's that commom that it always apears in bulk buys. I think there were 6 copies in total in that box I bought.

 

After Burner 2, Sonic, and Super Monaco GP are "crappy or ultra common"?

Also is Ristar rare in Japan?

 

Great tut Yakumo! Would be super cool to see a Super Famicom tutorial one as well too btw, will you make a video doing this someday?

 

Yep, Afterburner, Monaco GP and Sonic are ultra common and all very cheap games. And yes, Ristar is very expensive now. So is Dynamite Heady. At one point you could buy both Dynamite Heady and Ristar for 1500 yen each 5 years ago but now it's more like 8500 yen upwards.

DSwizzy145, I plan on doing a SFC guide once my PCB supplier starts to produce SFC boards

 

Well Done
Where did you bought the pcbs? can you tell the seller's contact ?

 

Sure, I get them from this guy -http://www.aliexpress.com/store/911614

You'll have to mail him with any special orders you have. I'm not sure if he'll do orders on request for anyone. I was buying from him before his store took off so he allows me to place the odder order for 10 or so PCBs. Normally you need to buy 100. He also let's me send him the ROMs I want making in to a PCB. You may want to ask if you can do that to

 

Thanks
I'll contact him for sure. The PCB is really cheap

 

I also bought a repro from China recently and made my own label. I also swapped out the flimsy Chinese shell.

 

Nice work. I'll have to show you my repro of that game close up tomorrow.

 

thank you

 

My question to Yakumo is,Do you know how to program nes,snes,genesis,sms,atari,colecovision games or make repros and homebrew games?I don't mean of the same game and putting it on cart I mean adding new characters,levels,art,different modes.

 

Nope, I haven't got a clue. My MD games come from a store on Aliexpress while my SFC games are made by a woman I know.

Added a SFC section!
By the way, I'll be selling reproduction carts soon for the SFC. More details within the week.