Been doing my daily rounds of eBay and I noticed there seems to be a huge amount of pirate multi-games carts (99 in 1, 45 in 1 ect). Any one know where they are coming from ? as I scouted my links to the usual China based company's and there not coming from there. There never seems to be any GB carts so im guessing the Ds was easy to hack?
I've seen some pirate copies of games such as Mario Kart DS, people attempting to trade them in at work, idiots didn't know they were pirates. Which is a suprise as the manual is about 6 pages badly printed, and the cover inlay and cart labels look shit.
Just like GBA, there's alot of money to be made pirating cartridges. DS was free of bootlegged cartridges for awhile, but then someone cracked the encryption which made it possible to produce bootlegs. Early on the only piracy was from an exploit that directed the DS to the GBA port and allowed software to run from there.
I've seen lots of these in China. Most of the time they sell to poor people who can't afford the real deal, so I assume thats why it takes so long for product to leak online. I guess the biggest problem to selling online is that it costs money (which most don't have) and once you start selling to foreign customers, law-enforcement starts getting heavy on you.
I live in China and haven't seen too many pirated DS carts - mainly because the R4 and other flash carts are hugely popular - - it makes little sense to buy each cart individually when you can download hundreds and slap them on a memory card.... The gameboy was a bit different - for a long time that was the most popular handheld, but the PSP took its place awhile ago. Even middle aged people are buying the PSP for reading books (?) and watching television shows on the bus.
If you don't mind me asking, where are you currently? I know in Xian, which is really an old city, its pretty touristy so lots of people push GBA/DS pirates. In Shanghai, they push flash carts pretty hard, but I guess more people can afford it in major city centers.
IN hong kong while i was there there were barely any DS carts for sale. Almost everyone who sold a DS did a bundle with R4 cards.
I live in Kunming, Yunnan province. I've been here four years, so I've seen some of the changes in the market. I imagine pirate DS carts might be pushed more towards foreigners than local Chinese, nearly everyone I know uses an R4 rather than buy pirate carts, as the R4 is simply more economical. It's a shame Nintendo won't take the Chinese market seriously, granted there are HUGE problems with piracy here, but if people make 1000RMB per month, and games cost 350RMB each, how reasonable is it for them to purchase a real one? It's a shame the iQue turned out to be such rubbish; it was a really good way to get Chinese into playing games made by Nintendo in their own language and the company totally blew their only opportunity. The only good thing that's happened with games is Warcraft, where they pay by the hour, and it's made a killing. It's easily above and beyond the most popular game in this country.
Pirates have gotten pretty good. I think I might have traded a pirated version of the GBA ALTTP at a local shop (Bought it on Ebay from a place in Hong Kong). I could barely tell the difference besides the screw type and label being a little darker then normal.
Ive seen DS pirate games on ebay for well over a year. You can buy them for ~$5, which leaves the manufacturer with a few $ profit, or you can buy a memory card adapter for ~$20 (R4, M3, EZ5), which leaves the manufacturer with more profit. Same goes for GBA pirates. Most GBA pirate games Ive seen are actually flash cartridges and not OTP, and can be had for ~$2-8 depending on size. Or, you add a few $ and buy a more expensive product which has better save-support and flashing functions. Shiggsy
