NES/SNES Repros on eBay Australia again...

http://myworld.ebay.com.au/captainngamemaster/
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Earthbound-N...yZ112733QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Anyone remember rare_nes_games_08? Let me refresh your memory, some kid in New South Wales was making repros of SMB2 and Earthbound for NES and selling them for ridiculously high prices. Well, he's back. He's got earthbound listed right now, and has sold and English PAL version of Secret of Mana 2, with box? Somehow he decided that's worth $300. And, for some strange reason - he's translated this game.

Do me a favor, click report. Because I for one am getting tired of this douchebag. Last time he took down my Gmail for questioning the authenticity.

 

Reported.

Only you can prevent forest fires.

 

if those repros were sold properly and at a normal price i would probably buy a few....

 

i sent a question to the seller:

just wondering; what is the cost of building such repros?

 

Cost of donor cart, really.

Just a case of desoldering the EPROM(s), erasing with UV light, reflashing with desired ROM that's been converted to .PRG(or.BIN), resoldering, assembling, printing a new label. It's about 20 minutes work if you're good at it, I've done a few Final Fantasy 2s for friends out of Maniac Mansion carts - it's just a matter of finding the right cart for the job, which isn't hard. The one cart he was trying to sell to you pays for the programmer, eraser, soldering iron and donor cart.

For those interested in the FF2 tutorial:
http://www.54.org/sage/condev/ff2cartproject/

 

wow, would you do such a service for snes too and at what price?

 

Do you want a box as well?

I've never done a SNES cart, I'll grab the programmer from work tonight and look into it.

 

wouldnt mind a translated front mission gun hazard myself

 

It would be good if you didn't spread misinformation. SNES games do not use EPROMs, so you have to purchase your own. A 32 Mbit EEPROM, which is used in Seiken Densetsu III costs about $9, so in generally people use several EEPROMs. Then you have to manually wire it yourself, because SNES carts do not have a standard pin layout. Donor carts aren't that expensive in general (you can use Madden 95 for a lot of games), but for something like Star Ocean, the only donor cart is an actual Star Ocean cart. In all, a general SNES repro is reasonably priced at $50-$60 (far more for something like Star Ocean). Considering the cost, you really are better off buying a flash cart, that can play 98% of SNES games.

 

You make it sound like he's interferring with your investigation into the Kennedy assasination or something.

Relax, man.

 

Building bootlegs/repros is not difficult. But it can be tedious and uneconomical. If you want to play games on real consoles, I highly recommend a specialized device over bootleg cartridges. For instance with SNES you can easily pick up a Copier from the 90s like the Game Doctor SF series which are very reliable. Cost of the device may be around 60 to 70 bucks, but with that one device you can play almost every SNES game.

Such devices exist for NES, SNES, Genesis, PC-Engine, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, Game Gear, Sega Master System, even N64. These sort of devices are far better than a single bootleg, unless for some reason you want to spent the money to have a collection of hand made bootlegs.

Now if you just want a couple games, it's not a bad choice. If you have someone build you or sell you a bootleg/repro, be sure to inquire about detailed cost. The costs would be the Donor Cartridge, the Programmable Replacement ROM with the new game on it, the new Label, the new box if applicable, and then ofcourse labor.

Also, Assembler should be consulted before anyone goes publicly offering any sort of bootleg building service or bootleg cartridge. He's said before that sort of thing isn't allowed.

 

Sorry, I have a bad cold right now, and I am one grumpy person.

 

I like how he evaded your acknowledging them as repros :clap:

 

Wasn't talking about SNES carts, mate. Wasn't aware Maniac Mansion was a SNES game.

 

Just got reported on eBay?

[FONT=Arial, Verdana]MC037 INV NOTICE&284: eBay Informational Alert - Misuse of eBay Email Forwarding System

[/FONT]Can this kid still see the board? If not he's probably caching it through google. Seems like something he'd do. Also I'm recieving new spam emails.

 

so those repros are costy for a reason? Those eeproms costs $$$ and require lot of work, uh?

 

I know it wouldn't be economical but I honestly wish someone would start making reproduction boxes/instructions and replacement stickers for old NES and SNES games. Clean up my collection and make it look nicer.

 

His point applies to all commercial games. All use MaskROMs (or PROMs maybe) and not EPROMs. Unless you produce an extremely limited number, EPROMs are way too expensive atleast back then. Repros always involve removing the original MaskROM, and introducing a new EPROM chip programmed with whatever you want.

Karsten, EPROMs vary in cost. So do "donor" cartridges. Depending on the bootleg being built, the cost of parts can actually be pretty low. But then there is the cost of labor. Many of these bootlegs you see around being shopped around at 100$+ are people really trying to charge alot for their labor. And they think they can get it by offering it in the form of a bootleg of a famous game.

These reproductions are also costly if you are just interested in playing "ROMs". If you just want to play any NES game on a whim, buying bootlegs for every game will get crazy expensive. If you figure it costs you 30$ per bootleg which may be low, at about the 5th game, you may as well have bought the PowerPAK cartridge instead. With that one more expensive cartridge you no longer need to buy bootleg cartridges. If you want more than 5 games you don't have, it's worth it.

A. Snow, there are people that reproduce boxes and have scans of those sorts of things. It probably would still be a gray or just illegal thing to do to sell reproduction boxes and manuals, but I too think that would be handy. I know when you pickup used games that sometimes the label has been damaged and being able to replace it would be very nice. The hard part is getting an original label scanned in high resolution. Particularly because the labels are hard to scan.

 

Eh, they're no different than the idiots who copy current generation games onto DVD-R and then sell those online, at boot sales, etc. etc.

In fact, I'd say they're worse because most of them try to hide the fact that they're selling homemade bootlegs.

-hl718

 

My mistake, was thinking of reprogramming carts that I had already modified.