Recent rise in Earthbound snes fakes.

Has anyone else noticed this? I have a saved search on ebay and every day another fake earthbound game is put on ebay and it has become astonishing. I mean it started a few years ago with the fake pal carts (but I really didn't mind that too much) Its now to the point where it is out of hand. And these people are good at counterfeiting labels. I don't have a copy of earthbound and this in addition to the virtual console release has driven prices down ,but this kind of stuff makes me sick. From now on people request pics of the pcb.

 

People think its a quick buck.

Its easier to make the repros now than it ever has been, people see the huge price and want some easy money.

Its one thing I have never really done. I have made a couple of SF2 repros for people, but thats about it. those were without any labels too and there was no retail release anyway

 

The whole thing is driven by ignorant people causing the prices of a number of games to get very inflated. So when Earthbound costs $200 or whatever it does now, when you can make a pirate copy for $20, that's extremely profitable.

It used to be when buying NeoGeo MVS Cartridges people would often want PCB pictures to see that it is not a bootleg. But sadly now that should be the case with valuable cartridge games on other systems as well.

 

I'm actually quite for it, I bought one on eBay. Earthbound didn't come out on the SNES over here and I wanted to play it on stock hardware without paying a stupid price for it, if it was a case of maybe a tenner more I'd buy an original cart but when it's like £80+ difference I think it's justified. I also bought a repro Darxide on 32X which closely resembles the PAL release to the untrained eye, I'm selling all my 32X stuff but not the Darxide because I know it's fake and I don't want to rip people off.

 

supply and demand, if theres a demand, someone will create a supply to fill it, for a price. i see no problem with reproductions of no longer in production games on original plantforms. aslong as they are sold as reproductions and not originals.

 

I recently sold my loose copy of earthbound that ive had for quite a few years for 150 GBP thats paid for my sd2snes ,i love the game but realistically im only going to play through the game a handful of times in my lifetime so its not worth sitting on that money when i can play the exact same thing on my flash cart.

Collecting games is just a bottomless well to throw your money into.

 

A bottomless well that eventually paid off for 150 GBP.

 

I second that. So long as everyone knows what exactly it is they're buying, there's no harm.

 

Then I guess you passed over what was going on. The whole point of this thread is people (on ebay) are making fake/counterfeit cartridges to rip people off by selling them as if they are original and authentic cartridges.

 

that is of course a bad thing and such sellers should be repeatedly kicked in the reproductive organs. or at least named and shamed on as many forums / whatever as possible, or maybe a central list.

 

Raising awareness of sellers that are trying to pass counterfeit carts off as original is a good idea. However it is ebay so there will still be uninformed buyers that may fall prey to bootlegs. Ironically the one thing that might help would be to have someone selling bootlegs (honestly) and under cutting them. Ex: Someone hocking Earthbound bootleg/replica carts for $35 or so.

 

Do these pirate reproduction carts happen to have that Anti-Piracy measurement stuff?

 

Not that I know of.

 

don't be silly, only the Government can pirate something that's already been pirated and then charge for it.

 

Perhaps though you'll never know what these sellers have upon their selves, pirated nor non-pirated

 

The Anti-Piracy measures were designed to target Copier machines from the 90s. When you produce actual bootleg cartridges usually using original parts from a cheap game the piracy methods are not tripped or otherwise activated.

When you open any cartridge you'll always be able to tell if it is a pirate or not because it's always obvious when it's a reproduction.

 

I'd have no qualms making a repro with modifications to fix the censorship issues but I'd never put on a legit looking label.

 

ohh okay, i understand because obviously cartridges are used to run on the console's manufacture like normal functions so it'd be easier to bypass the piracy errors without needing a copier correct? also, wouldn't you happen to know if the more later post-1996 backup units like Super Wild Card DX2 64MB or so bypasses Earthbound/Mother 2 finally or still impossible at the time?

 

All software based copy protections on licensed SNES games can be patched. This was true even in the mid 90s. Newer Copiers like the SWC DX2 and Game Doctor SF7 properly map SRAM so Earthbound and other games would never detect that they are running on a copier. However only the Game Doctor will get through the ROM mirroring protection such as what is in Mega Man X.

But again, all the games can be patched and it's no big deal. The reason people think about Earthbound and copy protection is all because it's very well known that the game does horrible things to the player. But in reality, very few people were ever affected by it. Anyway that was using a copier could get a patched version and be fine.

 

Oh Really?! never knew but in any case i have found a great chinese Rom MB site that shows nearly EVERY SFC & "snes" games ranging from 4M, 8M, 16M & 32M here: http://www.fireemblem.net/cjb/tools/e-00-sfc-02.htm