original or a fake?

[basitsch]

I am very grateful for your help and the various clues.

@blargg
I trust the seller. But it could be that he has even bought a fake and do not know. Therefore, I try to minimize the risk.

@BootGod
If you like, I can make some photos or scans for your database (after buying).

[basitsch]

OT: I noticed something strange in the database. The text says: mirroring horizontal. But on both boards there is a soldering point at V. I expected that these soldering points switching the mirroring. Or I'm wrong?

[tepples]

Mirroring solder pads on Nintendo boards are marked using the "arrangement" naming convention, not the "mirroring" naming convention invented by pirates and archivists. See Mirroring to learn why the "V" solder pad means horizontal mirroring.

[basitsch]

Thank you for the link. At first i was a little bit confused

[kevtris]

Hello!
I am still a novice in the field of NES games. But I have now received an offer to buy a rare NES game. I would like to make sure that this is not fake. For this reason, the seller has given me pictures of the board. I would like to hear your views on whether it is an original or a fake. Here are the pictures:

http://www.sdjg.de/se/100_3811.JPG
http://www.sdjg.de/se/100_3812.JPG

Thanks in advance!

Unfortunately I think that board is a fake.

If you look at the PCB around the PRG/CHR ROM pins, the chips have been replaced. They used a hollow tipped desoldering gun to do it. The PCB has some delamination around the holes. Said delamination occurs when you use one of these irons. The one I use produces the exact same kind of damage to the PCB around the holes.

The same damage is not present around the 74161 or the lockout chip's pads.

All they had to do was clean the flux off the board using some alcohol to remove the evidence of rework, but they couldn't fix the damaged PCB material around the pads.

If the PAL stadium events board uses the same ROMs as the NTSC one, then they most likely are transplants. The later lockout chip date kinda bears out that that the board was a donor.

I'm highly suspicious that there's no cartridge case / label to look at either.

As for chip markings, these days laser marking of chips is cheap and easy, and you have to be super careful. There's a bunch of chinese outfits that make fake chips. They just take any old chip and laser mark the part number you're looking for on them. I've seen this with SID chips and a few others. Of course, the chips don't do anything useful when you plug it in, other than maybe smoke, or damage what you put it in.

Not saying these chips were re marked but just keep in mind the above if you see any suspicious chips that were laser marked. Laser marking was popular near the end of the NES' rein, and I've seen it on MMCx chips and now and again ROMs but never the lockout chips, though it is possible that later ones had it.

[basitsch]

In another forum they have just come to the same result. But the title screen shows clearly 'U.S. version'. Therefore, it couldn't be a Pal-Rom?

[kevtris]

In another forum they have just come to the same result. But the title screen shows clearly 'U.S. version'. Therefore, it couldn't be a Pal-Rom?

Well the proof's in the cartridge label then. I guess it's possible that nintendo transplanted ROMs from famicom cartridges, if it had the same ROMs (does it exist, and if so use the same ROMs?) I'm still thinking something is fishy with it. I doubt nintendo would swap out ROMs on boards like that. you'd think if the reused ROMs, they would've put them on new boards instead of recycling old ones, or used those fami to nes adapters like you find in some gyromites.

I think it's highly odd someone would sell it based on PCB pics and not the label pics. Who'd just yank a board and sell it that way and say that they have the case, too? Sorta like selling your car by ripping the engine out and putting it in the ad. "for sale: one engine. also included: car body"

[basitsch]

Oh, there is a picture of the label. I posted it some messages before:

[Dain]

Without knowing much about boards, just looking at the pic, I would say it's definitely a fake.

[bunnyboy]

I am going to vote for completely and obviously FAKE. There are far more problems than I am noting here, I just won't be helping the creator rip off more people.

1 - Date code on lockout and mapper is wrong, and there is no way there were 2 runs of this game. The next fake will probably have this fixed.

2 - Soldering on PRG/CHR is completely different than lockout/mapper, which have nice cones from pad to pin on both sides. The next fake might have more time invested to do it better.

3 - Board code is wrong, should be CNROM 256 02. Also easy to fix in the next fake.

4 - The divots in the PRG/CHR chips look way too short and the ejection marks are also too small. That probably means an OTP ROM was polished and printed with new letters. It will be harder for the creator to find matching chips.

5 - The worst is the label, which is very obviously fake. There are large gaps on the left side and bottom. The bottom left corner isn't rounded right. On the left side you can see a strip of white where they didn't cut straight. Again there are many other problems that I won't write here. Just the above, without seeing the board, is enough to know its home made.

You should seriously post the sellers info, because they will try to rip off more people with more fraud carts.

[3gengames]

Yes yes yes I see this all now. That was a heck of a clean up on the de-soldering. :/ Wow.....And yeah the lable is off center VERY far to the right, and the bottom left curved edge is chipped, not curved. Wow.......Somebody has too much time on their hands. This is too damn close, and they even tried to fake the board to even try to fool the people smart enough to look at it for legitimation.



I have never used a soldering iron so there's never spots like that on the board but it is obvious now, I just didn't look for that last time. I never can get the solder to look old like that when i do soldering, so it looked like the real deal to me. Sorry, man. I could have cost you a lot of money. -.-

[Banshaku]

It amaze me how far people can go to dupe people for just a "piece of plastic". I guess it must be worth that much money to try to fake it.

But now that we know people go that far, the rabbit holes can go deep... Sorry to be rude but how much can we know now if "counterfeiter" will not come to this board and show their "work" and ask if this cart look legitimate or not under the context that "I want to buy it but I'm not sure if it's fake" just to make sure it look like the real deal and be able to sell it?

Sorry if I'm accusing almost directly the original poster but, you now, it's a new user, we don't know his history and now the "cat is out of the bag". Those rabbit holes can go deep. I have a good memory about the last case of the Kid icarus fake thingy with the same user with 2 accounts trying to validate his claim...

[blargg]

Damn, I just keep seeing the limits of my skepticism here. Everyone keeps raising new things I wouldn't have considered at all. I'm amazed. Not that the person selling this cartridge has to be the person who posted here; he can just search over the five posts to different boards that the original poster here made and see the responses to know where he needs to improve next time. People on another board caught these same issues, and put up some nice pictures circling them.

[3gengames]

Yeah, they will try to fix these flaws, getting the outside of the cart perfect will just require a little more time and effort. But as for changing PROM's onto the board with the right date and not having solder mistakes or solder that is all new and shiney and not 20 years old will be hard. It would probably cost more then the cart's sale value, but a solder bath would just make this nearly impossible to find any differences, because even the chips that wouldn't need messed with would look exactly the same, too.



If it gets any worse then this, I'm starting to feel scared about buying rare carts. At least ones with normal hardware that is easily found in other games.


But even a perfect cart, nearly like this, but just more refined, will have some stuff you just can't hide. We just have to be able to spot them, which until the next cart pops up, is anyones guess as to what the one difference will be.

[basitsch]

Thanks again for your help. Now i sure that this is a fake.

>Sorry if I'm accusing almost directly the original poster but, you now
I can understand your doubts well. But you should know that I'm only active in about 4 boards. 2 with the subject model building, 1 with the subject health, 1 with the subject C64 and 1 with the subject SNES. All of these boards couldn't help me, so i decided to register in some NES-Boards (NesDev, Nes-Forum, NintendoFans). This is the reason why i am a new user.

I would say that i delete the Pictures of the board and the module immediatly. Maybe we could delete all detailed information in this thread?

I asked the seller (a friend of mine, living in the netherlands / i live in germany) about this game. He told me that he bought this game two years ago. He send me the pictures that i can figure out whether it is an original or not. He don't want to cheat me, because he was not even sure if it's original. He thought that the former price for this game was to low.