I don't see why it would be weird that the price of a random old sport game is low. Even if the cart is rare or something, the seller might just not know about it, selling games he hasn't used for a long while and is never going to touch again.
The cart on the pics is definitely a real one. However, nothing proves what he's selling you is what is on the pics and that's the real danger. Although they have been cases of guys selling carts like Seiken Densetsu 3 (labelled Secret of Mana 2) very expensive with everything fake, including the pictures, but not mentionning it is fake. This pisses me off. In real life everyone is pissed about NES games and keeps saying me I should get into iphone games or something fashionable, but then on the net people are so creepy and sell fake rare NES games expensive.
original or a fake?
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Haha dumb question, why are they mad at your NES games? XD
And yeah, it is prissy. Faking something so good....and the sad thing is that if this guy isn't the scammer (It's possible, not that I think you are) just says that the pirate that made this cart is 2 years ago and should have these mistakes fixed and cleaned up, which is very scary. I'd hate to see how good these pirates get.
At least I got my Flintstones 2 game for cheap somewhere (I assume) I had it before I knew it was rare.
I wish I'd of remembered finding it, because now that I know it's uber rare, I'd of had the rush of finding it in the wild. I've never found another super rare game yet. XD
And yeah, it is prissy. Faking something so good....and the sad thing is that if this guy isn't the scammer (It's possible, not that I think you are) just says that the pirate that made this cart is 2 years ago and should have these mistakes fixed and cleaned up, which is very scary. I'd hate to see how good these pirates get.
At least I got my Flintstones 2 game for cheap somewhere (I assume) I had it before I knew it was rare.
I wish I'd of remembered finding it, because now that I know it's uber rare, I'd of had the rush of finding it in the wild. I've never found another super rare game yet. XD
@basitsch:
It's good that you didn't take my comment the wrong way. What I'm concerned is that possible bootleggers may now use this forum as a "proving ground" since some knowledgeable people can identity them.
@Bunnyboy:
I don't like usually removing contents from thread but in this case I would suggest that you remove the one from your post unless this is already well known information on the net.
It's good that you didn't take my comment the wrong way. What I'm concerned is that possible bootleggers may now use this forum as a "proving ground" since some knowledgeable people can identity them.
@Bunnyboy:
I don't like usually removing contents from thread but in this case I would suggest that you remove the one from your post unless this is already well known information on the net.
He claims he already removed a bunch before he posted the five points that he did post. So even if bootleggers do make better fakes, he can leak the known defects slowly.Banshaku wrote:@Bunnyboy:
I don't like usually removing contents from thread but in this case I would suggest that you remove the one from your post unless this is already well known information on the net.
Are there any tips for making a commercialized homebrew game harder to fake, using the tech we have today that Nintendo didn't have? Given that homebrew is written to OTP or flash, not a mask ROM, would a serial number work?
Wow, they really did go thru great lengths to fake this. Given kevtris and bunnyboys points, I have to to agree it is fake too. I noticed the bit of delamination on the thru-holes that kevtris mentioned, but it still soldering sill looked very good, so I kinda disregarded it.
The datecodes were the only things that really jumped at me as out of place, given the lengths the faker went thru with this cart, I'm surprised he missed that.
The datecodes were the only things that really jumped at me as out of place, given the lengths the faker went thru with this cart, I'm surprised he missed that.
If I ever finish my game, and have it fabricated, I would like to have a unique serial number in each game (possibly displayed on the game's main menu or credits screen). The serial # might even be part of the seed for the random number generator. I don't know why I would do this though. The idea just seemed kinda cool.tepples wrote:Are there any tips for making a commercialized homebrew game harder to fake, using the tech we have today that Nintendo didn't have? Given that homebrew is written to OTP or flash, not a mask ROM, would a serial number work?
Use a PIC or other MCU with code protection. Not impossible to break, but not cheap and probably a DMCA violation if one did. Lots of arcade games did this, I'm sure some are still protected/unemulated.tepples wrote: Are there any tips for making a commercialized homebrew game harder to fake, using the tech we have today that Nintendo didn't have? Given that homebrew is written to OTP or flash, not a mask ROM, would a serial number work?
Easy low tech solution would be to buy only new ROMs, and keep track of the ROM date codes used for each run. That would be hard to match.
I can't see a serial # inside the NES PRG-ROM being of much use (for this specific purpose) because it's easy to fake or just use the same one repeatedly. But how to check it? Letting people verify that their cart serial is legit would also allow pirates to verify that the serial # they came up with is legit.
My goal would not be to stop pirates. Piracy is unavoidable. I assume that all carts get pirated quickly. The goal would be to release some number of carts as a "limited production run" to stimulate sales. I would probably officially release the ROM with a different serial # / rand # seed. I would hope that some number of NES enthusiasts would purchase a cart to have an "authentic" one.Memblers wrote:I can't see a serial # inside the NES PRG-ROM being of much use (for this specific purpose) because it's easy to fake or just use the same one repeatedly. But how to check it? Letting people verify that their cart serial is legit would also allow pirates to verify that the serial # they came up with is legit.
With the original Garage Cart I did a limited run (mostly because I gave a number initially and didn't want to make a liar out of myself, heheh). In my experience, a truly limited run benefits your supporters (the purchasers) primarily. Garage Cart #1 sells for as much as 20 times what I sold it for, which I think is awesome, but maybe it's value is helped by it being "the original/first homebrew cart".
So yeah, from your buyers point of view they surely will be concerned with how easily (or not) the cart can be faked, because it affects the resale value. I don't think it's a likely issue in reality, but in perception, sure. So there are a lot of little things you can do, that together add up to make it more authentic. Expect your buyers to ask. Like on Garage Cart, among other stuff I printed the label at my printers max 2400x1200 DPI (the .PNG file I think is 70MB or so). It includes a lot of fine details, so good luck to whoever wants to try and copy that optically, heheh. I wrote serial #s on the label instead of in the ROM, then later found out that I can barely read my own handwriting and also mistakenly put out the same serial # twice, haha (when I had an opportunity to identify/authenticate a cart someone had).
Oh yeah, another thing I could have mentioned in the last post too was that one could use a custom board. Doesn't even need to be a custom mapper. It would make the cart a little more special, and it's cheaper than one might think (I'm willing to do custom boards for people, almost for free if it's NES..).
BTW, some unlicensed NES cart makers used to release carts where the part #s are scratched off the ICs. Not all that helpful these days maybe with 74xx parts being super-easy to identify (even automatically with the right tool). Other companies also were far more devious and used not custom labeled, but falsely-labeled ICs!
So yeah, from your buyers point of view they surely will be concerned with how easily (or not) the cart can be faked, because it affects the resale value. I don't think it's a likely issue in reality, but in perception, sure. So there are a lot of little things you can do, that together add up to make it more authentic. Expect your buyers to ask. Like on Garage Cart, among other stuff I printed the label at my printers max 2400x1200 DPI (the .PNG file I think is 70MB or so). It includes a lot of fine details, so good luck to whoever wants to try and copy that optically, heheh. I wrote serial #s on the label instead of in the ROM, then later found out that I can barely read my own handwriting and also mistakenly put out the same serial # twice, haha (when I had an opportunity to identify/authenticate a cart someone had).
Oh yeah, another thing I could have mentioned in the last post too was that one could use a custom board. Doesn't even need to be a custom mapper. It would make the cart a little more special, and it's cheaper than one might think (I'm willing to do custom boards for people, almost for free if it's NES..).
BTW, some unlicensed NES cart makers used to release carts where the part #s are scratched off the ICs. Not all that helpful these days maybe with 74xx parts being super-easy to identify (even automatically with the right tool). Other companies also were far more devious and used not custom labeled, but falsely-labeled ICs!
