Have You Ever Mistakenly Bought a Pirate Game Cart?

[shengoro86]

One of the biggest annoyances when collecting retro games, in my personal opinion, is that people now try to build reproductions of older games that look very close to the real thing.
Then they try to sell it at the 2nd hand price of the actual game to fool people.
Now let me get this straight.
I love repros. HOWEVER, when they are disguised as a real game without a clear "Repro" label or in game message, and sold at a real game price, then that is a scam.
Recently, I bought a copy of Earthbound for $20 USD pretty much knowing it was fake but just on that small change it wasn't since I bought it as broken.


Have you ever fell into one of these traps?
Fakes are getting pretty hard to distinguish without opening the cart now to see the boards.

Here is a video on that Earthbound I purchased.

phpBB [video]

[Mr357]

Nope, but I haven't bought many cartridge games since "retro gaming" picked up in popularity. The bits needed to open up most carts can be had for a few dollars, and are extremely handy to have whenever you've got a recent purchase. Typically, fake boards (like the one in Shengoro's video) look nothing like the original.

[shengoro86]

Nope, but I haven't bought many cartridge games since "retro gaming" picked up in popularity. The bits needed to open up most carts can be had for a few dollars, and are extremely handy to have whenever you've got a recent purchase. Typically, fake boards (like the one in Shengoro's video) look nothing like the original.

totally! Sadly i didnt have any snes bits at the time. Im looking to get some now

[BlueMue]

I never bought one mistakenly. One time I thought I had, when I got a cheap sealed US Sonic Spinball for Game Gear.
It looked a bit iffy when I took a closer look but it was just cheaper made because it was a late print by Majesco.

I bought some pirate Sonic carts on purpose for my collection and since these are sometimes really funny, especially if it's some strange hack like "Sonic 3 Fighter Sonic" for the GBA.