Why do you like pirate carts?

[Protoman]

Pirate carts seem to be very popular but I don't quite understand why... Personally I'd always want to have official games, although the cartridge forms, sticker designs and typos can be fun, I wouldn't purposefully buy a pirate cart unless it had a US-only game I otherwise couldn't play on my Famicom.

Why do you guys like them or even collect them?

[hvc01]

Hey! How exactly is a rainbow made? How exactly does a sun set? How exactly does a posi-trac rear-end on a Plymouth work? It just does.

It had to be done

[fcgamer]

To properly answer this question, I need to define a few terms that I will be using in my answer (so that everyone is clear on what I mean).  To me this is what the following mean:

pirate - a copy of an original Nintendo / Famicom game, like Super Mario Bros. or something

hack - Pandamar.  Super Mario Bros. with hacked graphics.

unlicensed - something entirely new and original.  Sometimes these are considered pirates due to the companies illegally using copyrighted characters (i.e. Super Mario World for Famicom), but at the end of the day, the game was coded from scratch and took effort, isn't just a copied game and thus deserves more credit than that.


For me, unlicensed games are highest on the food chain of the unofficial Famicom stuff.  These guys many times did impressive things, and produced a large number of fun games.  

Hacks are fun to collect for amusement purposes.  Sometimes the guys will hack a game so much, that it barely resembles the original at all.  Other times it is just funny to see Mario as a Panda Bear (i.e. Pandamar), or the Adventure Island guy as a Pikachu.  While I would never pay tons of money for a hack, if I can get them cheaply I will.  I see them as some sort of juvenile entertainment, sort of like watching stupid you tube videos.

1:1 pirates - I have very few of these in my collection, and when I can, I am replacing them with legit copies of the game; however, imo these are a gamer's paradise.  I paid maybe $3 for my bootleg Doropie and can play that game and enjoy it, until sometime that I can score a real one.  Same with Recca, etc.  And while these carts are not legit Japanese versions, they were enjoyed by children so many years ago, as games were supposed to be enjoyed.  They are authentic to the time and region, even if not authentic by Nintendo's standards, and thus hold more significance / value to me than anything cranked out today by some collector, labeled as a "repro"

Furthermore, some unlicensed game companies also produced pirates.  So since I collect unlicensed original games by NTDEC, I might grab the pirates they produced as well, where they hacked their names into the credits.  It makes sense if you are collecting by company, or something like that.

Finally, I know a lot of guys here from Eastern Europe and South America that collect the pirates because that is what was officially released there.  Poland received Pegasus, Russia received Dendy.  South America received clones back in the day.  As did Taiwan.  As did parts of Africa.  Those guys are collecting for the nostalgia, and to purchase real copies of the game isn't nostalgic when Dendy / Pegasus / whatever was the real games to them  

[80sFREAK]

BUMP 

I like hardware and the ways how, back in the days, those hackers(the real ones) bypassed ASIC mappers and even made some new.

[Great Hierophant]

Because I could take a hammer to them and take pleasure in the sound they make when I  smash them into pieces and the unique way in which each will be destroyed without guilt.

[fcgamer]

In pirate market, there is a pedigree of rarity and commons too, just like in the standard market,  Likewise, there are plenty of folks (from Poland, Russia, South America, etc) who exclusively collect bootleg games.

If I had it to do again, instead of going for a licensed full set of Famicom games, maybe I would have just attempted a bootleg full set.  Still challenging, reaches the same basic goal at the end anyways, and it would have been at a much smaller price.

[Great Hierophant]

Collecting an official licensed set is a difficult task to accomplish, but it can be accomplished.  I believe that there are 1,056 licensed Famicom games give or take, so the task is large but finite.  I believe there are thousands of bootleg/pirate games and they continue to be released, so a full set may be impossible to complete.  Of course there is no central database or repository for the unlicensed stuff, so obscure cartridges can come out of the unknown at any time. 

[fcgamer]

Collecting an official licensed set is a difficult task to accomplish, but it can be accomplished.  I believe that there are 1,056 licensed Famicom games give or take, so the task is large but finite.  I believe there are thousands of bootleg/pirate games and they continue to be released, so a full set may be impossible to complete.  Of course there is no central database or repository for the unlicensed stuff, so obscure cartridges can come out of the unknown at any time. 

Call me old school, but a "complete" set of games contains ALL that was released for the machine, sans multicarts and stuff like that. 

It has always amazed me to no end how you never hear of people trying to collect all of the Famicom unlicensed releases (I only need around 40 or so to go, until I have them all), yet with the NES, dozens of people have collected a "full set" including unlicensed games.   

Regarding a repository for unlicensed stuff, please check out my Famicom guide...it is outdated since I wrote it, but it is quite extensive and I hope to release an updated version soon.

Full set of Famicom carts licensed + unlicensed would be possible to complete, if you nix licensed promos (i.e. Rockman 4 gold), Konami study Q series (I forget the official name for these games at the moment) etc. This is the goal I am after, and I am only missing about 220 licensed games, 40 unlicensed, and a handful of pirates.  It can be done.