How do you spot a fake NES or Famicom cartridges?

[mugenfighter]

Hi, I buy some old NES games online and was wondering how can I spot fake NES or Famicom cartridges and what is the difference between an actually one. I am just looking for some general rules that almost always work. Also how do you spot a unofficial ports, pirate cartridges, bootleg cartridges, and all those illegal stuff. One final thing how can you tell if it was from back in the day or more recent?

[80sFREAK]

You should start from bootgod.dyndns.org:7777 and google "bootleg wiki" for some pirates. Also you can visit Cah4e3 website(blog)

[FrankWDoom]

This is a good place to start: http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=122991 You can probably find more info by search NA as the question comes up a lot.

NES games are pretty uniform. Famicom stuff has more variation but the general principles for the pcb's still apply to most cases.

When in doubt, post pics.