Reproductions vs. Counterfeits/Bootlegs

Started by nerdynebraskan, October 29, 2013, 10:02:00 am

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yakuza

Quote from: 80sFREAK on November 01, 2013, 05:03:21 pm
Quote from: yakuza on November 01, 2013, 08:37:29 am
Quote from: MasterDisk on November 01, 2013, 07:58:23 am
How 'bout you guys let yakuza sell his stuff without this giant argument going on?
I'm impressed it's already 2 pages long, many have posted (mods too) and no member or mod has done a thing.


lol....... hahaha  that's alright ...
So... how much? $30 with free shipping?



Lol are you kidding me !

nerdynebraskan

Why not? At least one SNES repro maker sells them for $25 shipped with donor cart. Given that the donors used for SNES repros are almost entirely cheap, common, late EA sports games, I don't see how $30 shipped is a terrible offer. A real Earthbound is only worth $150+ because it's, you know, original and not made in some guy's garage.
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fcgamer

Quote from: yakuza on November 01, 2013, 06:53:16 pm
Quote from: 80sFREAK on November 01, 2013, 05:03:21 pm
Quote from: yakuza on November 01, 2013, 08:37:29 am
Quote from: MasterDisk on November 01, 2013, 07:58:23 am
How 'bout you guys let yakuza sell his stuff without this giant argument going on?
I'm impressed it's already 2 pages long, many have posted (mods too) and no member or mod has done a thing.


lol....... hahaha  that's alright ...
So... how much? $30 with free shipping?



Lol are you kidding me !


Please do spill, what is the cheapest you would go on this cart, lol.  If the game was handmade, why the need to charge mucho dollars for it?!
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80sFREAK

Quote from: yakuza on November 01, 2013, 06:53:16 pm
Quote from: 80sFREAK on November 01, 2013, 05:03:21 pm
Quote from: yakuza on November 01, 2013, 08:37:29 am
Quote from: MasterDisk on November 01, 2013, 07:58:23 am
How 'bout you guys let yakuza sell his stuff without this giant argument going on?
I'm impressed it's already 2 pages long, many have posted (mods too) and no member or mod has done a thing.


lol....... hahaha  that's alright ...
So... how much? $30 with free shipping?



Lol are you kidding me !
Not at all. volumerates sold their bootlegs for $3 include shipping, so i offered 10(ten!) times more. TBH while ago i was ofered to make a repro of a... Gimmick for about what i offered to you, so i suppose it's "market value"
I don't buy, sell or trade at moment.
But my question is how hackers at that time were able to hack those games?(c)krzy

gr3yh47

QuoteYou seem to feel as if you're owed a "nice" Earthbound, and on the cheap and easy.


sod off, dude. just cause i might want to play the game and have a nice presentable cart instead of using a flash cart, doesnt mean i feel 'owed' that. that's just my preference.

I'm done arguing with you, since you feel the need to speak from the position that you're above others in this thread who don't agree with your opinion.

fcgamer

Quote from: gr3yh47 on November 02, 2013, 05:13:13 am
QuoteYou seem to feel as if you're owed a "nice" Earthbound, and on the cheap and easy.


sod off, dude. just cause i might want to play the game and have a nice presentable cart instead of using a flash cart, doesnt mean i feel 'owed' that. that's just my preference.

I'm done arguing with you, since you feel the need to speak from the position that you're above others in this thread who don't agree with your opinion.


He isn't above others, he just wasn't born of the entitlement era. 

All of your justifications about why people should make carts like this basically boil down to the argument you presented (once again), above:  "just cause I might want to play the game and have a nice presentable cart instead of using a flash cart, doesn't mean I feel 'owed' that."

If this is your preference, then sell some things, save some money, work two jobs, whatever and save up and buy a nice (authentic) cart; the game is not rare, not hard to find this thing. 

But then you will say, "Oh, but it is too expensive for me, but I still want to have a nice cart."

Well that is where the entitlement part comes in.  Why do all of these people think that you can have your cake and eat it too, so to speak? 

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gr3yh47

November 02, 2013, 06:53:45 am #36 Last Edit: November 02, 2013, 07:07:43 am by gr3yh47
Quotethe entitlement era.


So you're what, gen x, or a baby boomer? born in a time of economic growth? and low debt? lower taxes? less income inequality? low unemployment?
Even if you aren't, the whole 'entitlement era/generation' phrase/concept was coined by people who grew up and started their careers in an incredible economic time, and then torched it, and left the burden of cleaning up on the next generation.

To quote Adam Weinstein:
Quote
You have no idea about student debt, underemployment, life-long renting. "Stop feeling special" is some shitty advice. I don't feel special or entitled, just poor. The only thing that makes me special is I have more ballooning debt than you. I've tempered the hell out of my expectations of work, and I've exceeded those expectations crazily to have one interesting, exciting damned career that's culminated in some leadership roles for national publications. And I'm still poor and in debt and worked beyond the point where it can be managed with my health and my desire to actually see the son I'm helping to raise.


You seem to feel like it's ok to tell me to suck it up and get another job, save up, and drop over $200 on one game; and yet, you've never met me, and you don't know my situation. I already have 2 jobs and my wife has one too, and we find it difficult to save up money for important things, much less something like such an expensive game. If I wanted to have a nice looking REPRODUCTION :o of a game, and someone out there is making them, then yeah I might buy it.

Wanting something is NOT equal to feeling 'entitled' to that. Reducing someone's preferences or desires to that phrase is unbelievably condescending and insulting.


And the only thing my argument 'boils down to' is that this guy isn't selling a counterfeit, and so you shouldn't have crapped all over his thread because someone might buy it and use it in a way it wasn't intended (scamming)

MaxXimus

Wow you guys. Just wow haha...

I'm just going to jump out and say that I prefer to collect bootlegs over originals any day. I know that this discussion is about reproductions; not bootlegs, but when it comes down to it, there is a pretty thin line separating the two. It's an unofficial cartridge,  with an official game stored on it. Is the developer making money, or is the person who "stole" the intellectual property making money?

For me it isn't even about piracy. Anyone can go out and find an original game, but believe it or not, it's not as easy as it sounds to collect a load of bootlegs,  at least in this part of the world.




gr3yh47

Interesting take on things, although i think that there is definitely a difference between a modern reproduction and a same time period bootleg. When the bootlegs came out, they were taking money from devs/publishers/etc but now even buying the original cart doesnt give anyone but the previous owner money so it's a repro not a counterfeit or bootleg which was designed to be passed off as original.

You do gotta love some of the bootlegs out there though, especially for famicom good gracious. Somari. Mario 4 through whatever. etc etc. lot of humorous stuff. I played a mario 1 bootleg where everything was exactly the same but you're a panda. hilarity.

fcgamer

November 02, 2013, 09:07:05 am #39 Last Edit: November 04, 2013, 09:34:51 am by L___E___T
Quote from: FCgamer

I own a game merchandise catalogue from Whirlwind Manu, one of those large bootleg game companies from the late 1980s and early 1990s.  




I'd love to see some (low res) images - that sounds like a really awesome find, how good is the photography etc?  As a handbill collector, that is the bootleg equivalent of a handbill, sounds great.
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gr3yh47

Quote from: fcgamer on November 02, 2013, 09:07:05 am

Somari is in a totally different group of animals, and shouldn't be compared to the bootleg stuff we are talking about here.  Sure, it uses trademarks and stuff illegally, but Tengen Tetris infringed on rights too.  If someone reskinned Somari, it would be a perfectly legal work, as it was built from the grounds up and is an original, unlicensed title.

Mario 4, yeah that would just be a common bootleg or whatever, a common game hack of another game.

The only reason that people call these modern counterfeits "reproductions" is because it sounds nicer to many folks.  There is nothing separating these from ones made during the period, plain and simple, both are illegal and are just as counterfeit as the others.


nothing separating them except, oh, maybe the definition of the word

Counterfeit: a fraudulent imitation of something else; a forgery. made in exact imitation of something valuable or important with the intention to deceive or defraud.

Reproduction: a copy of a work of art

This particular cart is quite obviously the latter. Seriously, no one disagrees with you about counterfeits being wrong but this is NOT a counterfeit... by definition.

Your argument is like saying people shouldn't be able to sell reproduced paintings of Starry Night because someone might try to resell it as though it were the original... And anyone who would want to hang a reproduction of starry night in their house without the word REPRO written on it somewhere are just entitled...

fcgamer

Quote from: gr3yh47 on November 02, 2013, 09:32:22 am
Quote from: fcgamer on November 02, 2013, 09:07:05 am

Somari is in a totally different group of animals, and shouldn't be compared to the bootleg stuff we are talking about here.  Sure, it uses trademarks and stuff illegally, but Tengen Tetris infringed on rights too.  If someone reskinned Somari, it would be a perfectly legal work, as it was built from the grounds up and is an original, unlicensed title.

Mario 4, yeah that would just be a common bootleg or whatever, a common game hack of another game.

The only reason that people call these modern counterfeits "reproductions" is because it sounds nicer to many folks.  There is nothing separating these from ones made during the period, plain and simple, both are illegal and are just as counterfeit as the others.


nothing separating them except, oh, maybe the definition of the word

Counterfeit: a fraudulent imitation of something else; a forgery. made in exact imitation of something valuable or important with the intention to deceive or defraud.

Reproduction: a copy of a work of art

This particular cart is quite obviously the latter. Seriously, no one disagrees with you about counterfeits being wrong but this is NOT a counterfeit... by definition.

Your argument is like saying people shouldn't be able to sell reproduced paintings of Starry Night because someone might try to resell it as though it were the original... And anyone who would want to hang a reproduction of starry night in their house without the word REPRO written on it somewhere are just entitled...



Nope, that argument is guavas to bananas, my friend  ;D

The game is a copy of a high value cart.  It certainly can deceive, as it looks quite real.  I should ask for Earthbound for SNES for Christmas and see if my folks or brother or aunt or someone can get me one.  It will be interesting if I get the real one, or if they get deceived by a counterfeit such as the one being sold here.  To some, it might seem obvious to be a fake, but to others, sure it will definitely deceive. 

I don't think the guys making reproductions of van Gogh's Starry Night are breaking the law either...but the guy who made this cart broke the law, no two ways about it. 

Now going back to this here entitlement thing.  See here, if you want Earthbound, there are plenty of ways you can legitimately get it, without resorting to purchasing counterfeits.  It isn't anyone's right to even play the game (there are plenty of people the world over who can't even afford a gaming machine), it is even less of a right to feel that you can have the game, and can have it at the price you want.
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nerdynebraskan

Gray,

I'm not rich, either. I net less than $20,000 a year, while partially supporting my under-employed girlfriend, and not getting any substantial assistance from anyone else. I don't own a car, I buy my clothes and housewares at yard sales and thrift stores, and I carefully stock up on groceries when they're on sale. While it's true I have no debts aside from my mortgage, I've achieved that by carefully living within (and often below) my means on everything except my game collecting. And I mostly subsidize that through reselling.

So no, I'm not willing to let you play the poverty card here. If you're really in as desperate shape as you're inferring, you'd probably have trouble ponying up the $30-50 a pop for repros and NES/SNES bootlegs anyway. If I were in the situation you're claiming, I'd probably stick to a flash cart and pirates. As it is, I don't even like to buy repros. I'll spend a year scrounging up the donor sports games for a buck apiece, and send in 50 of them to a repro maker so I can get my repro carts for the equivalent of less than $10 apiece.

My ability to enjoy the collection I have, with the financial limitations that I have to work through, is proof that you can have a great collection even while being poor. But it does require hard work and patience; at least once, I've waited over a year to buy my most wanted game. But you want to cut corners to meet your desires, and you don't care what that means to the rest of our community. That impatience, selfishness, and entitlement is why I don't respect your position.

And one last nitpick:  If you want to insult me, cut the crap. We're not British, and it's not cute for Americans to hide behind the "class" of British profanity. Just tell me to fuck off, alright?

fcgamer,

I appreciate your defenses. You and I are both passionate for this hobby, and the community around it. We both understand the sacrifices that this scene can be worth, even as we go about that differently. But we still have our disagreements.

QuoteThe only reason that people call these modern counterfeits "reproductions" is because it sounds nicer to many folks.  There is nothing separating these from ones made during the period, plain and simple, both are illegal and are just as counterfeit as the others.  To say that these are less illegal or more acceptable just because the companies are no longer producing these games (which is only half true, since these "repros" could steal revenue from Nintendo's virtual console project...) is just silly.


I disagree with most of that.

I do like the word "reproduction" to be used to apply to some, but not all, of the modern, fan-made (or commonly recycled) game carts. I draw a hard line in limiting the games in this category, to mean only games that were not normally published here. Whether that was a cancelled prototype, a game that we missed because it didn't get published here, or a modern hack sequel, these all share many important characteristics:

1) The game company that developed the title never gave us the chance to buy it. Whether that meant cancelling a game's release even with a finished prototype in hand, or only publishing their game in another part of the world, they never gave us a chance to buy it on an NES cart. And now that the format is officially dead, there will never be an official release.

2) This software was so important to the vintage gaming community that it was immortalized in the ROM dumping scene. People in our community care so much about the preservation of this history that they found ways to extract the data, so that it would outlive its original hardware. A number of known prototypes no longer work, as they were thrown together cheaply. They were only meant to convey the game's features for a short time, after all, but NES prototypes are now 20-30 years old. (Restoring these now-immortal ROMs back to their original cartridge format through reproduction actually completes the cycle. The software is able to be used on its original console, as it was intended for.)

3) These games are innovative, compelling, or influential enough that they are still fascinating to us 20 years after their non-release. Mother/Earthbound Zero and Sweet Home proved to be influential on gaming to come, and they're both solid, enjoyable RPGs. (But many gamers, myself included, can't read Japanese and thus the only official copies of these games are unplayable to us.) Drac's Night Out and Sunman are original, entertaining games that only officially exist on a handful of dying proto carts. (Even Star Trek V, an admittedly mediocre game, is still fun to someone like me who loves both Nintendo and Star Trek.)

4) Some of these games can also be found on the old pirate carts that you're so fond of, but those aren't always a viable option either. There are reliability issues there, too:  most were built cheaply and are dying just like protos, and some aren't even fully compatible as they may have been designed for use on a Famiclone which may not have even been identical to an official FC/NES. And pirates are so strange; in their efforts to cover their tracks, it often takes a great deal of research to know which pirate carts even have the right games (and which ones aren't badly glitched, incomplete, etc.)

In the end, a true repro is a game that is preserving the history of this era of gaming. We're able to live and re-live the joy of this games by plugging them into an original console and playing them the way they were intended to. This is a fantasy that is only fulfilled by reproductions, since there is literally no other way to do this reliably. And in ten years, when age and shoddy worksmanship end the last of the original protos and most of the older pirates, repros and flash carts will be all that's left.

Now, this is obviously not the case for anything like the Earthbound bootleg in the OP. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of original carts still in circulation and most of them are prized and cared for. The fantasy of plugging this prized game into a real console is not that rare an experience, and it won't necessarily become one for many, many years. Commercially licensed and sold Nintendo carts were built with excellent materials, and they've held up exceptionally well. An original Earthbound cart will likely outlive this bootleg and its cheap chips, and it could easily outlive the last WiiU with an Earthbound ROM downloaded via Virtual Console.

As for the legal issues surrounding all of this:

Yes, these modern copies are infringing on still-copyrighted software, but I won't shed a tear for a company that never tried to take my money for it in the first place. And no, it's not the same for me to play official re-releases of these games on the modern consoles (if and when applicable). These things were programmed to be played on a controller with two buttons, and it's just not the same using a controller with 12 buttons on it.

And I don't think repros are a serious threat to profits when it comes to cashing in on Nintendo/Konami/Capcom's back catalog. Some of us don't even own the modern consoles, so we're not even potential consumers for the Virtual Console anyway. And some of us love the games so much that we buy them over and over anyway. I could easily see an Earthbound nut having a NES repro and a FC original of the first game, the SNES and SFC  versions of the second, an original and English repro of Mother 3 for the GBA, and having the games downloaded onto their modern console via Virtual Console (or equivalence). Oh, and ROMs for all three games on their PC, for good measure.
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80sFREAK

Quote from: gr3yh47 on November 02, 2013, 09:32:22 am
Quote from: fcgamer on November 02, 2013, 09:07:05 am

Somari is in a totally different group of animals, and shouldn't be compared to the bootleg stuff we are talking about here.  Sure, it uses trademarks and stuff illegally, but Tengen Tetris infringed on rights too.  If someone reskinned Somari, it would be a perfectly legal work, as it was built from the grounds up and is an original, unlicensed title.

Mario 4, yeah that would just be a common bootleg or whatever, a common game hack of another game.

The only reason that people call these modern counterfeits "reproductions" is because it sounds nicer to many folks.  There is nothing separating these from ones made during the period, plain and simple, both are illegal and are just as counterfeit as the others.


nothing separating them except, oh, maybe the definition of the word

Counterfeit: a fraudulent imitation of something else; a forgery. made in exact imitation of something valuable or important with the intention to deceive or defraud.

Reproduction: a copy of a work of art

This particular cart is quite obviously the latter. Seriously, no one disagrees with you about counterfeits being wrong but this is NOT a counterfeit... by definition.

Your argument is like saying people shouldn't be able to sell reproduced paintings of Starry Night because someone might try to resell it as though it were the original... And anyone who would want to hang a reproduction of starry night in their house without the word REPRO written on it somewhere are just entitled...

Reproduction for label - check. How about software?
I don't buy, sell or trade at moment.
But my question is how hackers at that time were able to hack those games?(c)krzy

L___E___T

November 03, 2013, 03:48:52 pm #44 Last Edit: November 04, 2013, 10:13:48 am by L___E___T
I don't understand 80sFreak's question, care to rephrase?

Lots of opinions flying round and lots of passion, it's good to see that everyone cares a lot.  We can't always agree on everything and we shouldn't expect to.

Personally I like repros, I like to have a physical cart of a game I play, ideally a CIB copy if I can, but there are times when it's not feasible for a number of reasons.  That's why I have some repros there. 

Additionally, I like to recase pirates I'm fond of and multicarts.  My Rockman 6 in 1 looks much nicer in a genuine blue shell.  Maybe in the future my mind will change, but for now I like this hobby effort, I just wish it was done with more care.  You see a lot of fugly NES cart designs in NA.  So many ugly examples.

I think we're retreading old ground here with a lot of these scripture-like replies, but as I said it shows passion for the hobby and that's no bad thing.

We do have to accept however that people have different views. 
I don't think it's fair to deny some people a thing they like, because we ourselves don't like it.  Sadly, that's how some of the finest artworks across history were wiped out.

I can't stand those ugly NA carts you see by folks like Atomic Games, but if some people enjoy them who am I to (try and) deny them?  It's their world too, their hobby too just a much as mine, that's the case regardless.
I may not agree with it, but I won't try and outlaw it.

That's kind of how I feel here - this is all a part of a free market (yay capitalism) that dictates itself, so let it.  You can't stop it anyway so don't get too stressed trying, it'll wear you out.

This is just my opinion mind, not telling anyone what to do in the slightest, nor would I try.

I'm still going to build repros though, still going to love them and still going to keep them to myself and not sell them, that's part of the deal of having them.

I partly let the old thread trail on because I think part of being involved with building repros is accepting the flack they can attract.  What's ironic to me, is that when I tried an experiment and showed off a clear repro of an expensive game here recently, nobody even noticed, let alone complained.  Why is that?




Post Merge: November 04, 2013, 10:13:48 am

To further this discussion, you'll either love this or hate it then, depending on your take:

http://gamergrafx.com/products/3509939-little-samson
My for Sale / Trade thread
http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=9423.msg133828#msg133828
大事なのは、オチに至るまでの積み重ねなのです。