Fake or Rare Zelda or What?

[sillic]

I live in the US and bought this on ebay from a US seller.  I am waiting for my Hyperkin 5 to arrive so I haven't been able try the game out yet to see what comes up. 

I was looking around online and I can't find another Famicom Zelda that looks like this.  My guess is that it is a fake or early pirate copy off the famicom disk system.  No triforce anywhere and it doesn't have 1 in the title.  From what I read when Nintendo did release The Legend of Zelda to the Famicom it had 1 in the title.

Any thoughts?  Well besides doing your homework before you buy.

Thanks in advance

[HVC-Man]

If that bootleg does predate the official Nintendo port to Famicom, that'd be quite an interesting find.

This is probably too difficult a request, but would you be able to open the cartridge and take pictures of the circuit board inside?

[sillic]

I thought about opening it up, but don't want to remove the back the label. 

[fcgamer]

Yeah it's a bootleg, who knows what is on the actual cartridge though.

I have a couple bootleg Zelda carts; one is a later one with the Famicom version of the game, and I also think I have one with the English version of the game on it.

[P]

It's also interesting that it has a mix of Chinese and Japanese text. The warning on the back label is in Japanese, but the text in the upper right corner as well as the top label or whatever it is (the third photo) is in Chinese (traditional characters so it's probably Hong Kong or Taiwan or something).

No triforce anywhere and it doesn't have 1 in the title.  From what I read when Nintendo did release The Legend of Zelda to the Famicom it had 1 in the title.

Bootleg titles often doesn't have much in common with the original title though, so I wouldn't consider that as a hint.

Easiest way to see is to to play it. If it's really an FDS conversion, the sound must have been modified in some way or it will sound very weird. Either way it will probably sound totally different from the Famicom cart and NES versions sound.

[sillic]

Thanks for the input!!  I can't wait to play it to see exactly what I have.

Yes the third pic is from the top.  I was wondering what language the back sticker is in.  I tried scanning it into google translate and didn't get anything made sense in either Japanese or Chinese. Not that I expected much from Google Translate. I thought about asking someone that works at one of the Asian Markets in town about it, but I didn't want to come off as if I assume they all are they same.  I can't read French or German even though the alphabets are similar, so I wouldn't expect someone from Japan to read Chinese or the other way around.

[L___E___T]

 



It's traditional Chinese embellishments, on top of the standard Japanese kana back label text.

Top left call out is also Japanese, with that one Kanji character which is Chinese essentially).  Top label is Chinese also. 

Basically, Traditional Chinese is/was used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.  Simplified Chinese is used in mainland China.  I don't claim to be an expert though.

[fcgamer]

Text on the back is in Japanese, top right corner text is traditional Chinese.  Top label is also Chinese.

Front side, markered out or whatever it says Lee Yin, again Chinese.

I have a lot of bootlegs with Japanese text on them, as well as some Chinese text here and there.  Basically, all of these were made in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and to disguise / make them look more authentic, they threw on some Japanese text.  I've seen this time and time again.

As for understanding of the two languages, with writing there is a degree of shared characters, with Japan borrowing from the traditional Chinese.

[chowder]

I'm pretty sure Lee Yin did some other FDS ports too.  It'll be interesting to see the game running

[P]

Yes the third pic is from the top.  I was wondering what language the back sticker is in.  I tried scanning it into google translate and didn't get anything made sense in either Japanese or Chinese. Not that I expected much from Google Translate. I thought about asking someone that works at one of the Asian Markets in town about it, but I didn't want to come off as if I assume they all are they same.  I can't read French or German even though the alphabets are similar, so I wouldn't expect someone from Japan to read Chinese or the other way around.

The Japanese warning says the usual stuff like don't remove cart while power is on, touch pins, pour water on it and so on. The Chinese to the right, I have no idea (I have very limited knowledge of Chinese). The Chinese on the top label probably say Zelda no Densetsu in Chinese.


People that know Japanese may understand some of the Chinese since the Chinese characters generally have the same meaning in both languages, but since Chinese have changed over the years since Japan borrowed the characters and Chinese uses a lot more characters, it's not easy at all. Grammar is also totally different so Japanese people can't expect to understand more than just some words and then guess the context based on that.

[CaH4e3]

this is a taiwan bootleg, and i doubt it has an acual fds conversion inside, cart version released at least in 1992, so most probably it is, not the fds

[HVC-Man]

Then again, Zelda 1 NES was released in 1987, it's entirely possible it got bootlegged before the advent of the FC cart release.

[P]

I doubt it too since there's a lot of work to convert something like this to a cart. They'd have to rewrite the songs for one thing (but this is pirates, it's possible they left the sound part incomplete and it sounds like crap). Even if the bootleg is from before 1992 it's possible it's just the NES version.

But it would be really cool if it was a FDS conversion, we can always hope.

[sillic]

Thanks for everyone's help and input!! I got my retron5 in today.  It is a US NES copy of the game. 

[P]

Yappari

Too bad.