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Correct number of unlicensed North American NES games


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4 hours ago, Mario_Friend1982 said:

How many unlicensed NES games have been released in North America?

If prior to 1998, then it's 89, 90 or 91, depending on whether Cheetahmen II counts and if Myriad/Caltron are separate releases.

Sachen would add 67, I think, if scattered importing by collectors counts.

Post-Garage Cart, who knows?

Edited by Tulpa
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Was it though? 😉

 

Seriously though, there never will be a solid answer.  The NES was an open ended dumpster fire of unlicensed goods once people figured it out back in the era, so even if you did exclude the homebrew, pet projects, or wish it were official release quality stuff you see now, it's still a blur.  No one will ever agree on it, the NES is ultimately a system you can never truly 100% collect every cart for, as no one is solidly sure just how many there were before the 21st century gave us cheap rom hacks and personal creations.

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3 hours ago, Tulpa said:

If prior to 1998, then it's 89, 90 or 91, depending on whether Cheetahmen II counts and if Myriad/Caltron are separate releases.

Sachen would add 67, I think, if scattered importing by collectors counts.

Post-Garage Cart, who knows?

Considering the only place that Huge insect saw a release was in the USA/Europe, some of this has to count.

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17 hours ago, fcgamer said:

Considering the only place that Huge insect saw a release was in the USA/Europe, some of this has to count.

Whether collectors like it or not, given your truly unique location, perspective, literal museum of systems+games+paper pieces, you're like the authority on some stuff when it comes to sachen, taiwanese releases, pirate/clone stuff.  I think the salt thrown at you for over a decade now is largely people who get pissed off having bought up over time a collection to get told, sorry, it actually isn't complete, doesn't sit well.

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On 4/22/2022 at 8:01 PM, Tulpa said:

If prior to 1998, then it's 89, 90 or 91, depending on whether Cheetahmen II counts and if Myriad/Caltron are separate releases.

Sachen would add 67, I think, if scattered importing by collectors counts.

Post-Garage Cart, who knows?

Is the gap between 98 and 05 too large to count Membler's Garage Cart if Cheetahmen II counts?

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8 minutes ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Is the gap between 98 and 05 too large to count Membler's Garage Cart if Cheetahmen II counts?

Honestly, I would think that the print run would be too low for it to count in any sort of official capacity.  Nothing pisses off a bunch of collectors faster than their collections being arbitrarily labeled incomplete simply due to it being basically or literally impossible to obtain one cart that wasn't widely distributed or available.  Cheetahmen II wasn't widely distributed for a good while, but there were ultimately thousands of copies produced and sold.  As good as a lot of it tends to be, I really don't think low production run homebrews count in the way that OP seems to be inferring from their question.  I think Stadium Events is the only exception to this "rule," and only because it was an actual licensed release.

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2 hours ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Is the gap between 98 and 05 too large to count Membler's Garage Cart if Cheetahmen II counts?

Well, I consider Garage Cart the start of the homebrew era. Which is a subset of unlicensed, but separate from the retail unlicensed.

Cheetahmen II was intended for release during the NES lifespan (probably 1992), but ended up warehoused until after NES production ended. Of course, you could still find new old stock toploaders into the 2000s, so...

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9 hours ago, Tulpa said:

Well, I consider Garage Cart the start of the homebrew era. Which is a subset of unlicensed, but separate from the retail unlicensed.

Cheetahmen II was intended for release during the NES lifespan (probably 1992), but ended up warehoused until after NES production ended. Of course, you could still find new old stock toploaders into the 2000s, so...

Cheetahmen II is an unreleased game that they found production copies of much later.  People were hoping such a find would turn up for Police Academy as well, since it was allegedly completed and ready for production, but instead we got that unfinished mess.  Go figure.  But yeah, I wouldn't class it as an unlicensed "release" as it was not technically a released game. 

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3 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Cheetahmen II is an unreleased game that they found production copies of much later.  People were hoping such a find would turn up for Police Academy as well, since it was allegedly completed and ready for production, but instead we got that unfinished mess.  Go figure.  But yeah, I wouldn't class it as an unlicensed "release" as it was not technically a released game. 

I don't know, if we're going to get into wordplay here, I think Cheetahmen II can absolutely be classified as "released," but perhaps not "distributed," or at least not widely so.  It was absolutely produced in large quantities and made it outside of its factory, with the intention of being sold to the public, but something derailed whichever route(s) the creators intended to take there.

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4 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Cheetahmen II is an unreleased game that they found production copies of much later.  People were hoping such a find would turn up for Police Academy as well, since it was allegedly completed and ready for production, but instead we got that unfinished mess.  Go figure.  But yeah, I wouldn't class it as an unlicensed "release" as it was not technically a released game. 

That's what I love about the NES. There's so many weird aspects to it that as soon as you nail down a definition, some exception pokes its head up.

whack-a-molegif.gif

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