Majoras Mask (not holo and not nfr - Gray) Authentic ?

[Edgarmcfly | 213]

I saw this zelda Majoras mask on a store

 

Is authentic ?

 

Should i buy ?

Edited March 3, 2021 by Edgarmcfly

[a3quit4s | 4,126]

The only gray one I know should be a not for resale

[ZeldaFreak | 3,619]

As far as I'm aware, every gray Majora's Mask that isn't an NFR is non-authentic. You can still buy it just for the novelty of it if you'd like, but I don't believe Nintendo ever produced gray Majora's Mask carts outside of the NFRs.

[phart010 | 1,708]

Maybe buy it and open it up. If the chips are fake, just return it and tell them it’s a bootleg. If they are authentic chips, you might potentially have something worth discussing 

[Edgarmcfly | 213]

5 minutes ago, phart010 said:

Maybe buy it and open it up. If the chips are fake, just return it and tell them it’s a bootleg. If they are authentic chips, you might potentially have something worth discussing 

I took this photo from inside

[phart010 | 1,708]

3 minutes ago, Edgarmcfly said:

I took this photo from inside

I’m not an N64 connoisseur. Anyone on here know if that pcb passes as authentic?

[ZeldaFreak | 3,619]

Wouldn't it be more likely that the chips inside are indeed authentic, and the internals were just switched out with a gray outer shell? It'd probably be more helpful to see the back label of the cartridge, since I know there's some numbers and whatnot on there that allow you to determine if the outer shell of the cartridge is indeed original or not.

I wouldn't be able to determine anything, I don't know much about this stuff, but I'm sure they'd mean something to someone on here, haha

[Edgarmcfly | 213]

complete pcb

Edited March 4, 2021 by Edgarmcfly

[Edgarmcfly | 213]

3 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

Wouldn't it be more likely that the chips inside are indeed authentic, and the internals were just switched out with a gray outer shell? It'd probably be more helpful to see the back label of the cartridge, since I know there's some numbers and whatnot on there that allow you to determine if the outer shell of the cartridge is indeed original or not.

I wouldn't be able to determine anything, I don't know much about this stuff, but I'm sure they'd mean something to someone on here, haha

back 

[DefaultGen | 5,436]

If this was the only gray MM ever found what are the chances the label on the one found would be completely wrecked in a way that makes it hard to determine if it was transposed?

[ZeldaFreak | 3,619]

7 minutes ago, Edgarmcfly said:

back 

OK, that wasn't as useful as I was hoping it'd be, haha. Maybe I was thinking of NFR back stickers. It doesn't look like there's any real identifying markers there differentiating it from a legitimate Majora's Mask back label. The only other thing I can think of is that on the back of most (if not all) N64 games, there's a tiny little number imprinted on the upper right-hand section of the back label of cartridges, perhaps you could get a pic/look real close at that yourself and maybe we could gleam something from that?

Here's an example of what I'm talking about

The circuit board also looks legit as far as I can tell, but that's not surprising to me since like I said, it's far more likely that it was a legitimate Majora's Mask game that was just extracted out of a standard gold cart and implanted in to a gray one, rather than being a complete from the ground up fake.

The only real difference I can see is that on a legitimate Majora's Mask cart, on the top of the inside of the outer shell, there appears to be the numbers "75-1   5" imprinted, whereas on your copy it looks like it just says "F-5", but I'm not sure if that really means anything in particular.

I should also reiterate that I don't actually know anything about this kind of thing, I'm hardly an expert on identifying fakes, I'm just trying to dig in to my limited knowledge on N64 games to see if I can find any definitive proof that it is indeed fake.

...I mean, I don't really need to, it is very obviously fake since as far as I'm aware no legitimate examples of a non-NFR gray MM cart have ever been found, but still it's good to have definite proof of that being the case, right?

[Edgarmcfly | 213]

I will try to take some photos of the back code

[chuppy44 | 56]

The creases and tears on the label definitely make it seem like it was just peeled off and reattached. Considering how the gold plastic on this game was much more prone to getting cracked and broken than a normal cart for whatever reason I can certainly see why someone might just swap the label. Though never having peeled off a label myself I don't know how doable that would be.

[tidaldreams | 654]

3 hours ago, Edgarmcfly said:

complete pbc

This is real.

[phart010 | 1,708]

1 hour ago, chuppy44 said:

The creases and tears on the label definitely make it seem like it was just peeled off and reattached. Considering how the gold plastic on this game was much more prone to getting cracked and broken than a normal cart for whatever reason I can certainly see why someone might just swap the label. Though never having peeled off a label myself I don't know how doable that would be.

Wasn’t the gold cart always a hologram label though?

[ZeldaFreak | 3,619]

1 minute ago, phart010 said:

Wasn’t the gold cart always a hologram label though?

Nope. You know how with Ocarina of Time, the standard cartridges were gray, but the collector's edition cartridges were Gold? With Majora's Mask, all cartridges other than the gray NFR are gold, but the standard cartridges have standard front labels, whereas the collector's edition cartridges have the holographic front labels.

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

3 hours ago, chuppy44 said:

The creases and tears on the label definitely make it seem like it was just peeled off and reattached. Considering how the gold plastic on this game was much more prone to getting cracked and broken than a normal cart for whatever reason I can certainly see why someone might just swap the label. Though never having peeled off a label myself I don't know how doable that would be.

Pretty easy to do when applying heat with a hairdryer to soften the adhesive. Also back on the N64 days I remember there being those sticker vending machines, usually in the entrance of a diner or chinese restaurant, that had straigjt up cart label stickers in them could be one of them

[Edgarmcfly | 213]

Ok, i bought the game... 

Sincerely looks very legit to me

 

I dont know 

 

i took photos with my pro camera 

[Edgarmcfly | 213]

[Edgarmcfly | 213]

[OptOut | 8,892]

This looks like a label reattach, IMO. These lines look really unusual to me, maybe stress lines where someone was peeling the label off?

[Edgarmcfly | 213]

1 hour ago, OptOut said:

This looks like a label reattach, IMO. These lines look really unusual to me, maybe stress lines where someone was peeling the label off?

The line from down is not from the label y part of adhesive tape, you know here in Mexico is very common use a adhesive plastic to protect the labels (the adhesive plastic like the used for notebooks) back in the old days, but anyway if the cart is real or not, the game works and is very rad !

[ZeldaFreak | 3,619]

1 hour ago, OptOut said:

This looks like a label reattach, IMO. These lines look really unusual to me, maybe stress lines where someone was peeling the label off?

Yeah I was gonna say, some of the damage on the label makes me lean more towards my initial suspicion of someone just implanting the internals and the front label of a legit Majora's Mask cart on to a gray cartridge. Not so much the lines you pointed out (although that is unusual) but what pointed me towards that conclusion is the slight damage on the upper side of the label in particular. Kind of looks to me like someone may have been trying to pick away at it to get it off, but that could just be me overthinking it.

Either way, there's a near 100% chance of it just being a fake, but it's still kind of neat regardless