pc engine Need Help Spotting Rondo of Blood Fakes

[Deadeye | 1,598]

Looking for help or a resource of how to spot bootlegs of Rondo of Blood for PC Engine.  Market seems flooded with PCE Works releases and I am having trouble identifying official versus PCE Works.  

Someone made a guide for identifying Sapphire, but I haven't found one for Rondo of Blood. 

Edited June 12, 2021 by Deadeye

[Tanooki | 4,954]

Unless I missed something, aren't the PCEW games branded with their logo, or was there a decade plus old run where it was a pure near 1:1 copy?

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

I have a copy if you want specific pictures. 

[Deadeye | 1,598]

I don't see any PCE Works logos on the images I have seen. 

@MrWunderfulThanks!  Maybe better pictures will help.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

Sure just let me know what pictures you want

[Tyree_Cooper | 777]

Yeah I've had this fear ever since the PCE Works thing came out. It's everywhere, I can't even trust buying this game from Yahoo Japan anymore. Photos I managed to find don't seem to show any easy-to-spot difference, but hopefully I'm wrong? If you need to check the inner ring info of the disc, good look asking that to each seller.

I think people who do these repros should do something else with their life.

[Sumez | 2,995]

I have an original too, absolutely certain it's legit because I bought it way before PCE Works was a thing. But RE: Tanooki, Rondo was definitely one of the games that they made for a few years before he started putting his logo on them.

You'd need someone with a confirmed PCE Works copy to know what to look out for I guess  

[Tanooki | 4,954]

Ahh well, if they're that close, I guess good for someone who just wants to play it I suppose.  Nothing can be done about it now if it's like identical.

[Deadeye | 1,598]

FWIW Limited Run just announced they are doing a Rondo of Blood release.  At the very least, it is licensed, should be visually different, and also should be a quality pressing.

 

[Deadeye | 1,598]

I am going to pick up LRG's release, but I still think having a guide to spot the differences between original and PCE Works (or other 1:1 copies) is important. 

[DefaultGen | 5,444]

PCE Works text on the back is wrong. Look at the "FOR SALE and USE IN JAPAN ONLY" text on the back, specifically the boldness and positioning.

This is PCE Works:

This is real:

Here is a legit inner disc code:

PCE Works discs may obviously say PCE Works on them where it should say Konami. There seem to be a few disc variants. There may be a "more legit" looking one which I why I posted the legit ring code.

Above info courtesy of Gex and Hyrulevyse. There may be many other subtle differences, this is just what I have in my notes. Fuck PCE Works btw.

Edited July 28, 2021 by DefaultGen

[Tyree_Cooper | 777]

They really can go get fuxxed for doing this. Thanks for flooding the market with hard-to-spot repros, especially of a game that was already expensive.

In your 1st photo, there's a circle with a white dot on the left of 本品. This is not present on the 2nd photo you mention is of a real copy.

Did they add this? Or maybe it's something from a different print, that PCE Works used as their base?

[Tyree_Cooper | 777]

No, sealed copies don't have a red tearstrip. I kept a photo of an old auction and have seen other copies with the same tearstrip, so I think it's the correct one.

[OptOut | 8,892]

Hoo boy whoever these PCE works fellas are, they SUUUUUCK! 

How and why are they allowed to get away with this shit? No shame or what?!

[Sumez | 2,995]

Is "tearstrip" what you guys are calling the obi?

[Tyree_Cooper | 777]

The tearstrip is the opaque plastic line you pull to open the seal.

The obi or spinecard is the paper thing that wraps the left side of the box.

I'm pretty sure the tearstrip of the PCE Works monster is slightly different, so it's a good way to tell what you're buying, since I've been seeing lots of suspiciously cheap sealed Rondo of Blood, even in Japan, which is impossible. So I suspect they are all PCE Works things.

[Sumez | 2,995]

3 hours ago, Tyree_Cooper said:

The tearstrip is the opaque plastic line you pull to open the seal.

Aha, got it. Makes more sense to me then.

[Tanooki | 4,954]

On 6/16/2021 at 9:19 AM, OptOut said:

Hoo boy whoever these PCE works fellas are, they SUUUUUCK! 

How and why are they allowed to get away with this shit? No shame or what?!

It's actually a guy, a german known as Tobias.  Originally in his very early days of the business he supposedly created using some official looking letterhead some letters that supposedly gave him permission to make legit copies of Sapphire for the arcade-card format.  With that official(hah) letter he has access to a NEC equal quality commercial grade printing facility for the CDs, the case art, manuals, etc.  He ran 1:1 copies of the stuff in an era when you had the shittiest of obvious bootleg copies with like HP printer quality stickers on Gameboy Advance stuff.  I think he went even as far as duplicating the RING code so you really need to be spot on genius enough to figure out if you have a new one or a new copy one from PCE Works.  Dracula X I don't think got the same 1:1 full on treatment, but buying Sapphire is basically playing with fire.

[YOURTURN | 1,257]

Wow! That Tobias sounds like the video game world's answer to Toy Toni. 

[Tanooki | 4,954]

I have no idea who that is.  But I will say this, people are split on him because what he did was like 15-20 years ago.  He's still in business and LONG reformed, well as much as a bootlegger can be.  He still has his 1:1 quality mastering facilities, but everything now is clearly branded, every box, disc, hucard, manual, tray with his logo.  There is no mistaking the stuff.  Those who are bitter and bitchy about what he pulled a decade and a half ago some still want his head on a pike, others gave up caring since the damage is done and he provides a service.  Those who come to know of his services after his proven turn around tend to be fine, his prices seem almost high, but given what it costs to make these low run goods, he's super fair, and how terrible TG/PCE prices are now, you're getting equal quality goods yet brand new so it's a real option.

Personally I don't mind the guy, what he did was a dick move with Sapphire and to a lesser extent Dracula X in the earlier 00s, but I don't care to beat some dude over the head with it like a child after so long.  When I was actively getting some CDs and cards again, I got a few discs off him and they were phenomenal.  One was something I owned originally in the 90s RayXanber III (and I had 2) and his deal you buy 3 and 2 is thrown in free for like $60 shipped from  Germany, given RX3 was like a $150 game pre-pandemic I was all over that.

[YOURTURN | 1,257]

On 6/19/2021 at 1:51 PM, Tanooki said:

I have no idea who that is.

LINK: https://www.action-figure-resource.com/palitoy-star-wars.html
LINK: https://starwarsforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11326&sid=152a1ffb937dd8dd3fc924e64a2bde92&start=180

Toy Toni is a scammer in the UK Star Wars collecting community.

He had managed to buy unused card proofs and bubbles, and sealed these every time he got the needed figures that go with said card proofs. Prior to somebody realizing that his stuff was not factory sealed, it went as far as having AFA and UKG not realizing they are fakes. I mean everything is authentic, but the seal itself is not.

In the end he screwed over a lot of collectors, and helped make it hard to feel safe collecting the pieces he did seal himself. With the latter issue appearing to not have ended.  As for the guy are talking about...

Does he look as "honest" as this guy? 

[Redmond | 152]

I was actually gonna post something similar and thought nobody would need it so I wrote like a few paragraphs and then scrapped it lol.

I can't recall exactly what I wrote, as they are pretty close, but the sharpness between the authentic/fake is pretty stark in person, although that could possibly be tweaked as well.  

On 6/15/2021 at 2:59 PM, DefaultGen said:

PCE Works text on the back is wrong. Look at the "FOR SALE and USE IN JAPAN ONLY" text on the back, specifically the boldness and positioning.

This is PCE Works:

This is real:

The circle symbol following the 4-3-1 also seems to be added on the PCEWorks copies and absent from authentic copies ( unless there's a variant or something ).  EDIT:  Tyree_Cooper mentioned this one already, whoops.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Redmond

[Tyree_Cooper | 777]

yeah that'd be something easy to spot, but i have the feeling it could be a variant on real copies. need more time browsing google images / yahoo japan auctions to confirm.

[Tanooki | 4,954]

Toni looks as honest as a second tier used car lot salesman who couldn't get into the good ones.

[Ozzy_98 | 55]

On 6/19/2021 at 4:51 PM, Tanooki said:

I have no idea who that is.  But I will say this, people are split on him because what he did was like 15-20 years ago.  He's still in business and LONG reformed, well as much as a bootlegger can be.  He still has his 1:1 quality mastering facilities, but everything now is clearly branded, every box, disc, hucard, manual, tray with his logo.  There is no mistaking the stuff.  Those who are bitter and bitchy about what he pulled a decade and a half ago some still want his head on a pike, others gave up caring since the damage is done and he provides a service.  Those who come to know of his services after his proven turn around tend to be fine, his prices seem almost high, but given what it costs to make these low run goods, he's super fair, and how terrible TG/PCE prices are now, you're getting equal quality goods yet brand new so it's a real option.

Personally I don't mind the guy, what he did was a dick move with Sapphire and to a lesser extent Dracula X in the earlier 00s, but I don't care to beat some dude over the head with it like a child after so long.  When I was actively getting some CDs and cards again, I got a few discs off him and they were phenomenal.  One was something I owned originally in the 90s RayXanber III (and I had 2) and his deal you buy 3 and 2 is thrown in free for like $60 shipped from  Germany, given RX3 was like a $150 game pre-pandemic I was all over that.

Digging up an old thread since it was linked to one I saw, and @AdamW posted about this, thought I'd add a bit more details.

In the very early 2000s, I think it was maybe 2000, could even been late 1990s before I got online, copies of Sapphire and one of the Fatal Furys were showing up printed by a company, Care-4-data. These were sold as legit games on ebay (Back when ebay was crazy and bidders could message each other). A know 1-2 guys on the Yahoo TG16 "mailing" group were burnt by buying them. 

The same a-hole who did that, was as stated, one of the main PCE Works guys, who then started using translation patches without permission from the translators, which pissed off more people. He's also the same guy who runs http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/ and is known as Fudoh in some circles. I'm not sure if he's also involved with the snatcher bootlegs at the time, that was around the time I first stopped collecting, cause of reasons. (Unemployment being the reason)