Ankos

23 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I've never heard of polywatch but I like that result.  I've got a few plastic pieces that could benefit from that.  I was using my left over novus from when I had a pin and it did work well there, but when it came to clear plastics from CD bottoms (lost causes) to lenses it seemed to nail down larger marks nicely enough but it also would not clear out stuff like the above image but get more hazy due to the sanding effect.  I'd like to see how that would work on a jacked up CD or DVD.

A DVD is not a bad idea. I've got a scuffed copy of Dracula vs Frankenstein that I could use the leftover polywatch on

Just this week I picked up a Mega Duck (sort of a copyright neutral Gameboy clone). It worked ok, but the display was super scuffed. These have gone up a lot in cost, and it's too obscure for people to make aftermarket screens, so I went ahead and tried this stuff called Polywatch. If my understanding is correct slightly melts the plastic, allowing for it to fill in small scratches. Here's a before and after. I think that it looks a lot better. Anyone else have any suggestions on what to do with a bad display lens (aside from replacing it)?

2 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Maybe that discoloration on the case can yield some clues?

Anyways, have you opened the cartridge up to look under the hood?

Yes, I posted pictures of the PCB just above my most recent post. It uses a different board from the two known Mega Duck board types

Last time I posted here, I showed off a weird looking Mega Duck cart with no sticker. I just picked one up. Turns out the cart was a copy of A-Force by Sachen. Oddly it has a fire sound effect once you get the piercing shot power up. To my knowledge there is no sound effect for this normally. Based on the appearance of the cart I'm guessing it is an early revision or prototype. Considering that Mega Duck stickers normally leave a ton of residue when removed, and this one had none (suggesting there never was a sticker), I'm going to guess prototype. I tried recording some footage of it to show off the sound effect, but it is hard to get a clear image of beat up dot matrix handhelds

38 minutes ago, weekendroady said:

Not sure if this is going to help, but I recently got something off of Carousell Taiwan through a Taiwanese purchasing service (there are a few). It was actually quite a bit easier than I thought. I'd assume there are similar services for HK? 

Agent options are much slimmer for Hong Kong. Shippn works for it, but it is super expensive. Unless I find something super great that I can't buy anywhere else I try to avoid using it. Superbuy I think has a service for buying from Hong Kong, but I have not used Superbuy for anything except buying from Mainland China. If it is as good as their Mainland Agent services, then it might be worth a shot

I'm biased since I like to import a lot of games, but I personally don't see an issue with importing itself. If you just want to shop around for yourself, then you're allowed to buy whatever is for sale

Flipping stuff and hoarding stuff is scummy, but that isn't really something exclusive to imports (though I've seen a decent bit of it with imported games)

If you're smart about how you search, then you can find a decent deal in most of the world within a month if you just search five minutes a day. Stuff might've gotten harder to find, but there's always going to be something worth buying. It might not be what you initially set out for, but coming up with reasonable goals is part of collecting

Also, I've spoken to collectors from at least six other countries, who all somewhat regularly imported games. If you really can't find something good where you are at, then the computer is right there

Edit: Also, I remember a seller on Xianyu who went out of their way to put a welcome message for buyers using agents. Seeing that I think emboldened me to use agents even more

Maybe try staying with friends for a while. That'll minimize the risk of someone hurting you, or you hurting yourself

Just picked this up. It's a Famicom game developed in Xi'an China. It's a solid platformer, though its not as original as some of their other stuff. Xi'an sort of had its own little ecosystem for game development that had a pretty interesting history. It started when UMC decided to set up an R&D team there. This was to save on costs when developing for the A'can and Gamate. Then those projects went south, but some of the staff from then wanted to stay in the industry, so they wound up developing less legit Famicom stuff for Dragon. Then they moved onto Mega Drive stuff (they publicly released their devkit for that if anyone is interested). Finally they wound up making fully original games for plug and play consoles

24 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

@Ankos I have a pair of boxed telefang Pokemons if you're interested.

That sounds interesting, but I don't like the idea of seeing store stock before it is listed, so I'll wait

2 hours ago, fcgamer said:

Bump! About 60 new items were added, please see first post for details. Thanks!

I don't see a Gameboy DMG/GBC section. Is there going to be one added later?

I picked up an obscure plug and play Famiclone called a Sky Cube. It's got unlicensed NES ports of C64 games and some other weird stuff thrown on it. It was made by a Hong Kong company called Cheer Tech. Games would be fun, but playing on a flimsy PnP kinda dampens the experience. It would be cool to try and put the contents on a flashcart though

Also, they decided to use the Genesis 2 video port, instead of something more common like the normal composite cables 90% of PnP's use. That made it take a while to figure out how to use it

Yes, it's from Mainland China

12 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

That one's really interesting looking, but I've never seen one of those until now. Judging from the text, I guess it's coming out of China?

8 hours ago, fcgamer said:

I knew you were going to bring up color as well - while I've probably found more blue cartridges overall, I've also found a large amount of orange cartridges, and even a few pink / black / white cartridges. Also, it's interesting as blue has become the standard of modern cartridges using this design, for some reason, and those are all coming out of China.

I guess what I am getting at is because you do see a lot of 72 in 1 orange cartridge story cartridges, 64 in 1 orange, etc. that I just honestly would not be able to classify these as strictly Chinese cartridges / versions. Even Princess Maker was in one of these, and primarily an orange shell. These are strictly just my opinions though.

It's funny that we ended up on this topic. A few weeks back I was actually investigating if there was a correlation between game, shell color, and shell design - i.e. I was chatting with a good buddy of mine (TheBootlegBandit), and I had posited that it might be possible to collect (within certain parameters) "all" bootleg Famicom games of all shell designs / colors. This was based on seeing certain games such as the Whirlwind Manu Rockman game always showing up in a pink Assupo shell, Fantasy Zone often appearing in a gray "standard" cartridge, etc. Then I looked at a pair of Tpita (Tengen) Tetris Whirlwind Manu cartridges I had, and while they were virtually identical, one was a paler shade of blue, though it didn't appear to be a case of sunfading. Then there was also the case of the two black Dig Dugs, where the labels were the same and while the black shells were almost the same, they were slightly different on the sides and back. Such things spooked me a bit and made me think that while I am sure there is going to be some patterns (i.e. none of these are going to be one-offs), unfortunately it would quickly get to the level of nitpicking akin to documenting minute changes in the fine print of licensed cartridge labels. I do, however, speculate that collecting for some of the shell variants would be quite doable though.

Yeah, I agree the colors are not a rule, just a tend

I'm not super in the loop with more modern designs; I always turn on a used goods only filter if it is an option. I also don't look that closely at shell design in general. One that did pop out to me though was this "Tedyphone" one. I rarely ever see it, and it appears to have a Konami logo molded on it

In addition to size there is also the color. I've noticed larger Taiwan shells often have a pale blue color, while the overwhelming majority of Mainland shells are either yellow or orange. It's not a surefire thing though, it's just the overall trend I see

1 hour ago, fcgamer said:

Kamen Rider Club, grabbed it from a friend. Extremely hard to find as a bootleg cartridge.

The shell for that looks like the type more common in Mainland China

35 minutes ago, Seth said:

No, this one takes most of my free time as is alas

Ah, I see. I guess it is quite the undertaking. I'm glad to see it is progressing along nicely. I went ahead and combed through your list, and you've got some pretty interesting stuff on it

@SethHave you ever done a list like this for Gameboy or Gameboy Color?

2 minutes ago, Link said:

Yeah, this. Today Zelda 1 is a lot less accessible than SMB 1. It's relatively dense and cryptic. Nintendo uses unaltered graphics, sounds, and play events from the latter much more than the former, or than Metroid 1, etc. 

Isn't that kinda the point with Zelda? I feel like with RPGs getting lost and dealing with the cryptic nonsense is part of the experience

24 minutes ago, DarkKobold said:

I love the Zook Hero games. I never managed to get my hands on originals, just bootlegs of bootlegs, which is honestly quite ironic. Are any of the Gowin games worth playing? I see them from time to time, but have never pulled the trigger. 

 

I like Gowin's games, though the consensus is admittedly mixed on them. Journey to the West, Binary Monster 2, and Prince Rainbow I think would be appealing to most people. I personally am a little mixed on Magic Lamp, but I've also heard people call it their favorite Gowin game. If you buy Mainland Chinese copies with agents you can usually get them for a pretty low price. English copies and certain print runs are harder to come by. Oh, by the way Zook Hero 3 got dumped and released earlier today. Sintax's entry in the series. Sadly, it isn't good like the Vast Fame ones. It is kinda official though since VF skipped 3 in their numbered releases

I've got two questions regarding eligibility, though I don't think I'd feel confident enough in my knowledge of this stuff to make a submission either way. I'm just curious

1. Does the game have to be vanilla NES? Nowadays there's multiple types of modified NES that add extra colors and sounds. This sort of stuff has been used for official products, like that Oregon Trail Handheld, and a billion plug and plays. It's also been used for fan projects. These would not work on a vanilla NES, so I'm guessing no

2. Does the game have to have been released on cart? Some homebrew stuff is just limited to ROMs available for download, like Silk Road on Gameboy. Would NES games that are download only be allowed for submission?

I kinda like it when remakes of "bad" games happen, because sometimes they fix the problems the original had and make it a good experience. That more of happens for fan remakes though

Off the top of my head the first thing that popped into my head reading this thread's headline was Final Fantasy 2 for Famicom. I've never played it myself, but I've heard it was kinda a miss for the franchise, and I know it got remakes. Sort of the same case for Wizardry 4

All remakes I've played though I either already liked the original, or only played the remake, so I don't have anything worth mentioning from personal experience. Closest thing to that would be Pokemon Diamond. That game ran terribly and I gave up on it for Platinum, which runs a little better, but is still bad in my opinion. That one got remade, though I never played through the remake

26 minutes ago, Brickman said:

Which other events have been as big and significant as NWC? I know of the Famicom one thanks to defaultgen but I’m not aware of anything quite as huge as NWC or the Famicom competition. Especially in the early days of gaming.

Maybe Swordquest? I'm pretty sure it had competition carts too

Now that I think about it, I just assumed there'd be a local store that would have what I want. I import 90% of my games, so I'm not sure that's the case. I guess I could come up with some GBA/NDS games as backups

I'm going to assume it expires if I don't use it right away. In that case I'll probably throw it at something like Azure Dreams GBC or Revelations the Demon Slayer. I'd probably have some left over, so maybe I'd mix in a bit out of pocket to get both

59 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I play a LOT of homebrews. I also play a LOT of shmups. 

Making a GOOD shmup is not that easy especially on the NES with sprite flickering and slow down, both of which are almost non existent in the game which is basically a miracle. 

There's not a ton of shmups coming out and those that do aren't great. The other one on my nominations is the exception - Astro Ninja Man is excellent, it's just not my favourite type of shmup. 

Again, you alluded to there being games out of Japan which are better. Name some. 

Haven't played this one, but I saw HaraForce on a blog post by Scrobins, and it looked pretty cool