fcgamer

Comparing tech a few years later to a few years earlier , apples to mangoes.

First off, these are real. Secondly, let's take a different approach at looking at these games. We know that the Nintendo NES library is just around 700 carts, the licensed Famicom library is just shy of 1100; interestingly enough, only about 200 or 300 games are shared between both platforms, which is why I feel compelled to consider them totally different gaming machines. I feel it's likely in the realm of probability that this sort of prototype was developed to shop around the game, rather than as an intention for release. It makes a lot more sense, honestly.

I always liked the Mario 3 ending screen. The Mario World ending screen always sucked though, as seeing it meant someone had played the game and beat it in the shop, so you weren't going to be getting a chance to play anything while at the toy shop.

Those guys have been doing this for years, well stripping local areas of games and then reselling for decent mark-up. I think as hobbyists who are quite into this stuff, we sort of lose track of how the average person thinks. So while we might value a SMB/DH at $10 or whatever (actually I still value it at Funcoland $0.09), it's an amazing game and to pay $30 for it plus the cost of a machine to relive my childhood, honestly I can't say that I'd feel like I was getting ripped off (if I weren't following the market).

Just attempted to join.

Yeah, I always try to buy something when I stop by, and I generally go there once a week. Sometimes I buy gaming stuff, sometimes other things. Friendly people, generally good prices and good selection of new items coming in, for a junk shop.

I got these. The label is an unused label for Whirlwind Manu's bootleg Famicom game release. The PS3 game is the Asian version of the game.

I would want to choose a company that focuses on authentication. Besides, it's been shown countless times that the folks here can do a better job at authentication than the rubes at Wata. The Garage Cart is the perfect example of a game that absolutely should not be getting a grade, yet similarly is a game that I could see someone wanting to authenticate.

And more

More pictures

Made the rounds like I generally do weekly, saw a crate of bootleg PS games on the counter of one shop. As they had no prices on them, I asked the owner of they were for sale, she said that as they were just burnt disks, they couldn't sell them, then proceeded to give me all of them, after I inquired, for free. She even grabbed a few out of the claws of a Philipino guy, to give me instead, yeah I guess now I'm enemy number 1. The shopkeeper asked me if I was going to resell them, then I explained about my research efforts and book, and she was quite excited to hear that someone was interested in documenting this stuff. These would have been made and sold at the shop level, the spines have the Chinese on them. A few games claim to be Chinese language version, I (obviously) haven't tried anything out. As I know little about PS games, these all just seem to be copies of normal releases, anything exciting here like something unreleased?

No, grading companies should grade games. Atleast from my understanding of the English language, grade =/= authenticate.

Was a prototype version then found and dumped?!? Holy fuck I need this too.

Some of my students were into this. Needless to say, I'm not.

Not for the second homebrew on cart it doesn't. Silver never commands the price of gold medal.

Well with Wata telling us what to collect and how to collect, I forgot we could collect for other reasons.

Aren't we all just in this for the money? Lol

Fixed.

Are you sure it was being sold on NesDev? I thought it was being sold on the NES World forum, though it's been so long ago that it could be my poor memory. Either way, I had initially been on the list to get one, but then jumped off after awhile as $40 or whatever seemed a bit more than I wanted to pay, as a poor teen. That being said, I personally would argue that Chris Covell's Solar Wars (see Mali's Cash Issue 1) was the first physical homebrew game. I remember when Mr Covell had put his game onto a cartridge and then posted pictures / instructions so that others could do the same thing. He even got a lot of messages asking if he'd make them cartridges, presumably, as he posted a disclaimer on the site saying that he wouldn't do it for people. Who knows if he did make a few copies for his friends and what not. Either way, I'd list Solar Wars as the first (known) NES homebrew to appear on a cartridge, Garage Cart comes in second place. Its significance is that the developer decided to make a print run of cartridges and sell them. Actually, I somewhat agree with @Code Monkey . There's a point where it gets down to splitting hairs, and that's where we are at now. I think many people would accept this answer (though bump it to 1995 to include Sunday Funday and finish out the Wisdom Tree set). Although there are some "problems", I feel this is an adequate definition that would suit most people. For fun though, let's look at one of the problems: hundreds of unlicensed Famicom games (from companies) were being released all the way through the late nineties, even into the 2000s. I know, I know, Famicom - but on a VGS poll, the majority of people consider the Famicom and the NES to be the same console. I personally am not so sure of that, but if we take the stance of the majority, then suddenly we have a problem with the dates being used as a cutoff point to distinguish unlicensed versus homebrew. Not sure I agree here. As far as I'm aware, Aleksandar Chudov was a one-man operation. Someone like Hwang Shinwei also seems to have been, at times, a one-man team. Seeing that his games were published eventually by several different publishers suggests that he was basically anything except for an incorporated company. To take things further, one of the multicarts produced here in Taiwan, obviously the games were made in Japan but the menu and fabrication was done here. Anyways, it credits a guy that was a student at a local tech university, and some blog entries I found from a guy that knew this guy had name-dropped him as having been involved in some tech clubs and stuff. I don't know about you, but to me it sounds like a situation where a university student enjoyed programming, and was able to develop a multicart menu for a company, though the student was probably doing it purely as a nerd hobbyist thing with a bit of beer money as pay. Certainly sounds very hobbyist to me. With Garage Cart being the first, again, I'd suggest that Solar Wars was the first. Totally agree on the first paragraph. Second paragraph, I'd say they are both homebrew and unlicensed. Sounds decent, but it fails in actuality. What about something like the unreleased Kitty's Catch game? Or other games that were developed by a guy or some small team, and then shopped around? We are getting caught up in the business / not business factor of things; however, I think we are failing to consider a few vital points, namely: a. People can have multiple jobs b. People sometimes work as freelance workers c. People that are hobbyists often dream of monetizing their work The lines often blur. I am sure it happened many times where people with the knowledge and interest made games, tried to shop them around for publication, and then couldn't get a deal (or perhaps they were lucky and did get a contract). These same people may have been working as the cook at a sports bar, who knows. Unless it is a situation where I am working at Capcom, for example, and am making the game - in other instances, the waters become much murkier. See above. And these waters are getting even murkier now with companies such as Mega Cat Studios and their releases. I think we could make an argument for this stance. Licensed or unlicensed just simply means did the company pay for (and receive) a license to release the game on said machine. It has nothing to do with homebrew or not. Generally speaking, homebrew games are going to be unlicensed, as they are often aftermarket products, and in some cases, the games might be simple or less-polished than what a professional studio would make*, which could also hinder them from receiving a license and subsequent release from a big publisher. Unlicensed games can be anything, if it never received a license from the company. Game Shark is unlicensed. Then again take something like Videomation - it was unlicensed on the Famicom, yet it was licensed on the NES. *Homebrew games are amazing, and I don't personally hold this viewpoint that the games might not be polished, etc. We don't even know if Cheetahmen II was unreleased for sure, as some copies may have slipped out and been sold. What is known for certain though, I guess, is that the game was completely manufactured and ended up remaining largely unsold. I think it's weird to talk about licensed or not on Atari, as it wasn't even really a concept then, from my understanding. As such, I think the idea of licensed / unlicensed only applies to machines that had a licensing scheme. It's sort of like talking about licensed or unlicensed software on computers. Would you agree that Famicom and the NES are two entirely different machines then? Otherwise, it is impossible to apply the term aftermarket, since there were major companies making Famicom games (Hummer Team, Waixing, Nanjing, Rex Soft, Rinco, etc etc) up through the 2000s. Calling those products "Aftermarket" would be entirely wrong. Exactly, it's like splitting hairs. People try to "apply logic" but it always fails, as we have seen so far through the course of this discussion. Almost agree here, stop the press! I guess we also agree about CRT TVs though... The reason I don't entirely agree is because it is extremely plausible that some people made games for fun, then managed to shop them around and get them published, even licensed. Honestly, I guess that would have been the dream. It's like making a demo tape and then against all odds getting picked up by a local radio station, leading you to ultimately get discovered by a major recording studio. Too rigid. All of these points have been discussed above, and they all fail.

Super Mario Bros 3 Castlevania 3 Castlevania IV Little Nemo: Dream Master

Very nice! Wonder when I'll end up in the spotlight

https://www.ebay.com/itm/295037119291 Sending a Garage Cart to WATA for grading. Will this make it more valuable somehow? Grade of a 6, maybe because of the back sticker? But then again, not sure why these are being graded anyways, being assembled by hand and all. Will shitty soldering on one cart versus another knock one off points? Likely to be the stupidest thing I've seen all day, and my day's just beginning.

Boil dat disk down!

I've heard he ball-tags every game before sending them out.

On a different note, better gather your gear the next issue for July features a Mario prototype and also am unreleased Mario game. @The Count I'll order you a June issue and dm you soon , sorry I've been terribly busy