PSA some asshole is doing spot on counterfeits of NWC now

[Gloves | 11,776]

9 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Sure.

Khan's Leisure Suit Larry

Khan's Frogger

Sintax's Pokemon Leaf

Sachen's Rockman X

Tengen Tetris

 

 

To my knowledge you could only reasonably put up a defense for Larry and Tetris, among those.

Larry because as I understand it Khan got permission from the original creator. Tetris because the rights to the game didn't land back in the original creator's hands until well after it's release. Obviously Tetris is a weird one, where rights are concerned.

I'll swap to the other example that you keep using (dunno why we're picking specifically on Khan) - Frogger. If literally all he did was go and make a Frogger port, never asking permission or obtaining rights, then yeah I'd call it a bootleg.

I am simply using the definition put forth by the first thing that pops up when I search for "bootleg game". I am deferring to what I'd consider an authority.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

1 minute ago, Gloves said:

See this is the problem, and my mistake, with ever even uttering any terminology that you pop out. Every rando and his gram seems to have a different definition of the term "bootleg".

And so with that I simply henceforth refuse to bother with the term, outside of my above comment regarding our for fun little game. I just don't care and I know I'm posting a lot so it might look like I do, but boy do I ever not.

No, the problem is the inherent desire to *judge* based on where the game is being made, and who made it.

If people recognise and refer to those two NES games simply as "homebrew", then the ones I posted should all get the same treatment, only as "unlicensed". They're all in the same boat, built by scratch, but using IP without permission. In fact, in this case, the Sintax games aren't even derivatives, for better or more likely, for worse.

Same goes for things as the Sachens. Always considered bootlegs, yet the lion's share of them are original, and the five or so (out of 60+?) that are clones, again mimic the situation of the two NES games discussed earlier.

Then the items such as the completely original games, well look at the Bootleg Games Wiki, just in its name, though there are literally hundreds of original titles without any stolen assets being labelled as "bootleg", again just because of where it's made.

That is the issue at hand here, this prejudice against some items, with a bias towards not being quick to label products made by a community member in the same way, despite the exact same situation occuring. 

If we expand the scope further, people rarely if ever consider Color Dreams games, or Tengen games, as bootlegs. Yet how can Color Dreams Silent Assault be "unlicensed" yet Sachens (original) Silent Assault is "bootleg"? Or even just two other random games, one from each company.

I'm not trying to be the semantics police here, rather I'm just pointing out the obvious bias that many here seem to have.

 

[fcgamer | 4,723]

6 minutes ago, Gloves said:

 

To my knowledge you could only reasonably put up a defense for Larry and Tetris, among those.

Larry because as I understand it Khan got permission from the original creator. Tetris because the rights to the game didn't land back in the original creator's hands until well after it's release. Obviously Tetris is a weird one, where rights are concerned.

I'll swap to the other example that you keep using (dunno why we're picking specifically on Khan) - Frogger. If literally all he did was go and make a Frogger port, never asking permission or obtaining rights, then yeah I'd call it a bootleg.

I am simply using the definition put forth by the first thing that pops up when I search for "bootleg game". I am deferring to what I'd consider an authority.

I can't particularly think of many or any other homebrew examples where this situation occurred, so you gotta make a point using the games that meet the requirements.

There was that guy that did the game and watch homebrew years ago, back when homebrew first was cropping up, I'd guess it would fit the bill too but on NA people decided it didn't count as a homebrew and was fair game for "repros", since it was a clone of a game and watch game.

[Gloves | 11,776]

Just now, fcgamer said:

I can't particularly think of many or any other homebrew examples where this situation occurred, so you gotta make a point using the games that meet the requirements.

There was that guy that did the game and watch homebrew years ago, back when homebrew first was cropping up, I'd guess it would fit the bill too but on NA people decided it didn't count as a homebrew and was fair game for "repros", since it was a clone of a game and watch game.

If it makes you feel any better, I'd put all the games you listed apart from Larry as "not cool" under my "Cool or Not Cool" metric. And yesterday I'd have put Larry under "not cool", up until I was made aware that he asked permission and wasn't denied.

Honestly my opinion may even be changing here a bit. @sg17 made a really good point about fan fiction, brief though it may have been. I did a bit of introspection there and kinda went "I mean, I'm cool with Rule 34 shit, so why not this?".

As I say, I'm pretty open to having my mind changed. My only real problem here is that it seems to get pretty bogged down in needless semantics. On the one hand, I do prefer that people follow the rules in general. On the other hand (literally lol) - Princess Peach naughty bits.

[Gloves | 11,776]

I think we can all agree though that 1:1 repros really aren't cool, yeah? Like, the NWC being made/sold is not cool? This is where I think we've deviated, me and @fcgamer, and again where I'm confused. I know you at least USED to be pretty against repros of the games you collect. So why not this? Spite? That's my main confusion here.

[attakid101 | 267]

14 hours ago, fcgamer said:

Yeah, we addressed that the person identifies as female multiple pages back, nothing more to discuss on that.

Regarding the other part, there we go with the hypocrisy again. If you truly care about the legality, I'll send you a list of links that you can start reporting. 

The only reason you care is because this is a NWC . Let's be honest here. And that still doesn't give you the right to possibly be messing with someone else's livelihood.

You don’t give a shit about this person’s livelihood. You’re just seizing the morale high ground in order to elevate your soapbox a little more. 

You’re so transparent—I can’t believe more people don’t call you on this bullshit. Oh wait. I know why. It’s because you’re so insufferably obstinate. But hey, it plays in your favor. Now you get to walk away from these debates with an unearned sense of satisfaction after we throw up our hands at the futility of the task of convincing you that you’re wrong.

Well played.

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

8 hours ago, fcgamer said:

So the games I posted with Pokemon, Rockman, etc, would they also be unlicensed then, to you? The companies did not have permission to use that IP, but the games were programmed from scratch and are original titles, playing nothing like the original games that the IP come from.

Yes, if they're programmed from scratch by those companies, they're not bootlegs and nobody would think they are, don't assume what people will think. Counterfeits, bootlegs, copyright infringement, IP infringement and unauthorized use of license are not all the same thing. 

[fcgamer | 4,723]

Brother @attakid101 oh, what a wonderful surprise to see you. I've missed you, dear friend, top o' the morning to you sir

[phart010 | 1,707]

1 hour ago, fcgamer said:

Also where do we put this?

Bootleg or...oh crap

I don’t think the Konami logo on the PCB makes it legit. Maybe makes it “equal in terms of quality” but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s authorized by Konami. 
 

We would have to know the full story behind this cartridge. It could be that the OME pcb manufacturer that Konami used for its legit supply chain was selling stock of Konamis product to an unauthorized third party. Or the pcb designs could have been leaked to another pcb manufacturer who made the same design using their own equipment.

It makes me think about a lawsuit years ago where Nike sued their Chinese supplier for millions of dollars. Apparently they were making tons of extra Nike shoes and selling them in the domestic Chinese market for a fraction of the US market price. Eventually some American distributors caught wind of it, so they started sourcing these unauthorized Nikes from Chinese distributors and were selling them in the American market. These American distributors were competing with Nike at selling their own official product and they were selling them at a fraction of the price

[fcgamer | 4,723]

13 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I think we can all agree though that 1:1 repros really aren't cool, yeah? Like, the NWC being made/sold is not cool? This is where I think we've deviated, me and @fcgamer, and again where I'm confused. I know you at least USED to be pretty against repros of the games you collect. So why not this? Spite? That's my main confusion here.

I think I've mentioned it earlier, but it's a combination of a few things:

1. I'll admit there's a small amount of spite in the mix, rather I actually just personally feel that a big ticket item brings about more discussion than something most people don't care about. I think it's great we are having a discussion on this stuff, no matter what our viewpoints.

2. As people would point out to me in the past, how can I not be okay with repros, but then be collecting stuff like that in the pictures below? Yes, this stuff is highly collectible in a lot of countries around the world, and yes, this stuff is seen as being very very different from the AliExpress modern crap, but unless you are collecting and living bin one of these regions, you can hear what I'm saying but you won't "get it". So at some point I just got tired of trying to highlight differences for deaf ears.

 

3. Finally, no amount of complaining or arguing is going to suddenly half this stuff or stop it. By now, I just don't care anymore, at all. Just no point wasting my time thinking and worrying about this sort of thing. 

[attakid101 | 267]

15 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Brother @attakid101 oh, what a wonderful surprise to see you. I've missed you, dear friend, top o' the morning to you sir

Missed you too, champ. How’s things?

[fcgamer | 4,723]

2 minutes ago, phart010 said:

I don’t think the Konami logo on the PCB makes it legit. Maybe makes it “equal in terms of quality” but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s authorized by Konami. 
 

We would have to know the full story behind this cartridge. It could be that the OME pcb manufacturer that Konami used for its legit supply chain was selling stock of Konamis product to an unauthorized third party. Or the pcb designs could have been leaked to another pcb manufacturer who made the same design using their own equipment.

It makes me think about a lawsuit years ago where Nike sued their Chinese supplier for millions of dollars. Apparently they were making tons of extra Nike shoes and selling them in the domestic Chinese market for a fraction of the US market price. Eventually some American distributors caught wind of it, so they started sourcing these unauthorized Nikes from Chinese distributors and were selling them in the American market. These American distributors were competing with Nike at selling their own official product and they were selling them at a fraction of the price

Well it happened with both Contra PCBs, also with several other Konami games, some Tecmo and Technos games, etc.

These boards seem to be 100% legit. My thought is that Konami and other companies sold these to local companies for bootlegs. Back at this time, from my understanding, only the rich could afford to purchase real games, so Konami would still be earning some profits, and more importantly, like Microsoft allegedly did in China with windows, people would become familiar with their brand and games so that at a later date people would buy their official products (and by now, that's mostly all the folks here buy , the real products).

Very interesting information about Nike though, it definitely could have been something like that too.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

3 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Out of curiosity, what's the story behind the Zelda? I see that the cart is gray instead of green (and maybe the box is a different shade of green but maybe that's just the lighting). Besides that, it looks pretty spot on.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

3 minutes ago, attakid101 said:

Missed you too, champ. How’s things?

Well as you can see from here, same old same old I guess.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

Just now, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

Out of curiosity, what's the story behind the Zelda? I see that the cart is gray instead of green (and maybe the box is a different shade of green but maybe that's just the lighting). Besides that, it looks pretty spot on.

It's completely a fake, though it does look really close, aside from the cartridge itself. This was made back in the day for markets in Taiwan, Thailand, etc where copies were king, since people couldn't really afford real stuff back then.

On a different yet related note though, a pair of Famicom Zelda cartridges (one and two) had been discovered in Korea, both containing official Nintendo chips.

 

[Khromak | 768]

I have to admit I haven't read every post because this has blown up, but from what I read last night and what I'm reading this afternoon I think the difference of opinions here boils down to two sides, let me know if I'm way off base here but I think this summarizes pretty cleanly:

1. These 1:1 repros aren't OK at all because, while the person selling it right now may not be trying to, they can be passed off, and harm the hobby in general, because the very fact that this exists makes collectors' lives more difficult
2. 1:1 repro isn't a problem because this seller isn't trying to defraud anyone and is being upfront about what they're selling. People should do their due diligence and there are some ways to tell the difference.

Personally, I'm in the camp of #1, but I understand where #2 is coming from. Unfortunately, if they're realistic enough they can catch some buyers and even the possibility of that happening is absolutely not OK. Even if you aren't doing that or trying to do it, you're letting this loose and once, twice, or 50x in the future, your product could be used to do that. That's not OK. You're potentially causing harm down the line.

IMHO if you're keeping it for yourself it's less harmful, but even then...you will die and your estate might unknowingly sell it as original. You might be robbed and then it's in the wild...

It's like genetic modification, you have to understand that there are ripple effects and even though you're being careful in your sale, it will echo and reverberate.

[Lincoln | 230]

45 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Sure.

Khan's Leisure Suit Larry

Khan's Frogger

Sintax's Pokemon Leaf

Sachen's Rockman X

Tengen Tetris

 

Ohh ill play. 

Larry: assuming it was done with permission from ip holder, then its just a homebrew. If not, its also a bootleg

Frogger: assuming no permission, homebrew and bootleg

Pokemon leaf: not familiar, is it done with a license? If so, legitimate release i guess. If not its bootleg. It might be an original creation bootleg, but still bootleg. 

Rockman x: this is using capcoms rockman ip? With or without license? Do you see where this is going? 

Tetris: i don't know an obvious term for this other than "infringing". It was done under the assumption they had proper rights to produce an original game using tetris ip. They turned out to be wrong, but that doesn't automatically make it a bootleg. If they had continued to produce that version after the judgment then you could argue that. Very out there edge case that isnt relevant for 99% of this discussion.

Contra cart you posted elsewhere: no idea. Looks like a legit konami board. Is it? Did they do the shell/label too? If its one yes and one no, i don't think you can qualify it as a whole, you need to consider the parts individually. Is this common in your finds?

Other post with several games you made a bunch of strawman arguments for: have no familiarity with any of those games, dont tell me what i would call them.

Do they use existing ip without license/rights/permission? If so they are bootlegs. 

In the cases where they attempt to copy ip in its entirety, program and package design, they are also counterfeit.

Are they original games using no infringing ip? Then they are legitimate releases, regardless if done by nintendo or sachen or whatever random noname shop produced them. 

In regards to the nwc counterfeiter, you have no insight into her financial situation, stop trying to argue reporting her to ebay is going go ruin her life. Based on her posts at nesdev, this appears to be a personal challenge/exercise. While not legal, i can appreciate it on a technical level, if thats where it ends. Producing more copies to sell crosses an ethical line. 

[Gloves | 11,776]

3 minutes ago, Khromak said:

IMHO if you're keeping it for yourself it's less harmful, but even then...you will die and your estate might unknowingly sell it as original. You might be robbed and then it's in the wild...

Future headline:

"Gamer discovers rare official Nintendo NWC cartridge inside deceased grandfather's NES console"

The online discussion following:

"This new find brings to light that Nintendo actually did some interesting things differently across the NWC carts - note the subtle differences..."

 

[Lincoln | 230]

5 minutes ago, Khromak said:

I have to admit I haven't read every post because this has blown up, but from what I read last night and what I'm reading this afternoon I think the difference of opinions here boils down to two sides, let me know if I'm way off base here but I think this summarizes pretty cleanly:

1. These 1:1 repros aren't OK at all because, while the person selling it right now may not be trying to, they can be passed off, and harm the hobby in general, because the very fact that this exists makes collectors' lives more difficult
2. 1:1 repro isn't a problem because this seller isn't trying to defraud anyone and is being upfront about what they're selling. People should do their due diligence and there are some ways to tell the difference.

Personally, I'm in the camp of #1, but I understand where #2 is coming from. Unfortunately, if they're realistic enough they can catch some buyers and even the possibility of that happening is absolutely not OK. Even if you aren't doing that or trying to do it, you're letting this loose and once, twice, or 50x in the future, your product could be used to do that. That's not OK. You're potentially causing harm down the line.

IMHO if you're keeping it for yourself it's less harmful, but even then...you will die and your estate might unknowingly sell it as original. You might be robbed and then it's in the wild...

It's like genetic modification, you have to understand that there are ripple effects and even though you're being careful in your sale, it will echo and reverberate.

The closest other instance to this i can recall is when someone on NA (tusk, i think) made up a contra force box "for personal purposes". The title design on the front was intentionally different so that it was immediately obvious when you compared. It still ended up on ebay somehow with no explanation it was not original, and lots of bids.

Stuff like this always finds its way into the world and eventually will try to sell it, intentionally or not, without disclosing what it is.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

@0xDEAFC0DE :

Here's some pictures of the Zelda II box and PCB (sadly the PCB picture is low resolution, but I know the guy who made the discovery and know what he says is true), and the larger picture is of Zelda 1 chips in a bootleg shell. Also a box from the Zelda II.

[Khromak | 768]

2 minutes ago, Lincoln said:

It still ended up on ebay somehow with no explanation it was not original, and lots of bids.

And that's the even worse harm: Even though diligent collectors won't be fooled, tons and tons of people will be. Every time.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

4 minutes ago, Lincoln said:

The closest other instance to this i can recall is when someone on NA (tusk, i think) made up a contra force box "for personal purposes". The title design on the front was intentionally different so that it was immediately obvious when you compared. It still ended up on ebay somehow with no explanation it was not original, and lots of bids.

Stuff like this always finds its way into the world and eventually will try to sell it, intentionally or not, without disclosing what it is.

I think that's one thing we all can agree on.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

1 minute ago, Khromak said:

And that's the even worse harm: Even though diligent collectors won't be fooled, tons and tons of people will be. Every time.

That's gonna be the same with "safe" repros too though, like Kung Fu 2 for the NES and stuff like that.

These days I'd never ask my mum to buy me a game for Christmas, but if I did, someone like her could easily fall into such a pitfall.

 

[Khromak | 768]

1 minute ago, fcgamer said:

That's gonna be the same with "safe" repros too though, like Kung Fu 2 for the NES and stuff like that.

Sure, but there's a spectrum...This isn't a black-and-white issue where one thing is wrong and another is perfectly OK. Obviously it's a matter of opinion, this whole topic is, but I think that putting a repro game in a black shell with a label that says "Reproduction" on it, not putting on a back label at all, using different screws, etc. is very different from making something that is exactly the same as the original. That's kind of the whole thread?

Some people will say that you shouldn't even make physical copies of homebrew/hacks because "muh purity", for me I think that anything which wasn't an official product is fair game, but once you get into copying original releases with repros, you're doing something wrong, and if you're intentionally trying to make it as realistic as possible it's worse, then when you sell it that's even worse. If you sell it and don't disclosure that's worse...etc. etc. on to infinity until you're murdering orphans while yelling at grandma that it's a true original and she's not a real collector and charging double what the original goes for.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

2 minutes ago, Khromak said:

Sure, but there's a spectrum...This isn't a black-and-white issue where one thing is wrong and another is perfectly OK. Obviously it's a matter of opinion, this whole topic is, but I think that putting a repro game in a black shell with a label that says "Reproduction" on it, not putting on a back label at all, using different screws, etc. is very different from making something that is exactly the same as the original. That's kind of the whole thread?

Some people will say that you shouldn't even make physical copies of homebrew/hacks because "muh purity", for me I think that anything which wasn't an official product is fair game, but once you get into copying original releases with repros, you're doing something wrong, and if you're intentionally trying to make it as realistic as possible it's worse, then when you sell it that's even worse. If you sell it and don't disclosure that's worse...etc. etc. on to infinity until you're murdering orphans while yelling at grandma that it's a true original and she's not a real collector and charging double what the original goes for.

Sure, but when we start creating such releases, it causes a lot of trouble when something undiscovered does come around, as to whether it's real or fake.

For example, three or four years ago I discovered a pulse line version of the Famicom game F1 Race. I even cracked it open, risking damaging the case, just to confirm its legitimacy. Unknown version up through 2015 or whatever.

But when such fan stuff as the "repros" get made, ultimately it's going to cause trouble for researchers , as well as call into question the legitimacy of true obscure, yet legit items.

I personally find this much more damaging to the hobby as a whole than this NWC. I mean let's face it , most of us aren't even going for a nwc, so this effects us none at all. And for those that are going for one, I'd reckon they are going to research and scrutinize every cart that comes up for sale, but wait, they'd already have done that anyways, so this really hasn't changed anything at all imo.