Retro Consoles Pirate/Hacks

Alter Egotist

Just wondering what are peoples feelings on pirates and hacks for retro consoles. i have many many hacks and pirates along with translation hacks also.

Keeping the retro scene alive or killing it (use of donors)?

What are your taughts?

i love them to bits but a lot of them are straight out bad bad games. Some of the hacks that are written from ground up are absolutely fantastic though.

Al.

STG.Otaku

The translation scene is epic. Check out Tomato's work on Mother 3 for example. Or the Star Ocean localization for the Super Nintendo, that one I recall took years to finish.

Stuff like that, and the weird pirate Famicom carts et al (Tekken vs Virtua Fighter on the Mega Drive is another example) is pretty cool too. My personal stance changes on repro's mis-sold as legit items, stuff along those lines. That is definitely not cool. The repro thing though, when made clear exactly what it is, is another slant. In my opinion, that decision is up to the buyer because they should know what they are getting in to. Personally at the 'legit' repro level, I'd rather chuck it in an Everdrive because it's the exact same thing.

I did a different thing recently with two Megadrive games. Air Management and Air Management II. I hate the PAL/USA cover art and along with that they are very expensive to buy anyway. So I bought the Japanese games and burned new English ROM's, removing the mask ROM's. Soldered those in and hey presto, I've got my own localized Japanese carts!

Hacks, homebrews, pirate carts and translations though are brilliant. Keep 'em coming I say!

o1s1n

The only issues I have are when conversions end up destroying volumes of of original carts (Metal Slug MVS to AES conversion is a good example) or, when folks make repros of valuable games which are indistinguishable from the originals.

The first is literally destroying parts of the hobby and both can be uses for ripping unsuspecting buyers off.

Software hacks though are a different thing entirely and can be good fun.

Alter Egotist

STG.Otaku wrote: »

The translation scene is epic. Check out Tomato's work on Mother 3 for example. Or the Star Ocean localization for the Super Nintendo, that one I recall took years to finish.

Stuff like that, and the weird pirate Famicom carts et al (Tekken vs Virtua Fighter on the Mega Drive is another example) is pretty cool too. My personal stance changes on repro's mis-sold as legit items, stuff along those lines. That is definitely not cool. The repro thing though, when made clear exactly what it is, is another slant. In my opinion, that decision is up to the buyer because they should know what they are getting in to. Personally at the 'legit' repro level, I'd rather chuck it in an Everdrive because it's the exact same thing.

I did a different thing recently with two Megadrive games. Air Management and Air Management II. I hate the PAL/USA cover art and along with that they are very expensive to buy anyway. So I bought the Japanese games and burned new English ROM's, removing the mask ROM's. Soldered those in and hey presto, I've got my own localized Japanese carts!

Hacks, homebrews, pirate carts and translations though are brilliant. Keep 'em coming I say!

yeah i have a couple of the translations for the nes (contra with the cut scenes, eathbound, downtown special, all the final fantasy games etc.) and they are all amazing because japenese wouldnt be my strong point. ha ha
. i also have nearly 55 mario hacks and pirate mario multi carts for the nes alone. never played it but have super mario world on the megadrive (dont own a megadrive). But thats a different matter entirely.

Alter Egotist

o1s1n wrote: »

The only issues I have are when conversions end up destroying volumes of of original carts (Metal Slug MVS to AES conversion is a good example) or, when folks make repros of valuable games which are indistinguishable from the originals.

The first is literally destroying parts of the hobby and both can be uses for ripping unsuspecting buyers off.

Software hacks though are a different thing entirely and can be good fun.

See this is the bit im on the fence about. the majority of the donors needed for the nes are fairly common (well to me anyway with my 320 duplicate carts) apart from a few odd titles like the final fantasys or the castlevania rom hacks but the majority of the carts needed are 5 or 6 euro donor carts tops. And any of the famicom rom hacks are freshly made cbecause the famicom is still so widely played over there.

i can understand people thinking what i think as common not being for them as they dont have it already but non of the games are that expensive in the first place unless you want something like crisis force on the nes which needs its famicom counterpart to be made and will set you back a pretty penny (not to mind being complete murder in my opinion as its one of the best fami games out there)

havent made repros in a while since ive been ill but i feel it leaves you open to experience games you just wouldnt experience elsewhere. the fds for example has so many hacks that will only play on the fds which are fabulous.

Al.

o1s1n

If the donor cart is something like Super Mario Bros with millions of copies in existence then I don't think anyone is going to mind

I'm more talking about certain Neo Geo AES titles for example being used as donor carts to create Metal Slug home carts.

Some of the more common titles are now getting harder to find as folks keep destroying them to create these AES home carts. Technically they're also destroying the MVS cart too.

That and then the dilemma of actually trying to buy a Metal Slug home cart - when there are truck loads of forgeries around, it's not something you'd want to be trying to locate.

Megadrive games are going that way too. Many titles you now have to open the cart up once you get it by default, just in case it's a repro.

Myrddin

I think I'd go the Everdrive route myself, than have repro's taking up shelf space. There are some oddities I'd make exceptions for, Earthbound Zero etc, & games that weren't released maybe, but on the whole, not my cup of tea.

It should also be noted that the chips used to create repros won't have a shelf life anything like original carts will. I read recently that those tsop/flash adapters used to create Snes carts these days will be lucky to work in ten years.

CiDeRmAn

I'm two minds about Repro's
On the one hand there are games I'll never ever own, like Gleylancer, and I'd love to have the cart there to play, to stick in the MD or Nomad and off I go.
On the other, I can do that pretty effectively with the Everdrive I own as it is.
So what to do?
As for hacks, what's the big deal?
If someone is enterprising enough to make a better or different game out of an existing one I say go for it, but I acknowledge the wanton destruction of rarer carts for the purpose of producing cases, that said, there are only a handful of consoles with carts so rare, maybe the VB and Virtual Boy, which is why the great and powerful Richard Hutchinson is now making his flash carts for the Veccy and VB out of his own designed 3D printed casings.