How This Bootleg Console Led to an ARREST 

“Why did they model the controller after an N64 controller?” Simple to make money. They never intended to sell this as a famiclone per se , they intended to trick people into thinking they were buying an N64 ( at the time a modern console ).

The Famiclone audio is due to two of the duty cycle modes being reversed.

The light gun that came with this was also used as a third party light gun for the PS1. (sometimes even came in a bundle with Die Hard Trilogy)

LOL I used to have one of these. I believe most companies are getting away with it now because the patent for the NES expired in 2005. I could be wrong though.

9:02 - So, fun fact, both Tekken (2) and Toy Story have already gotten bootleg NES ports before this system was released. Ouch...

3:08 : I had a Power Player and trust me. They've FORGOT to make sure that the batteries fit inside. I've managed to make them fit, but inserting it into the machine was a nightmare. And that nightmare was even worst when you realize that the whole thing is too big to fit inside the socket. (I had to use some tools to pop it out.)

Not EVERYONE thought these consoles were bootleg and bad quality. In fact, my own parents, many years ago bought one of these pieces of crap and ruined Christmas for me and my brother one year by basing the entire round of family gifts around it as if this was some kind of main event big time surprise gift we were all supposed to love and be excited for. Me and my brother instantly knew this was a pile of crap, but our parents got this thing, expecting it to be as big for us back then as a Playstation 5 would be for people today. To the point that our parents even got mad that we didn't appreciate it the way were supposed to.

3:00 the reason the batteries dont fit is pretty simple and is the case for lots of late-90s technology: it needs R6P batteries, these batteries are carbon zinc based and are just a tad but smaller than alkaline batteries. if you're having trouble telling if a battery is an R6P (somehow... they say the kind on the battery itself most of the time), try seeing if you can squish the battery a little with your hands or compare it to an alkaline to see if its noticably lighter than an alkaline or not

They're not doing anything to stay out of trouble. They simply exist through obscurity. In the 2000s I remember there was a different kiosk every couple of months at the local mall who was selling a completely different, similar thing. I doubt any of them got in trouble, and this particular guy was probably just extremely unlucky. The reality is that these companies don't really "care" or have time to deal with this, because it's not an actual problem they can do much about if they were even inclined. Hell, when I was a kid (over 20 years ago) I used to sell burnt CDs filled with every NES, Genesis, and SNES game on it for like $5, I would even organize them, put recommended lists, and put the emulators with custom configs and a little splash screen with artwork I drew. People would ask me "Isn't this illegal? Aren't you worried about getting in trouble?" And I'd say "I dunno, probably, but no, I'm not," and I wasn't.

Never thought I'd see Donkey Kong Jr as Green Man.

I went to California many years ago and bought one at the "Great Mall" for my godson. I never saw something like that in Puerto Rico on those days. Now we have similar units everywhere.

Here in Brazil, consoles like this are often bought for the child because the father often doesn't have the money to buy a popular one. It was like that in the 90s and it remains that way to this day. That's why TecToy (which has always been a Sega representative) still sells Master System and Atari Flashback here.

Famiclones only contain early Famicom titles not just because they use less ROM space but especially because they don't use mappers that were introduced later. So they just rely on basic hardware. Even bootleg cartridges that run on original NES hardware never contain games like Castlevania 3 because of the mappers.

Around where I live, I would see these guys at the local malls selling these things from kiosks. They always appeared to be Eastern European guys with thick foreign accents telling passers by about 76,000 games. I was even briefly tempted to take a closer look as I thought it looked like it could be a usable cheap N64 style controller. To this day I didn't know the analog stick was not functional. I watched one person argue with them they were selling bootlegged games and were breaking copyright, and the guy defended it stating they are all legally copyrighted, going so far as to show the copyright notice on the game screen! "Look! It is copyright! It is ok!" It was pretty comical - the guy was adamant that the fact the game showed a copyright on screen meant it was completely legal. Out of a matter of curiosity, I called Nintendo's 800 number to ask them about it , and even then, the early 2000s, their rep took the call very seriously, asking for the exact mall and location. I gave them the info, and a week later, those guys were no longer at that mall. I assumed Nintendo's legal department called the mall offices making threats, but I could never confirm if that ever happened.

The odd sound is due to the famiclone incorrectly emulating the sound chip, using the square wave when it should be a triangle wave and vice versa.

I had a Power Joy! Got it for Christmas in the late 90’s. I was in my mid-teens and didn’t ask for it or any other video game stuff that I can recall (I had a PlayStation at the time and still regularly played my SNES), but I think my grandma just got it as like a stocking stuffer kinda thing. I remember it being kinda fun as I hadn’t played my NES in years and this was a neat way to recapture the 8-bit days of my youth (even though like half the games didn’t work and the ones that did weren’t all that great).

America is wild, 5 years in prison for selling a bootleg console that hd software that was not easy to get legally (at least the Famicom Stuff). I have seen news stories of people robbing gas stations with a gun get less time.

Soulja boy sold bootleg consoles and nothing happened to him

I was a 13 year old kid when the shit hit the fan on these consoles. I remember a dude trying to sell one of these to my local mall. So my narc-ass self went and called Nintendo (something I did a lot as a kid, god help me) and I reported it to them. I remember some time later hearing about some dude who sold these things getting arrested and I always wondered if I was responsible. I am no longer a narc.

I think the reason clones are thriving today is beacause there are simply too many clones, back then the early 2000 is was all new so easier to target (espacially if you sell them directly from the US), now those companies are located in China and most of them are short lived so by the time any legal action could be taken, the company is gone / recreated under another name. Also trying to protect the IP of retro games is a losing battle IMO it's too late for that, internet connections / storage are so good you can basically get every games of a system in minutes, maybe why Nintendo are focusing hard on protecting the Switch right now and offering older games as a service (Switch Online).

I have one hooked up to my television right now actually. Lol. I got it out of storage a couple weeks ago to play "Bird Week," and 'Space Invaders.'

What’s funny is that is exact model bootleg console was my very first game console when I was 4 or 5. I think my Grandma got it for me. My first time ever paying Mario or Contra was on this thing. (My mom didn’t like me playing contra though because it had guns in it). It’s also weird how you showing the distorted bad audio is what triggers my nostalgia rather than the correct audio. Also speaking of the joystick on the main controller, I ended up, breaking it off as a kid because I could never figure out what it was for lol. Thanks for unlocking a core memory with this video.

“What are you in for?” “Bootleg video game consoles.” This is a fucking screenplay, dawg!

These Bootleg Multicarts were Awesome as a Kid. You can fail to understand 75+ games while not knowing what game you were actually playing

0:54 my god that smile is magical

Oh god does this take me back to the early into late 2000s when I begged my parents to buy me one of those Super Joy III/Power Player bootleg consoles when we stumbled upon it at a kiosk at our local mall. I remember even buying one from a flea market during a family vacation trip in Orlando, Florida. Learning about the history of this thing and how it ultimately led to an arrest was just wild to discover when I got older. It was even crazier to find out that the Super Joy III literally took the same menu SFXs from Action 52 as well.

Recently, there were these cheap handheld that were being sold at Walmart and Five Below that were Famiclones with obviously pirated games. When the word got spread, the handhelds were re-released with several of those games taken off, but there were still a lot of obvious games on it

funny story, an nes bootleg toy story game actually exists

I know a LOT of people who used to own these kind of bootleg consoles, and they always wondered how they can make 10000 original games in one affordable system only to find out that theres a bunch of repeats. At least Action 52 kept some originality in its 52 games! (Also, big fan of your content, I love these kind of topics you delve into, Subscribed!)

I had one of these. The cart port was only for using cartridges that would sometimes come with these devices.

I remember seeing this one back in the day, but I had no idea the guy who helped make it got arrested! great video as always Pojr!

Had to sub to your channel. Interesting deep dive into video games and other subjects.

Bought this in a Tennessee mall around 99/2000 … started making a burning rubber smell and started smoking after a couple months into use , had to throw it away of course

I would say that most of the people who were buying them back then was probably older people like grandparents, tricking them into buying a cheap knock off systems instead of buying new systems that cost alot more money.

Pojr console when?

Nice video! I had a mega joy II growing up

There are so many of these that Nintendo couldn't ever go after all of them, they are like weed farms they take a few down and a few dozen more pop up.

The key (legal) mistake of that console was that it was *ordered* from China. I.e. importer _requested_ someone to make it. Other bootlegs are _imported_, i.e. someone requested shipment of some already produced and branded units. The difference is that in the first case the US citizen left an order for the production of knowingly pirated consoles, while in the second case he is a legal importer with all (legal) reasons to believe that the games were licensed by the manufacturing company, and it is almost impossible to prove malice (because, thanks to the presumption of innocence, it is still necessary to prove that Shenzhen Dumb Brick United Manufacturing Co, whose entire legal history began and ended the month before last on Taobao, did NOT obtain the licenses - and, more importantly, that the importer knew about it).

NES clones are cheap and decent to me. I remember some versions sold at mall kiosk even had a light gun with Duck Hunt.

Remember Gamestation console? PS1 Famiclone xD. I grew up a lot with Famiclones in India. Nostalgia ❤

My first console was one of these, it was called "Super creation". My parents weren't rich and that's what they could afford, nonetheless, while Mario sounded like in the video and I realized much latter how it actually should have sounded, I have good memories.

Wow I played this exact model back in the late 2000s! At a local flea market I visited one of the vendors had it connected on a CRT TV and your reaction to the mismatched titles is exactly what I was thinking while trying it out. Since I grew up with the NES the very first thing that stood out to me aside from the wonky controller was the inaccuracy of the duty cycles and the coloration of the palette because that's not how a real NES looks or sounds. I would love to see a tear down of this thing to find out what kin of hardware is in it and will search on YT now. 😃

Something insane is you can actually buy a portable Famiclone at Walmart which has the typical bootleg jank you'd expect, like one game is literally named "Assart" on the unit, and another has Pikachu all over it for some reason.

pojr doesn't have braces anymore it seems~ hope it worked out for the better~ i think i notice each of your videos becoming more and more professional and i acutally love how you wear suits for the videos. real classy

I stayed in a shitty roadside motel in Indiana in like 2005-ish and all the rooms had these. Oddly enough, only the gun was (sloppily) chained to the nightstand.

My mother gave me that famiclone as a Christmas present back in 2001, it only lasted 7 months, after that it just stopped working. At 12 years old I couldn't feel more disappointed and furious.

I remember aggressive salesmen trying to sell these things at a mall kiosk back in the day. Word quickly got around about how bad they were.

You may not be aware, but for those who are not from the CIS countries, the story of such a pirated NES console as Dendy will be an amazing discovery.

The reason these Famiclones used relatively simple games was due to the mappers in more complex games. They could pull off Contra because it had only discrete logic chips for its memory mapping.

Really enjoying your videos Pojr. I remember seeing these things at discount dollar shops here in Australia back in the early 2000's and thinking to myself ''what the hell is that? It's playing 8-bit games on a Nintendo 64 controller?'' The reason why it's not really policed anymore like it was back in the early 2000's I think is because the video market today is over saturated with cheap, knock off retro game clone consoles these days like how many unlicensed Mega Drive/Genesis consoles are on sale at the moment and most of them from China?👍

I can't help you. I'm already subscribed.

Its weird how after being infamous for decades now, the ROM still hasn't been dumped. Like, most famiclones and multicarts have been dumped but this one hasn't.

There was a device similar to this called TV Boy that was sold for years in the '90s(at around the same time the SNES and Mega Drive were big) in massive nationwide stores such as Argos here in England. It wasn't a Famiclone like these, but a bootleg Atari 2600 with unlicenced Atari and Activision games. Later ones even had a unique feature in that they had an antenna and you could actually tune your TV to it via RF without actually needing to plug it into the TV, so if you were running on batteries and playing single player, it was completely wireless.

I Remember Having These in 2004 at a Flea Market, Good Times Playing Super Mario Bros, Contra, Pac-Man, and a Few Famicom Games That Didn't Release in America, But Later On I Realized That There is a Different Versions of Power Joy III Games, Like Aladdin III was Replaced by Games Knights Which is Game Called Ikki for The Famicom and Front Line for Famicom was Replaced by Duck Hunt Clone or Hack, Man So Many Variations of the Power Joy III Also Some Music on These Uses The Duty Cycle Swap, It's Strange Because Listening to The Music on These Games Sounds Good or Different From a Real NES.

7:11-7:17 why does that sound better than the original i'm not joking that actually sounds fire bro! that bootleg 1-1 overworld theme is kinda golden! this is fire! 🔥 💯

BTW, while the first TwinBee game didn't get released in the US initially, the 2nd game did as 'Stinger', and is a lot of fun.

(0:00) OK… right off the bat that took me back! I saw them for sale (in around 2010 to 2011) at a ‘3Stars’ shop near where I lived, they had a stack of them near their shopfront and had one set up with a small 14" CRT TV, but other than that they sold cheap off-brand stuff. At the time, I was a teen and didn't know it was modelled after both Nintendo 64 and Mega Drive controllers, but did notice the fake control stick which was broken on the shop's demo unit. I never bought one, but did experience some of the bootleg games you showed through one of those Chinese ODM portable DVD players that had a built-in NES emulator with a ‘Super Game 300’ disc and controller modelled after a Mega Drive 6 button controller. (11:53) That setup with the two TVs looks a lot like the mall kiosks I saw here in Singapore in around 2018 to 2019 that sold set-top boxes preconfigured for pay TV piracy. Part of their MO involved hiding the fact that it's piracy and instead baiting unsuspecting customers with what appeared to be a good deal compared to actually paying for Singtel TV or StarHub TV. Linux Tech Tips did a video on the boxes themselves, but they basically ran uncertified Android TV OS (or Android for tablets) with a custom UX of poor quality, Kodi (legitimate) but configured with third-party plugin repositories that provided plugins for pay TV piracy, and/or had a low-quality pay TV piracy app preloaded. I do remember one of my uncles having one of those piracy boxes, and that ran Android for tablets with an extremely outdated version of Nova Launcher along with a fake baseband (so it always shows ‘No SIM card’ and ‘No service’ in the notification centre). The services themselves are still being sold on Lazada to the point where many people buying them led to them being algorithmically recommended to me on my Lazada homepage when I'm signed in.

Here in Argentina we had various Famiclones the back in the 90s. The Electrolab Family Game was very popular and they sold it as an "original" unit, it was very well built :)

In The Netherlands they even sold on television (Tel Sell channel). It was called Arcade Action and looked like a N64. Unfortunately I haven't been able to found the particular commercial online, it was so bad.

Wow. I remember when I saw a kiosk in Fayette Mall (Now Fayette Center) selling these. I had about the same reaction as you did with the "Tekken" listing, and to see it was Karateka throw m for a curve ball. Memories. Although, you never covered any light gun games. Was the Light gun controller not working or did they just throw it in as a prop?

I have several old bootleg consoles, including the one in this video. I never did try plugging a cartridge into it. Yeah, it is pretty bad. I plugged it in and played with it for about 20 minutes. It's been back in its box ever since. Thanks for the video.

I remember a kiosk at my local mall selling these at one point. They even had a TV set up with it, and I played it briefly using that terrible knock off N64 controller. While was there, a woman who bought one earlier that decided she wanted to return it (it hadn't been opened as far as I know), and the guy at the kiosk was giving her a hard time about it, and she was saying that she specifically asked him about their return policy earlier and he had told her it could be returned. It was an interesting exchange since it was clearly (to me) a shady kiosk.

This was sold in the main mall area of the Harlequin, Watford, UK in 2003. It was a small table and TV set-up where people could walk up and try it out. In fact, the guy there coerced people to try it out to buy because he had a tonne of them. He was set up right outside what was then the GAME store. As a 12 year old I knew this was bootleg, but decided to go over and “play test” it because it had Super Mario Bros, a game I hadn’t played for a good few years at that point. The guy eagerly watched me as I had a good go on the crappy N64-style blue controller, and then said thank you and walked off 🤣

I had a version of this, mine was Grey. I bought it in a *Bilo **_Grocery Store_* in probably May 2005 for $10, and I returned it the next day because it was just _bad._ I remember one game on it being a romhack of Super Mario Bros. that had gravity turned off. Here's the game: jump once, "go to the moon," the end. I also saw them for sale in a mall, and for $40 in probably September / October 2004. _They were right in front of Electronics Boutique._ NES, Super NES, and Genesis era games (mostly) weren't available there anymore (they stopped accepting them in mid 2004, for the most part, but not completely*) and N64 was still available as a used console at that time. * At the same store, I later bought a copy of Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures complete in box for $5.99. Mint. None of them SNES games were on display, though - My Dad and I were on good enough terms with the store manager there, so I got to see Super NES games that weren't on display. Too bad I didn't buy all of them and keep them a while longer, but oh well.

Would AV-to-HD converters rectify the blurry television monitor issue?

I owned two of these Power Play Super Joy III handheld TV games when I was a kid. Like many others who have commented on this video, I got mine from a kiosk at my local shopping mall around 2003-04. My mom and I saw it on display, and they were showing off Super Mario Bros. It had been several years since I owned an NES and played SMB. At the time, I didn't know about emulators and ROM sites, and I didn't question how these games were acquired. I just thought it was the coolest thing having all those games built into single controller that you could connect to your TV and play. It wasn't until I got it home and played it that I noticed the list of games repeated, that some games had funny/incorrect titles, and that some were modified versions of games already on the list. I've since learned that this is typical of these cheap Chinese XXX-in-1 Famiclone consoles. I remember that weird SMB "2" title screen with Mario giving the peace sign. I had no idea what that was about, and I still don't. lol Also, the version of SMB they included was the PAL/European version, which meant the gameplay and music was noticeably sped up, and I had no idea why at the time. Me being from the United States, I wasn't used to that. I found out how crappy the build quality of the Super Joy III was the hard way when one day, I plugged the power adapter in and the Super Joy made a loud pop and wouldn't power on after that. In hindsight, the Super Joy III was complete garbage, and if I had known I could download these games and play them on my computer, I wouldn't have gotten one, but at the time, I had a lot of fun with it. I thought it was great way to play Super Mario Bros., and it opened me up to a number of games I had never seen/played before then. One game that sticks out to me is "Magic Jewelry," a clone of Sega's "Columns," developed by Hwang Shinwei, which has been referenced on this channel in the past. I spent a lot of time on that one, and the music to it was great. "All kinds of everything remind me of you."

There was one game in there that was released in the US, Antarctic Adventure was released on the ColecoVision. We're there other Colecovision games?

Never thought I would see the great NY state fair mentioned. Anyways, my friend had one of these. It was cool at the time to play old games on a CRT.

I've had one of these things for the last 10 years that my brother-in-law got me as a gift. I never gave it much thought other than it was just another bootleg. Cool to actually see there was a story behind it and someone else going through the device. The genesis controller had a stick you could thread into the d-pad and that was supposed to be your joystick but it was awful, much like the rest of it.

I was worried we wouldn't get the creepy smile and fade out this time, you came thru in the end

Yeah, I remember when the mall in my town was selling this "76,000-game" device for a while back then. I tried out some of the games on it, including beating Contra within 20 minutes just to show off. :P Also, one of the silliest renames I saw was Dr. Mario, which when booted up, replaced the title screen logo with "S-P-A-C-E H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L" or something like that, even though I think it was actually properly called Dr. Mario in the main game list. And, I remember seeing a game called "TENAGE NUTANT" or something, and you could be forgiven for thinking it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it was actually T&C Surf Designs. I never actually purchased one of these myself, but at least I had the a chance to try out a few of the games that the US didn't have official access to, including Lode Runner 2, which contained unique and bigger levels compared to the original Lode Runner, which could scroll vertically. Of course, they were significantly more difficult than the first game's levels, and any level beyond the first 10 required a password to access, probably earned by completing the previous level. Oh, and I remember how we tried to find a cartridge that could fit in the slot on the back of the device, even trying out the games that the nearby FuncoLand (now GameStop) had available, but nothing would fit, so that just left us all stumped as to what that slot was even for. Welp.

Here in Brazil we had the "Polystation".

I miss the 90s packaging. So much clip art and blurry areas and pixelated photos and more.

My dad bought one of these in 2004 at a mall just because it looked cool. He knew it was a bootleg, and that we kiddos would enjoy it. And by golly we did enjoy it. This system was my introduction to the game Binary Land. So I have this system to thank

I knew these things were suss, but realize they were actually _shady_

The one I had was a "Power Player 128" where the main system was in the form of a Sega Dreamcast controller - 2nd was like the original PlayStation and a small brown pistol. With 128 games included, there weren't too many (or maybe no clones).

I seriously don't get how companies get away with selling bootleg....well...anything at the malls. It amazes me that the mall even allows it to begin with. The kiosks at my local malls typically have plushies and cheap toys, and the pokemon plushies will range from okay to hilarious. The game units, I haven't seen in a while. Last one I saw was in 2019, at the mall on the strip in Vegas. When these early 2000s bootlegs were being sold, the people who ran the booths would only let people play Super Mario Bros on them. If you tried to play other games, they'd reset the console on you.

There is a kiosk is my local mall that has been selling bootleg NES minis for a few years now.

Even if not arrested you will suffer consiquences. You cannot change your original MAC address.

Oh hey i had the black super joy three as a Christmas present a long time ago, even if it was bootlegged it's still somewhat nostalgic

I had one. I bought it at a mall kiosk. The cool thing was the gun add on. No flat TVs back then, CRT.

I had one of those as a kid. The second player controller and gun disinagrated. The other controller worked. Then stopped working after a couple years.

That's wild about the arrest requiring the full-page ads against piracy 🤣 Somehow I never saw them! ...but I guess I kind of stopped reading EGM, etc. years before these garbage clones hit the market anyway

Totally bought one of those in a mall back in ‘02 or ‘03. I learned my lesson fast!

There were a lot of variants of these consoles, I have one that looks like an N64 controller and so does the player 2 controller. Its box called it the shooting action TV game, but I think the unit is labelled Mega Gun III. This things were just strange. I think mine slightly drains the batteries even when it's off.

This was a small portion of my childhood lmao. At the time, this, ps1 , gba, and the N64 were the ones I had eventually being phased out by the PS2 . I don't know what happened to this.

I had one of these but it was a bootleg console shaped like a mini PS1. The lid opened and you could insert a game cart in it. It was cheaply made, it bricked when I tried playing an nes game on it using a converter.

Nintendo doesn't have the money to pay very expensive lawyers to get each individual selling bootleg consoles. There's just too many that's why Nintendo never bothered. But hey it's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching!

Those bootleg consoles were how i played the classics as a kid

I used to see this and the super joy 3 at the flea market in Syracuse NY all the time in the late 90s early 2000s.

I had one of these. Mine was just the N64 Controller which came with the light gun nozzel built into the front of the game pad. Happy times pkaying all those retro games.

I used to own one of these as a kid. Although mines had a completely different game selection interface and a somewhat different game list. Although these were how I was first exposed to Mappy, Battle City, and Antarctic Adventure and led me into the rabbit hole of bootleg games back then when I would go to dedicated retro gaming blog sites that have sections that talk about them before it it would become more popular on RU-vid thanks to certain people like Joel. Oh and one of them led me to discovering Urusei Yatsura from a bootleg hack of a Famicom game with Digimon.

The games in these NOAC clones are based on the old FC/NES Multi-Carts from SuperVision. Those were most popular in their 52in1, 110in1, and 190in1 varients. The games with the scrambled letters after the name are just modified versions. As if GameGenie codes were applied. There are also better versions of these, where the sound isn't as bad. Many of the games are running on hacked mappers. Some of the "Famiclones" even have quality A/V composite output. No jailbars, or distorted sound. Those + a Famicom to NES cart adapter works pretty nicely.

Calculator is Donkey Kong Jr. Math 🤣😂🤣😂🤣

My local fair was selling Pandora sticks and bootleg NES classic consoles with 600 NES titles

I grew up with one of these units. I played Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Jr., Karataka, Ikki, and Muscle the most on the unit. I almost considered buying another bootleg console to play some Famicom cartridges I bought years ago, but I'm going to leave them be.

The newer "coolbaby" consoles shit me right up the wall because some of their packaging is deceptively similar to the NES Classic, and some sellers on Marketplace (not resellers, just your average Facebook user selling their stuff on Marketplace) will just download a photo of the NES Classic from Google and slap it on there because taking an actual photo is too difficult, so you ask the usual questions, show up to the house, and leave empty handed because it's not an NES Classic despite the seller's (well meaning) insistences, it's a CoolBaby. But when I do get them and I re-sell them on Marketplace (at a cheap price, and properly listed), people will message me later saying "wow this is awesome thanks!" and it shits me even more because there's a billion better ways to play NES games than on a bootleg piece of crap knockoff, but it doesn't matter to them.

I remember those. I remember being able to stick Famicom games in there

11:20 I remember that issue of EGM (mine had the Steamboat Willie-style cover) that had that anti-piracy ad. While it looked ridiculously cheap alongside the various slick and high-budget ads, its stark message did intimidate me. Considering Nintendo's well-documented history of swooping down and destroying fan projects, it's nothing short of bizarre that so many bootleggers are still getting away with selling various illegal crap out in the open.

"stolen" More like preserved & presented to gamers who never saw them before.