A non-techincal look at what's inside a relatively modern SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis bootleg cartridge, also known as a pirate game. How does the unofficial clone compare to the real thing? I open them up and find out. Thanks for watching!
You can sand/clean down the edge and corners of the PCB board and it will then fit smoothly instead of that grating feeling. I did it to my Musha bootleg board.
Highly recommend you use a Game Genie between bootleg and your Genesis. The PCB's on some of those bootleg carts can screw up the cartridge slot beyond repair. Also, it doesn't hurt to sand down the bottom and sides to make it a little easier to put in the slot.
I have a bootleg 32 in 1 for the Game Boy which goes into any Game Boy system just fine but requires a little bit more effort if inserting into a Game Boy Advance
I have bought my repo's from a very high quality producer. The only way you can tell they are not repos is by opening them up which scares me to pay do much for "legit" copy. So sad Musha, Working Design Games and others were stolen back when I was in college.
I would think that holding the cartridge near a radiator or in direct sunlight would be encouraged while bending because the heat would soften the plastic ;)
One interesting thing of note is that no official Mega Drive / Genesis carts outside of japan have that notch on the left side except for Sonic and Knuckles. That notch + international labeling is a surefire way to spot a bootleg. Sonic and Knuckles is the sole exception because sega was cheap and only wanted to mass produce one version of the lock-on cart mold.
Back in the days almost all my mega drive cartridges were bootlegs. The only problem is when it’s a game with a save feature (in this case the PCB will have a battery), bootlegs will save your progress but it will be erased when you turn the console off (no battery). I was so frustrated with a super Monaco gp 2 bootleg I had that I once rented a original cartridge of the same game and exchanged the PCBs... 🙈
Bootlegs are always a little cool, as long as you don't think you're getting the real thing. I've got a pair of bootleg Pokemon Firered/Leafgreen GBA cartridges I picked up at a yard sale a few years ago. They randomly lose their save files, and also blank out if you try to trade forward to a legit DS game, and maybe even just from being played on a DS, I don't remember if that later was the case or not. They don't fit quite right in most systems, and while they do have red/green colored plastic, their labels are a bit off center and not shiny like the legit versions. I've heard conflicting stories on whether these particular bootlegs can trade with each other or legit games, and while it would be interesting to test I sadly don't own the hardware to do so. (I'd assume it's not possible.) Due to the save issue they aren't any good for playing, but they're an interesting oddity.
I still have a bunch of these. I think I even have russian-translated Zero Tolerance cart somewhere. It was so badly done, no one cared. Even guy who sold it to me said that Image on the label is nothing like the game ( and it isn't), and I glad that I knew, what Zero Tolerance was, when I bought it. But game works and that's all that matters.
I'm guessing when you see Mega Drive/Genesis games on sites like AliExpress you're probably looking at bootlegs. Tempted to pick some up, as they are kind of intriguing.
It's actually multi purpose. It's cheap, it bonds the chip to the board, and yes it prevents anyone else from seeing what components are used, both preventing reverse engineering and hiding the source of the components, thus making it more difficult to track down the bootleggers.
More likely it's just a 'glop top' - i.e.: a bare chip lacking the usual plastic casing or legs which is epoxied directly onto the board. It's also black to prevent UV damage to the chip or light interfering with it working. It is also less likely to be a EPROM due to higher cost, could be a PROM, but far more likely a ROM as in bulk it's significantly cheaper to produce those than having to flash a lot of chips. 'Glop tops' are extremely common where cost is an issue (i.e.: on bootlegs and extremely cheap consoles). If you removed the epoxy, you could easily damage the chip due to the lack of a package, but even if you managed to remove the 'glop' , the bare silicon die will just drop off.
Taking a break during extended play period, probably wasn't about any health concerns. It was probably written because the heat of the Sega would damage the cheap chips of the boot leg cartridge.🤯
Used to have a pirate NES cartridge which I opened out of curiosity. I think the original pirate pcb inside was meant for a famicom and then they had soldered (very poorly) tons of wires to another pcb to make the connector for PAL NES. Should have made a video of it before I gave it away.
Think you mean chamfered, rather than bevelled. A chamfer is where you cut away one edge, leaving a diagonal surface, instead of a right-angled one. Interesting stuff though. Presumably, the bootlegs with the epoxy resin are fairly recent?
Interesting how they use glop tops (that resin) for everything; to my eyes they look pretty recent. For example, everything's surface mount (pins are soldered onto the top of board; as opposed to the Sega cart where the pins go all the way through the board). Gotta wonder how a harsh edge like that would affect the pins in the console: it'd be a bit scratchy, to say the least. I've got a few bootlegs of my own; mostly GBA and DS stuff. It's kinda fascinating how it all goes together. My personal favourite is my copy of Mario/Sonic at the Olympic Games - the box is a pre-release box touting the release date and asking for preorders; while the (horribly-labelled) cartridge works fine... except for DS Download Play, which would always error out. Didn't stop me trying it whenever a friend was around. Now I think of it, they were probably using a stripped ROM (to save space on the cart). Apparently it was bought at EB Games (Aussie Gamestop), but I don't know if they'd mess up the box that badly; as I mentioned, it was a photocopy of the pre-release box. I still wonder who manages to trade stuff like that in with a straight face.
I picked up a bootleg of Spiderman a few years ago in a charity shop. Looks like a UK cart, but has a cut out on the side like a Japanese cartridge. The artwork is wrong as well ! Plays just fine though.
Well, they are even cheaper than the previous batch from a year or two. Those at least have a flash chip soldered, not a globtop. I assume they can be reflashed, given you have proper flashing tools
Pov: You're Russian retro gamer. Still, these carts are awesome! Better than buying MUSHA for 200$. One day I even saw a generic Gameboy RPG with the price higher than 300$!
bootlegs dont bother me especially when they tell you its a bootleg, and you know what you're getting. and as long as they did a good job (quality wise) with the cart and PCB, and it works like it should, and not at the highly inflated price of the original. now if the person selling it is trying to pass it off as legit, now that I have an issue with.
Bootlegs are probably more tempting now because of cart prices. I'm not a fan of pirating but if I'm ever in the market for multiple carts that are overpriced I'd just get an Everdrive. No fair way about it I suppose.
Those chips would be chip on board where they put the bare silicone chip on wire it to the traces and put a blob of resin on top. very cheap way of adding chips
Those are weird small boards, both you got are the same, one just differ by having a resistor. Maybe it's because it's A PAL board?! All the ones I got, single or multi-games, are alike the original, just with more traces, having a big ROM chip, divided in small ones or the UV chip like the shown on the video. Interesting to know.
can anyone explain roughly how the fakes get away with practically nothing on the PCB for the exact same legit cartridge has a ton more. probably a stupid question but why does the legit ones need to use so much space compared
I just got castlevania bloodlines same 16 bit thing on back.worked fine for about 25 minutes and in between stages froze up. Now it wont work at all. Any advise?
there's no way. he wouldn't have paid what that cart is valued at without a good look at it. i doubt he thought he was getting a genuine one for what he presumably paid for this.
Great way to tell from a real game cartridge than a pirated or fake cartridge. If I were a CBSA officer working in the post office, I would catch them and have them either shipped back or destroyed as they can cost Sega thousands of dollars.
OhNoNotMyPenis It was more of ironic humour, but if your level of humor is "oh no not my penis" then of course we are going to have issues seeing eye to eye :)
OhNoNotMyPenis It was somewhere around option 2. Nevermind, you can't please everybody, although I've never heard anybody refer to the long standing joke that china makes knock off crap (which happens to be also fact) as a "moronic" joke.
Musha is a popular game currently it is going for about 300 dollars on amazon there were cheaper ones but i think some guy bought them up from the seller and then turned around and reposted them for u guessed it 300 bucks a piece ! Im not sure if people know you can play musha online along with every other old game for FREE? One interesting little known fact is the only difference in mega drive and sega games are the shape of the cartridges mega drive game cards will fit in a regular sega console once it has been removed from it mega drive cartridge.
Playing mega drive games online isn't a great experience TBH. It's just not the same without an original controller and emulators are still butchering the sound and sometimes also the graphics.
I actually found them on ebay. MUSHA was £13 and Contra £14. And to be honest, those are kinda high prices for bootlegs. But these are 2 games that really interested me and I wanted to add them to the pirate cart collection.
Thanks for replying I don't really by bootleg games i just wanted to know the price I really like it when you refurbish ebay junk i just enjoy it when you take the things apart and open them up fix and clean them so satisfying to watch
Yeah, some russian companies order cartridges to be done in China, then chinese dealers deliver these carts to that companies, its pretty cheap, so this is why this bootlegs are so widely spread in Russia :) so as for exclusives, afaik there are some: танчики (battle city), super mario bros, darkwing duck, felix the cat these were ported very poorly from nes/fc, with horrible control of a character. i remember there is kinda plants vs zombies game, pretty odd though.
another interesting thing i know is if you take a look at the PCB you might find some areas for soldering, like 3x3 array or something (sorry, English isn't my native language) So if you try to solder some spots together, you might get ANOTHER GAME instead of initial
Abisso666 The only reason legitimate products say where they are made is because they legally have to. Bootleggers aren't exactly in the business of following laws.
Bootleg media is a big no-no in my book! I remember in the late 90s-2000 that most of our friends were getting their PlayStations chipped to play pirated games and MY OWN MOM offered to get my bro and I's PlayStation chipped, even explaining that I could rent games and copy them using the computer with CD writer we just bought! I already knew about PlayStations not playing copied games unless chipped and I absolutely refused to get mine chipped! No, the Dreamcast having replaced the PlayStation as our main console by then DID NOT factor into my refusal to get the PlayStation chipped, piracy is something I morally disapprove of! I still kick myself for buying a bootleg Sonic Drift Game Gear cart in 2013 simply because I did not check it for authenticity before buying!
