Reproductions that look like original games

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Fisher
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by Fisher »

DRW wrote:why the box needs to have a label that tells a lie about its origin.
Another point about honesty.
If the product was not made, endorsed or sponsored by someone, why put it's logo on the box?
Just because other similar products have one?
Other than restoration of originals, I don't see a valid reason do do a 1:1 label copy.
But well, it's like a totally gray area...
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by Sumez »

Yup, I can only back up that sentiment. I don't mind fake boxes that look awesome (I got a few shockboxes too, but only because I got them with the carts, I have no idea where you get new ones), but putting fake logos and stuff on it is really dumb.

And it's not really a grey area. Putting Nintendos logo on something they didn't endorse isn't just against their policy, it's illegal. Not that I care, but it's pretty black on white :)
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by Nioreh »

DRW wrote:
Nioreh wrote:Because they look nice. I have fake art on my wall because I like the look of them. I have fake boxes on my shelf because I like the look of them. MVS carts are pretty ugly by themselves.
I didn't ask why you put a box of the game on your shelf, but why the box needs to have a label that tells a lie about its origin.
So, the same box without the Seal of Quality, but with a NintendoAge logo would not look nice, or what?
I quoted the part I answered, and I stand by that statement. I put Neo-Geo logos on those fake boxes, and I don't really care if people on the internet disagree with that. In that sense I can fully understand why someone would like a similar box for a Nintendo game that never had one. I of course do not agree with anyone selling a fake copy of something and try to pass it off as the real deal to try and trick someone. But this isn't that.
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DRW
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by DRW »

Well, I cannot understand it.

Collectors collect all kinds of NES games:

Licensed western games have a Seal of Quality.
Famicom games don't have a Seal of Quality.
Unlicensed games don't have a Seal of Quality.
Homebrews don't have a Seal of Quality.

So, the collection of an NES collector is a wild mix of different kinds of games in different boxes and cartridge shapes.

But the one category Reproductions of Famicom-only games that are put on an NES cartridge suddenly need a fake Seal of Quality because "it looks nice" and because "it's fun to pretend"?

What the fuck?


And about the tricking of people: Maybe NintendoAge didn't intend to fool people. But there are enough idiots on the internet who get their hands on these reproductions and who sell it as some rare prototype or small batch release of a legitimate game. (The same idiots who list a cart-only "Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt" as "ultra rare".)

And clueless people might fall for it, just because NintendoAge wasn't honest and didn't put their logo on it, but created a counterfeit game with a fake Seal of Quality, fake company logos, fake copyright notes and a fake barcode.
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by thefox »

DRW wrote:And clueless people might fall for it, just because NintendoAge wasn't honest and didn't put their logo on it, but created a counterfeit game with a fake Seal of Quality, fake company logos, fake copyright notes and a fake barcode.
I'm curious, what makes you say "NintendoAge" made these repros? It sounds about the same as saying "NESDev" is making whatever repros are being discussed at the Reproduction forum here.
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by rainwarrior »

tokumaru wrote:The reasoning might end up being as simple as "the fun is in pretending these releases did happen, and an ugly reproduction disclaimer destroys that illusion". I don't like it either, but it is what it is.
This was the answer to the question as asked (though it looks more like a complaint than a real question). The Nintendo Seal etc. are a fun and welcome detail for many people.

I don't think most of the people here would want a fraudulent seal on their game boxes, but it's just a familiar and nostalgic symbol for tons of people. Not everybody cares about what it was supposed to mean, they just like the look of it.

The idea that it's illegal is completely unimportant. Everything about it is already illegal.
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by Punch »

Calling "repros" for what they really are (bootlegs) would have solved much of the issues presented here, but no, you gotta romanticize it.

This will ruin retrogaming (and even legitimate homebrewers) completely someday.
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by Bregalad »

We've already have this argument countless times here, and my opinion on the matter
  • Until the arrival of flash cards I was rather pro-reproduction (but that was a long time ago)
  • Since the arrival of flashcards that costs only slightly more than $100 there is NO reason whatsoever to sabotage original cartridges. It's possible to play romhacks and translations on real hardware, so any reproduction/bootleg is unneeded technically.
  • If a reproduction/bootleg uses new hardware it's less of an issue, but it's still an economical scam
  • Reproduction cartridges have very low value as basically anyone can make them for cheap
  • People selling other people's work for profit are assholes
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by Sumez »

Bregalad wrote: [*] People selling other people's work for profit are assholes[/list]
I think this needs repeating a few times. I see why it's fun to make your own reproductions and fancy boxes etc. Hell, I made a port of Donkey Kong myself, which isn't exactly my copyright, but it was super interesting for me to do.
But taking stuff other people made, and reproducing it on your own to sell it for profit ? That's a special kind of terrible morals.
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by Fisher »

I think that as long as you do repro/bootlegs for yourself there's not a big problem.
One thing that had come to my mind right now is a tought about the future...

I've done some very nice repros and enjoy playing them, but unfortunatelly, I'll not live forever.
What will happen when I pass away? Will my repros be sold as originals or they'll be sold as the cheap knockoffs they really are?
I think it's time to print some "reproduction copy" labels and put on all the repros I have. :roll:

About the copyright infringiments, if the copyright holder don't care about this kind of misuse, the biggest thing I can do is to warn people that the thing isn't legit.
Also, there's that old problem of the (mis)use of 3v parts.
This kind of care should've taken by the people who produced it.

But even them if people agree to buy knowing it's not legit (and in some cases it can damage the console) because it has a fair price, so let it be! They've been warned.
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by DRW »

thefox wrote:I'm curious, what makes you say "NintendoAge" made these repros?
This:
http://nintendoage.com/forum/messagevie ... adid=67379
rainwarrior wrote:Not everybody cares about what it was supposed to mean, they just like the look of it.
Yeah, the random Joe Anybody probably doesn't care. (But the random Joe Anybody doesn't care about an authentic-looking reproduction either.)

But those people over there are experts. They know exactly what it means.
And putting such a seal on the box, even though NES games don't automatically have the seal anyway (unlicensed games, homebrews, Famicom games), that's just a dick move:

Why are the people content with "Alien Syndrome" not having a Seal of Quality and why don't they insist to play make-believe by pretending that "Battle Kid" was a 1989 game by Capcom, but a reproduction of a never-released-in-the-west game has to have that seal for "authenticity's sake"?
Why is it alright to take "Alien Syndrome" and "Battle Kid" as they are (an unlicensed Tengen game and a homebrew), but with "F-1 Race", we have to pretend that it was a black box release?

A game without the seal doesn't look out of place in a collection. But a game with a seal, even though it belongs to the sub-collection of non-licensed games, this is the oddball in a collection.
Fisher wrote:Will my repros be sold as originals or they'll be sold as the cheap knockoffs they really are?
This already happens today:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/272650711893

Not a single word about this being a reproduction. This guy makes it sound like this was some production that got produced, but never released, and now you have an item of "high value".

This would have never worked if the box had said:
"Game contents and artwork copyright Konami.
This is a reproduction.
Manufacturing, manual and box texts made by NintendoAge/coinheaven."
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by tepples »

DRW wrote:
thefox wrote:I'm curious, what makes you say "NintendoAge" made these repros?
This:
http://nintendoage.com/forum/messagevie ... adid=67379
That's a post by user "coinheaven". I'm unfamiliar with who is and isn't staff on NintendoAge. Is coinheaven on NA's staff?
DRW wrote:Why are the people content with "Alien Syndrome" not having a Seal of Quality and why don't they insist to play make-believe by pretending that "Battle Kid" was a 1989 game by Capcom, but a reproduction of a never-released-in-the-west game has to have that seal for "authenticity's sake"?
Just a guess, but perhaps the intent was to match similar-era games from the same publisher. Battle Kid box art thus would not look like that of Capcom games because it wasn't published by Capcom, and Alien Syndrome would look like any other Tengen game. But NROM-era Nintendo games had the "black box" look, and Konami's early output had its own distinctive border. Only starting around 1990 (e.g. Dr. Mario) did Nintendo start to standardize the borders of licensed games, adding the red bar across the top.
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by Sumez »

DRW wrote:
thefox wrote:I'm curious, what makes you say "NintendoAge" made these repros?
This:
http://nintendoage.com/forum/messagevie ... adid=67379
As far as I can tell that person isn't even affiliated with NintendoAge? At least it is not a moderator on the forum or anything.
I agree as far as it's detestable that NintendoAge openly allows stuff like this, but don't pin the production itself on them.

Also, describing Arumana no Kiseki as a "neat platformer" is doing a disservice to the customers. :P I did enjoy the game, but it's probably the closest to kusoge I have ever seen from Konami, it's so absurdly glitchy and unintuitive it's almost funny.
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by DRW »

tepples wrote:That's a post by user "coinheaven". I'm unfamiliar with who is and isn't staff on NintendoAge. Is coinheaven on NA's staff?
Is this of any actual relevance to the topic at hand? Does the meaning of any of my posts change if you replace "NintendoAge" with "coinheaven"?

Code: Select all

foreach (var post in DRW.Posts)
    post.Text = post.Text.Replace("NintendoAge", "coinheaven");
Do my arguments change their meaning now? Do they become less correct or do logical errors in them suddenly disappear?

I used NintendoAge as a shortcut because that's the site from where this game was originally sold, they sanction the sales of these kinds of reproductions and NintendoAge is known as the forum where many of these kinds of reproductions get sold from.

So, do you have an actual objection where the fact that it wasn't NintendoAge staff, but a single user, somehow invalidates my arguments about counterfeits etc.? Or is it just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking?
tepples wrote:Just a guess, but perhaps the intent was to match similar-era games from the same publisher.
Alright, so a "Metroid" nude hack is justified in being called "Licensed by Nintendo".

The point is: In my collection, everything says what it actually is: Licensed games are licensed, homebrew games are not.

My game "City Trouble" is consciously modeled after first generation NES games and I even invented a fake backstory for my "company". But I didn't actually put a "Copyright 1985" into the game. And after telling the fake backstory in the manual, I continued with: "At least this is what it might have looked like if we had actually been game developers 30 years ago" and then I write how the game really came to be.

And when I ordered a reproduction of "Tower of Radia", I created a label with the official artwork and company logo (the game's ROM is a 1:1 copy after all, so the code is still by Tecmo and the artwork belongs to the game that you play on screen, so you can just as well put this on the label), but with a clear text: "Reproduction" and the website from where I got this reproduction.

When I got to the conclusion that the game's fighting mechanics are too boring for me and I gave the game away, I can be sure that there's no way this ends up at eBay with the statement: "Never released prototype cartridge from 1992. Ultra rare and highly valuable. $200."
If it gets on eBay, everybody sees the URL and can easily find out that it was home-made and can be ordered for $10 and a donor cart.

(Ironically, the guy who makes the reproductions does the same dick move of putting the Nintendo Seal of Quality on his works. I got a different label because I explicitly said that I don't want this and sent him my own label.)

So, unless you want to make a movie and use this as a prop, there's absolutely no reason to apply make-believe and "what if" to the real world. An NES collection is not a work of fiction. It's part of the real world. "I'm an NES collector and these are my games." That's real. That's not part of an act. So, there's no point in pretending: "And this is my copy of "F-1 Race" which was part of the initial run of NES games in 1985."
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Re: Reproductions that look like original games

Post by tepples »

DRW wrote:So, do you have an actual objection where the fact that it wasn't NintendoAge staff, but a single user, somehow invalidates my arguments about counterfeits etc.? Or is it just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking?
I was heading toward trying to distinguish "NA encourages coinheaven's behavior" from merely "NA tolerates coinheaven's behavior".
DRW wrote:The point is: In my collection, everything says what it actually is: Licensed games are licensed, homebrew games are not.
I agree with you that these repros shouldn't be passed off as licensed. I was just trying to guess what was going through their heads.
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