Fake or Rare Zelda or What?

[Great Hierophant]

Those PCBs for both Z1 and Z2 look far too roughly cut to be an official Nintendo PCB.  The PCB traces may have been copied from official boards, but it is a little hard to tell when bootgod's NESCart DB is down.  The label on Z1 is obviously wrong (thanks to the "2") and off-center. 

Still, you have a situation where the chips appear to be genuine Nintendo chips intended for their respective NES carts.  Note that Z2 uses a PRG-ROM and a CHR-ROM while Z1 only uses a PRG-ROM.  S-RAM chips are generic but these are the brands and packages I would expect to find in an official Nintendo product. 

These carts are obviously unofficial products, but are they pirate products?  A pirate could conceivably acquire a batch of NES Zelda 1 & 2 cartridges, but I'm still more partial to the theory that Hyundai wanted to clear out unsold inventory by converting their NES cartridges into Famicom cartridges and selling them like pirates. 

[fcgamer]

Those PCBs for both Z1 and Z2 look far too roughly cut to be an official Nintendo PCB.  The PCB traces may have been copied from official boards, but it is a little hard to tell when bootgod's NESCart DB is down.  The label on Z1 is obviously wrong (thanks to the "2") and off-center. 

Still, you have a situation where the chips appear to be genuine Nintendo chips intended for their respective NES carts.  Note that Z2 uses a PRG-ROM and a CHR-ROM while Z1 only uses a PRG-ROM.  S-RAM chips are generic but these are the brands and packages I would expect to find in an official Nintendo product. 

These carts are obviously unofficial products, but are they pirate products?  A pirate could conceivably acquire a batch of NES Zelda 1 & 2 cartridges, but I'm still more partial to the theory that Hyundai wanted to clear out unsold inventory by converting their NES cartridges into Famicom cartridges and selling them like pirates. 

I could easily see something like this being the truth of the matter, gray area.

[BonBon]

The pic I posted is the board of the cart in question. @ flying Phoenix please tell me where you can find a cart like mine for sale because I've only ever seen 3 in my life.
Post Merge: June 06, 2016, 02:06:02 am
Any one notice the back of the boxes are almost identical from the famicom Korean version to the nes Korean version

[L___E___T]

 



I had noticed that - it supports and makes sense for both theories that it would, but it's worth noting.

These carts are obviously unofficial products, but are they pirate products?  A pirate could conceivably acquire a batch of NES Zelda 1 & 2 cartridges, but I'm still more partial to the theory that Hyundai wanted to clear out unsold inventory by converting their NES cartridges into Famicom cartridges and selling them like pirates.  

This is refreshing to see.  To me it's clear that these are not official, or at the very least have not taken on an official guise.  With that out of the way (IMO), the question in hand is - does that make it a pirate?

Now, for me, I tend to think that anything unofficial is essentially a pirate.  That's like an umbrella term I slap on (rightly or wrongly) myself as a categorisation.  I see repros sitting as a sub-category underneath that really, because they are different and DIY efforts, but they're not licensed or put out by approved 3rd party developer/publishers, so to me they are fundamentally a 'pirate', which is as I said that label that I (personally) use for non-official releases.  I wouldn't count a licensed distribution, i.e. by Mani or by Hyundai or Samurai as a pirate, to clarify.  Homebrew sits in a grey zone that I don't want to digress into.

As for this particular cart - whatever the insides are, to me it is not official because of the packaging and manufacture signs.  I do however entertain the notion that Hyundai had leftover stock of NES chips and sold or passed those on or however they made their way to someone else.  I don't think Hyundai released this themselves, personally.  But that's not something I can 'prove' either way.

But what I would say is that I still consider this an unofficial 'pirate' because the game is not official at all in the presentation or localisation, which is fundamentally the difference to me in what makes something 'official' or not.  I can in today's day and age harvest some official Famicom boards for Mother, stick them in a NES shell with a converter and make a little box and label, but that does in no shape make it an official release.  It doesn't matter that the chips are real Nintendo, or that I myself have done previous business with Nintendo, what makes it official (for me at least) is whether it was a legitimate release in the market in agreement with Nintendo, and it wouldn't have any of those points.

So I think it's not just a question of 'what is a pirate?' it's also in part a question of 'what is an official release?'.  This is my personal stance on this (very lovely) game, not to be taken with any negativity.

[Great Hierophant]

It is indisputably unofficial and therefore would be a pirate cart by Nintendo's standards. 

If a Korean pirate outfit obtained a batch of Zelda II NES carts, desoldered the chips and put them on a pirate Famicom PCB in a pirate Famicom shell and adapted the official Zelda Famicom cart label and appropriated official Nintendo Zelda (SNES) artwork, it is a pirate cart.  People who make and sell unauthorized cartridges containing copyrighted code are pirates.  It does not make it legitimate because the game did not come out in your region.  You are still a pirate whether you have a clandestine factory in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province or are making them by hand in Hoboken, New Jersey.  You can call yourself a reproduction maker, but you are still flying the Jolly Roger.

Given the similarities in the box backs, I am a tad more inclined to believe that Hyundai did this one on the sly.  Since they probably didn't have their own factories with the machining to produce Famicom carts, they may had to contact a pirate factory in Taiwan or on the mainland. 

[fcgamer]

Now, for me, I tend to think that anything unofficial is essentially a pirate.  That's like an umbrella term I slap on (rightly or wrongly) myself as a categorisation.  I see repros sitting as a sub-category underneath that really, because they are different and DIY efforts, but they're not licensed or put out by approved 3rd party developer/publishers, so to me they are fundamentally a 'pirate', which is as I said that label that I (personally) use for non-official releases.  I wouldn't count a licensed distribution, i.e. by Mani or by Hyundai or Samurai as a pirate, to clarify.  Homebrew sits in a grey zone that I don't want to digress into.

I personally think it sloppy to "think that anything unofficial is essentially a pirate" and that "I wouldn't count a licensed distribution...as a pirate".  Here is why.

Let's take a company such as Samurai.  You already said that you wouldn't count them as pirate, and they were seemingly licensed distributors.  However, they also crossed over to the dark side, as can be seen here:

http://postimg.org/image/e38yz4oef/

So not all Samurai games were official, and some were pirates.  They dipped their toes in both waters.

Then take something like the game Videomation.  According to Wikipedia, it was developed by FarSide Studios, the same guys that developed Action 52 for Sega.  The game was published in the USA by THQ (licensed) yet published on Famicom by BIC and also another company, both of which were unlicensed.  So then is it a pirate or official?  In some places it is pirate and others it is official?

Unofficial is okay, but pirate is a poor word choice.  Many companies produced games that weren't licensed by Nintendo (whatever that even means), but it doesn't make them pirates.    Let's lose the close-mindedness and examine the games in a more open way.  Also, if unlicensed games are pirates, than homebrews essentially are as well

[L___E___T]

 



That's exactly as I said, I do count homebrews and repros essentially as 'pirate' - but I don't use that term as derogatory or with negativity to insinuate that they are made by evil doers etc.

I use it in place of 'unofficial', which is how I view this game.  Hard to say on that Samurai game whether it's official or not, it looks unofficial to me.  Videomation for Famicom I would also say is an unofficial release, like 8-Bit Music Power.  It was a licensed release in other regions on NES sure, but the Famicom release is clearly unofficial, even if the code is legit, and the effort applaudable.  I don't think that's weird, because what ultimately makes an official or unofficial release is the release itself, not necessarily the quality of the game that plays when you fire it up.  There are some truly awful officially licensed games, and some excellent unlicensed unofficial releases, that's a pretty separate discussion in my opinion and again, an unofficial release does not mean 'a rubbish quality experience' which I've tried to hammer home.

In the end, I agree "pirate" probably isn't the best term because it is as I referred to it, an umbrella word and that might have been enough decades back, but with a need to differentiate today it doesn't work for all.

However FCgamer, you're kinda assuming that any negativity you appear to associate with the label 'pirate' is shared by everyone, and it's certainly it's not in my case.  Linguistics are tricky and what is an ugly word to you or someone else may not be an ugly word at all to others.  I find 'US NTSC' a label I steer away from, but for Nintendo Age regulars, that could well be seen as a boon, right?  That's the best example I can think of on the fly, to why it's not a big deal to me to think of and refer to the game as a pirate.

[Great Hierophant]

I consider these Zelda cartridges as pirate carts because they contains Nintendo's software released in an unauthorized manner.  Nintendo could have released Zelda and Zelda II for the Famicom and did release Zelda for the Famicom.  If Hyundai wanted to release some English Zelda cartridges for the Famicom clones in South Korea, Nintendo technically could make them for that market.  Of course, Nintendo wouldn't because it would only encourage sales of unauthorized console hardware.  So, Hyundai under this theory was both a licensed distributor of Nintendo hardware and software and also a pirate.  

Outside pirate cartridges, there are only licensed and unlicensed cartridges.  Licensed cartridges are a finite quantity.  Nintendo entered into licensing contracts to companies to give them official permission to release games for the Famicom and NES.  Nintendo stopped producing NES cartridges in 1993 and Famicom cartridges in 1994, discontinuing the NES hardware in 1995 and the Famicom hardware in 2003.  The number of licensed games is set more-or-less in stone because Nintendo does not license games for its 8-bit hardware anymore.

Unlicensed cartridges, whether by Tengen, Hacker International or homebrew produced by RetroUSB, is a universe that is not closed.  All unlicensed means is that the company has not contracted with Nintendo to be granted permission to release games on Nintendo's Famicom and NES.  All pirate cartridges are unlicensed, but not all unlicensed cartridges are pirates.  No one needs a license from Nintendo to produce cartridges for its systems anymore and no one can get one anyway.

As noted in fcgamer's blog, there were companies that may have dipped their toes into the unlicensed waters.  Hudson Soft seems pretty "guilty" here, perhaps Konami as well.  But even though Nintendo would not have approved, they were at least issuing their own software in an unauthorized format.  By contrast, Samurai and Hyundai were releasing someone else's, Nintendo's software.  A fine distinction between unlicensed and pirate, but a distinction none-the-less.

A pirate cartridge is illegal because it contains infringing content, whether copyrighted code, graphics, music or trademarked characters.   Copyright and trademark violations carry both criminal and civil penalties.  So it is unfair to characterize a homebrew like Kira Kira Star Night DX as a pirate cartridge unless there is some illegality in it. 

[UglyJoe]

That's kind of how it goes.  There is no formal definition of "unlicensed" or "pirate", so if you are going to label a game as such, you need to lay out your definition of the terms first.

[chowder]

I dunno, I thought the term "pirate" refers to anything appropriating someone else's IP without permission.  I can't say I've ever heard it used in any other way to be honest...

[fcgamer]

I dunno, I thought the term "pirate" refers to anything appropriating someone else's IP without permission.  I can't say I've ever heard it used in any other way to be honest...

Yup, this man gets it.  Hence why pirate and unofficial are not very good synonyms.   

[Retrospectives]

Agree. Earlier everyone say HK-Originals referring to these type of games. But if no universal (or for us on FW, locally) conclusion has been made about what we should define as a "Pirate/Unlicensed/Unauthorized" e.t.c then it will be just a matter of personal interpretation which might bring confusion so it might be a good idea to actually try to narrow it down for the sake of clarity, although it might be hard I think we can come to a somewhat diplomatic solution to what we should be able to refer to certain types of games.

At least it would be preferrable and easier for people to actually know what a person might refer to when speaking about games like these. 

[P]

No people use it in any way they like. For example printer companies uses terms like pirate ink and pirate papers for compatible third-party ink cartridges and papers which is ridiculous.

Using that term for unlicensed original Famicom games is also rubbish. Bootlegs are pirates. "Unlicenced" can be used as an umbrella term for both unlicensed originals and crappy bootlegs, not the other way around!

This game has the artwork from another game, so licensed or not Hyundai screwed up.

[GreenKoopa]

I think some definitions need to be clarified to sort out this issue.

Pirate: As Great Hierophant said, software that has been released in an unauthorized manner. I.e. Stolen IP.

Hack: Although contains some unique work, it still contains (mostly) stolen IP. Therefore, it's a type of pirate

Unofficial: A game which did not have Nintendo's permission to be released on their system, but does not contain stolen IP like a pirate game. From an old court case, I think Atari vs Activision, the judge said that when a person buys a console, you can't stop them from what they put into it. So there is no legal or moral issue with the existence of "unofficial" games. Not having Nintendo Seal of Approval meant you didn't a guarantee from Nintendo.

Homebrew: if the content is not stolen, then it's a type of Unofficial game, usually low budget. If the content is stolen, all or in part, then it's a pirate.

Also, there is the grey area of what happens when the IP holder no longer exists (abandonware) but maybe we shouldn't discuss that here.

Regarding real Nintendo components in the cartiridge, it doesn't make the game an official Nintendo approved release. E.g. For any car manufacturer, about 70% of the components are purchased parts from 3rd parties. In some cases, some brands don't even make their own engine! It's not certain individual parts which make something genuine, it's the overall product. In our example, the overall product is the legal use of the game software as approved by Nintendo in which they receive royalties for the release.

In relation to the box, if it was real, then it would have Nintendo logos etc plastered on the back just the like official release does. If I was a gambler, I would bet it's a pirate.

Also, there was a comment regarding the value of pirate games. I saw on TV once a coin/banknote appraiser talking about counterfeit currency from the late 1800s, and how it was worth a lot more than "legitimate" versions due to the rarity. In time, the stigma of "low quality" pirates will fade and the focus will change to include rarity amongst other things. 

[UglyJoe]

I'll just put this here again.  Once again, this is not a mandate on how the forum is to use the terms.

The official FW stance (that is, how the FW website defines them, not how the forum in general defines them) are (to paraphrase a post by JC from 2009):

Licensed -- the obvious one.

Unlicensed -- games with original gameplay when compared with licensed games, even if the game borrows some graphics from licensed games.

Hacks -- games with the same gameplay as a licensed game, only the graphics are hacked, either basically or extensively. I usually refer to hacks as basic hacks -- title screen, main character -- or extensive hacks -- more than just the title screen, main character.

Pirates -- games that are the exact copy of licensed games, except perhaps the removal of the copyright or an altered title screen.