Pirated Stuff

[FamicomFreak]

Sweet pirates I'm drolling over here!

[JC]

I got a cool cart from a friend, which manuel will appreciate -- much of it is in German:

At one time, it must've been packaged with one of those controller consoles, like the PowerJoy. I've said before that carts packaged with Famiclones are among the best. This one proves it:





Many of the games have these "Waiting" or "Loading" screens, which I presume are fake, since only disks are known to need to load:



Box World is fun -- and has about 30 levels. I know I've played a PC game like this before, but I can't remember the name...kinda like Chip's Challenge, err:





Fun Click is amazingly addictive. It's pretty much a Yoshi's Cookie clone, but instead of just trying to move the cookies to make matches, you click matches to get rid of them to make more matches. The goal is to get as many of the same item connected (no diagonals) to get the most points. (EDIT: There's a hack of this called Picaclick, which is short for Pikachu Click -- it makes use of Pokemon sprites):





If you stop moving the cursor, the little boy at the top of the screen falls asleep!

Here's a memory clone without a name, so I'll title it Memory. The only other Memory game I know of for the Famicom is one by Hwang Shinwei. In this one, you get 30 tries to match the cards. It's easy and boring:



And here's one manuel better love. I've seen a Chinese language version of Harry's Legend, and an English version. But! this is a German language version, called Tom's Adventure:







I tend to think this next game is an extensive hack, but a damn nice one. As racing games usually go, it's kinda boring, but the sprites are fun. There are several space-themed hacks on this multicarts, including two extensive hacks of Duck Hunt, called Space Shoot and Space 2050:





And this last one...it feels like an extensive hack -- too well developed to be an original, but it's well-disguised, or I'm just clueless about the licensed version from whence this came. It's Soldier Boy, and this little dude takes his sword and kicks enemy ass. Some of the enemies are rudimentary versions of Super Mario characters -- and some appear to be original and just awesome. Someday I'll get more screens on the site:







This cart also have extensive hacks of Super Mario Bros. (Pandamar), Contra, Duck Hunt (more than the space ones), Galaxian, Galaga, Hogan's Alley, Wild Gunman, and more.

Also an FYI: I want to point out the use of cursors in several of these originals, which is strong evidence that you've got an original. Only PCs would influence a developer to put a cursor, and it seems that trend would've only come after gaming began to firmly ground itself in the PC world.

[son_ov_hades]

I don't normally care for pirates, but that German cart is sweet! I've always wanted some PAL NES games in German.

[133MHz]

Box World is Sokoban. I've got the same game on a DreamGear 64 in 1 Plug&Play TV game which is just a Famiclone without a cart slot and built in original (and terrible) games. I like that game so much, I've played it a lot in the past and it's the only reason I keep that DreamGear joystick around (seriously, it's THAT bad).

UFO Race is just an extensive hack of Nintendo's F1 Race.

[JC]

Nice. Since I don't like the FDS, it's nice to have a clone/port of Sokoban. There are so many hacks of racing games on this cart, I figured UFO Race was a hack. Glad to know which was hacked.

[133MHz]

Would you be interested on checking screenshots from the games on my DreamGear Famiclone joystick?
I received it as a gift a while ago and I was like 'oh cool a Famiclone!' but the games are so terrible I threw it away and even chopped off the AV cable to make one for my Genesis xD. But seeing you so interested in these extensive hacks/original crappy games also sparked the interest in me to check them out, and compare them with yours and/or document them for the site or something.

[JC]

I guess you could say I'm on a quest for unlicensed originals. Since about 2000, China has been pumping out so many extensive hacks that it's difficult to figure out which games are the originals. It's similar to what companies did with the fighter games like Street Fighter. It's hard to tell where the fighters began because they've pumped out so many variations: Street Fighter, Master Fighter, Street Blaster, II, III, IV, V, VI', etc.

I'd love to see what you've got. I'll be documenting all of my pirates and hacks for the site, including what anyone has to contribute. I've got a long Excel spreadsheet list of originals, hacks, fighters, Mario hacks, etc. Kinda fun to figure out.

EDIT: One of the problems with my lists right now is that I don't know Chinese and many of the originals are in Chinese. For example, though Harry's Legend and Tom's Adventure are English titles, there's also a Chinese title for the game which I'm assuming is the original since these games originate in China/Hong Kong/Taiwan.

[133MHz]

OK then, tomorrow I'll dig out my DreamGear Famiclone, solder some RCA plugs to the chopped end of the wire and get screenshots of the games for you.
I'll be glad to contribute to your quest

[JC]

I played a bit more of that Soldiier Boy game. The second boss is a car that drive on top of quicksand, and he shoots shit. So, you have to fight this car while trying not to sink too deep in quicksand -- a little like SMB USA. Neat game. It recreates pieces from the Mario series -- like the quicksand, -- but I haven't figured out if a licensed game was hacked, or if the recreated sprites were added to some original creation.

[thegreatgonzo]

I have that gunboy cart as well JC. Tons of fun. Fun Click is a game I am trying to find for my friend who is addicted to it... so far as I know its only found on this cart...

[JC]

Haha...yes, Fun Click is very addicting. I wish more people had this cart so we could compete for high scores. (My best is 657 right now; and I have yet to entirely clear the screen.) From what I've seen, there are at least two carts that have this game -- this one, and a Union-Bond multicart where the game goes by the name "Picaclick" and has Pokemon sprites.

[YamiMario]

You gotta love original pirates.

[planet_haxxor]

anyone who wants one of these lovely gunboy multicarts can pm me

- it really is a brilliant cart - I remember the shop owner from the place I got it said to me 'you like weird shit, check this cart out'.

[YamiMario]

Id PM you, but i got no coins D:

[UglyJoe]

JC,

That Solider Boy game is a fairly extensive graphics hack of Chiki Chiki Machine Mou Race / Wacky Races.  I knew it looked familiar, but I couldn't think of it until just now.