Brutal video game abuse

[simonbelmont2]

Boys and girls,

We are talking here about a console that died years ago.
Why Nintendo not recreate this stuff again? Out there are thousand of collectors that are dying to buy.
They don't have the time or the passion to do this?
So, if they don't sell this stuff anymore, why this copyright bullshit? I'm sick about this...
OK, I understand and it seems very normal to talk about copyrights for consoles like Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS. They still sell games for those consoles, they still create games on cartridges/media discs, they still have the passion to do this...
But for old games/console they don't bring nothing new... They used some cheap ways to put the "games" (yes, roms) on the Wii channel, create a custom emulator or something then charged some money for those games.
From some respects I agree with what are doing some people that are creating reproduction stuff.

What a horrible night to have a curse!

[Garoth Moulinoski]

Whatever Nintendo or whatever company out there does with their IP is up to them as long as they keep owning the IPs. If what they want to do is not to do anything with it, then that's their business.

On the other hand, I'm not saying that we shouldn't be angry that we can't get the stuff we want and that we shouldn't take matters into our own hands. Most of the time, nothing bad happens despite being some shady color of legal. But we can't pretend that it's 100%, perfectly fine.

[SargeSmash]

I think there's enough demand where these repro can make a bit of money, probably enough to sustain their e-business and then some if they're smart. I see Timewalk is now offering repros of Bahamut Lagoon and DQ 1+2, both of which have parts that don't work on an SNES. That probably pisses me off more than anything, but the retards will still buy them.

What parts of these don't work?  I've got a SD2SNES now, and I'd hate to sink a lot of time in and have it goof up.  I was under the impression that the later versions of the patches made things work on copiers (which would probably also work for the SD2SNES, right?).

[kingofcrusher]

Have you ever tried to make your own repro cart? It's pretty involved, requires an EPROM programmer (ones that actually work for EPROMs and not just say they do are at least $80+, the good ones are a couple hundred bucks), EPROMs (about $6-$8 each last time I checked a couple years ago), and a few other components, and it's definitely not something you can bang out in 10 minutes (the one time I built one myself it took me hours to get the thing working). Considering the amount of work and cost of materials involved & investment in equipment, I doubt these guys are getting rich.

I don't have any problem with people making and selling these as it's worth the money to pay someone for their time and parts to do it for me. I consider it just paying for the labor/parts, not the actual content of the cartridge.

[Pikachumanson]

Well if we are going to bug about hacks being sold as carts why don't we talk about those knock off system that have like a hundred nes games built into them. Or just fake systems that can play cartridges. I have seen one that can play nes, sms, snes and genesis games. When i was a kid i would have killed for that system.

[Pennywise]

What parts of these don't work?  I've got a SD2SNES now, and I'd hate to sink a lot of time in and have it goof up.  I was under the impression that the later versions of the patches made things work on copiers (which would probably also work for the SD2SNES, right?).

There's a patch that fixes the issues with DQ, but I doubt Timewalk used it. As for BL, there's some sort of issue with the items, possibly descriptions not displaying properly. As far as I know that never received an update and is one of the handful of fan translators that needs a bit of updating to keep up with the times.

[JCE3000GT]

This thread made me chuckle mostly. I like the idea of reproductions of rom hacks/translations.  I for one am happy Timewalk released Mystic Quest Reborn. I was able to participate in the design of the artwork and etc.  And I won't make a cent off of it. Do I care?  Hell no. What I think is that I'm glad that there is a medium for gaming fans to actually play my hack on real hardware complete with it's own artwork, map, and manual.  That is cool I think.  In fact I'm doing at least two more hacks that should get released over there as well. 

Those of you who think this is something that you can bang out for $20 taking only 30 minutes to make obviously do not know what all is involved in creating CIB reproductions  Purchasing the materials to print the stuff on, the professional printers / ink used, the donor cart, cost of the EEPROMs, and wiring / etc.  These things are not cheap. Also don't forget the occasional goof up that ruins a donor cart or two.

Stuff like this is good for the vintage gaming scene and keeps it fresh and different. Reproductions are the natural evolution of just simply playing roms on emulators. 

[beelzebub06660]

Well if we are going to bug about hacks being sold as carts why don't we talk about those knock off system that have like a hundred nes games built into them. Or just fake systems that can play cartridges. I have seen one that can play nes, sms, snes and genesis games. When i was a kid i would have killed for that system.

Besides possibly packaging them with licensed games. Clone hardware of NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis is perfectly legal. Because unlike copyrights, patents only have a life of 20 years. After that any person/company can come along and manufacture said hardware.

[Bregalad]

I don't have any problem with people making and selling these as it's worth the money to pay someone for their time and parts to do it for me. I consider it just paying for the labor/parts, not the actual content of the cartridge.

If their "hard labour" of programming an EPROM and puttint it on a PCB is worth $150, then the hard labour of doing a romhack is worth $1200. (and in my opinion it's not).

And it is somehting you can do in 10 minutes. I know because I am an electrician engineer. True an EPROM programmer is expensive, but they only buy one and can make a shitload of money by selling their fake cartridges for $150. An eprom is arround $2-3.

[simonbelmont2]

My friend, did you translate something game related in your life to say that: in couple of hours you do the job?
They are times when the translations require days even months.
If you know how to do reproductions please make some and sell them for 20$ but with one condition: your reproduction to have box, manual, inlays, cartridge with custom label and all of this to have high quality like the originals are or maybe better.
If you do this for 20$ I will buy reproductions from you.
Success!

P.S. Would be a good idea that people who make reproductions to ask the translators/team whether they agree or not with selling their translation.

That. If they were selling it for something like $20, I would not mind this much, but what pisses me is how expensive they sell them, they obviously make HUGE profit on it, and when they didn't do anything !
They say it's for the "labour", but in my opinion on a translation the labour goes :
- 90% to the original game maker (full time paid job for several employee for a few months)
- 9% to the rom hacker (a couple of hours a thousand hours of work, depending on the hacks' complexity)
- 1% at the VERY MOST to the guy who put the ROM on a cart (at the VERY MOST 30 minutes of work).

[Bregalad]

Hmm that's exactly what I said... translating and romhacking is very time consuming, that's what I said. As opposed to burning an EPROM and soldering which can be done in 10-30 minutes.

[kingofcrusher]

Have you actually built one yourself? You should try it first before saying it can be done in 10-30 minutes; trust me it's more than 30 minutes of work. And where are you buying EPROMs that work with a SNES repro for $2-$3? Last I checked the ones that will actually work are at least $6-$8 a piece.

So, as an electrical engineer, what's an hour of your time worth? I'm betting you get paid pretty well, so why shouldn't someone with the skill and knowledge of how to build a repro also get paid well? Plus, that's not even factoring in the box/manual and the other stuff they're including (which aren't cheap). I'm not trying to attack you or anything, just saying that maybe there's a lot more involved in the building of a repro than you're allowing.

[SargeSmash]

They can probably do it quickly with practice, at any rate.  My first go at a few NES repros took me a while.  Granted, there's a little more involved with the rewiring of the pins, but I definitely couldn't do it in 30 minutes.  Maybe with practice, though.

If I were to ever do this, I'd charge for parts and labor, which I think is certainly fair, and I'd also run it by the original patch authors, as well.  If they didn't want it distributed, I would abide by those wishes.  I'm all in favor of a reasonable repro market, even if it's unlikely that I'll ever use it myself.  Some folks just don't have the prerequisite skills to make them.

[Bregalad]

Of course I have been doing this before the Power Pak came, I did not do any SNES carts but I did plenty of NES ones, before I was against all of this. Note that I never cared to make a cart "look real", but I had printed and glued a label on them (with normal paper).
10 minutes is a bit short, but it's very doable in 30 minutes. Opening the cart with the proper gamebit takes 30 seconds. The longest part is removing the old ROM from the board which is painful to do. It doesn't matter if you damage the ROM but you should be careful to not damage the board. I think this can take 10-15 minutes, but someone more skilled could do it in less time. Then programming the EPROM takes aprox. 30 seconds. Soldering it on the board takes 3 minutes. Closing the box and gluing the label : 2 minutes. Total : 16-21 minutes. This is approximative, but I think that's about the time it takes to do a repro. This time is worth $20, and the EPROM is worth $4, so if they didn't abuse stupid consumers it would cost $24, NOT $150.

[SargeSmash]

There's a patch that fixes the issues with DQ, but I doubt Timewalk used it. As for BL, there's some sort of issue with the items, possibly descriptions not displaying properly. As far as I know that never received an update and is one of the handful of fan translators that needs a bit of updating to keep up with the times.

Tried this out last night, and you're right.  The item names get scrambled up when changing pages.  You can select an item then back out to refresh it correctly, but it's definitely not quite right.  I noticed a bit of corruption upon feeding the dragons as well.  Not sure what else is there, though.  Is this a layer clearing bug, or something deeper?  I'm sure as heck no expert on coding for the SNES.

[kingofcrusher]

They can probably do it quickly with practice, at any rate.  My first go at a few NES repros took me a while.  Granted, there's a little more involved with the rewiring of the pins, but I definitely couldn't do it in 30 minutes.  Maybe with practice, though.

If I were to ever do this, I'd charge for parts and labor, which I think is certainly fair, and I'd also run it by the original patch authors, as well.  If they didn't want it distributed, I would abide by those wishes.  I'm all in favor of a reasonable repro market, even if it's unlikely that I'll ever use it myself.  Some folks just don't have the prerequisite skills to make them.

Oh I totally agree on running it by the authors if it's possible to contact them, that's one thing I do fault all these repro guys on not doing; I think they should at least make an offer to send the author a percentage of the profit or at the very least try to get their permission. SNES games are a bit harder than NES games to repro, since for one nearly every game requires multiple EPROMS. But yeah, once you've done a bunch of them you could probably get the amount of time involved in just building it down to under an hour, maybe half that if you're really good.

One thing to also remember is that getting a nice looking box/manual/map like that is expensive to setup, the printers require it all to be ordered in advance and paid for up front generally. Plus you have to pay someone to cut/fold the boxes professionally or they look all janky as hell if you try and do it yourself. I did a Colecovision port a couple years ago that a guy released with box/instructions and I remember it was a nightmare for him to get the boxes cut and folded correctly, he ended up spending a grip of money on the whole thing. He was selling them at $50 each, and with all the materials & time involved he wasn't making anything (actually losing money since he took some time off work to get everything together). He loves the hobby so that was fine with him, but personally I don't see any problem with people wanting to make some money on all the time invested in producing one of these.

[KingMike]

The ONLY one, who has the right to SELL Parallel Worlds is Nintendo. They are the only one who own the programming behind this game, since most of the code is intact and is the same as in Alttp. The overworld, dungeons etc were made by the hackers for no cost.

I'm pretty sure nobody has the rights to sell it. Nintendo may own the copyrights on the game engine and the original graphics, music, etc. but wouldn't the ROM hack authors still have copyright on the PW level design, story, etc? (not unless Nintendo were to license the hack. But Nintendo is probably the last company that would ever do something like that.)

[Myria]

Copyright issues aside, I don't like that they're destroying an original game in order to do this, something of a limited quantity.  It would be better if they just fabricated these themselves.  You can buy CIC clone chips online now, and from there, just make your own PCB and put ROM chips on it.  Maybe an SRAM chip, a battery, and some discrete logic gates.

[LostTemplar]

I'm not sure of the costs, but wouldn't the case be the most expensive of the parts to produce yourself, because it's the most elusive?

[henke37]

You'd think that they'd have plastic molding facilities available.