Hey /vr/, How d you feel about reproductions of NES games that are just way too expensive to by original? I was thinking of doing this for games like pic related because i'd rather pay for the labor involved to re burn an eprom, and that person would likely be a real /vr/ trooper and get the game for substantially less, even though it isn't a very expensive game.
Why not just get a flash cartridge or emulate?
Reproductions are shit and the people behind them scum.
>>2850404
I enjoy having some kind of physical representation of the game with its label also. Seeing it on a list on a menu screen along with a bunch of other roms half heartedly tossed on there because why not sucks the fun out of it for me.
>>2850521
that sounds really autistic
>>2850529
I suppose it is. Why do you feel the people who make reproductions are scum?
>>2850554
Because they're making money with other people's work, be it the original producers or fan translators and modders.
There's nothing wrong with repros as long as they aren't being done for a profit and as long as the cartridge is clearly labeled a reproduction
>>2850562
In all fairness, the original creators don't profit off of original copies being resold either. So in that regard buying the original game or a repro isn't that much different.
I do agree that using free fan translations of games for profit is really shitty though.
>>2850562
They're producing a physical good that would otherwise go unproduced. The only people it really hurts are those involved with holding on to rare copies to resell. You're not going to see me crying over that.
>>2850631
>They could license the rights to the games from the owners and give them a fair share of the profit.
You know as well as I do that option is off the fucking table for a host of different reasons. Don't be daft, Anon.
>>2850631
If someone were to go through official channels to make these old cartridges, I'd be all over it, but no one does.
>>2850619
>>2850608
Most translation projects are distributed with an express non resell clause in their readme/license.
It's dishonest and goes against the wishes of the authors of the translation projects.
There are also issues with older translation projects not running properly on actual hardware due to relying on hacks that the emulators of yesteryear employed (things like framebuffer hacks for font rendering at times).
Let's get a bit more hypothetical. Let's say Square Enix sees an FFVI repo cart. By US law they need to send a cease and desist to the project for encroaching on their copyright, or else they risk not being able to defend it in court. Who are they going to go after? The one seller, who has no real presence or the rom translation team who has their logo in the game? Repo makers are potentially throwing the romhackers under the bus to make a quick buck, and that's disgusting.
The Turbografx/PC Engine community has lost two translators and at least one hacker because of their work being redistributed, so don't act like it hasn't had an effect on the community.
>>2850636
This isn't that crazy, the translators/hackers could be cut in on it. No repo makers even bother to get an okay from the team.
Companies have approached teams for their scripts, one of the more recent Ys games did it, and a few other games. Hell it's even been done in the anime community.
The bottom line is repo makers are scum, and they're making money off of bootlegs and other peoples work. You want something that plays on original hardware? Buy a flash cart.
>>2850658
>By US law they need to send a cease and desist to the project for encroaching on their copyright, or else they risk not being able to defend it in court
That's blatantly false. Trademarks have to be actively defended, Copyrights do not.
If I'm going to pay money to illegally play vidya I'd rather buy a flashcart once and be done with it.
I own a few reproductions.
In general, I only tend to get english translations of unreleased JP games.
I have NTSC-UC Terranigma, Bahamut Lagoon, Front Mission, Front Mission: Gun Hazard, and Brandish 2: The Planet Buster for SNES.
My thoughts on actual SNES reproductions of legit carts however..
You shouldn't want it both ways.
If you want to collect, you're going for real carts. If you don't want to pay the going rates, you have a lot of alternatives, with flashcarts, importing famicom or super famicom, or emulators.
The -only- time I condone the reproduction carts for official NTSC-UC releases are games that are just virtually unfeasible for anyone to obtain. The Little Samsons, the Nintendo World Championships, The Mr. Gimmicks, etc.
I don't condone using donor carts either, but if you're making repros from new boards and shells then I think its fine for the most part.
When the fuck did Megaman 5 get so expensive? I'm glad I bought that lot of Megaman 1-6 all those years ago for like 150 bucks (I overpaid at the time)
>>2850654
>Is that a reason to sell counterfeits? They're not doing people a service
They're saving me the trouble of buying a chip flasher, some chips, and soldering the things in myself.
If we're talking some asshole trying to pass this shit off as legit, that's one thing, but most of the time we're talking ROM hacks, untranslated games, and prohibitively rare games that no one wants to spend the time, money, and effort to hunt down, verify legitimacy, and purchase. People trying to pass off shit like Little Samson or Stadium Events should get fucked though.
>>2850658
>Most translation projects are distributed with an express non resell clause in their readme/license.
>It's dishonest and goes against the wishes of the authors of the translation projects.
No one's selling the ROMs. They're selling flashed chips installed on carts.
The only Repro I'd buy is of a game with a special chip that can't be played using a flash cart. I'm past emulating, playing on real consoles is the way to go.
>>2850670
>No repo makers even bother to get an okay from the team.
Because, why bother? No seriously, why bother?
Say you approach a fan translation team, ask to use their stuff and they tell you to get fucked for whatever reason. So? What are they gonna do, sue you for using their dubiously legal fan translation in your also dubiously legal repro cart service? Ridiculous.
And say they say, yes but we want some of the cash? Again, also not going to happen because at least with a repro cart you can argue there's a physical cost of manufacturing to be accounted for but charging for fan translations or ROMHacks has never been legal nor is it ever the done thing.
there's fuck all to gain from asking permission and nothing to really lose either so why bother with the effort
>>2850698
>charging for fan translations or ROMHacks has never been legal nor is it ever the done thing.
Selling mods isn't unheard of and perfectly legal if you do it properly.
>>2850693
Thanks for demonstrating you have absolutely no idea what a ROM actually is.
>>2850686
>They're saving me the trouble of buying a chip flasher, some chips, and soldering the things in myself.
Or you could stop being retarded and get a flash cartridge.
>>2850714
Why do you care what I do?
>>2850714
Isn't that still at least 100 dollars that they would be spending?
>>2850719
It's called giving good advice.
>>2850386
I feel they're for autistic faggots. Seems everyone ITT feels the same way
Do you guys also feel this way about burning your own CDs for PSX or Dreamcast etc??
This is going on with PC engine cd games.
It has been a disaster so far
>>2850731
Not really. You're just spouting a preference for media storage.
>>2850723
Depends on the system.
"Reproductions" aren't cheap either.
>>2850743
In what way?
>>2850746
...or simply trying to save you money.
>>2850761
What makes you think money is an issue?
>>2850748
But they should be. Its such a markup (duh, yes)
Flashing a chip is easy with relatively inexpensive equipment. Car ecu chips are flashed with the same process for less than half the going rate of game repros.
In all honesty, if I had any interest in buying the stuff I would sell them for under $10 each, no label or shell and still make a giant profit.
>>2850781
Ok then, Richy Rich. Go wipe your ass with a $100 bill and we'll just call it a day...
>>2850698
You're seriously a retard, did you know that?
a.)Just because you want to release it doesn't mean you go against the wishes of the team, this is how you get people to stop translating roms.
b.)There are translation patches that are sold! It's perfectly legal to sell modifications for stuff, you just can't distribute the original work with it.
http://www.project-melancholia.org/ Oh gee it's a translation patch for a game being sold! Better get on the horn to Konami there Jr. Detective Mouthbreather!
Reproductions are great. I want more and better reproductions because I want to own physical copies of games I enjoy from the past that are severely limited in number and quality.
Companies should do reprints of old games but no one does so it's up to someone else. Why the hell is it a bad thing? If you're worried about monetary rights, then the copyright holders should just pitch it rights and get a sales cut. Everyone wins. Reproductions forever.
>>2851313
I'm sure you can come up with some better bait than that...
>>2851327
The fuck?
>>2851313
Demand doesn't justify the cost of production.
Realize that only a handful of nerds would actually buy them considering how popular emulation is getting.
>>2851356
So? That's up to the producer to wrestle with. If they can't make a profit with it and do not want to pursue, that's their issue and has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand.
>now that emulation is getting popular
I know you kids have a bad grasp of situations from before you were born, but emulation has been popular for decades. No one is looking at a repro thinking "if only legit copies were cheaper, I could finally play this game". They look at a repro and think "I don't want to spend 200$+ to fill a missing hole on my knick knack shelf. Good thing I can buy it for ~40$." (Or whatever the going rate for a repro is)
>>2851360
Shit, I did misread it. I thought it meant the original companies should produce them. I'm going to bed after this.
>>2851364
I probably shouldn't have added "getting." I didn't realize it would trigger someone's oldfaggotry.
Emulation was still a kind of nerdy subject back then. But now it's pretty much mainstream thanks to smartphones. I'm sure there was a time not too long ago where normies would seek out the original hardware because they didn't know any better.
>>2851380
>this poster was born in the late 90s
>checks MMV on eBay
Fuck! That's the only one I was missing from my collection. Why is it listed at twice the price of VI which I got when I had the chance because I heard V was the weakest entry of the series.
>>2851380
>Emulation was a nerdy subject back then
No, it wasn't. Pretty much since the internet arose emulation has been a cheap and easy way to play games. The only point it gets nerdy is when people start whining about accuracy of emulation and shit like filters. Emulation has been step fucking 1 for anyone looking to play old games easily since the 90s, especially for normies. The only way it wouldn't be is if you're being mentored by some hipster filling your head with tales of CRTs and original hardware or some reseller is offloading a retron V on to you and your wife (or a console on a chip if you were getting suckered before those hit the market).
I make repros and sell them on etsy and ebay. I only use new parts and specifically do not do reproductions of commercial games. I only do prototypes, homebrew/hacks, or translations. I've seen too many people try to sell repros of rare games that prey on people not realizing it is one. Whether the label says it is or not, someone is going to think that it is genuine.
>>2852315
What do you charge and what consoles do you make repros for?
>>2852339
$5 under whatever the title is being listed at on average. SNES games are usually about $35-$40. NES are about $30-$40. I've done genesis in the past, but there was never much of a market. I used to do Mother 3 carts, but you can get them so cheap nowadays it isn't worth the time.
Raw parts for SNES is $18 and $12 for NES. If I ordered bigger quantities I could get it down a lot, but I just make these in my spare time. It really isn't that hard to make your own, the eeprom programmer is the most expensive, especially if you want to do TSOP chips later. A guy sells a $3 adapter for superFX chips that eliminates all of the wiring normally needed for a Starfox 2.
>>2850754
Sapphire had repros produced that looked almost just like the real thing. It caused prices to go up because nobody knew what the real one was.
PCEWorks also recently provided PCEFX with a few hundred repro discs. They only cost like $5 each. Some of the discs were re-sold on eBay, which caused the whole forum to flip the fuck out for no reason.
PC Engine is a great system, but the forum is like Neo-Geo.com sometimes.
