The joy of pirated games

[Drtooth]

You know what the funny thing is? Pirate games from the earliest era of home video games didn't even need to hack the code. And the most interesting thing about them is, they had completely original artwork, rather than scary cut and paste jobs. And they were... well... interesting.

Somehow, the translation from Popeye the Sailor Man (who is now public domain everywhere else in the world but America, ironically) to drunken, mustachioed glutton doesn't make much sense.

Now look at this Yellow Submarine-esque Generic cover for "Super-Man"

And this Even more generic game called "SupperMen"

Then there's something called "HEY! STOP!" which has to be some pirate of something..

And a generic label Spider-Man game in Chinese.

Then again, with the Atari 2600, pirating games was child's play, and a lot of garbage from tenth party publishers (giving way to some disgusting pornographic games) was constantly crapped out. That's why the NES had security chips. But the pirates found a way around them.

 

[AquaGGR]

I like the really weird pirates, like Super 3D Noah's Ark...

...some of these games have decent cartridge labels/box covers, like Super Mario World 64:

...then there's the bizarre cut-and-paste covers like that MFS bootleg cover that Drtooth found...

I don't understand the need to paste Bowser's head onto Yoshi, and having two Marios on the cover.

 

[AquaGGR]

Here's a weird game called Pizza Pop Mario, which is just Pizza Pop with the delivery guy replaced by Mario. It's still a strange looking game.

 

[AquaGGR]

Why are these games still being made? These pirates are all for old systems like the Gameboy, Famicom, and Sega Genesis. So who buys them?

^ Notice the Sonic Riders artwork used on the cartridge, that proves that this could be from as late as 2005.

 

[mr3urious]

Here's a multicart that's actually more like a computer program full of stuff like word processors and karaoke songs! I think it was actually pre-loaded on hardware clones of the NES/Famicom designed to look like a computer.

 

[Drtooth]

Why are these games still being made? These pirates are all for old systems like the Gameboy, Famicom, and Sega Genesis. So who buys them?

^ Notice the Sonic Riders artwork used on the cartridge, that proves that this could be from as late as 2005.

Unless I'm mistaken, I once heard that they do most business with certain South American countries. But I forget where I read it to confirm that information.

 

[mr3urious]

From a Game Boy Advance multicart, we have Dora the Explorer hopping the border to hunt for some gold in the desert in Manic Troll!

Dora: DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE LAWYERS ARE?

 

[Drtooth]

Dora IS a Manic Troll

 

[mr3urious]

Dora IS a Manic Troll

Now that you think about it, I did see a bit of a trollface there.