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Jul - General Game/ROM Hacking - I don't think any of these are authorized by their creators... New poll - New thread - New reply
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Kazinsal

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Posted on 03-22-12 04:45:24 AM Link | Quote
This guy appears to be selling cartridges of romhacks and fan translations for incredibly high prices ($95 for a SNES game, $65 for NES). Among the available games are Zelda: Parallel Worlds, Mario Adventure, and (the hack that led me to discover this site) Return to Dinosaur Island.

Yup, that's right, folks. This scummy bastard appears to be selling reproduction carts of some incredibly popular (and, dare I say, famous) romhacks and fan translations under his own name. Nowhere on any item description is any form of credit given to the authors of the hacks/translations, as far as I can find.

This kind of thing is just disgusting. The people who buy these probably don't even know that they're actually romhacks written and distributed for free by fans of the game.

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Posted on 03-22-12 05:15:16 AM Link | Quote
Paulguy's Post configuration
Would be amusing if he didn't play through them on the real thing and found some of them might not work properly on real hardware and may fail partway through. A lot of ROM hacks only work in specific emulators. Very common for SMW ROM hacks to only work in zsnes and nothing else, including a real SNES, and there are several other ROM hacks for other games that have similar issues.

As for this, yeah, it's a real asshole thing to do. Those prices are really high and I doubt it's supporting the original authors. Maybe if some people who are familiar with these people, as I'm sure some people around here are, can confirm?

Why exactly would SNES cost so much more than NES? I figure the larger variety of NES mappers and their greater complexity with a lot of games would make the NES games cost way more. Also a lot of flash carts which need to emulate lots and lots of mappers can be had for around those prices, and certainly after 2 or 3 games, a flash cart is way cheaper.

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Posted on 03-22-12 05:19:39 AM Link | Quote
Post #4611 · 03-22-12 12:19:39 AM
This would be why "This is a free fan game/translation/etc - not for sale" splash screens are popular.

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Posted on 03-22-12 12:25:11 PM Link | Quote




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Posted on 03-22-12 01:11:55 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by paulguy
Would be amusing if he didn't play through them on the real thing and found some of them might not work properly on real hardware and may fail partway through. A lot of ROM hacks only work in specific emulators. Very common for SMW ROM hacks to only work in zsnes and nothing else, including a real SNES, and there are several other ROM hacks for other games that have similar issues.

Mario Adventure in particular, I thought had some hardware issues... (having to do with how the MMC3 was implemented in emulators at the time, I think?)

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Posted on 03-22-12 01:22:00 PM Link | Quote
Mario Adventure has some timing issues that break it on the real hardware, yes.

What a dirtbag. It's kind of surprising that we found someone worse than bunnyboy.

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Posted on 03-22-12 01:27:32 PM Link | Quote
The same for Parallel Worlds, it breaks on the title screen I believe.

In fact, this makes me wonder about this...

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Posted on 03-22-12 04:56:58 PM Link | Quote
I sent off a comment, but I'll doubt I'll even get a reply or, hell, if it'll even be read. If I was the creator of one of those hacks, I would be so pissed off. Not only are they not credited, they aren't even getting a share of the ridiculous amount they're charging, which is probably illegal.

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Posted on 03-22-12 06:16:00 PM Link | Quote
Possibility doesn't dictate what you can do.
Originally posted by Zero One
illegal
They are basically making bootlegs of games, which is illegal already, using ROMHacks people made not for that purpose, which is pretty much using them for a scam.

Not like this hasn't happened before, but it's a shame that pretty much every major hack needs now a warning splash screen for assholes like these.

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Posted on 03-22-12 07:01:33 PM Link | Quote
I wouldn't want a cut of the profits even if it was offered to me. It's dirty money, plain and simple. ROM hacking is on shaky enough legal ground without these idiots profiting off of it.

It would be fantastic if there was some way to specifically detect a repro cartridge--but not a flash cart/copier or accurate emulator--and throw a "Congratulations! You've been scammed!" message near the end of the game. Maybe have it erase any save files and put a string in SRAM that prevents the cart from booting just for good measure.

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Koolboyman
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Posted on 03-22-12 08:26:38 PM (last edited by Koolboyman at 03-22-12 05:37 PM) Link | Quote
It's a shame that ROM hackers still have to deal with this shit. Some bastards tried to sell my ROM Hacks (Pokemon Brown and Prism) before as well which made me put a splash screen at the start of Prism.

Oh and just so you know, they're still selling other Pokemon hacks on ebay like Chaos Black and Quartz.

Quartz actually has a PRODUCT PAGE on eBay.

http://www.ebay.com/ctg/Pokemon-Quartz-Version-Nintendo-Game-Boy-Advance-/82669317?_refkw=pokemon+quartz&_pcatid=2&_pcategid=1249&_from=R40&_dmpt=Video_Games_Games
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Posted on 03-22-12 09:03:44 PM Link | Quote
To be fair, it seems that the major selling point is not so much the game itself as it is the aesthetic value of the custom made cart, manual, box, etc. that come with it.

From the looks of things, they seem pretty high quality, and the one who runs this site apparently makes them all from scratch. The seller puts quite a bit of effort into making these, so I wouldn't just write him off as some common thief or con-artist.


With that said, this person really shouldn't be doing this without the explicit permission of the creators of these hacks. The site itself makes no mention of it, so I think it's a safe assumption that this permission wasn't given.

This person's work is impressive, so it's a shame that these skills are being abused like this.
Kazinsal

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Posted on 03-22-12 09:11:28 PM Link | Quote
Stigandr sent an email off to Gideon Zhi last night to let him know about his Treasure of the Rudras translation being sold.

So that's one possibly-angry person who's been scammed that we've notified.

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Posted on 03-23-12 12:31:24 PM Link | Quote
I'm pretty sure Drew (redesign) has already been notified about this... if not he will be the next time he joins in on IRC.

Now I'm sorta thinking about a way to have a splash screen in any of my future works.

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Koolboyman
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Posted on 03-24-12 02:09:11 AM (last edited by Koolboyman at 03-23-12 11:20 PM) Link | Quote
For those of you who that thought that nobody would fall for this, just watch these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMpEipnlq90
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hh4BqPrjwU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EghBuwvDk90

Putting effort into a scam does not make it any more ethical.
VL-Tone
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Posted on 05-06-12 02:58:07 AM Link | Quote
Time: One second ago - Date: Tomorrow - Weather: Sunshine - Mood: Moody Answer to the universe: Yes
This reminds me, years ago some scammer tried to sell a "3D Metroid NES cartridge" using screenshots from my own Metroid Cubed voxel conversion which would not even be technically possible since my conversion was not a NES game nor a hack of one, it was made to be played using the Shockwave Web plug-in!

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Posted on 05-06-12 02:38:16 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by VL-Tone
This reminds me, years ago some scammer tried to sell a "3D Metroid NES cartridge" using screenshots from my own Metroid Cubed voxel conversion which would not even be technically possible since my conversion was not a NES game nor a hack of one, it was made to be played using the Shockwave Web plug-in!

Man- porting Shockwave to the NES would be really impressive.

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Rachel Mae

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Posted on 05-07-12 04:36:37 AM Link | Quote
It's been done:



(I'm sorry)

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Jul - General Game/ROM Hacking - I don't think any of these are authorized by their creators... New poll - New thread - New reply


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