Obscure SNES pirates

[Barver]

Throughout the past few months I've been finding some new SNES pirates that nobody really knows about. It probably goes without saying that besides the occasional hacks(i.e Sonic 4) that the whole library of SNES pirates is nothing but ports from Genesis, or apparently on the rare occasion possibly other systems? In this topic I'll just bring a little run through of what I know about, some introduced on RX a bit ago and others you probably haven't heard of much, or ever?  :O

Hercules


I got this one a few months ago, hoping that I may have found something really unique. It turned out to just be a port of the Genesis Hercules pirate. It uses completely different music however, some of it not half bad. As some probably are aware, this game is a loose port of the Playstation Hercules game, so maybe the music comes from that, I still need to play it someday to find out. Animation in general is also very jerky, plus the palette is kind of screwed up for a couple of things. Besides that, it's the same thing as on Genesis, with the exact same ending.

Taz in Escape from Mars


I've sadly no idea what this is, and the seller failed to take any shots of it. He told me he'll give me screenshots soon, so I'll definitely post about it here if he follows through on that. It would be pretty interesting if pirates actually ported the Genesis game to SNES, since instances of an official game ported to SNES aren't common.

Mortal Kombat 2000



Just more proof SNES pirates can't get terribly interesting, this appears to just be a port of the Mortal Kombat 5 Sub Zero pirate on Genesis.

Digimon


I'm sure people on the RX forums saw this(same seller as the Taz above). Some people think it's a port of a GBA Digimon game that was somewhat recently shown on the Sky League website. I recently found out that Vast Fame made a Digimon Sidescroller on GBA with a different name from that one though, perhaps they made both of them? So it's up in the air which it's a port of, but as anyone can tell it definitely came from the GBA. Here's shots of one of the GBA games to compare:

Aladdin 2



I know, horrible pic quality, but trust me, that Aladdin cart in the middle has a 2 on it, and the guy that was selling it listed it as Aladdin 2 also. Could it be, a port of the Aladdin 2 pirate on Genesis? But that game was a port of the SNES Aladdin. Which means they'd be porting a port of a game that's already on the SNES. We'll probably never know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if pirates were so stupid as to not realize how redundant porting this of all things back onto SNES would have been  :lol:

101 Dalmations



Unknown. But what is known is that this is merely a hack of some other game. It was made by Twin Eagles Group, the same people responsible for Sonic 4 and lots of other sprite hacks.


I take it most are already familiar with the rest, like Bug's Life, Titanic(S.O.S hack), Street Fighter EX Alpha etc. Maybe I'll post those pics of people aren't already familiar with them thanks to the RX topic made awhile ago. Hope some of this was interesting.

[taizou]

ooh. seems like new SNES pirates are popping up all the time now. wasnt that long ago when people thought there was only Tekken 2 and Pocket Monster and nothing else

its looking like nearly every Mega Drive pirate was ported to the SNES at some point, but there are a few genuine SNES originals too.. like that Pokemon GS that WhiteLionness has (unless theres an undiscovered MD version) and Street Fighter Alpha, so there may well be more out there. but if Aladdin 2 really is the MD port of the SNES game ported back to the SNES that'd be like.. the best stupid pirate thing ever.

edit:

Quote:

 

I recently found out that Vast Fame made a Digimon Sidescroller on GBA with a different name from that one though, perhaps they made both of them?[/quote]
have you seen any screenshots of that one? the title screen of the one on Sky League looks a bit hacky to me, especially with the Pokemon stuff. maybe the Sky League one's just a hack of the other?

[Barver]

I don't know about what Sky League has, but I found out that they actually sell games on Taobao, and supposedly it's brand new boxed, so I went for it See for yourself.

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=1457752511

The name isn't the same, that's all I can go off of. You do have a point though, the title screen calls it Pokemon and has a Charmander on the title, yet the actual game is Digimon. Maybe what they got really is just a hack of the V.Fame game. When(if, I ordered three days ago and still my order isn't being done) I get it in the mail I'll be sure to post what it actually is.

And it probably goes without saying, but I bet Digimon, and Taz if it really is a port from Genesis, are both based off the same engine Picachu and Pokemon Gold Silver are. WIth the Bonkers music too no doubt.

[taizou]

That looks like a GBC strategy game to me.. probably this one:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040110195022/http://www.st168.net/eng/mainroot/prodshow.asp?ProdId=st032
which sounds exactly like the intro of that Pokemon Sapphire I have, only with Digimon instead of Pokemon, and retranslated from Chinese into better English, so I guess its based on that engine (if not just a straight character swap)

[Barver]

Edit: Oops, my mistake, I linked to the wrong game. I meant to post this one:
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=4334812549

[taizou]

ah yeah, I've seen that cart before. Hopefully its something awesome. O:

[SpaceNinja]

You might add Tekken 2 to the obscures

[taizou]

btw, where did you find these? SNES originals seem to be the rarest of any console, at least based on my casual browsing of auction sites... but maybe i'm just not looking in the right places.

[Barver]

In case there's misunderstanding I don't own all of them, just the Hercules. All the pics came from that guy at Digital Press, which I think you posted the topic about on the RX Forum?

I got the Hercules from someone on another forum that lives in Brazil. Pretty much Brazil seems to be THE place for SNES pirates. In fact, I don't think you find them anywhere else. It leads me to believe that all SNES pirates likely were developed in Brazil and not Taiwan, since I've yet to ever come across a single SNES pirate on a Taiwan auction site or for sale from someone over there. Not to mention they always come in SNES shells, not SFC.

[taizou]

ah, I only recognised Digimon from that guy's threads. I dunno if he posted some later on that I missed. but yeah, the few I've seen seem to come from Brazil (or occasionally Mexico).

I think they were still probably developed in Taiwan though, but only sold in Brazil etc for some reason.. maybe that was just the only big market for pirate SNES games? I guess unlike the NES and Megadrive there were never that many cheap SNES clones, so the market for pirate carts wouldn't have been that big in most of the "traditional" pirate areas like Taiwan/China/Russia etc. but maybe Latin American countries had a cheapish supply of official SNESs from the US or something?

edit: though what is strange is that I definitely have seen pirate SFC carts of Japanese games, and a few multis, on Taiwanese auction sites... there must have been at least some market for SNES stuff there. so surely if the originals were developed in Taiwan they'd want to sell them locally too. hmm.

[KingPepe]

Isn't it usually harder to make SNES unlicensed games due to the copy protection they put on it?

[Barver]

Dunno if it matters but I recently found out the Digimon pirate only has five levels. I think I may have scored a copy of it, not 100% yet. More to come =p

[Barver]

Just got confirmation today, Taz in Escape from Mars 2 in nothing but the regular Taz-mania. Another case of misleading art

[sevin0seven]

^ =(

[Barver]

Well, since you bumped this I may as well also point out 101 Dalmations is just a hack of Beethoven.  There's also apparently a port of the Samurai Shodown 2 on Genesis to SNES, though I've yet to see that one myself.