Hi everyone I rarely look at these forums much anymore these days, but I was reminiscing about how much I used to be into pirate gaming the other day and thought I'd make a small topic about some things that after all these years I still have no answer to. These are mostly small things that I'm sure not too many people would pay mind to since it's mostly unproveable or very niche stuff that only hardcore collectors would care about, of which there are only probably less than 10 in the world it feels like  Anyway, let's see if any of this has ever crossed anyone else's minds.

1. Sonic 2 for SNES
Mr. Byte said that this Sparkster hack supposedly got distributed onto cartridge in Argentina. I've yet to ever see a copy show up, though. My best guess is it's been so long that he was remembering incorrectly that it ever shipped, but I'd love to be proven wrong. There's no telling what else was in it like a titlescreen, but going by the work on Sonic 4, it's probably certainly more than my simple sprite hack ROM that's out there. Here's a topic link again in case anyone in confused that the ROM for this game out there is NOT the original: http://bootleg.games/BGC_Forum/index.php?topic=276.0

2. SNES ports
This is another thing that can't really be proven, but I'm very curious what, if any, other SNES ports exist out there. There's been some generally completely unknown surprises that came up in recent years for pirates (i.e. Power Rangers fighter for Genesis, or Squirrel and Aladdin 2000 for SNES). Since so many Genesis ports end up appearing on SNES, it makes me think there's still gotta be more out there. This is a completely baseless mystery and more just a "what if" in this list. Always fun to imagine we can get more stuttery crap with Bonkers music, right? 

Not that it means much, and again is completely baseless, but I feel like Mulan, Samurai Spirits II, and Lion King 2 would be prime candidates for other things haphazardly ported to SNES. Still waiting for a surprise one day...

3. Boxes and manuals
I still remember when I first got into pirates, it was honestly because I saw potential in reselling them. But the more and more I found things, the more I realized not only are not many people really trying to collect them CIB, but there's actually (at the time, anyway) not so many pirates where it's known what the original CIB physical media looks like. This is probably one of the only things that keeps me interested in pirates these days, since it seems like most of the games themselves have been found at this point (except for GB/C/A. There's always gonna be stuff for that).

A vast majority of games have at the very least been found with their original boxes, but there's still many for which no box has been ever seen. And we don't need to get started with manuals; even finding one with a boxed game is impossible. It's easy to assume that most of them just didn't come with a box or a manual, or even had either. Let me list some examples of stuff that makes me wonder.

• Lion King 2 for MD

- I luckily got this off Ruten CIB a few years back and surprisingly, it had a manual (yes, I swear I'll finally get to scanning that someday). I think the vast majority of other Gamtec games on MD had manuals, but this game, AFAIK, is the only Gamtec game based off of someone else's IP that has a manual. Squirrel King, Bubble Bobble, and Tiny Toons 3 have never been seen with one. I'm thinking it's very likely they did, it's just a matter of if they weren't all thrown out and they're lost to time.

• SNES pirates

- Looking at the wiki, there's actually a good number of these confirmed to have existed. Off the top of my head... Digimon Adventure, Pokemon Gold Silver, Pokemon Stadium, Picachu, A Bug's Life..... But what's never been seen with a box? Well, Squirrel, Dragon Ball Final Bout, Aladdin 2000... It would be nice to get these documented, but like manuals (which not a single boxed SNES pirate has been seen with, to the best of my knowledge), they were always thrown out apparently. Most of this stuff, being distributed to rental stores in South America, were mutilated and turned into sleeves for boxes kinda like Sega Genesis ones that have an insert. It's really a shame...

• Kart Fighter

- There's gotta be a box for this out there, right? Did Hummer confirm one never was made?
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4. Lost pirates
Remember the supposed Terranigma/Tenchi Souzo, aka "Tian Zhi Chuan Zao" port made by Nanjing? If you take one look at the following list you'll see how many unknown (未知) games that were listed in an old Nanjing sales list are still as-of-yet unconfirmed to even exist. I remember when their games were suddenly making wide distribution on Taobao and all over China back around 2009. The fact all of this stuff never showed up tells me they probably made a list of games they knew they could make cheap ports of, but many of them they never got around to. Still, you have to wonder...

There's also some other lost stuff like Cat King which, as far as I'm concerned, definitely didn't make it to production. But you never know with any of this stuff.


Anyone got any of their own?

It's been over a month. I guess no takers? Still available.

You can find videos on Youtube to get an impression of the game. It's mediocre for the most part, but then again so are most unlicensed platformers  :lol:

I still feel like I remember distinctly seeing an unlicensed port of The Mask from SNES to the NES. Not a cart for sale but rather screenshots obviously captured from a TV and put on some website. Even CaH4e3 once had this game on his wanted list at the front page of his site. But I've looked at archive.org captures of all the old sites I visited back in the day that covered pirates (namely NESWorld) and have found nothing.

Of course, some might be aware that a common FC pirate of the NES game Kick Master has The Mask on the label despite having nothing to do with the game, so I'm guessing I saw that years back and somehow made up a whole port existing. But it doesn't explain my memory of seeing the screenshots of the game having been backported to NES. I still remember one shot in my mind of the Mask doing some move that makes one of his ears become big, or he's honking a huge horn, I can't remember which.

I feel like this is a mystery for FC pirate collectors as Shazaam is for people who remember the 90s. I swear I saw it and yet there's no evidence of it out there. So far my only backup is the fact that Cah4e3 was looking for it at one point, so I can't be dreaming, can I?

I've only ever seen the original Taiwanese release once. Besides that, there's cheap Chinese copies I've seen before, I owned one once. I wouldn't pay more than like $16 for it, maybe $20 but it's really a crappy fighter that's not worth much.

The system itself isn't so rare, it's just not ever sold in the US or elsewhere, but it's more uncommon than rare in Taiwan.


Based off of how often I've ever seen these titles sold, I'd say these ratings might be accurate.


Formosa Duel -3
Sango Fighter - 3
Son of evil - 1
Speedy dragon - 2
Super China Baseball League - 1
C.U.G. - 1
(Super) Dragon Force - 4
Monopoly: Adventure in Africa - 1
Gambling Lord - 2
Magic Billiard - 3
Boom Zoo - 2
Rebel Star - 5


Been March since the OP posted, so they might not even see this...

I had a cart some years back. It's completely it's own game, not a port of the SNES game. I think it was only like four levels or so. The Chikorita sprite seemed to be pretty close if not the same thing as what you see in Pokemon Gold Silver on SNES, though. Either that or I have a bad memory.

It's already established that it's neither of those. Those are indeed homebrew.