While doing some hacking stuff recently out of boredom, I noticed something strange about the game Door Door. As common as it is on bootleg multicarts, every knockoff version of it is...weirdly altered. Most notably, the doors can be opened multiple times after letting an enemy inside; in the original game, they can only be opened once. Additionally, the life counter doesn't appear, and the score resets to zero upon entering a new level. Check any multicart with the game; they ALL do this!

So I decided to put an unaltered Door Door ROM into a multicart menu. At some point in the gameplay, the graphics will completely glitch out, usually after closing a door or touching the candy. For whatever reason, bootleg carts can't handle running the game normally... (I actually have a plug & play that has this glitch in it [Super Joy III variant], so I know its not an emulation error. It always pissed me off as a kid)

My question is: is Door Door just something the crappy multigames cannot handle properly? Or is this a very early form of copy protection, from the developers seeing the possibility of pirates appearing in the future? Is it able to detect if the ROM is above a certain filesize or something, and intentionally breaks the game from there?

Picture attached of glitch results when importing the original version over the bootleg in a multicart.

This will probably turn out as a rather annoying post, but I know there are many preservationists and such here so they might be able to answer this question. Over the years, I've found many strange forms of documentation on video games that aren't listed on any major websites. For example, I just randomly found this webpage:

https://www.slideshare.net/JeffBuccellato/jbuccellatotitlehistory

Many of the games here were unreleased, such as Felix the Cat for PlayStation and Namco Collection for Pocket PC 2002+ (the hell is a Pocket PC?). There are no pictures or videos of these games, let alone other text mentions of them, and we can only imagine what they were. And this is literally on some developer's resume, so I'm not even sure if its something I should be sharing around.

My question is, what can I do to get the word out about these things, without creating an obnoxious post like this on an unrelated forum? I know there's the Undumped Wiki, but they disabled the ability to create an account for some reason. I'm not exactly good at talking to people (especially in this scene with my track record), and most just ignore me. The best I can do is make light of one thing that leads to another; for example, I posted the Korean PC version of Pac-Man World on a wiki page, which led to some spiked interest in Korean PC games. I can't figure out any better way...

Not sure if anyone's already pointed it out, but there's a strangely high amount of "licensed" Famiclones currently on the market, mostly a bunch of handheld games shaped like arcade machines. Often times they only include one game per system, that being the NES port of an 80s arcade game. Here are some companies off the top of my head:

DreamGEAR - Yes, * that * DreamGEAR (who are going by My Arcade now for some reason). The ones who have been shelving out Famiclones to actual retail stores for the past decade. They have the license to BurgerTime and a couple other games, and now seemingly ALL of Namco's stuff judging by this press video. All NES, as expected, with the Nintendo copyrights chopped off the title screen. Actually pretty excited for the Namco stuff, but I don't understand why the hell they're using the Pac-Man design from Pac-Man Cereal...

Basic Fun - They've released a whole bunch of arcade-shaped handhelds, some LCD-based and others NES-based. Somehow they've accumulated the licenses from Namco, Taito, Konami, Gottelib, Atari, AND Williams. How they managed to do that I have no idea.

MSI Entertainment - The only non-handhelds to my knowledge; they release AWFUL plug 'n plays, with one NES game each, designed to intentionally look like Jakks Pacific units that originally had at least ten games on them. Their business reviews sure say a lot about them as a company.

There are probably a few others, and certainly there are more to come, but these were the ones off the top of my head. You'd think by this point they could create arcade-accurate stuff for...actually, never mind. I think I'll stick to $30 NES clones over $160 arcade clones.

NOTE: Current binaries are now handled by NewRisingSun. Future revisions are now posted here (as of July 2020). The below dialogue and download links are from the previous February 2018 version.

(LAST UPDATE: 02/11/2018)

Project PLUG 'N PLAY is a collection of many bootleg plug 'n play games extracted from their multicarts - the majority of which I have done myself. Overtime this project will grow as more titles are discovered (it started as just one game, now its over 500!).

Inside the RAR file you will find six folders of games, the contents of which are detailed below (bonus points if you can figure out where their names come from):

Project BLEB: This is for games created by the company Nice Code Software. In addition to about 120 unique games, you will find many variations of said games (used as "repeat" titles on multigames) with different graphics, sounds, etc.

Project HUMM: This folder is for the Hummer Team titles. There's practically nothing in here but the games are actually pretty decent (more of "full-fledged" games compared to other stuff).

Project KUMM: Games from JungleTac. Currently NES-based stuff only - some of their consoles run on other hardware, which aren't fully emulatable yet (maybe one day...) The emulation on these titles is still a little incomplete, so a few games run with glitches, but for the most part they work fine.

Project KUCK: This is for hacked games from Inventor. Included are various hacks which attempt to hide old Nintendo games by changing around the features of them. Each hacked game comes with the original as well, so you can compare and contrast the differences between them.

Project BATH: Original plug 'n play games from Waixing. The majority of Waixing's games are actually reskinned Nice Code games; as such those are stored in BLEB; but their originally coded titles are in here.

Project GOOF: Everything else goes here. Either the companies that made these games aren't known or they aren't notable enough to receive a full game folder. Lots of bizarre stuff in here, mixed in with 15 million Dance Dance Revolution rip-offs.

To play these, you need a NES emulator; however, games marked "VT03" or "VT09" will require a specific emulator to run properly. If games are unmarked, they'll work in pretty much any emulator you put them in. Oh, and you'll need to install a free trial of the program WinRAR to open the ROMS up.

DOWNLOAD NEWEST VERSION: http://www.mediafire.com/file/nzwbvc6ymgpd1g5/Project%20PLUG%20%27N%20PLAY%2002-11-18.rar

<small>(Older archives are available under request, if you want them for some reason. If you're interested in these games, you may as well support the only plug 'n play company still around, My Arcade, and pick up one of their cheapo consoles so you feel less guilty for your crimes. Please don't scream at me to rip some random game you found because I probably can't. Enjoy your mediocre game collection I spent far too much time compiling.)</small>