When did you first come across pirate games?

[Nanashi]

I remember making this thread at RX Community. Now, it'll be posted on here.

I first knew about pirate games since the summer of 2003, where I got a 108-in-1 cartridge for the GBA during my time at Craig Tara (a holiday resort in Ayr). From there, it contained Pocket Monsters (NES original from Super Game we all know) plus many pirated hacks. When I first saw Pocket Monsters, I was like "What the hell? Is this real?". Then, in late 2004, I discovered more pirate games such as Rocman X and I continued to see more weird stuff for the next three years.

[Smedis2]

You.

[Pepper-98]

For me it started when I found out about Jurassic Boy 2 and Sonic 7 at the Secrets of Sonic Team website, since I was a huge classic Sonic fan at the time.  After that, I found Brydo's channel which introduced me to other games like Digimon 02 Jade and it grew from there.  Even though I don't really consider them a big favorite nearly as much anymore, I found Sachen's games to be rather fun and quirky back then, and then the rest is history.

[Awesome Panda]

Star-Spangled Shazam

Jul 15 2013, 12:48:36 PM

For me it started when I found out about Jurassic Boy 2 and Sonic 7 at the Secrets of Sonic Team website, since I was a huge classic Sonic fan at the time.  After that, I found Brydo's channel which introduced me to other games like Digimon 02 Jade and it grew from there.[/quote]Same here.

[Robyn]

There was this website which had about pirates. I can't remember the name. (I think it was TORP?)
Anyway, I found it after searching about a multicart that my Dad bought me and my sister, and the knowledge grew for bootlegs.

And then I found Nanashi, SpaceNinja and Awesome Panda over here.

[fcgamer]

I guess I am dating myself here.  I remember when the internet first started coming into popularity and mainstream towards the mid/late 90s.  Around 1997 or 1998 I began surfing the net, albeit for limited periods of time, and came across a few NES fansites, including two of the big names from that time, NES World and tsr's NES Archives.  At that time I then began reading all of the information about the games, and there was a ton of weird stuff on those sites.  Learnt about Mario IV and 14 then, Somari, the Paneasians, and all kinds of other amazing games.  Some of the aforementioned stuff was unlicensed, others were just plain pirates, but I immediately became hooked and tried to do as much research as I could into that stuff.

My first unlicensed game cart was probably either Captain Comic or Silent Assault for the NES; and I remember a few months later searching the used bins at Babbages (anyone remember them?) and walking out with F15 City Wars, Tiles of Fate, Dudes with Attitude, and Venice Beach Volleyball, the latter 3 were boxed.  Good times and good memories.  And from there I just built a knowledge and a nice collection of games over the years, via trading, and the like.

As for my first *true* pirate game (not unlicensed), I believe it was a generic Supervision 72 pin multicart, 350 or 360 games in one, something like that.  I had paid about $10 - $20 for it at the time, and although the games were mostly just common multicart fare, I remember being really tickled with that purchase.  

I remember later when a Russian friend would hook me up with some really cool Famicom bootleg stuff from that region, and of course how could I forget getting a set of new old stock Sachen games back in the day.  It was only a few titles, as that was all I could afford, but I was just happy with having that.  For a high schooler without a job most of the time, I had a damn fine collection of games back then, if not even better than my collection today.  All it took was sweat, blood, tears, time, and dedication --- traits which many seem to lack these days.

Wow, the memories.  Those sure were different times.

[KAGE-008]

History begins about late 2009 or so. I found about NES ports of SNES/GBA titles on a blog, then I thought they were reals (especially with Jovial Race which I discovered on 23.10.2009) and since I had no patience to dissect them by myself, I found SN88's channel in December 2009 (on day 15) and the first vid I saw from him was the Minish Cap NES ending (skipped most of it btw). Then I continued finding about more... And in mid-2010 I started to do them on my own.

15 months later, those SNT games I knew from that guy went to my ending backlog, however I had to hexhack stats just to complete them. So far, ~20 of them are already down by me, but I'm hoping there will be more for my backlog.

And about Waixing games, the first game I played was Super Contra 7, which I knew in early 2010. It was average at first, but in 2011 I got used to their programming.

[MLX]

I was looking for smb1 level hacks. And eventually found Super Mario World port by Hummer Team. Played a bit and quickly forgot about it. Then in early-middle 2009 I found again that Super Mario World port. I was very interested to know more about it and slowly started to search about it.

[Picrodus]

About two years ago, when I was thirteen, I came across Pokemon quartz on eBay and got it for my birthday. And since then I've been looking for more obscure games related to Pokemon. Then I found you guys last year, and I've been collecting fake/pirated games ever since.

[Azathoth]

fcgamer

Jul 15 2013, 01:42:23 PM

My first unlicensed game cart was probably either Captain Comic or Silent Assault for the NES; and I remember a few months later searching the used bins at Babbages (anyone remember them?) and walking out with F15 City Wars, Tiles of Fate, Dudes with Attitude, and Venice Beach Volleyball, the latter 3 were boxed.  Good times and good memories.  And from there I just built a knowledge and a nice collection of games over the years, via trading, and the like.[/quote]Babbages, EB, Software Etc...what a blast from the past.

First stuff I picked up were some Tengen titles, I remember the goings on during the Nintendo lawsuit and passed on Tengen Tetris a few times (which I always kick myself in the ass for). Following the Tengen affair let me know what unlicensed carts were and how the companies operated, but I never new that I was buying games from Sachen or whoever when I picked up AVE games, I just knew they mostly sucked  :dance:

First time I ever actually came across pirated stuff was back in the SFII wave around '93 or '94 and a few gaming rags had some info about Master Fighter II. Made it my quest to find it (yeah, I keep my life goals lofty like that).

[fcgamer]

Azathoth

Jul 17 2013, 12:02:34 AM

fcgamer

Jul 15 2013, 01:42:23 PM

My first unlicensed game cart was probably either Captain Comic or Silent Assault for the NES; and I remember a few months later searching the used bins at Babbages (anyone remember them?) and walking out with F15 City Wars, Tiles of Fate, Dudes with Attitude, and Venice Beach Volleyball, the latter 3 were boxed.  Good times and good memories.  And from there I just built a knowledge and a nice collection of games over the years, via trading, and the like.[/quote]Babbages, EB, Software Etc...what a blast from the past.

First stuff I picked up were some Tengen titles, I remember the goings on during the Nintendo lawsuit and passed on Tengen Tetris a few times (which I always kick myself in the ass for). Following the Tengen affair let me know what unlicensed carts were and how the companies operated, but I never new that I was buying games from Sachen or whoever when I picked up AVE games, I just knew they mostly sucked  :dance:

First time I ever actually came across pirated stuff was back in the SFII wave around '93 or '94 and a few gaming rags had some info about Master Fighter II. Made it my quest to find it (yeah, I keep my life goals lofty like that).[/quote]Awesome story, great to read a perspective of someone who was introduced to this stuff waaaaay in the past.  

Do you still have any of those mags, game rags, with the Master Fighter II articles in it?  Would be nice to see some scans.

[Azathoth]

fcgamer

Jul 17 2013, 12:39:46 AM

Do you still have any of those mags, game rags, with the Master Fighter II articles in it?  Would be nice to see some scans.[/quote]I'd have to check, but I don't think I saved any of them. I tossed almost all my game magazines in the trash around 2000 or so, the only one's I hung on to were my Gamefans and a few odd issues of EGM, Mega Play, and VG&CE.

EGM was the one that had the pics and information about Master Fighter II.

Something I always wish I kept were some older Gamepro magazines that had full page ads of game copiers in the back. They usually had some generic fighting game character art super imposed over the copier along with a bunch of bullet-point features that never actually came out and said it was a copier. Since most of them supported Goldfinger codes they'd usually try to pitch it as a cheat device or some other nonsense.

[MWK]

Lol, nice stories, but as for me I should have been asked when did I first come across original game instead, since here in Poland, back in the early 90's, when we've been introduced to the first famiclone gaming system "Pegasus" (MT-777DX to be exact), distributed by a two-guys-company called "BobMark", that already came with a pirate game, a "cult" multicart "168in1", we have (had?) absolutely NO IDEA it wasn't the original console, the real thing ;-)

[SpaceNinja]

1995. (Sheesh I must be the earliest bird then here?)

Not only because I got a 400-in-1 built-in included Famiclone, but that crap did not work. Actually, the menu kinda froze on us, so we had to take it back to the seller. He hooked it up on his TV, and confirmed it was broken. He felt sorry, so he replaced the console with a new one (but he insisted on testing it in front of us, just so it works), and he also gave me a cartridge for free. I forgot what it was.

First cartridge I can think of? A reset-selector 2-in-1 cartridge of Rockman 5 and Master Fighter 2.

Emulation-wise? 2006 or so. Tom and Jerry 3.

The rest is history, I think

[missy-tannenbaum]

A few years ago, I read an article on Chinese RPGs in PiQ magazine, which lasted a whopping three issues, that mentioned the Famicom FFVII, and I thought that was interesting. I didn't find out much about them as a whole until later, though, when my dad bought a Famiclone at a used record store and I was having some trouble getting it to work. The instructions didn't mention that you needed to put the games on top of an adapter backwards and *then* put them in the machine, but since the instructions pretty much said that the machine needed to be plugged into the wall, that lack of information shouldn't have been a surprise. One of the information sources that I found on the system came from this wiki, though, which got me reading more about Famiclones in general and the games that you guys were posting about. I thought that the sprite art for the demakes in particular was really cool, so that's how I became interested in the games.