When did you first come across pirate games?

[SpaceNinja]

This makes me wonder what their earlier games were then.

I'm pointing towards some Nice Code games, but not all are capable of being dated 2003: AVP, Tomb Raider immediately drops out of question, due to the packaging art and the graphics used in game, respectively.
Eh, I'm totally going to set up a timeline in a new topic soon.

[Linkrulezall]

Many, many years ago, back when I first discovered YouTube, one of the first pseudo-memes I started following was the Angry German Kid. Eventually I stumbled across this video:
Angry German Kid Plays Sonic Adventure 7

And my interest with pirated games sort of snowballed from there.  :somari:

[Yoni Arousement]

Back in 2004, when I first started using emulators, there was Sonic the Hedgehog for SNES which was one of the first pirated games I've seen.

[wario_101]

Well, it was first back in 1992, I was only 12, and I was at in Russia for a family vacation. I did'nt even know what gaming was! After a few nights in a hotel, we come across some Russian man selling video games. I was learning Russian in Social Studies so, I asked the man what he was selling. He said he was selling "exotic" games. I had some money left over, so i bought one with a man wearing overalls. I asked him what it was for, and he said it was a video game for the Famicom. After that, me and my parents went to find a Famicom and we found one after a hour long car ride. I was so excited to get an actual video game! At the hotel, my dad helped me plug it in and when i turned on the game, my dad said it reminded him of Tiny Toon Adventures, (my dad was a HUGE fan,) and it was called, Mario 6. I'll never forget that day.

[msf007]

A generic 'Family Computer' famiclone made in Taiwan with a 190-in-1 multicart and a TMNT3 pirate cart, all handed-down from my uncle was the beginning of my console gaming life. I think that was around 1993, just when I was 4 years old. Super NES/Super Famicom was already out there by that time but I just started with famiclone without any choice and sticked to it until I bought N64 around 1999.

Famicom/NES gaming scene was dominated by pirate carts and famiclones in South Korea when I began to start buying new games. We had an official, Nintendo-licensed version of NES under the name of Hyundai Comboy, but it wasn't that popular. Hyundai Electronics provided only a limited selection of games and just moved on to the Super Comboy(=Super Famicom) business. Comboy used NES cartridges rather than Famicom ones, which is no good when much cheaper famicom pirate carts are going around everywhere. I remember my friend with Comboy saying that he wanted a famiclone like mine rather than a Comboy, which sounded quite crazy since I realized my 'Family Computer' was not an official product looking at his Comboy.

Other Korean companies than Hyundai made their own famiclones compatible with famicom carts and they were sold beside the official one, together with the Taiwanese famiclones like Ending Man. My handed-down Famiclone eventually got broken and I could just go to a random store and buy my second famiclone - a Korean one this time(Though it was an Ending Man clone without their logo)

So that results in my every famicom and famicom cart being pirate, except for a Japan-import Rockman 6 cart. Multicarts from JY company comprising the most part(You could find them anywhere dealing famicom carts), two Korean multicarts, some single-game pirates, and a copy of Somari. Pirates just filled up my almost entire childhood gaming.

[Colonel Llama]

The first time i came across pirate games? If i remember, i was about 7 years old when i found a site called 1980 games. It had flash games, abandonwares and java NES emulator called NEScafe that had about 800 games to play on the browser. While looking at the featured games, i saw one called "Sonic the Hedgehog". Since i was a big Sonic fan (we only had the Genesis/Megadrive at the time), i selected it, then i waited some time for the game to load. When waiting, i noticed that the site called the game "Sonic 3D Blast 5", but i didn't really care. When the game started up, i was greeted by the classic Sonic 1 title screen. Then i started the game, only to see that it started at Spring Yard Zone! For the rest, i remember that it sucked. Not so long after, i found myself playing Somari with my sister. It sucked. About one year later, i went to Québec to visit the MEGA PARK (Galeries de la Capitale). That's where i got my first pirate console, the undocumented "Handy Max" from JungleTac. About 5 years later, i discovered the "wonderful" world of pirated games, starting with the infamous YONG YONG (I actually had nightmares after watching footage from Sonic 3D Blast 5 on GameBoy). I started to read the Bootleg Games Wiki and the Pirated Games Central forum at this time, only to finally join 3 years later.