Shanghai Paradise Cartridge Photos

[KlondikeFops]

Hello, users of this forum.

     I have recently been getting into bootleg games as a result of my sprite ripping endeavors, and like many others, I have been fascinated by the enigmatic Shanghai Tianyuan/Shanghai Paradise company. While doing research on them, I found some listings and image links from several users that displayed what the cartridges of some games looked like (Specifically Blood of Jurassic and Super Hang On 97), but those unfortunately seem to be down now. The closest thing I could find is the photos of Blood of Jurassic taken dragon2snow, where the cartridge is just out of view. All I could gather is that the cartridge is yellow, but so is almost every other NES bootleg cart. I did find a link to the NESBBS forum that potentially has the photos, but I am hesitant to sign up for it due to privacy concerns. I also tried putting the Ruten link into the Wayback Machine, but it constantly reloads the page and never gets past the loading screen.

     The reason I'm stating all this is to ask if anyone just so happens to have the pictures saved on their computer so that if I ever go to some shady flea market, I may be able to spot an SP game and chip away further at this mystery. Thanks in advance for your help!

Resources for those who find it useful:
Thread with dragon2snow's photos:
tapatalk.com/groups/pgc_forums/is-blood-of-jurassic-jurassic-hunt-dumped-t135.html
Dead Ruten link:
goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21312077666607
Thread with dead links to photos of Super Hang-On 97:
tapatalk.com/groups/pgc_forums/shanghai-paradise-science-technology-co-ltd-t792.html

[Ankos]

There should be some pictures of Super Hang On in the discord (here's one I nabbed). Not sure where to get better pics of Blood of Jurassic though. The shell itself can vary but the sticker should have their logo on it as well as a GD ID code. These are really hard to find though. If you search Chinese and Taiwanese sites regularly maybe you'll find one. Flea markets I don't think are going to have these though

[KlondikeFops]

Thank you so much! Unfortunately, I don't have Discord. Maybe I should make one. Would you also know how to search for these on said Chinese/Taiwanese sites? I know next to no Chinese.

[Ankos]

The characters for Blood of Jurassic should be on the wiki page. If you search Mainland Chinese sites you'll want to switch those to Simplified Chinese. For Mainland China sites I recommend Xianyu (only accessible via its app). For Taiwanese sites Ruten, Shopee Taiwan, and Yahoo Auctions Taiwan are all good bets. Shanghai Paradise carts are hard to find though. Even if you know where to look, and what terms to search with, you still might not find them

[KlondikeFops]

Thanks a bunch! Also, have any other carts from SP surfaced? I know SH97 (GD-97) and BOJ (GD-98) are known to exist, but are there any others like Monkey King or Underground Mission?

[Ankos]

As far as I'm aware those are the only two Shanghai Paradise carts that have been documented. There's another GD cart that might be from the same publisher, but it does not have Shanghai Paradise stuff on it

https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/BomberBoy

[KlondikeFops]

I also remember that fcgamer posted a picture of BOJ in a thread, though the Photobucket link doesn't work anymore. Do you think he still has a copy of the photo? That Bomberman bootleg is really interesting, though.

[Ankos]

fcgamer is no longer active on this site

[KlondikeFops]

Sorry about that. Also, I'm a bit afraid to sign up for Discord due to its extremely notorious reputation. Would you mind posting the rest of the pictures of SHO97 here?

[Ankos]

It would a bit of effort to dig those up and they wouldn't be particularly different from what I already posted. Here's some pictures from an expired xianyu listing instead (I did not make it in time to this one, it sold out before I got the chance)

Edit: Saw your other post. I was the one who suggested you visit this site (not sure if you recognized my username or not, I axed my reddit account a little bit ago). I suggested that because I remembered other users talking about digging through the ROM, which sounded more up your alley (I just look for carts, so I wouldn't be a ton of help with that). Anyways, yeah these xianyu pictures confirm the screen is used on cart

[KlondikeFops]

Thanks a lot! You being the Reddit guy was a fun little plot twist.

Also, sorry if this is a bit of a silly question, but how were these cartridges distributed (Not just SP games, but also things like Waixing or Hummer titles)? Were they sold in stores, available through mail order, or given out by your local trenchcoat-wearing guy hiding in a dark alleyway?

[Ankos]

Dark alleyway sales would be a pretty bad business model for this sort of stuff. Most of this stuff could just be sold out in the open since it was in countries where IP law was either weakly enforced or not enforced

Small shops I would guess was the most common distribution method, followed by mail order.

Where and when you were buying this stuff matters though. Waixing had (or I guess has) a very long career and was in Mainland China. I've heard Chinese users mention their games being available even in larger stores (supermarkets) at one point, but Waixing continued operations in the Famicom business much later than Hummer (which stuck around for a while but had moved on from cartridges). Out in Taiwan though it was only really small stores since this stuff died out earlier there and larger stores weren't much of a thing back then there

Without statements from people who were there though it is hard to say for certain for each game. Sometimes they showed up in magazine ads if you were lucky

[KlondikeFops]

Sorry for not talking much, it's hard researching these things. I did some digging and found this image, would this happen to be a BOJ cart?

[Ankos]

I don't think it is. The description I heard for Blood of Jurassic is that it has the same Shanghai Paradise crest that Super Hang On has, as well as the ID code GD-98 on the sticker

[KlondikeFops]

Alright then. Guess I'll have to keep looking. I've also been thinking about going to a retro game store in the Shanghai area in hopes of possibly discovering a cartridge. Is that plausible?