Pirate cartridge feature request

[knight_beat]

Hello Retro Gamer dudes,
I would like to request a feature on the 8-bit and 16-bit pirate cartridges that swamped the Japanese and Korean market during the 1990s and early 2000s. These cartridges are, in many ways, the predecessors to the current trend fan translations and hacks that we have today. Many of the games are fascinating in themselves, demonstrating influences from other platforms.

The Megadrive and NES seem to have received a large number of unofficial games, including Sonic Jam 6, Squirrel King, Donkey Kong 99 and Super Mario World. [Note to mods. These URLs *do not* link to game dumps]

So, anyone interested in writing an article on the topic?

[ipmarks]

I think there was an article on these? Possible in the early days of RG, but I definitely remember something about hacked cartridges and Mario clones... maybe I dreamt it though. Have no idea which issue, possible in the Live years.

[richie freebird]

So, anyone interested in writing an article on the topic?

I'd be very interested in seeing an article on this, for some reason pirate / unlicensed / unofficial games fascinate me. I'd love to actually find a source to get hold of some too.

[Liamh1982]

Watching the MD Super Mario World video, in the words of Roy Walker - it's good but it's not right!
No score, and no storing power-ups. There also seem to be more enemies in the castles and the way Mario runs definitely isn't right.

[c0nfu53d]

I'd be totally interested in seeing this. It's a facinating side of retro gaming thats rarely seen.

[RichL]

Article on Super Magicom would be good too.

[Liamh1982]

I'm actually playing through a lot of these at the moment!

[richie freebird]

I'm actually playing through a lot of these at the moment!

Does anywhere you know sell old pirated cartridges bud?

[Megamixer]

It's definitely amusing how pirated games are something you usually try and stay away from yet in the retro sense, they're fascinating. I'd love to read a feature on these and I'd also love to own a few just to see how crazy they are!

[Liamh1982]

I'm actually playing through a lot of these at the moment!

Does anywhere you know sell old pirated cartridges bud?

Through emulation!

[richie freebird]

I'm actually playing through a lot of these at the moment!

Does anywhere you know sell old pirated cartridges bud?

Through emulation!

Ah right, fair enough. I'm pretty much a hardware only guy at the minute and would loe to get hold of some of the old pirated titles.

[club]

Article on Super Magicom would be good too.

Was this the 'back-up' system on the SNES that copied games onto floppy?
Remember some of my friends having this and and one called Super Wild Card (I think). Never understood how an 8 meg SNES game fit onto floppy disk.

[TMR]

Never understood how an 8 meg SNES game fit onto floppy disk.

If memory serves, the data is spread across multiple disks.

[club]

Never understood how an 8 meg SNES game fit onto floppy disk.

If memory serves, the data is spread across multiple disks.

For big games yeah, but I'm sure I remember 8 meg games on a single disk, no?

[TMR]

For big games yeah, but I'm sure I remember 8 meg games on a single disk, no?

8 megabits is only a megabyte of data, if the unit has a DS/HD drive there's room on the disk for that with space to spare and if some of the ROM space was free it might well fit on a DS/DD as well; it's been well over a decade since i last saw any kind of SNES backup kit and i can't remember what drives they actually used. =-)