gaming Ever accidentally buy a counterfeit video game?

[Grepper 3,193]

The only Game Boy Advance game I bought new was Mario Kart: Super Circuit. I had it for about a year and I lost it, never to find it again. (This probably happened in 2006-2007.)

 

I thought it was a fun game, so near 2008 I went on Ebay to buy a replacement. I found a supposedly used one with an actual picture of the cartridge (not a stock photo) because counterfeit games tend to use stock photos.

 

The minimum bid was around seven dollars, and no one else bid on it, so I thought I got a great deal.

 

When it finally came in the mail, I was disappointed the moment I opened the package. I quickly realized that the "used" game was a fake. Major signs were that it came in plastic wrap and an unadvertised plastic case, and that it had a European style label.

 

The game worked, but the poorly made cartridge had to be forced into the Game Boy slot, which can damage the console over the long term. I also heard that counterfeit games use a save battery while real GBA games use a type of flash memory which doesn't require a battery to save data. As a consequence, the game data on fake games may last up to a month or so.

 

The seller did take the game back and gave me a refund. He claimed it was refurbished (yeah, right.) :okiedokielokie:

I felt dumb after reading buyer's reviews of that seller. Several people complained that the game they bought from him was counterfeit.

 

I was so upset about it back then; that someone would intentionally sell me a counterfeit product, even showing a picture of a genuine game that looked nothing like I received.

 

I almost find it funny now. If it happened to me again, I may have kept it because the cost of paying return shipping nearly matched the value of the refund. Hey, I play roms anyway, right?

 

Well, back then I felt like copyright infringement was a moral transgression; now I know it's a trade-off on the public's interest to encourage creativity by granting a temporary monopoly to the author of a work. I'll leave copyright reform debate for another thread, though.

 

So, has something like this ever happened to you?

[Cirrus. 1,092]

LOL, This happened to me a couple years ago. I got a racing game on eBay (forgot the name) and I realized immediately what it was. First thing was that the DVD-like case was kind of wrinkled from the shrink wrapping process. The second thing was that the cover was obviously a scanned copy because you could see diagonal lines if you looked close. The third thing strange is that the disc art was black and white. The print quality was good there- but all the pictures I saw elsewhere were bluish.

 

I played it and it worked but I sent the seller an angry email threatening bad feedback and a buyer protection case if I didn't get a pdf of a pre-paid shipping label emailed to me.

 

 

 

Well I got my label and money back. and they got a neutral feedback.

 

I don't put up with "flim-flamming charlatans."

[NuclearBurg (Dawn) 622]

There was a pokemon game I had for gba that was a fake of pokemon fire red (yeah there's a lot of them). It used one of those battery saves like you said but I believe that all gba roms used that form of saving (or at least the early ones) and to access your data you would have to replace the battery after a certain amount of time.

[EddG 554]

I brought a bootleg copy of Pokemon Emerald when I was younger on Holiday.

They didn't even try faking the cartridge colouring. It was just black.

It played okay but it kept forgetting the save files and the HP bar was gone, it was just numbers.

[TheJLeeTeam 914]

I once found a bootleg copy of Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire at a flea market. It worked fine but it was still a bootleg. Also I got a bootleg Dragon Quest V for DS and didn't work on Any Ds after Ds Lite.

[Grepper 3,193]

There was a pokemon game I had for gba that was a fake of pokemon fire red (yeah there's a lot of them). It used one of those battery saves like you said but I believe that all gba roms used that form of saving (or at least the early ones) and to access your data you would have to replace the battery after a certain amount of time.

 

I forgot to mention that some GBA Pokemon games used batteries to keep track of the time, because the GBA has no system time. That's the only exception I'm aware of.

I once found a bootleg copy of Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire at a flea market. It worked fine but it was still a bootleg. Also I got a bootleg Dragon Quest V for DS and didn't work on Any Ds after Ds Lite.

 

Yes, unfortunately the DSi and onward had even more antifeatures preventing counterfeit games from running. When I had a DSi, I was still able to use my Action Replay DSi. (It presents itself to the system as a Game & Watch Collection cartridge.)

[Technous285 40]

MANY years back, I bought a cheap copy of a Power Rangers: Ninja Storm game for PC on eBay, it turned out to be a bootleg.

Worked fine though, no hidden viruses, no hidden trojans, just a damn good rip-and-burn of the legit copy of the game.

 

I actually still have it floating around somewhere along with a legit copy of the game too.

[Chacobos 160]

I bought some random somebody's  random collection of Gameboy games awhile back, most of them were legit but there were a few counterfeits in them. Problem is they are/were too easy to replicate. and the real good ones required close inspection 

[Magic Note 2,752]

Yep. I have run into a couple counterfeit games before. My family had a couple PC games many years ago that were counterfeit. idr which ones but I do recall playing one.

[baba_booey 4,303]

Yep. Yoshi's Island for the Gameboy Advance

 

Wrote a blog about it too - http://mlpforums.com/blog/1755/entry-12641-sma3-yoshis-island-counterfeit-cartridge/

 

Oddly enough, I never even realized it was fake for like, 2 years after I got it

[Jon the VGNerd 887]

Never had a counterfeit game, but I did got the wrong game on eBay. I got a demo disc of Sonic Adventure 2 instead of an actual disk. It was surely a disappointment and I got no refunds, and eBay did nothing to the seller. Since then, I've relied on JJGames.com, a site that sells vintage games, never conterfeit.