Anyone ever heard of the "Cartridge Arcade" on Etsy?

piscian18

piscian18

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No Im not spamming, infact the opposite

https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheCartridgeArcade?page=1

So Ive been watching this guy Adam Koralik on youtube that does these pretty amusing console retrospectives. Anyway he brought these guys up, their main site is https://8bitevolution.com though most of their finished stuff is on etsy. Anyway part of what they do is take homebrew roms or Translated Japanese console titles and press them in actual cart form, box and all. Like Front Mission for SNES translated instead of the famicom version.

Has anybody bought from them? If not I am not advertising in fact I'd say hold off. I bought a couple games. Mother for nes, Earthbound uncut and Tales of phantasia. As soon as they show up I'll post unboxing and confirmation on the "realness". If they are good stuff I'll let you guys know, I just thought they were interesting enough to share. They also do custom built consoles like original Backlit GBAs.
 
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Ocellaris said:
These seem tremendously overpriced for fake items?
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It depends on your perspective I suppose, No because it actually costs a lot of money to design and manufacture the carts, cases etc. Admittedly I dont have any interest in the homebrews, its mainly the Japanese translations that interest me.

Mchart said:
Your money would be better spent on a flashcart if you want to play the original code on the original system.

http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=34
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I actually already own an everdrive. I've never heard of a powerpack, but it appears to be the same thing. This is kind of for the enthusiast that wants these for I guess the feel of actually having the game. I can't really defend it. This isn't for everybody.
 
I have heard of people like this before. PS, what they are selling is illegal and you shouldn't link to it on this forum.

Rule:
(18) You will not discuss, suggest, engage, or encourage any ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES. Links provided to locations that deal with any such activity are also expressly forbidden.
 
Mozex said:
I have heard of people like this before. PS, what they are selling is illegal and you shouldn't link to it on this forum.

Rule:
(18) You will not discuss, suggest, engage, or encourage any ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES. Links provided to locations that deal with any such activity are also expressly forbidden.
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Kind of a grey area man....

Mods here are really good about locking threads that break the rules.
 
... oh boy. Glorified bootlegs.

Please don't support these kinds of people. They don't care about the programmers who made the translation patches, and all they want is to make a profit out of stuff other people release for free.
 
horrorshow said:
Kind of a grey area man....

Mods here are really good about locking threads that break the rules.
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Its definitely a tricky area, so far these guys and some of the other reproduction groups I've found only deal in homebrews and translations. So they're not selling anything you could theoretically buy from the source. Theres no bootlegs or anything like that. I read a statement from the 8evolution guys saying they give full credit to the translators and brewers.

Since none of this is pirated, as far as I can tell, no it doesn't break rules. I just think its cool to have actual carts of games that never made it over here. If any mods want to close this I'm ok with it I just thought it was neat and wanted to share. Some of these are really crazy quality.

On a sidenote Sega specifically does not care about the translation or brewer scene. Apparently games are still coming out for the Dreamcast. Actual retail titles not roms. 7 in 2015 and Sega has given their ok though they no longer license indie games. I'm thinking about picking up Pier Solar.
 
piscian18 said:
Its definitely a tricky area, so far these guys and some of the other reproduction groups I've found only deal in homebrews and translations. So they're not selling anything you could theoretically buy from the source. Theres no bootlegs or anything like that. I read a statement from the 8evolution guys saying they give full credit to the translators and brewers.
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Then they ignore requests from the original translators and homebrewers which ask that these patches not be sold in any way, or be distributed as prepatched binaries or code. Companies don't usually care until money is being made.

And yes, they SELL BOOTLEGS. Don't try to deny it, a game on a cart that the IP owner gets no money from is a bootleg. That's what unauthorized repro carts are. (There ARE a few that are legit, fully authorized by the copyright owners or original programmers, and I'm fine with those. It's the ones that don't respect the wishes of the creators that I have a problem with.)
 
Foxhack said:
Then they ignore requests from the original translators and homebrewers which ask that these patches not be sold in any way, or be distributed as prepatched binaries or code. Companies don't usually care until money is being made.

And yes, they SELL BOOTLEGS. Don't try to deny it, a game on a cart that the IP owner gets no money from is a bootleg. That's what unauthorized repro carts are. (There ARE a few that are legit, fully authorized by the copyright owners or original programmers, and I'm fine with those. It's the ones that don't respect the wishes of the creators that I have a problem with.)
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Interesting, I cant really argue as I don't have any of their product yet to verify one way or another. I looked up 8bit and they do have programmers on their staff. It looks like at one point they were looking for programmers and romhack reviewers and play testers. I will ping them and see what their take is on all that. As for IP stuff like whether I care that square gets cut of profits from an english translation of front mission for snes. I honestly don't and thats just a personal question of morality. Square clearly doesn't care enough to go to battle over it. 8bit has been around for a couple years theyre out of Pittsburgh. Its not some hongkong back alley shop. They do a lot of game charity stuff.

They're apparently applying for a nintendo license now to put out their own games, heres an interview.(I havent finished listening to it as of this post.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l-H3m0AdQ0
 
horrorshow said:
Kind of a grey area man....
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No grey area. Nintendo owns the copyright to these products. They are selling copied (bootleg) Nintendo products and derivative
works (translations) based on Nintendo products.
 
I think it's hilarious that everyone is skewering op on cartridge bootlegs when torrenting is discussed here 9 in bulk. "Linux ISO's" my butt...
 
/dev/null said:
I think it's hilarious that everyone is skewering op on cartridge bootlegs when torrenting is discussed here 9 in bulk. "Linux ISO's" my butt...
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You would get a similar reaction here if a business was downloading movies from Pirate Bay, burning to disc, making DVD/BluRay cases for them, then selling them in Etsy as a craft project. Which likely still isn't as bad as this, since this involves redistributing community translation and code change work for profit.
 
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The key difference is that these aren't original games, they're hacks. Yes, the hacks use the original code and it's largely the original game but the point is that it isn't the original game and most of these games have been abandoned anyways.
 
piscian18 said:
They're apparently applying for a nintendo license now to put out their own games, heres an interview.(I havent finished listening to it as of this post.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l-H3m0AdQ0
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This... is a joke, right?

Once they apply, whoever does the background checks realizes that they're selling hacks of their first party games they're going to sue them into the ground. Nintendo can't do much of anything about the other games, but they can and will when it comes to the Zelda and Mario hacks.

Nintendo isn't like a company who'd be impressed if you managed to modify their copyrighted code into something else. They'll throw the books at you.

Mozex said:
No grey area. Nintendo owns the copyright to these products. They are selling copied (bootleg) Nintendo products and derivative
works (translations) based on Nintendo products.
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They only own the copyright to their first party games or whatever they distributed outside of Japan, so they can't do anything about the Square games - those would have to be taken down by Square, and so on.

jbltecnicspro said:
They're selling Pulseman for the Genesis. Isn't that a bootleg?
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... considering the game was released on the Wii Virtual Console... oh boy.

Ocellaris said:
You would get a similar reaction here if a business was downloading movies from Pirate Bay, burning to disc, making DVD/BluRay cases for them, then selling them in Etsy as a craft project. Which likely still isn't as bad as this, since this involves redistributing community translation and code change work for profit.
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Nah, pirating and selling movies is worse, legality wise. Repro creators can get away with this because the community translators and romhack creators can't do much of anything to stop them.
 
Foxhack said:
Nah, pirating and selling movies is worse, legality wise. Repro creators can get away with this because the community translators and romhack creators can't do much of anything to stop them.
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Community translators and romhack creators don't have legal departments. The entity that needs to go after them is the original copyright holder. This company (and others) get away with making repro carts and boxes because it is low enough profile to fly under the radar of Nintendo and others. Legally speaking this is just as bad as downloading a movie then selling a burned DVD. Nintendo and others are not very good at (or don't care enough) going after these businesses - just because they haven't been sued or shut down doesn't make it legal.
 
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