Confessions of a Bootlegger
I just wrote an article about an experience I had in more recent times, where I had the opportunity to talk with someone that had copied hundreds of Super Nintendo / Super Famicom games. So I decided to post about it, at the link below:
https://fcgamer.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/confessions-of-a-bootlegger/
https://fcgamer.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/confessions-of-a-bootlegger/
Comments
It sure reads like a work of short-story fiction. If it's not, maybe you've got a hidden career in writing waiting for you!
Thanks mate I was trying to go for a different style with this writing, than just being strictly "This is blah blah blah"
The whole story is true, dialogs are not 100% accurate as they were translated from Chinese to English, and also since I wasn't tape-recording it or anything, but it is the gist of what he said, even down to the costs (this is in Taiwanese money). Name is also changed, to protect the innocent, hehe (Wang is one of the most common family names in Chinese). But
Any chance you might document that 5 binder any further. Curious to see what was available and well thumbed.
I'm frequently surprised more by similarities than by differences.
Around 2008/2009 Apple news sites were reporting that you could get your iPhone jailbroken and unlocked at some Apple Stores in China. This may have even been before China had official Apple stores, but the people writing these stories obviously thought that they were real Apple Stores. They were SO convinced that they didn't even realize that they had already been to a "fake Apple Store" when the "China even has fake Apple Stores!" news started making the rounds a couple years later... on the same news sites! The kicker is: WE HAVE FAKE APPLE STORES IN THE USA TOO! Yes, really.
When I need to go to an Apple Store for something that can only be taken care of by a real Apple Store, I frequently complain about the 80-mile round trip. Coworkers, friends, family, and random clueless people on social media will ALWAYS chime in about the two "Apple Stores" we have in-town. They INSIST that we have real Apple Stores in Newnan and Peachtree City, GA. After I get done palming my face I explain that the Apple products arranged on wooden tables and the giant Apple logo on the metallic wall panels are intended to make them LOOK like an Apple Store doesn't make them an Apple Store.
They are just computer stores that carry Apple products and they are allowed to use the logo because they are authorized Apple techs. They take advantage of this to sell Apple products and accessories but they're the place you take your iMac for repair or upgrade, not the place you go to line up for the latest iPhone launch. They deliberately downplay the differences and only use the Apple logo above the building but if you look closely you will see "Computer Advantage" or "Peach.Mac" in small white lettering on the door.
Fun read, very well written. One question though, how would customers play a game off the floppy?
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You have to have a game copier, such as the Super Wild Card or Game Doctor SF...
There were many more models, but essentially they all just loaded binaries off a floppy disk into some volatile (or some were NV) RAM which simulated the real cartridge being plugged in.
Fun read, very well written. One question though, how would customers play a game off the floppy?
With a Super Wild Car or Bung Game Doctor, or one of the dozens of floppy disk addons for the Super Famicom and SNES. Google it, this is what we used before flashcarts were invented.
Originally posted by: BertBerryCrunch
Fun read, very well written. One question though, how would customers play a game off the floppy?
----
You have to have a game copier, such as the Super Wild Card or Game Doctor SF...
There were many more models, but essentially they all just loaded binaries off a floppy disk into some volatile (or some were NV) RAM which simulated the real cartridge being plugged in.
I don't think any SNES backup devices back then ever used non-volatile ROM/RAM for game data. EEPROM big enough for SNES games would have been prohibitively expensive and limited read/write cycles would make it unreliable anyway.
A friend of mine had a floppy disk drive hooked up to his SNES back in the day, about 92-93ish. He could dump cartridges right off his SNES and onto the floppy disks. He'd just rent all of his games and make duplicates. I was only about 11-12 years old at the time and I have no idea what device he was using. A friend of his spent a month in Japan and brought it back for him. I was, insanely jealous, to say the least. Some games even needed multiple floppies to save them. I'm not entirely sure how that worked when it came to playing the copy again.
Yes, the guy I spoke with about his setup, he also mentioned that some games would require multiple floppies. I didn't bother to ask him though if it cost more for more disks or not, maybe next time I go back I will, as he hopes I'll stop by again in the near future.
http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=7155.0
And awesome story,really enjoyed it.
A friend of mine had a floppy disk drive hooked up to his SNES back in the day, about 92-93ish. He could dump cartridges right off his SNES and onto the floppy disks. He'd just rent all of his games and make duplicates. I was only about 11-12 years old at the time and I have no idea what device he was using. A friend of his spent a month in Japan and brought it back for him. I was, insanely jealous, to say the least. Some games even needed multiple floppies to save them. I'm not entirely sure how that worked when it came to playing the copy again.
The copier would split the files with a sequential extension (.1, .2, etc), and when you load it up, you'd put the disks into the device in order and it stores it in the devices ram. I have a copier/dumper for the snes (had it since the late 90's). It's pretty cool - it's basically a flash cart before flash carts, but had limitations (can't play special chip games, though I think the dsp-1 games you could if you put another dsp-1 game in the cart slot)
A friend of mine had a floppy disk drive hooked up to his SNES back in the day, about 92-93ish. He could dump cartridges right off his SNES and onto the floppy disks. He'd just rent all of his games and make duplicates. I was only about 11-12 years old at the time and I have no idea what device he was using. A friend of his spent a month in Japan and brought it back for him. I was, insanely jealous, to say the least. Some games even needed multiple floppies to save them. I'm not entirely sure how that worked when it came to playing the copy again.
The copier would split the files with a sequential extension (.1, .2, etc), and when you load it up, you'd put the disks into the device in order and it stores it in the devices ram. I have a copier/dumper for the snes (had it since the late 90's). It's pretty cool - it's basically a flash cart before flash carts, but had limitations (can't play special chip games, though I think the dsp-1 games you could if you put another dsp-1 game in the cart slot)
That would make sense. I never saw him play the multiple floppy games once he copied them, so I was never sure how it worked. It's amazing to know that pirating was around, even back then. Now days. it's just common for people to download and crack everything under the sun. If it hadn't been for that friend of mine, I'd have never known you could do stuff like that until learning about it now.