Mega Drive bootleg games
From Sega Retro
if you're in the mood (please be in the mood)
If I'm to do this on my own it'll take months. There are hundreds, if not thousands of these things, but the more we have, the higher the chances of finding patterns and understanding what was going on. There are also some wacky cartridges yet to be discovered.
I have two "main" sources for this crap:
The Argentine MercardoLibre. Other MercardoLibres/Livres can throw up stuff too, but the Argentine one is almost exclusively filled with tat. Unfortunately nobody in the country appears to own a good camera so most of the photos are horrendous.
Because Taiwan built a lot of these cartridges, there are truckloads of them on sale between legitimate Japanese releases on Ruten. This is also where I've been gathering undocumented tat for the Saturn and Dreamcast too - it's a treasure trove.
(and this is before we factor in the Russian stuff)
You have to look carefully because some games are official copies, while others are extremely close to the official thing, with only very minor differences. I've been numbering my uploads so I can match cartridges with boxes at a later date.
Also watch out for cases like these:
these are both derived from the official Japanese box but one is more stretched than the other.
bonus points if anyone any details on "T&T Technology Corp" - that company is credited on a few carts, but its history remains a mystery. -Black Squirrel (talk) 08:12, 22 August 2014 (CDT)
- It is infinite) Attempt to collect all bootlegs... -Depressor (talk) 08:35, 22 August 2014 (CDT)
- http://videojuegos.mercadolibre.com.uy/sega-genesis-juegos/_DisplayType_G - Uruguay's MercardoLibre has stuff too - I thought I'd swept most of it up, but turns out I hadn't.
- This task isn't impossible, just big. As long as you focus on the cartridges built on an assembly line as opposed to homebrew experiments, I think we could easily build up a fairly substantial list. It's important as many people in the world associate these knock-offs with their "Sega experience", in a similar way more developed countries associate themselves with the official products. We cater for everyone on Sega Retro.
- Even with the ~300 cartridges I've uploaded, Sega Retro is the most informed website on this subject. There'll be several thousand carts in total. -Black Squirrel (talk)