Mike’s Gameboy Game of the Week: Digimon Battle Spirits

Oh was my post late this week? Well normally this would be the result of communists attempting to destroy the gaming industry, but unfortunately it was something far worse. Ponies. Ponies invaded my computer.

They’re plotting something, I can just feel it.

The levels of cute were so overwhelming I had to take a break and do some manly stuff like wrestling Bears and extreme beard growing.

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Way back in the far off years of 1998-1999 two shows popped up that essentially defined a majority of nerdy children in the United States, these shows were Pokémon and Digimon despite a great deal of differences between both shows many children (some even today) claimed that Digimon was a copy of Pokémon. In all actuality the Digimon series has much deeper established roots then the Pokémon series. Akiyoshi Hongo is credited as the creator of virtual pets most notably the Tamgotchi line and as the man who created Digimon. Digimon itself started as a line of virtual pets these virtual pets were created in 1997 as a series aimed at young boys. Whereas Pokémon was a result of Satoshi Tajiri’s fondness for catching small bugs and tadpoles Digimon is a result of the virtual pet craze. So children formed their respective camps and many to this day prefer one group over the other, or in some cases like a third group that popped up in the midst of this craze. However today we are not closely analyzing the the intricacies of sisters and whether or not they are similar or dissimilar, we are looking at Digimon Battle Spirit a fighting game for the Gameboy Advance.

Seems legit.

I didn’t particularly notice a story to this game, to my knowledge the extent of the story is:

The Big Bad Millenniummon wants to destroy the Digital World. It is your job to defeat him, fight all his minions until you reach him and defeat him to save the Digital World.

The game handles this in the best possible way, you fight everything. There are seven stages in which you have to defeat a target Digimon while avoiding or defeating some random spawning enemies who will drop random items which you can throw at your opponent. The stages are generally large and as you move around the camera scrolls with you so that you cannot see the entire stage at any point in time, some may find this annoying as it limits visibility and makes it harder to catch a computer who is on the run.

They better run before I Nova Flame all up in here.

In battle you aren’t trying to defeat your opponent in the rudimentary way of hitting them until they are out of HP, you are instead hitting them and trying to collect more orbs then them, at the end of the battle your orbs are counted up and whoever snagged the most wins. The fighting mechanics in Digimon Battle Spirits I almost overly simplistic with the A and B buttons controlling jumping and attacking with the triggers allowing you to vary your attacks by holding them in. There are five starting Digimon to choose from with several you can unlock later on by beating the game. Each Digimon has a unique move set and certain attributes that set them apart from the other Digimon. A good example of this is that Guilmon has weak physical attacks but moves quickly, this makes him a good comparison for Wormmon who attacks quickly but moves very slow. A random element to each stage is the appearance of the Digimon Calumon who can instantly digivolve your character to mega level for a brief period of time greatly increasing your strength and making you invincible.

Let’s be honest the Afro already hooked you on the game right? Just forget the rest of the review and go buy it already.

Digimon Battle Spirits should mostly appeal to fighting game enthusiasts looking for something different to try and even to regular fans of the Series as the game is simple enough to grasp and fairly easy enough to play that anyone can really do it. For those very reason I mentioned the game lacks much for the person looking for an intense deep fighting game like Soul Calibur or Super Street Fighter IX Hyper Turbo Limited Arcade Edition VII. The game can feel shallow at times as battles sometimes boil down to hit and run tactics and the final battle itself can for the unprepared be overwhelming. The game has some neat unlockable characters but aside from those few all they bring to the table is some new moves. The game is fairly inexpensive at most places and can provide a fun ride for a couple of playthrough and is more then worth a couple of bucks.

If I’ve learned anything from the Power Rangers jump kicks are the most efficient way of dispatching enemies.

Mike’s Gameboy Game of the Week: Guardian Heroes Advance

I have some fond memories of the original Guardian Heroes as I played it way back in late 90’s over a friends house, recently with the rerelease of Guardian Heroes for the Xbox 360 I have been able to relive those great memories of a fantastic Beatem’ up’ RPG with many endings and so many paths that it would take many play-throughs to truly enjoy the game. For comparisons sake the closest game to Guardian Heroes is Golden Axe, but the similarities are entirely superficial as unlike Golden Axe Guardian Heroes has a riveting story that changes based on your actions (I’d say both are great in the fighting aspect though.) Seeing is believing I supposed so here’s some gameplay footage of the first stage:

Unlike Golden Axe or any other beatem’ up you may have noticed that the characters don’t move around a three dimensional plane with enemies coming at them from all directions, instead the characters jump through three zones (one in the foreground, one in the middle, and one in the back) this feature while at first seeming ridiculous makes perfect sense from a design standpoint as in Guardian Heroes there are stages where lots of enemies will come at you all at once and being able to quickly jump to another zone out of their range giving a moment to collect yourself before the enemies all hop over. This feature is even more helpful due to the sheer difficulty of the game as mastering hopping from one zone to the other can mean life or death at points.

 

Look at those generic soldiers, think their tough shit jumpin’ out of the way of my lightning.

It would be impossible for me to fully explain to you the sheer depth of the story of this game with it’s many plot twists, undead, demons, gods, murder, and vampire clowns, however I can tell you this, you can play as any character you defeat in versus mode (in the Xbox 360 version you can play online as well).

Oh yes, even bosses.

Now that you have some grasp of the basic premise of Guardian Heroes lets talk about its sequel Guardian Heroes Advance.

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Guardian Heroes Advance takes things a little differently, it does away with the whole zone nonsense and allows you to move about a three dimensional plane, it also added a homing jump (a jump that automatically takes you to whatever the nearest platform is) and platforming elements to mix things up. It also did away the path choosing element of the previous game where you instead move along a linear path towards the ending of the game, luckily though there are two endings so it guarantee’s you at least two playthroughs. Not one of the things that makes up for it is how much depth they added to the combat system with the addition of a counter that can nullify damage and larger move pools for all characters.

Honestly what more could you want?

Of all the characters though the main three Enn, Ray, and who cares because they are all identical and their stats are the only major differences between them, have the largest move pools with different possible attack combos based on directional movements and how long you hold down the attack button. I personally like the addition of a ground pound attack that does area damage. Magic which in the previous game could only be executed by certain button combos (like a haduken) was a tad hard to pull off when a bunch of enemies were punching you in the face Advance fixes this problem by making it so that magic is charges and selected using the shoulder buttons making it a lot easier to pop-off magic spells when you need them.

The change was pretty shocking.

Now Guardian Heroes Advance follows the adventure of the Undead hero from the first game as he is revived by taking over the body of whichever generic main character you chose to start with. You are immediately tasked with saving the world from the Sky Kingdom as they hope to take over the world and create the “Ultimate Warrior”.

I honestly don’t know why though…

So you battle through stages fighting many enemies and eventually you wind up fighting the cast from the previous series who are apparently being controlled by the Sky Kingdom. You beat them and depending on certain conditions you get one of two endings after fighting the final boss. Now the real fun of this game comes after you have beaten it. Remember how earlier I said that in Guardian Heroes you could play as any character in versus mode? Well in Guardian Heroes Advance you can play as ANY character in both versus mode and story mode. So long after you’ve seen the ending of the games you can go back and decide to play as the best mage in the game and just spam uber-spells murdering all of the things.

The didn’t know what hit them.

I haven’t really touched on what versus mode is yet have I? Well in both games it is a feature in which up to twelve characters (be they human or CPU) can all duke it out. This means that you can either have twelve of the baddest bosses pounding on each other of just one tackling a whole bunch of the weakest enemies and utterly destroying them (or losing somehow [it happens oddly enough]). In versus mode you get to assign stats to each character based on the level cap you have chosen and they can either be preset stat distributions or you can set them however you want, this can amount to hours of amusement.

Dance my puppets, DANCE!

I found that Guardian Heroes Advance doesn’t easily appeal to many people due to the fact that a majority of the mythos of the game is lost upon a person who hasn’t played the first game. Guardian Heroes Advance is a must have for anyone who liked the first game and for anyone who is a diehard fan of Beatem’ Ups. The game has memorable characters and a decent soundtrack, the graphics are alright for a Gameboy Advance game, the controls are amazing, and you can play as any character in the game after you’ve killed them. Seriously, what isn’t there to love? To add even more incentive the game is fairly inexpensive. So why not pick a copy now? You can also grab a copy of the original game off the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 MS points if you don’t have a Sega Saturn.

ChuChu Rocket - A Quick Look (GBA/DC)

With the advent of the Dreamcast it brought the concept of online gaming to the world and with that the first truly online game, ChuChu Rocket. ChuChu Rocket is a puzzle game released on February 29, 2000 to the North American audience and rereleased on June 10, 2001 for the Gameboy Advance with only minor alterations. ChuChu Rocket was lauded at the time for being the first online game and for a brief stint was given away for free with a purchase of a Sega Dreamcast in Europe. The sheer popularity of the game at the time inevitably resulted in the GBA port, aside from the obvious lack of internet play the port allowed for up to four players to participate in puzzle battles with only a single cartridge, another thing the game contained was over 25,000 puzzle previously created by the online user-base for the Dreamcast version.

ChuChu Rocket as a puzzle game revolves around guiding mice (named ChuChus) to their rocket ships, the obstacles they need to overcome are KapuKapus (Cat’s), pitfalls, and walls. You guide the ChuChu’s by placing arrow panels down to change the direction in which they are traveling, however the KapuKapus will also change the direction they are traveling if they happen to pass over an arrow. Ultimately each puzzle requires a good deal of forethought such as…

See the above example? With three panels you need to get both sets of ChuChu’s to the ship in the center of the Dreamcast logo. Not all puzzles are as difficult, in actuality some are quite easy like the example below…

As you can see all that was needed to complete the puzzle was the placement of a single arrow.

As charming as the single player modes are the real fun in the game lies within it’s multiplayer modes. In multiplayer mode your obejective to get the most mice in your Rocket Ship and to direct as many Kapu’s into your opponents Rockets as quick as you can. The gameplay can be hectic but incredibly fun and rewarding…

The video above is a good example of what a multiplayer match look(ed)s like, as not long after the above recording the SEGAnet servers were shut down and to date there haven’t been any private servers for the Dreamcast version. In the video you will notice the Kapu’s and Chu’s all going every which way and each player attempting to drive them into their rocket by slapping arrow panels everywhere, things can get pretty crazy. The ultimate objective of any match is to get the most Chu’s, both the GBA version and the Dreamcast version have this and it can be rewarding as much as it is crazy. Both versions of the game can provide hours of enjoyment either alone or with friends, and for those looking for a more modern version an iOS port was recently released which boasts “HD” graphics and what not. I highly recommend this game to any puzzle fan as the game can really get you thinking.

Duel Masters: Kaijudo Showdown (GBA) – A brief look.

It also comes with a large bottle of industrial strength hair gel.

Disclaimer: This video game is based on a card game, so if you have no interest in card games then you may want to just skip this post. If you don’t care for any background info on the game or the series skip ahead two paragraphs.

For the uninitiated who person who had never heard of the show or read the manga (like myself) that it is based on it may seem like a generic slapped together half-assed attempt at pulling in children who are into Yugioh or the Pokémon Trading Card Game, I can assure you this is not the case. Surprisingly enough this card game has been around in Japan for over a decade but only reached stateside in late 2004 and was quickly discontinued in early 2006 after airing only two seasons and releasing only thirteen different card packs. Despite being discontinued a sizable number of people follow the Japanese card game and even banded together to make a forum which to this very day is still active.

I’m certain this would be their reaction to the TCG making a comeback.

Duel Master’s can essentially be considered a simpler version of the card game Magic the Gathering, you have six different “Civilizations” (i.e. elements, or whatever) which are, Nature, Water, Fire, Darkness, Light, and Rainbow unlike Magic there are no Mana cards and instead at the start of every turn you can add any card in your hand to the Mana pool. You can then tap the aforementioned Mana to summon a monster or cast a spell. The game doesn’t have a life point system but instead has you use “Shields” to defend yourself once all five of your shields are destroyed by your opponent and they attack you directly you lose the game. To defend yourself the cards are broken up into groups and subgroups:

Monsters

• Regular Monsters – you tap the mana and toss em; in the battle zone to attack your opponent
• Blocker Monsters – They can be used to defend against opponents attacks
• Evolution Monsters – Stronger monsters that must be put onto a weaker one of a specific type similar to evolving in Pokémon

I like how the abilities are explain in such detail.

Spells

• Regular Spells: They have effects and can be used to aid yourself or destroy an opponents card(s)
• Trigger spells: Spell cards that when placed as a shield and destroyed by an opponents attack immediately activate

For a more in depth explanation of gameplay the Duel Masters wiki has an in-depth How-to guide on playing the game.

Because we all know that no one listens to the tutorial.

Duel Masters: Kaijudo Showdown has a very simple premise, you play as the game’s protagonist named “TOM” by default which from what I’ve gleaned through “extensive” wiki reading I can safely say is not from the show/manga’s canon. The game has a unique story in which you use a card game to save the world while attempting to win all of the tournaments to gain sponsorships and whatnot, all normal stuff thus far. Kaijudo Showdown sports the entire cast from the first season of the show/manga (which you can duel) and boasts a hefty 300 unique cards in the game. Premise-wise the game focuses mainly on the building of decks and just out and out dueling everyone as the reward for winning any duel is a pack of cards. Multiplayer is encouraged through the use of a link battle/trade system which is neat and adds replay value as constantly trying to outdo your friends decks is always fun.

The ultimate appeal of this game lies in the fact that the Card game is similar to that of Magic the Gathering meaning that anyone who has a passing knowledge of Magic can pick the game up with little trouble. Duel Maters Kaijudo Showdown has very little appeal to anyone who isn’t into card games, the sub-par graphic’s and soundtrack don’t help it out very much. I would advise fans of the show, or fans of card games in general to give this game or it’s sequels a look as they are fairly inexpensive and can provide loads of fun if you can get a couple of your friends together to play it with you.

I can’t wait for the HD remake.

Pokémon Gold and Silver (GBC)

How do you measure its worth?

If there has ever been any constant over the course of this life of mine its my love of Pokémon. I recall many fond memories playing the Gen I games, thwarting Team Rockets plans, defeating the Elite Four, and catching Mewtwo those were good times and being the nostalgic person that I am the first generation of Pokémon will always be regarded as perfect in my memory. Two years after devoting every fiber of my being towards the goal of being a Pokémon master Pokémon Gold and Silver were released, naturally I snagged both copies of the games and was completely taken in by the games. The rest of the year 2000 would be spent beating the games and trying once again to become the greatest Pokémon master there ever was.

Pokémon Gold and Silver released on October 15, 2000 to North American audiences is commonly regarded as being the superior to Red, Blue, and Yellow as many improvements were made to the game in regards to graphics, sound, and battle mechanic. The many concepts and facets introduced in this game would set a precedent for all subsequent games to improve upon.

In Pokémon Gold and Silver just as in the Red and Blue your ultimate objective remains the same, and that is to become the Pokémon Master. To go about doing this you need to catch all of the Pokémon and defeat all of the Gym Leaders of both the Johto and Kanto regions and the Elite Four. There are an additional 100 Pokémon along with the 151 from the previous generation of games, however to catch them all you will need to trade Pokémon in order to catch them all as in Gold and Silver there are certain Pokémon with whom you need to trade between games as they are exclusives. In order to get any of the legendaries from the first generation you will need to trade for them, this includes Mewtwo, Moltres, Articuno, and Zapdos, some minor Pokémon you may need to get from previous games as well though for the most part it is only the legendaries from the first generation that you truly need to trade for. Below is a chart showing the version exclusive Pokémon between Gold and Silver compliments of Bulbapedia.

I shall now discuss the improvements Gold and Silver made to the series as a whole, the first of which is the ability for Pokémon to hold items. The item holding mechanic adds further depth to the battle system as the items have the capacity to either heal of increase/decrease offensive or defensive strength of the Pokémon according to whatever item you are holding. I shall give only several item examples as there are many and accounting for them all would only make this unnecessarily long.

Held Item Examples:

• Quick Claw: When held by a Pokémon it gives it a 20% of going first
• Leftovers: Restores 1/16 of a Pokémon's Maximum HP at the end of every turn while held
• Berserk Gene: Confuses the user and Raises Attack. One time use.

By using held items it revolutionized the entire battle system by making it so that you need to account for the effects of an item prior to choosing an attack or switching a Pokémon. For an in depth look at the core battle mechanic see my previous review of Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow.

Pokémon Types received additions in this game these were the Dark Type and Steel type which were included in order to help balance the battle system as in the previous games the Psychic type was incredibly over powerful and the fighting type was never really used. Some balancing issues were assessed and type effectiveness was changed for several typing's that were unbalanced at the time.

One of the greater aspects of the game is that it has a built in internal clock and by taking this step into reality it changes how one goes about catching Pokémon. As time changes in the real world it changes according to the set time in the game and the in game world shifts through day, afternoon, and night. The differing times of the day indicate what Pokémon you will catch in certain areas, this also opens up the realm of night and day Pokémon such as Hoothoot and Noctowl who only ever appears at night. Another interesting mechanic that sadly hasn’t been fleshed out since it’s inception is the concept of the time of day deciding evolution, Evee gained two new evolutions Umbreon and Espeon to evolve into the former it would need to be night while the latter would need it to be day time. The time function did not only extend to the Pokémon with whom you encounter it also encompassed what shops would be open in the Goldenrod Underground as on certain day you would have the old woman selling medicine and on others you would have one of the Pokémon groomers who will make your Pokémon like you more by grooming them.

Morning, Day and Night respectively.

Another interesting bit is the Bug catching contest (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) and S.S.Aqua ( both of which have certain days in which you can interact with them. The Bug Catching contest is a contest in which you attempt to catch the largest bug and receive a prize based on your placement. The S.S. Aqua is a boat which will take you from one region to the next which you can only catch at certain ports on certain days, while on it you can battle a plethora of trainers who will always be raring to fight now matter how many times you ride the boat.

I hope he has his swim trunks.

Graphics wise Pokémon Gold and Silver are superior to the previous games in every facet as the game not only is in color but the sprites and battle sprites are greatly detailed in comparison to the previous games. It is safe to say that the game is far more aesthetically pleasing as many of the ingame sprites better resemble what they were intended to be, tree’s resemble trees, grass resembles grass, but voltorb still look like Poke balls. The battle sprites look infinitely better then they did in the previous games and all the attacks now have unique battle animations which all look absolutely great. Remember those ugly back sprites which barely resembled the Pokémon? Well those are gone and now we have back sprites that actually look alright!

Pokémon Gold and Silver for it’s time was incredibly revolutionary for a sequel and improved upon almost every facet of the series while retaining the main purpose of the series. In my opinion Gen II stands as the most important point in the evolution of the series as all of the important additions to Gold and Silver have remained in all of its successors unlike Gen III and Gen IV in which both had many of their unique additions abandoned at the doorstep. Both Pokémon Gold and Silver use time as a game mechanic which increases replay value as only certain Pokémon and certain events can occur at night or during the day which essentially forces any player to have to keep up with their playing if they want to experience every aspect of the game and catch all of the Pokémon. Gold and Silver just like it’s predecessors has some quirky humor as you can examine practically anything and hear some sort of comment on it along with the dialog of the NPC’s which is always good fun. Overall if you liked the previous three games you will most likely fall in love with the second round of games, they are easily worth the $10-$20 that they can be found for and I’d highly recommend getting them.

Bonus:

Early Concept Art for Pokémon Silver and Gold

Japanese Official Site for Pokémon Silver and Gold

North American Official Site for Pokémon Silver and Gold

Medabots Ax (GBA)

Lightning is cool.

Medabots Ax is an exclusive title to the North American region based on the moderately popular anime which was playing on Fox Kids (or was it the Fox Block by then?). It’s a decent fighting game where you have the ability to customize your robots with parts you acquire through tournaments, did I just mention tournaments? Well this game is all about tournaments because it’s a tournament fighter! (applause?) The game is moderately original in design and for what it’s worth the game does provide some adequate fun. Medabots Ax took the Pokémon root and made it so that in order to get the parts for all 30 Medabots you would have to connect and trade the last five from the other game (either the Rokusho version or Medabee version depending).

If I recall correctly I was still a youngin’ when this show was new, and I recall when I got this game I was pretty psyched about it. For those that don’t know Medabots was a moderately popular anime about young kids who ran around and made robots battle for their amusement. In the show many of the battles were fought with the rule that if you lost you were obliged to give the winner one of the parts off your Medabot which as you can guess, kind of really sucked. The shows main character was Ikki Tenryou and his Medabot was Medabee (who was quite sassy) and they spent much of their time fighting against the evil organization the Skrew Gang and fighting battles to be the best there ever was.

Here’s an Example of to expect from the show:

The game plays simply, you have three regular attacks a jump and a special move. Each move sans the jump and special all require time to reload before using it again and each varies depending on the type of part you have equipped and what it’s function is. Fairly standard stuff, however the most important factor of this is the speed and defense of each part as its imperative that you balance the speed of your attacks with a part that won’t be destroyed after one hit. You win battles by destroying the leader Medabots head, so don’t feel discouraged about sending your partner out to take the brunt of the damage as it’s your death that makes you lose. All the stages are fairly similar with slight variations such as the addition of water or moving floors but all keep the same overall setup despite changing looks.

As the great military strategist Zhuge Liang once said; “Fake em’ out, It’ll work every time.”

The customizing is fairly simple, you open up the menu and select either your partner Medabot or your leader Medabot and from there you can exchange the arms, head, legs, and medal (the thing which gives it a special attack). At any point in time you can alternate the gender of the two Medabots if you so choose, so instead of having a male Medabot being the Leader, you can have a female, or you can have them both be male or female Medabots. This change allows you to customize the strategy of your team as the female parts are mostly passive so you can create a team based on endurance whereas the male parts are aggressive so with two males you can have a team that doggedly attacks. Ultimately the medal decides your plan as the medal decides your special attack, and the commands you can issue to your partner.

Sht? How crass.

Both parts and medals have stats in this game and its imperative that you mix them to make a balanced Medabot, otherwise you may wind up losing a lot.

The game has a pathetically small roster of opponents and very often you will wind up facing the same opponents over and over as you attempt to farm parts or grind experience so you can gain more commands for your partners medal.

Medabots Ax is solid tournament fighting game with a fairly original system, for battling and quite a bit of customization which easily allots for lots of play time. The game however is plagued by its lack of depth as there is no story to the game, which I guess is expected as fighting games trend towards having no real story. The controls are really good and the difficulty isn’t to hard, though tedium tends to kick in after you’ve battled the same team of enemies for the fortieth time. The game is relatively inexpensive no matter where you get it from and in my opinion Medabots Ax is a game worth the cost for any fan of the series as despite its shortcomings the game is still solid enough to provide a moderately enjoyable experience for at least a majority of the ride.

Holiday Shopping tips: How to identify a bootleg Gameboy Advance game.

With the Holiday shopping season now in full swing you have to be increasingly aware of products which are either to good to be true or are of disputable quality. Ever since the Gameboy Advance’s release back in 2001 there has been a steady influx of bootlegged games being pumped into the video game market from places like Mexico and China. These fake games are for the most part surprisingly unconvincing. Bootlegs are typically brought in through border flea markets or online stores, but once they make it in they are here to stay. Now you may be thinking that the possibility of getting a bootleg game is exceedingly low but that couldn't be farther from the truth because unless you are purchasing a game used from a trusted retailer (i.e. Lukie Games, or some other company that checks its games for authenticity) you have a chance (albeit small) of getting a fake game. Bootleg games even wind up in used game stores (like GameStop) because the person who originally purchased it noticed it was fake, or because it stopped working and they wanted to get rid of it, this isn’t totally uncommon though you will most likely encounter bootleg games at flea markets.

The overall lack of quality makes me want to facepalm.

Bootlegs tend to be of more popular game series like Golden Sun, Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, etc. So when you go to purchase one of these games you need to keep your eyes peeled to avoid purchasing a fake. Now you might be asking “Why should I care if it’s a bootleg if it still plays?” Well I’ll tell you why! Bootleg Gameboy Cartridge’s use very short lived batteries to retain their save files instead of having flash based memory as DS games do and a handful of Gameboy Games. So after a period of time the battery will die and you will lose everything on the game. You can change the battery out yourself, and there are plenty of wiki’s to show you how, but the meat of the matter is that the quality of the bootlegs are incredible bad.

It really sucks just getting to Zerumus and being told your Save is corrupted.

Now if you are an avid EBay shopper like me than you should know that eBay is overflowing with bootleg games, most of them come in the form of incredibly cheap versions of popular games (as mentioned above). Some will charge an exorbitant amount of money for multiple fakes.

It’s a sad day when you wind up shelling almost forty dollars for a fake game.

Now not all cheap games on eBay are bootlegs, but you still have to watch out for several signs:

1. Label Art – Quite often with bootlegs the label art will be different from the original. Things like the color of the label or the picture which is supposed to be in the background will be different from the original and often times bootleggers will just put the box’s image on it and call it a day. In recent years bootleggers have upped the quality of their fakes and now some have begun to use design of the legitimate label. So you may be ask me “If they have the original label image and text than how will I know its fake?” Well I would direct you to the lower right side of the label, if you see a set of numbers and and/or letters there (if in the US it should start with AGB and end with USA) that means that its legit also look for the Nintendo Seal, which should read: “Official Nintendo Seal”

On the upper Right side of the label should be two sets of double digit numbers stamped into the label as well.

Class, can you tell me what’s wrong with this cartridge?

2. The back of the game cartridge – The back of your game cartridge should have a Tri-Wing screw in it, these screws look like a “Y” and can only be removed with a special screwdriver. Some bootleggers will instead opt to use a regular Phillips screw which looks like a “+” this is a tell tale sign of a bootleg, as all Nintendo Licensed games use a Tri-wing screw. Another thing to look for is the where its made, bootleggers sometimes replace the “Made in Japan” with “Made in China” (they aren’t all that good at masking things.)


3. Finally and most definitely is the contacts and board of the game itself. If you open up the game by taking out the screw you should be greeted by a regular board and DEPENDING on the game a possible battery with a red ring around it. Certain GBA games do not use a battery for saves and instead use flash based memory which means it saves directly to the carts memory so if you were to find a game which should save in that manner but instead uses a battery you can tell that it is a bootleg. If you look on the bottom of the board near the contacts in white lettering you should clearly see Nintendo, and a product number which shows that Nintendo manufactured it.

Real.

Fake.

Another thing to watch out for are those “175 (or 250, or whatever amount) games in one” those are typically modified flash cartridges (Cart’s used to bootleg games). They tend to be limited in ability and the “Games” they come with are typically multiples of a single game and are all quite illegal (especially if you live in the UK).

You zany Canadians.

Now I’m going to get very specific now and target the Pokémon series as this franchise has been hit the worst by bootleggers. There is no reason to ever pay money for that which is free correct? Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, right? Pokémon fans love making their own Pokémon games, there are so many Pokémon hacks and homebrew games on the internet that it’s absurd. Consistently bootleggers will put out these hacked or homebrew games and claim that they are actual Nintendo releases and will sell them on places like eBay, iOffer, or flea markets. The truth of the matter is that many of these games aren’t exactly finished, and they are not stable, meaning that corruption and game breaking glitches are regular.

Not pictured: Human Decency.

If you are a fan of the series it is best that you realize that if it wasn’t announced by Nintendo, then there is a good chance the copy of “Shiny Gold” you picked up is a fake.

What you don’t remember Quartz? Why it was only the best Pokémon game of 2005!

Now you may wind up going your whole life without ever having a bootleg game fall into your hands, but there is credence to the saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Ben Franklin really knew what he was talking about and I’m sure he would agree that to arm oneself with knowledge is the best way to avoid disaster later on (by disaster I mean getting a bootleg game that winds up being a waste of money). If you follow the above rule for identifying a game you should be golden, especially if you avoid ordering North American games from non-North American regions (i.e. China, Mexico, etc.). Well I wish you all the luck in your shopping and stay tuned for my tips on how to avoid purchasing any bootleg Nintendo DS games.

There will be complaints, lots of them.