Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2019 18:45:20 GMT
Hit Japan is selling on ebay some weird hucards with custom "labels" glued on top of the real labels depicting a different game, claiming it's a "rewrite" HuCard. For example, a F1 Circus 91 posing as "Tatsujin":
What on earth is that? Looks like a normal HuCard to me... I wonder if anyone knows of any process to replace the mask ROMs on a Hucard with a flash chip or something, which I guess it's what is done here.
This is probably a good time to stop buying real HuCards, I guess. Everdrive's the way to go.
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mooz
Deep Blooper
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Post by mooz on Mar 3, 2019 19:21:43 GMT
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2019 19:44:22 GMT
That's odd, as I was reading the forums people were theorizing about those chips being 100% legitimate -- what's the point of putting in a real and functional mask rom of an expensive game in a shitty, yellowed F1 Circus '91 plastic case then? I wonder if he's mass producing those (which is highly unlikely) or ended up finding a lot of those unused, without the plastic HuCard enclosure, somewhere. Either way, the pricing is ridiculous.
Thanks for posting this, mooz.
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fragmare
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 116
Homebrew skills: Graphics, Music, Level Design, Annoying Programmers
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Post by fragmare on Mar 3, 2019 19:55:47 GMT
Ouch! The corner on that thing looks like it was dug out with someone's car keys D:
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Post by videofestival on Mar 3, 2019 21:10:07 GMT
I can confirm that these are original ROMs put in donor-HuCARDs. I opened up the Knight Rider one that was put in a Keith Courage TG16 donor in December as I had hoped these might be some kind of re-writables. The guts of it look identical to the regular release. Attachments:
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Post by Arkhan on Mar 16, 2019 7:23:42 GMT
the latest in HuCard repro/money making dipshitterrryyyyyyyyy
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Post by Mathius on Mar 18, 2019 2:54:14 GMT
*sigh*
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Post by SignOfZeta on Mar 19, 2019 20:57:50 GMT
I’m having a really hard time understanding the motivation for this. Was it done a really long time ago or recently, do we think?
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Post by videofestival on Mar 20, 2019 7:24:50 GMT
The removal of the original PCBs must have been done a long time ago. Either someone needed to move all of his games and had no space for them or they failed some sort of quality control during manufacturing and never made it in a HuCARD body. Again, these are not re-writables. EEProms in that size would have been very expensive back then. Stickers for gullible buyers in the west are new, the rest old.
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gilbot
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 137
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Post by gilbot on Mar 20, 2019 7:49:36 GMT
Since some of these had "Developer item" (or something similar) in the description text, they probably wanted to pass them up as proto carts used by the developers, as indicated by their high prices (well, a few of them are at relatively reasonable prices, especially those not marked as "Developer item", but they're probably intentionally thrown in to make the deal look less fishy), which was obviously BS. I don't know about the market prices but I think Darius Alpha, though rare, probably doesn't cost this much. By taking out the board from a "donar cart" (or rather, donar plastic plate) and putting in a legitimate board of the target game you get a "development version" of that game which sells at a much higher price. I feel sick seeing this, as they ruined two games in making something this stupid, with one of them probably cheap as dirt and the other relatively more rare.
They also could even get away with this when questioned, as they put in the word "Unofficial" in these "Developer item", so in their defense they never mentioned they're original proto carts used by the developers, just you, the buyer, implied this (i.e. they literally laughed and called anyone who bought their stuff fools).
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Post by SignOfZeta on Mar 22, 2019 16:45:48 GMT
I’m sorry that doesn’t make any sense either. It may still be true but it still sounds like something an insane person would do. Did an American buy Hit Japan? If not then it seems super unlikely they’d be involved in such a thing.
What games are being seen like this? Are they all from a tight release period?
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Post by videofestival on Mar 23, 2019 9:20:35 GMT
You have to understand that the bigger shops on eBay work like warehouses. They can't spend too much time on checking, cleaning or modifying any of their goods. Taking apart a HuCARD is risky. I have done that and I would say there is a good chance of destroying it in the process (even using a hair dryer to soften the glue). It's a safe bet that they just bought someone's lot of stuff and made those stickers at best.
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Post by SignOfZeta on Mar 24, 2019 1:58:21 GMT
Sure...but again, what is the point? Why would anyone do this? If it was Hit Japan or some other store’s inventory or a private person or a company or anyone, what is the point of it? That’s what I don’t get. If this is a fabricated collectible then what is it pretending to be?
I think the PCBs were at some point not installed into HuCARDS originally and then someone thought the games on them were worth more than some other games so they gutted the lesser title. It would be interesting to see a list of games known to be sold in this weird zombie condition. If they all came from the same year or from the same publisher or if there was something else tying the games together. A link of that sort would support a theory like that. Maybe they were all rejects and some dude on the line collected them from the junk bucket and then put them together from spare parts.
I know that’s not a very exciting or scandalous story but at least it jives with the tendencies of human nature. I don’t know why anyone in the modern era (ie: in the time when both the ROMs and the sac HuCARD were relatively worthless) would waste any time doing this work from two complete cards.
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