If you own a repro, does it bother you that you have a “fake” version of a video game, or is it something you don’t really think about? And if you don't own a repro, is it something you'd ever consider? Why or why not?
I thankfully don’t own any repros due to my obsessive comparisons and insistence on buying used games at their initial retail price, and I don’t think I ever will. If I ever wanted to play a game so badly that I’d ever even consider getting a reproduction, I’d probably just emulate it to scratch that itch for free until I could find a legit copy.
Hey, I got a platinum repro, from someone who was selling it because they thought it was legit at the time when they bought it from some one else, and I got it for 30 bucks, I agree repros are bad if you can get the games in easily, like I got a switch but no interest in new games, heck I bought old Mario games like Mario party 6 and 7 with legit copies, I believe 6 was 90 bucks but luckily 7 I got for 60, and I love the games, play it with my siblings and stuff, and of you told me I could play pokemon dungeon explorers of sky on the switch, I buy it in a heart beat, because I played darkness and never knew sky was definitive version of the game, but I can't find it unless I want to give around 80 to over 100 dollars to get it, it just sucks, so repros are good to play very old games that aren't supported any more, but bad for games you can easily to play on the new console, and for me, I'm not a collector, but I do want to play these old games I never knew or had money to play in, as a kid when I was younger
Well, my friend got me 2 repro's for my birthday in 2019, while I am thankful he got me games, when I try playing them I just can't seem to get the idea "Its a reproduction" out of my head. This leads me to stop playing the game. This friend I was talking about doesn't care weather his games are repro's or not though, even though his leaf green reproduction has had its save file corrupted countless times, he still resorts to getting a reproduction just for the sake of playing the game. Myself, I wish I would be able to do this as I'd save a LOT of money on games. But I just can't play a game fully knowing its a reproduction.
For me, I draw the line at selling fakes as genuine. I think as long as a game is clearly labeled as a reproduction, it's perfectly fine. Trying to disguise a reproduction as genuine is not okay.
100% this. That labeling is also extremely useful for those of us who actually *look for* repros. Personally, if the gameplay experience isn't worth the authentic game's price tag to me (and literally *no* game is worth $100+, imho), then I will actively seek out repros. Especially if the asking price is above the original retail price (adjusted for inflation). If an authentic copy of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap will run me $80+ on ebay, but I can get a perfectly functional repro for $15, you can bet I'm choosing the latter! The existence of repros is also really awesome when it comes to fan-translated games. I can't get an authentic English-language cartridge for the original Star Ocean (SNES) or Magical Vacation (GBA), but both of those are available as repros. Playing a fan-translated game on official hardware instead of emulating? Heck yes!
They're good enough for me. If they play the game, and my save data is safe in there, as it has been on 99% of the *newer* bootlegs I bought, they're ok for me. And I prefer to give C15 to some chinese dude which had to build a new copy of a game which isnt produced anymore than give 300USD to a random dude which found its molden cart which he threw on a drawer 10 years ago. Also, if nintendo wants money from it, why aren't they selling it?
You are absolutly right. But about Nintendo not selling it anymore is because the demand for older games is in comparison way to low to make enough profit and company's (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc.) have to push the industry so people buy new console's and new games
Agreed. If an authentic copy of a retro game is much over $50-$60 it just isn’t worth it. I don’t care about the originality of the plastic cart at that point, I just want to play the game on real hardware.
@@psplayer1344 same, although there are certain games i just wont bother with if i cant find a real one, this is mostly pokemon games or other such games that have more complex save systems or hardware interactions, the repros rarely get that stuff right, mostly i use roms and isos instead of repros though
I actually have a couple DS repros. The ones I got actually came with reprints of all the different papers that came in the case, which I think is pretty neat. I think repros are awesome when they're being advertised as repros, but when they try to pass as authentic copies, that's when I think it's an unambiguously bad thing.
Fair. Yeah. I've thought about buying repros of the GB/GBC Pokemon games. But, I KNOW they're repros. I'd be getting 'em off Etsy or AliExpress or something for like $5 each. I wouldn't exactly be happy if I bought one, thinking it was legit, and it wasn't.
For the people that are interested and aren't tech-savvy enough to hack their systems or run an emulator on their computer or phone, reproductions are a cool option. They don't personally interest me, but I can see their value. The moment Nintendo starts selling physical copies again, I'll consider the criticism against repros. Until then, idgaf.
@@Lucifronz My only thing with Repros really, is, they're neat and all. And like I said above, I wouldn't really mind buying a few cheapo ones just to have 'em. But, at the same time, you could get a flash cart. They're more money, sure. But for like, the price of one or two modern games (depending on the console), you can get a cartridge to toss roms onto and play on unmodded consoles, and they work exactly the same as the real thing. A flash cart is essentially a repro, but with any game or multiple games you want on it. Like one of those old bootleg multicarts, but way higher quality, and you can put your own games on it. Including rom hacks and things. Not gonna lie, playing rom hacks, or betas and things, on real hardware, is super neat. Like, I loaded the old Pokemon Gold/Silver Spaceworld '97 demo, on my real Game Boy Color, and had a blast. Played through it properly, then ran around for like 2 hours exploring the unfinished game. And before anyone says "but that requires the user to have some knowledge of tech", I mean, technically, yes. But it's literally just "Get Micro SD card, toss roms on it, put SD Card into flash cart", then it's done. You put the cart into the console and pick a game.
I'm in the "will it actually work" camp of repro worries. I'm mostly after Pokémon, but that runs into transfer issues for mons. For others like the GBA fire emblem games, I'm always worried that some obscure anti-piracy will show up and screw me over after hours of play. I emulate in those cases...
Trading SHOULD work with repros. It works fine using flash carts. It's still the same game, loaded the same way as the original. And the console still thinks the real game is loaded. But yeah. Even without considering trading, repros are kind of a 50/50 shot at whether it's going to work right or not. Sometimes they're damn-near perfect. Game works fine, saves work fine, etc. But, sometimes they're not. Sometimes the rom on the cart is busted, or they copied it over badly, or saves just don't work at all. Or even worse, saves DO work, then 2 weeks later, your save just disappears. I wouldn't go into buying a repro expecting a perfectly working game. I'd buy a repro expecting something that's not gonna be quite up to the quality of the real thing, expecting that there's at least a possibility that it won't work. And if it does work fine, there ya go. If it doesn't, it's a Repro, you probably didn't spend a ton on it. Though honestly, your safer bet would be to just use a flash cart. For DS, you got the R4. For GB/GBC, the EverDrive GB is one I have and recommend. For GBA, the EZ Flash Omega is really good. You just put roms on a micro sd card, toss the sd card into the flash cart, and you're good to go. Pick a game and play. And it's the real game, being run on real hardware still, since it's loading the rom into memory and stuff just like a real cart would do.
@@John-Doe-Yo Games sometimes have "anti-piracy" stuff in them. It could be something obvious, like the game detecting it's pirated and throwing up a screen that you can't get past, meaning the game can't be played. Sometimes devs like to have fun with it and just ruin the game if it detects it's been pirated. GTA4 will have a permanent drunk camera effect that gets worse the longer you play. One of the Batman Arkham games disables your ability to glide making the game impossible to play right. Game Dev Tycoon actually lets you play for a bit, then suddenly all the games you create get pirated and you get no sales. Some games will mess with the physics of a game, or destroy the graphics. Nowadays, people have figured out ways past it, at least in older games. I don't know exactly how common it is in modern current games.
It used to be the case that if the game read "Reproduction" in its Amazon or eBay listing you could rest assured knowing that it would be a high-quality game on working hardware and if it said anything else, then you're flipping a coin. And that while DS reproductions were generally very good, GBA bootlegs were especially notorious for having bad hardware or taking shortcuts. But I don't know if either of those are the case anymore. A good quality DS reproduction (or flash cart) will have the communication features preserved. So Platinum for example would be able to go into the Underground with others, do multiplayer in the Battle Frontier, work with all Union Room Features, and migrate Pokemon from authentic Gen 3 cartridges through Pal Park (as well as getting the perks of the dual-slot encounters). The only exceptions I'm aware of for features on a quality repro are that HeartGold/SoulSilver generally don't work with InfraRed (so no PokeWalker) and neither do the Gen 5 games (so no cGear features which need InfraRed).
Recently I've been trying to find an emerald cart to trade with Colosseum that won't break the bank, and that's my exact issue with repros. According to most of what I can find they can't trade with the gc, but they're soooo much cheaper that I've almost bought one just to try it anyways a few times.
I personally don’t buy repros as I like to trade up my Pokémon to newer gens after each play through. Finding out my Pokémon Emerald cartridge was a fake after 60ish hours of gameplay while trying to trade up really did a toll on me.
If you get a good enough copy you can mate, I transferred my entire dex from a hacked Pokémon X to Pokémon bank, then to home and now I have a full shiny dex in sword and shield👌🏿😁 EDIT: actually I’ve done this with a fake omega ruby and ultra sun too and if I’m wrong then I was sold real copies for really cheap so Ive won either way🤷🏿♂️ but they did tell me they were all fake
I'm ok with people pirating games, but I'm not really cool with people selling repro carts, especially if they don't make them obvious and if they try to sell them as real.
I think that selling repro is not a problem if u are just putting the cost the "work" of making a repro, it means selling it almost with "production cost" even though it's easy.
I think repros are best for things like SNES Final Fantasy V (not released in US) or the uncensored Earthbound. Rare or unreleased things that don't exist.
They can make as much money as they want if they're honest about it. Happy there's another option out there to make playing the game cheaper than having to compete with collectors for copies.
I own all the Pokémon repros but I also own authentic copies of each as well. It honestly just comes down to that I wanted a way to nuzlocke on the games without losing my full national dex on each game. To me it’s honestly just emulating but with a more classic feel
@@senerio2124 I see where OP is coming from. With a modded 3ds you never know if Nintendo is going to throw a "fuck you" patch out there like they tried to do with 11.17-50 that modders found a way around in no time flat. They do that and somehow it just kills all CFW software, and your backed up save file using Checkpoint is boned. Repro for Nuzlocke and legit for 100% save file makes a lot of sense. Sure, you should probably still use Checkpoint to back it up, but you get my point.
I personally believe that collecting is a way of preserving preserving a game to reproduction games are good because it means more people will have access to this amazing games and will become easier for collection is to get into the hobby Edit I also forgot to say that as time goes on and the authentic copies begin to break down scratch Mark whatever eventually the only way we could ever revisit these some of these fantastic games would be beer reproduction
The games are already preserved as ROMs, you could argue that making repros is not really "preservation" but unecessary pollution since these games can just be played on one cart or even on the PC instead of making so many plastic cases for them.
I actually appreciate that repo carts use different plastic because it makes it easy to have a potential seller hold the cart up to the light for DS cardts and know if it's real or fake.
This only works for 8 games, because only 8 games use the NTR-031 cartridges, which is black(red or purple when held up to light). Everything else uses the NTR-005 Cartridges, which is grey and not translucent.
@@Taegotgames No, most official DS games use NTR-005 carts. The only ones that use NTR-031 carts were mostly games that used IR, and there were only like 7 games that used that.
before covid i wanted to do something that kid-me never got a chance to do: complete the gen 3 pokedex. I bought an authentic copy of pokémon emerald and a gameboy advance SP and began chugging away at it before realizing i would need more games to trade with to complete the pokedex. When i saw how much game prices went up during covid, I couldn’t justify the huge price for these used games. Since FR/LG/R/S/E all trade with each other normally (whether being a reproduction cart or not), i decided to buy a repro set of all the gen 3 games and am now working on completing my pokedex. If i want to transfer the pokémon up, I have to send them all through my legit Emerald and send them to a legit gen 4 game, but that’s not an issue for me. In my eyes, I put in the work to get those pokémon and they’re real to me and as legitimate as any other pokémon (even when transferred all the way up to pokémon home).
@@ozmond The ROMs on the repro carts themselves are likely the exact same ROMs as the legitimate ones. The reason why you cannot transfer Pokemon up to a gen 4 game from a repro cart is because of the physical hardware difference between a repro cart and a legit cart. It has nothing to do with the actual Pokemon being "illegitimate." The fact that he traded all the Pokemon from the repro carts to a legit Emerald cart makes the Pokemon entirely legitimate.
I would love the original copy over a reproduction copy any day but like you said I just want to play the game without spending hundreds of dollars. I think part of the problem is the people selling them for these ridiculous prices making them inaccessible. It’s why I now buy a physical copy of every Pokémon game while it’s still available in store because I know in 10 years it’s going to cost an arm and a leg. I don’t do it to sell later on I do it so I can replay it when I want to feel nostalgic. Sadly I never owned a copy of HGSS so I move only ever had roms and pirated copies
That's also why I like to have physical pokemon games. It won't stay market price after the production stops, it just shoots up instantly. I remember I never got hgss because my parents couldn't afford it since it stayed market price until it was gone, then just instantly 35-50 at GameStop loose...I don't think I'll ever get my hands on them, unless I get really lucky at a thrift shop or yard sale. I also missed dpp because well yeah I could only get maybe 3-4 games a year due to cost. But I kinda miss the days of just walking into GameStop and grabbing something used I can afford that looks fun. I honestly wouldn't mind repros because it's insane to pay 90$ for an N64 game in a local retro game shop. Loose even. I'm at the point in life I wouldn't care if it's fake or not just as long as I can play it lol
To be honest, my older sister pretty much has every single mainline pokemon game that she has bought since the gameboy/gameboy color days, and we have ALL of the original gen 1 cartridges that still work to this very day. Although I don't bother with it considering it can only hold one save file and I'd hate to erase my older sister's 100% completed save file for me to try out the game. So I want to back it up first safely before I use the cart for my own purposes. But then again, I don't play mainline pokemon series anyway, so it's not really something I'm interested in getting and such. The Hey You Pikachu game on the other hand I had to buy a legit copy of it because the emulator still hasn't figured out how to get the microphone part of the N64 to work properly (and it's been years since any work on it has been made. heck, even the DS's emulated microphone is still buggy at best.)
I've unfortunately had a decent number of my Pokemon games stolen over the years by former "friends", presumably because of the price, and chances are I'm never going to re-buy them due to the pricing. I've owned (almost) every single one at one time or another, and still own a lot, but many are gone, too. Red, Blue, Gold, Silver, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Leaf Green, XD: Gale of Darkness, Diamond, Platinum, Black, Black 2, Trozei, Ranger, and Conquest have all been stolen over the years, and considering I have to live in a pretty small apartment and if I want to afford my hobbies at all I can't ever go out to eat or do things, like hell I'll be able to afford copies of ALL those games. While I prefer the original copies, at that point, repro is pretty much the only way to go. On the bright side, I recently came across and ordered a bootleg of the Pokemon Conquest Ultimate romhack on aliexpress, so I'm kind of looking forward to that. I almost always prefer flashing my own cartridges with something like a GBxCart RW, but as far as I'm aware no one's made publicly available reader/writers and writable NDS cartridges yet (other than something like an R4, which just isn't the same), so it seems like it'll be a neat addition to the library.
this is exactly what happened to me i even went to the extent of opening my repro copy of pokemon diamond i was pretty devastated but it doesnt bother me much because my beloved pokemon are in there and i will still keep it i spent 167 hours in that cartridge in my opinion, the fun you had with the game, beats whether its a repro or not and makes it worth it.
If you have a hacked 3DS or some third-party tools, you can back up your Save files from your game. Not all repros are necessarily going to be compatible, but I was able to back up my save from a buggy bootleg of HeartGold.
I have a copy of Pokémon Platinun that I got for a good price. I'm not sure whether it's authentic or a repro, but it works perfectly, and I am able to transfer Pokémon to gen 5 as well as receive mystery gifts. So if it's a repro, the reproducer did a dang good job.
Can repos actually copy readability? I always figured that that was just something that couldn't happen, but I never knew exactly why because I'm not a game or component maker lol
@@asherjohnston8263 thats just not true bro. How do you know its a repo ? Because I would guarantee any cartridge that can transfer and accept mystery gifts is 100% real
I own a repro cart of Conker’s Bad Fur Day on n64, and while it doesn’t outright bother me that it’s a repro, I do have a desire to get my hands on an authentic cart since for me there’s a sense of wonder and accomplishment getting the “real deal”
Lmao when reading that you had a cart of conkers bad fur day I was initially extremely impressed and confused until it clicked with me that you meant a cartridge and not a cart full of just conkers bad fur day games
I recently bought a Pokémon Ruby repro, since I bought it to play, and I didn't really know the pitfalls of buying repro cartridges. The save feature felt flaky. It would freeze up the whole game for a few seconds. But since this was my first experience playing gen 3, I just went along with it. Until the game wouldn't unfreeze while saving, and I lost my save game. Since then I've been really careful to avoid repro carts.
I had a copy of platinum that I didn't know was fake and in one playthrough it bugged out right before the E4, and in a second playthrough a key story event did not load meaning I could not progress. Fun times
I think a big problem is quality on repro carts, especially for Pokemon games, and ESPECIALLY for gen 3. Most gen 3 repros you'll find are cheap Chinese bootlegs that are programmed to save in a way that's different from the real copies, which is where most of the problems come from. If you buy a higher quality board (I prefer InsideGadgets boards) then you'll generally have a better experience. That said, a higher quality board means higher costs, and it's kind of prohibitively expensive for the most part. I use them for romhacks, since I need to be able to update the game, but if I were just playing the original games, I'd be cautious of Pokemon repros, and avoid GBA Pokemon repros like the plague.
i will NEVER forget the bootleg Pokemon Diamond I got one time and Fanges, the starter "Pokemon" you get in it. as a kid, I was really confused how insanely different it was from red, blue, green which i was able to complete. Damn felt like a fever dream.
I stopped feeling bad about getting repros after I bought Mother 3 for GBA and loved the experience as opposed to playing an emulated copy on a laptop or phone. I now added Metroid Zero Mission and Fusion without regrets to my collection. I wish I could have the authentic copies, for that single point, it does feel a bit scummy to own these. But the experience I have playing these is no different than someone whose playing with authentic copies except to flex that they have an authentic copy. If there wasn’t a $80-150 difference in price to own authentic vs. repro then I’d be all for authentics; that’s just not the reality. Great video man !
I refuse to pay over $50+ on a game that is almost 15 years old. Especially when I used to own it and paid less for a brand new one back in the day. My (original) platinum cartridge became unreadable a couple of years ago and I just replaced with a $5 bootleg one off of aliexpress and it works just fine. I would highly reccomend anyone else to do same, those ebay prices are not justifiable.
I remember buying reproductions of SoulSilver and HeartGold a couple months ago and they were honestly pretty awful. They would brick savegames often and had the chance of also bricking Local and Online play if you trade too early in the game. I am going to stick to R4's and M3's for a little while but when the time comes I hope to own authentic HG and SS copy's.
Houston I have a problem I want to buy repo Pokemon Diamond even though I already have a full legit Pokemon Black 2 cuz I paid $100 but I don't think it's a need for Pokemon Diamond cuz cuz I just needed to put my save file from Twilight menu onto there so I can transfer my Pokemon to Black 2
My bootleg HeartGold is disappointing. The only bug I've noticed is that starting the Voltorb Flip crashes the game, but it's also just disappointing seeing that the cartridge has the wrong color.
@@AlexsGoogleAccount I've been playing on an R4 card since I commented last year lol. It's worth the money, everything works and my brother's been able to complete the games multiple times without issue. He's even been able to use rom hacks to add replayability.
I think having repro carts are completely fine, personally I own a reproduction cart of Pokemon Red and will be getting a repro cart of mario 64, it's something I wanted to ensure I have without breaking the bank, and while I am happy to own authentic copies of Red and Crystal. Knowing I don't have to really play them as much due to the age is great! As it preserves their build and ensures I can still play the games, even if the cart itself isn't authentic!
Man I’m glad that I have emerald, platinum, soul silver, and white all with original boxes and they’re all real, purchased when I was a kid. It’s crazy how valuable these things are now, I’m very glad I held on to my original copies
I've definitely got a couple repros in my own collection, biggest one that comes to mind is one of the Mother 3 fan translation. Can't say I had a bad experience with it either, game plays perfectly and they used the shell of another GBA cart so it feels like a legitimate cart would. They even included a little hand written note thanking me and drew a little doodle, definitely someone who just wants to provide something for people like me. Besides that though, I usually just look for a flashcart or another way to run ROM's off of external storage. Pretty much always works as I expect it to, and in the case of Pokémon I can just take my save file and transfer stuff through programs people have made to work around those features not working.
I have an old repro Emerald version. It doesn't bother me that it's a repro (It was a gift), but one of the major downsides to them (at the time anyway) is that they had a tendency to just randomly yeet your savedata for no reason.
Id think there are viable reasons for repros to exist beyond just the price gouging of authentic copies. There are a couple games that simply just didnt leave japan so having fan translations physically are pretty cool. Theres also the odd case with gba ffs where their sound quality was scuffed during their ports, well there are fan patches for sound quality and some of these “remastered” versions are sold as repros. Its not only about authenticity, repros offer experiences that are not available for other reasons than a dollar sign
repros of fan translations of jp only games im fine with as long as the fan translators are fine with the repros or even better, are the ones selling them
Your point about piracy is soooooo true! I have purchased all the pokemon games on my DS and I LOVE the fact that they made this available. But I have no clue why they wouldn't want to cash grab selling old pokemon games for $10-15 per game on the Switch. The only reason I ROM some games is because I just can't find an affordable way to play the real version easily. Great vid!
I think I have a couple Pokemon repos for the GBA that I unknowingly bought a few years back. Didn't even know reproduction carts were a thing until way later. They worked perfectly fine surprisingly.
I knowingly purchased a copy of the Castlevania double pack on GBA (copy including both Aria Of Sorrow & Harmony of Dissonance.) The price of an original cartridge was around $80 or so, and the repro just $15. Once it arrived I was SHOCKED at how nice the build quality was! The plastic/label was indistinguishable from an original. I even opened up the cartridge and the internals seemed comparable to what Nintendo would actually use. It genuinely felt like I had picked up a legit copy, without anyone else years of wear and tear/cheeto dust fingers all over it. I never had any issues with saving or crashing and there were no load time errors. I've had this repro for approx 4 years now and my saves are still there and everything plays the way it should. I've had a similar experience with another repro of Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. I understand that not all repros are created equally but I implore anyone who is interested in playing gba games on original hardware to at least give them a shot. $15 is a drop in the bucket compared to the prices that some of these things go for now. Hope this helps!!
Pokemon games are the only games I've ever bought in the aftermarket, and I was sure to buy authentic copies due to the known compatibility issues with reproduction carts. Unfortunately, some of the authentic carts had tons of hacked Pokemon on them, but after resetting the save file I was good to go. Fortunately, there were no signs of the game itself having been hacked, so that's good news. I'd consider buying a repro if there weren't any known compatibility issues with it. The closest I've come to buying a repro was when I bought a limited official production run of the original Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii. It was CAN$80 when the going rate on Ebay for an authentic copy was over CAN$250. I wonder what the going rate for it is now with the remaster on Switch readily available.
I once sold a copy of Pokémon Sun to a CeX, would’ve been down in back in like 2017, South Wales. I thought it would be nice if I sold the game with all the Pokémon on it since I had a game shark, and cheated all of them onto the save file, but I had accidentally left a lot of unhacked Pokémon I had gotten from previous playthroughs or from wonder trade since I did a lot of wonderlockes when they were popular, still miss that save file and everything I lost. Moral of the story don’t cheat I guess? Idk
@@ethancampbell9096 I got the Switch Remaster for $10 at Walmart when someone accidentally put it on clearance online back in March. Thank God I was working that day and a kid wanted to buy it. I worked in Electronics and I almost didn’t sell it to him because I knew it was a mistake but I was given the okay when I was told it was a mistake done by someone higher up and found out it was a US wide mistake.
My first Pokemon Emerald was a repro from a toystore, I got into Gen III much later after Gen I and skipped Gen II entirely when I got a PS1. It was a good experience but I was disappointed that berries didnt grow. At some point I got hold of a legit copy but I still kept the repro
if you had a dry internal battery issue, it was a genuine emerald cartridge. you’d just have to replace the internal battery and reset the save file to get everything working, or work w an RTC if you had a DS.
@@DriftingGoose I have an authentic copy of Emerald and the berries don't grow because the internal battery is dead. If this is the case, Shoal Cave also won't work as intended with the tides and you won't be able to get a Milotic iirc. Otherwise it's playable. You can replace the battery with a bit of soldering or I've heard of people using conductive glue or electrical tape as well.
I recently discovered some of the Pokemon games I bought when I first got back into back in 2017 are fake. I think the part that bothers me the *most* is that they were sold as real games. If the sellers mentioned that they are not genuine copies I think I would feel better about it. They have played fine thus far, but it just feels dirty knowing I got scammed.
Personally, I feel that emulating games is THE way to experience the older pokemon games. Especially considering all the quality of life features you can action replay into some of the roms like instant dialogue, instant xp, etc. On top of that, there's also the plethora of romhacks like Renegade Platinum or Stormsilver that reinvent the classic experience. And on top of this, it's all free. Obviously it's not the same as owning a cartridge but you don't have to worry about damaging it or losing it.
Emulation was fine by me until i wanted to complete the emerald pokedex and gold symbol every battle frontier facility. It just felt like the accomplishment would be diminished if i did it on an emulator. The victory would feel hollow. I ended up settling for repo carts to accomplish it because im not spending $200 per cart. I do prefer the Drayano remakes to the original though. They are most definitley the best way to enjoy Gen 4 if you appreciate a challenge.
I own exactly one repro NDS cartridge, and it's one of those combo cartridges with a ton of games. Why? Some of the games on it were never even released in Europe (where I live), and getting them was a pain even back then when the NDS was still somewhat popular. I don't even want to know what I have to pay to get my hands on a legit copy of, let's say, Pokemon Conquest nowadays. There's also all of the NDS era Pokemon games on there, which is great if I want to experience the game again without deleting my original file on the legit version. Because the only thing more painful than paying 100€+ for a game that retailed at 40€ is paying 100€+ for a game that retailed at 40€ WHICH YOU ALREADY OWN A COPY OF. I paid 30€ for my cartridge, but considering how many games are on it, I see it as more of a service fee in this case. Could I buy a blank cartridge myself, look up all the games I want on it individually to find the game files, and put them on there? Maybe. Do I want to do so if I could pay someone 30€ to do it for me? No.
Where did you get those cabinets and what are they called? I'm looking for a way to store my game collection in a more compact way and your cabinets with the shelfs on the inside of the doors looks like a great way to do that!
I don't currently have any reproduction carts but in the past I have been known to use them as a placeholder for a particularly hard to come by or expensive game until I can get my hands on an authentic copy
I personally wouldn’t buy a repo game. I feel “wrong” owning it. I want the original good quality one. I am a collector and own 95% of all my childhood games though. I am looking to buy Pokémon Alpha Sapphire because I accidentally donated mine(😑). Thankfully cart only looks to be $30. I do see repos go for less, but I feel better having the real one. Just my opinion/feeling on the matter. Great video!
am i trippin, how do you spot platinum repros like in the thumbnail? those are remarkably similar, only thing i see is the contrast in pokemon logo outline?
Ngl, the only reason why I care if my game is authentic is for things like Mystery Gifts and being able to trade/travel my Pokémon across different versions. If the fake version was able to do everything the authentic version was able to do, then I’d just buy the fake version without hesitation.
I have a reproduction soul silver cartridge. It works well, you can trade, receive and play through the game with no save corruptions(yet). The only issue I’ve had is some of the older ds systems have trouble reading it. It’s insane that these games go for so much now. DS systems have seen a inflation in price too. I’ve seen used 3DS XL systems go for $200+. You could’ve bought it new 3 years ago for that price.
tbh for ds just buy a n3ds/n2ds xl (ll if you don't mind region as jpn ones are cheaper and you can mod em) and an r4 card (research which ones are legit as there''s repros for those now -_-) and just play dumps or pirate some. no point in paying for a fake experience as repros have become better over the years... the day they begin makine ntr-031 carts is when i stop buying them.
To get around older consoles not reading it, start new game and get to the point of where you can move then soft reset and it will load your save file no problem.
i recently bought a soul silver cartridge at game stop (in person) for 89.99. it was pretty expensive but i really wanted it to complete my gen 4 collection. i have a legit copy of diamond (japanese version i got for like $13-18 from ebay), pearl, platinum, heartgold and soulsilver. i've had the same pearl, platinum and heartgold english copies since 2010-2011. the soulsilver cartridge i bought had a lot of trouble reading at first, but it was 100% legit because i could trade to it from my heartgold copy. i rubbed the pins with a cotton boll with a drop of 90% alcohol and it worked like a charm! it reads perfectly without fail now.
I recently just bought a repro Emerald cart. I don't usually consider doing that, partly because the real thing is 10x better. However, I did have an Emerald cart waaaaay before the price hikes, so I ended up getting my copy for about £30, wasn't fussed with that, I love Emerald the most still to this day. I broke that copy using the wrong flux to change the battery, so the whole board basically corroded hard, rusted lots of the chips etc. I was gutted, and I was planning to potentially get a new one, which would be real, but I can't really be bothered to go through the hassle again. I'm actually a gamer before a collector, so it doesn't matter to me if I don't have a collection piece. As long as the cart plays like normal, then I'm more than happy to have a repro.
I bought a repo platinum from eBay it came in the case and all the paperwork it looks so good I couldn’t believe it was a repo, even the boxes shiny details are spot on, the thing which is even more bizarre is that it can trade with other games I don’t understand how it’s possible
This was a very interesting video. I enjoyed your perspective on it because you went much more in depth then "the game is fake so it's bad". I have a pretty big collection of games spanning over every nintendo console, ps1, ps2, and the original xbox, and among some of those games are some reproduction carts or 'repros'. I honestly don't mind because I'd much rather buy a copy of a game that feels or looks slightly weird compared to an authentic copy for $15, then shovel out over $200 for a game that's completely trashed and barely works but IS authentic or even having to spend more to get the same game in a cleaner state. To me, I usually turn to repros when the cost of the game by itself is much more then the original selling price of a game. I agree that it's not ok for someone to make money selling other people's work, but when it comes to repros and the company not doing anything to preserve their games or make them available, I think when you buy a repro you're more so paying for the price of the custom cartridge and the labor they put into making it more available for people to experience. The company isn't losing any more money then they already are by not making it available. I'd 100% disagree with switch piracy, but when it comes to older games, I think preservation is important. For example, there is currently no way to play the original Mario Party 64 trilogy without having the original hardware. The games at the time went for $90-$120 each for authentic copies. So I turned to repros and managed to buy them for $20 each, paying less then a single authentic copy for all three. And for that reason, I was actually happier with the reproductions carts. If you look close and compare them to official cartridges you could notice some differences, but to me I'm still popping a cartridge of the game into my original 64 to play with my friends/family. One thing with reproduction carts is that some sellers can be pretty sketchy when trying to buy. Like you said, things like ending up with the completely wrong game. But I'm glad we have reproductions because there are so many games I've gotten to experience on the official hardware that I wouldn't have gotten to without them.
If the game I want is impossibly rare and expensive, I'd go for a flashcard. Repros are just waste of plastic and space IMO. The exception is for unreleased games, like Star Fox 2, or translated cartridges (for games that never left japan, for example), I'm totally fine with a Tales of Phantasia, Seiken Densetsu 3 or Final Fantasy 5 repro cartridges, in english, for the american SNES model. There's one situation where I think repros are kinda acceptable too: When the original game was buggy as hell. On top of my head I can think of Lufia 2, wich received a rushed localization, so there are menu bugs, graphical corruptions and other problems not present in the original japanese game. If the console is disc based, I'd burn copies or mod them to run games from other sources, like HDD, SD card, etc. I don't really like emulation, and avoid it like the plague. If I can, I'll definitely try to purchase at least the console.
The only downside I see to flashcarts are games that require certain hardware from the cartridge (like SF2, as you mentioned, and the Gen 2 remakes of Pokemon, along with Gen 5, which include IR transceivers for communication).
I have about 3 R4 cartridges with many games in each one and the truth is that having them doesn't bother me but I'm always afraid of losing my saved files or that the games stop working after a while (because it already happened a few times) :(
I had one of those 50+ games in one cart for the DS more than a decade ago. Needless to say, my game corrupted and I was devastated when I lost several hours of my Pokémon Emerald game. Now as an adult, I just buy legitimate physical copies or from the digital store. Bought all the games I wanted on the 3DS before the eShop closed so I’m content with the games I have now.
I was unfortunate enough to buy a used copy of Platinum at a GameStop years ago for $30 and it happened to be a reproduction. I got a good way through the game before it completely crashed and stopped working. I was so upset that GameStop of all places sold me a fake copy and refused to give me a full refund
i have a fake version of the minish cap on gba, i really don't mind it! i have played through the game 100% 3 times over the years and there have been 0 issues, yes. the build quality is worse. but that does not take away the enjoyment i got out of it.
Great video one thing I was hoping you were going to cover is how you tell the difference? I’ve been looking over the past few days on eBay and I don’t want to take people word for it. I would rather there be a way to check.
I have the originals from when I was a kid. Actually a few copies of heartgold and soulsilver from when the price was low. But in 2021, I got a repo of every game from GB, GBA, and DS. They are all mostly fine with the exception of the Silver. It is annoying that the infrared sensor on the Heartgold and Soulsilver. Also, these ones are able to trade for some reason.
I’m so happy my idiot kid self never lost my copy of platinum, it to this day is still my favorite Pokémon game of all time. I replayed it recently after being extremely disappointed with sword & shield and I had so much more fun playing it. Sure it’s far slower but you at least feel like you are earning your progression with the limited EXP share and not being able to get tons of XP candies from the max raid dens
I usually try to go for real copies, but when the prices of the original are insanely inflated, I really don't think repros are that bad of an option. I got a reproduction Pokemon Yellow at a con partially because I considered the possibility that it could actually play better than genuine old hardware with the known internal battery issue.
personally, I just bought a fake copy, the person told me it wasn't a real one, but the only thing that cared for me, is the feeling and the experience to play the game (and the original sold by the same shop was twice the price WITHOUT the case) so I took it and I love it! It's fun and work just as well as all my other games vintage games! I was just worried that the game would not work 'cause nintendo do things that block fake ones. But it didn't! I was SO happy! THIS is what thruly matters for me! 😌 *And the quality is nice!
I ended up getting a couple repros of heartgold when I couldn't find my original copy and didn't wanna pay so much to replace what I had since release (eventually did find it and am currently playing through it again). The only issues I've had are voltorb flip crashing the game, and since i started one of them on my 3ds I can only play that file on the 3ds, it won't load on any regular ds systems. Otherwise the repro plays fine (halfway through kanto so far on the 3ds locked one with no other issues or crashes outside game corner), trades fine (used them to get the other 2 starters over to my legit), and everything else that I can see works
my two biggest problems with repro's is that you may be indirectly funding organised crime and that they are often sold as originals scamming people trying to fine real copies.
I live in the Philippines and as a child who had no idea where to buy games, I got to have a lot of reproduction/fake cartridges of GBA games. I was in denial that they were fake since they were bought at the big supermarkets at our place. Think Target. Although they were 1/4th the price of original games. The old reproduction cartridges(around 10-15 years ago) all used batteries for their save files. Majority of the GBA carts reproduction nowadays uses flash saving, which solved a significant problem they had in the past. There are specific problems for carts though. Fire Red and Leaf Green are probably the most ideal repro carts if you consider playing FRLG in original hardware(Some GBA prices are cheaper than these games today) since they don't have a real time clock. Because there are no batteries in Ruby and Sapphire Reproductions, you are locked from Day and Night cycles. Pokemon Emerald has it worst since your progress in the Battle Frontier gets reset whenever you restart your game. It is still possible to complete all symbols but you will need to do it in an ironman fashion wherein you do not turn off the game. I tried completing the Battle Frontier many years ago like that but I still wasn't able to get the Gold symbols for Tower, Factory, and Arena. The battery died before ahahaha. But that shouldn't be a problem for newer repro carts. Also, the new reproduction carts look good. Their stickers are prone to scratching, but at least there are some effort done to make them more similar to the originals. As for transferring from repro carts to DS games, I haven't tried this personally, but apparently it deletes the save files of the reproduction carts. This is apparently due to where are the save files are usually stored, but I don't understand the deeper mechanics behind it. In addition, there are no backup saves in repro carts. My recommendation will be, if all you want to do is play Gen III in original hardware, then Reproduction carts are PRETTY GOOD since you don't have to fork over $50-$150. They have shortcomings as mentioned above but I think this method is more authentic than playing via Emulators. IF you want to play a variety of games though, although a little expensive, I'd recommend you buy a FlashCart(Everdrive or Ez Flash Omega, the Definitive Edition is out but it's significantly more expensive than the former) As for the DS Repro carts.... the only thing I find of value there is if you want to have a reproduction case of Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, since these games often comes with a repro case as well(sadly most of these are sold as if they're original, but the prices should be a dead giveaway if their very cheap) The Gen IV Repros(DPP and HGSS) tend to be clunky while the Gen V repros(BW B2W2) are just horrible, they could hardly even count as repros since they are just sd card readers. If you don't want the repro cases that comes wth DPP(gen IV) I'd strongly recommend just using an R4. If you want to collect the 3DS games... now might be a good time since they are still cheap hahaha. They'll become very expensive too sooner or later. I hope this wall of text help someone and WELL done Snivy102! Great video.
For the longest time I wondered why my copy of Pokemon Platinum felt... wrong. The ESRB E was missing. Everything about the cart checked up fine, until I realised I got a US box, but an australian cart. (I'm in the US) Still works, still played and had a blast haha, good to know I have an Authentic australian copy
Although i originally purchased Pokemon Ruby, Fire Red, Diamond, Platinum, Heart Gold, and Black from Gamestop, I lost all of them overtime except for Fire Red. I recently purchased a repro off Amazon of Platinum and bought an original Japanese copy of Crystal locally, both for $20. Seeing your collection made me disappointed at 10 year old me for not taking care of my old games. It’s impressive!
i own repro gen 3 pokemon games, but i also have authentic one becuase occasionally the repros would crash and lose the saves, but anytime my sister wanted to play pokemon with me she could just grab one of the clones and play along, so it was handy to have them but i never played them a whole lot
Thanks for making this video! Yea, I need to have an original copy, first print is preferred because I don't like the obvious red label/green label. I just can't unsee it once I have it. The reproduction copies just don't do it. I know what an authentic copy looks like it and having a fake just doesn't bring the same nostalgia.
For the Pokémon games, not being able to use the GBA stuff for DPP would be a big deal for me. For most other repros, I’d feel way more comfortable buying them if I could have proof they work just as well as the original- since I’d only have the sellers word to go off of, I don’t feel comfortable buying them online currently.
My copy I got off eBay was a good price that didn’t come with a case. When putting the card in my 3DS I noticed it would kinda get stuck which was super odd. My friend told me it was fake and I was mildly disappointed, not because it was fake, but because of how hard it was to put in my 3DS. The game worked fine and that was what I was okay with haha
Ironically enough, the intro of this video is surprisingly accurate to how i somewhat felt when discovering the Pokemon platinum i bought on Ebay was a repro. At the time i bought it, I also lost some other pokemon games (which i bought the legit copies of now thx to my lesson of my repro Platinum). Looking at the this repro card now, i always think it sucks that its not the original, but it plays the game and honestly, all i wanted was some form or copy of Platinum along with the other copies of pokemon games i lost, so i definitely don’t mind it. It works fine, plays well and never froze on me, so its a pretty good repro. Yes it sucks i supported the practice of reselling a game someone didn’t pay for, but i learned my lesson then and I honestly will keep a sharper eye out for stuff like this, as i plan to get a legit Platinum copy sometime in the future, hoping the prices lower around the low 100’s atleast.
I think my Playinum is an original. I don’t recall buying it or how much I paid, but it has all the markings of an original and plays beautifully. But if it is a Repo, then it makes the case for them for sure. I do have a Repo copy of Fire Red and other than a slight stutter when saving, it works perfectly.
I do have a reproduction copy of both pokemon black and white. It wasn't being advertised as the real thing and both games were on the same cart. It even had an ejectable micro SD card where I could put more games on it. I do not regret buying it, I actually like having it. It feels amazing being able to play these games on the original hardware
5:14 I actually would really like a video about you going on and on about your thoughts on video game piracy. Your videos are so chill and relaxing I love them :)
I was never really bothered by my repro Pokemon Emerald (got it second hand from gamestop in the mid 2000's so definitely an older one). I used to think it was cool that the sticker on the cartridge had a slightly different pattern than my sibling's. But a few weeks ago I wanted to start a new Emerald one and my save file was wiped. I made a couple new ones and they also wiped, like a gen 2 cartridge with a dead battery. All my other gen 3 cartridges still save functionally, even though they are older. This has made me much more wary about fakes, at least for platforms where the save data is held within the game.
I just recently bought reproductions for all the Pokémon games and I’ve been really enjoying playing them. I haven’t had much issue except for so far and my copy of Pokémon blue sometimes when I deposit Pokémon into my boxes, their names get all weird like a missing no. But no other issues I would love to have authentic copies of these games, but the prices are ridiculous.
I would buy those repro carts if they just made them in similar quality with all the features. It would be amazing if we could get modern repro carts built with higher quality than the original. With that, people like me that just want the game can snag those, and real collectors dont have to worry about people like me getting the original.
Only repros I'd buy were mods/translations of unreleased games. This is starting to change though with newly released "official" repros like the Wily Wars and Shantae GBC releases. I missed out on the first run of Wily Wars sales but I made sure to grab a Shantae gbc from LR. I really REALLY hope more games get released like this back on their original hardware. I'd kill for Capcom to do this for Tron Bonne.
as of now, i currently own four repro gba cartriddges. one bought intentionally, another 1 i recently discovered was a repro, and the remaining 2 are just speculations, considering i got them from the same seller (and feel exactly like my other repros). the one i bought deliberately was drill dozer, and while it was missing its defining feature, the rumble, i wasn't ready to pay the dreading 200 euro they were asking for an authentic, loose cartridge. and it came with an european rom exclusive to the wii u's virtual console, so that is pretty neat. the other ones... yeah, it felt like a kick in the nuts learning they are quote unquote "fake", but then i realized it never affected my experience too much. sure, one of them was a pokémon game, where it is objectively detrimental to play using a repro cartridge (eg: can't transfer pokémon, ingame time is locked, etc), but other than that, i never really noticed anything that could be off. specially with final fantasy v, my current most played gba game. i guess i fear the save data might corrupt at some point, and that i might also not be able to back up the saves on my laptop, but at this point in time, i am simply really happy i am getting to experience these games in real hardware at all, at a price point that honest to god mightve been the greatest deal ive ever seen (15€ for drill dozer, 6€ for final fantasy iv and v and 3€ for pokemon emerald)
I might consider one day getting a repro of a outragious expensive game, for now I'll stick to my collection as an excuse to play the one I already have. Great video! I like the way you speak calmly and wahtching you play banjo, haaa good times! hehe 😊
Although it may be a flawed way of thinking, if I’m gonna play a repro I might of well just buy a flash cart, or use an emulator. Because those get the same job done, have more options, and aren’t as flimsy. Although I understand why some would buy them. The only repro I’ve ever bought was a Megaman and Bass fan translation, mainly because it was a Japanese only game, (despite the fact that I’ve already took out the tabs in my SNES to play imports)
I usually have a mix between reps and reals, for example, the only game i prioritize being original on my gbc is Tetris because it means a lot to me, anything else can be fake as long as it works. But there is one and only console that i only buy originals. It is the n64. Im slowly building my collection
Great video! I think the discussion is really interesting, and I think that it brings up good points about what the value of the "real experience" is. When we see old games get more and expensive, often very sporadically, I think it's good to have competition in the form of repros for people who aren't really collectors and just want to enjoy a game they played as a kid or something. I have a decent chunk of the 3rd-5th gen Pokemon games that are really expensive right now, but I'm thinking about what I would do if I didn't and wanted to enjoy those games again. Pokemon emulation has come a long way since the old ROM hacking days. Now with emulation, you can trade and transfer between emulated versions of the game and real ones! They're hosted on servers like Wiimmfi, which removes the sting of not being able to transfer your buddies up to newer versions, or even just real copies of the games. If I'm honest with myself, even though playing Platinum on an actual console would be enticing, I think that I would settle for emulation when looking at the prices of current games. And I this extends beyond just games I've played in the past. If I want to go back and enjoy some of the older games in the series, the high prices of games that I don't even know if I would enjoy is daunting. I got into playing Mario Golf Toadstool Tour on Dolphin recently (because I saw that the new one wasn't very good and I thought it would be funny to play a better, older game out of spite), but if I did have a GameCube, the $80-$100 price tags are kind of ludicrous! It'll probably be a while before that price goes down, and would I really want to go through the headache of finding a real copy that was in good condition, or a repro that might be of shoddy quality? Not really! But I believe that the future of repros is bright. Making low volume PCBs is super easy nowadays, so if you just find a version of the original game, making copies of it is simpler now than ever, when it comes to cartridge based games of course. And with the proper tools, a skilled person like a modder who has an eye for quality versions of the original hardware could make PCBs that work just like the original, and even make good cartridges for them. Now, the problem becomes the paradox of having somebody who holds the authentic, original release of a game in high enough regard, and has the experience to make good copies of them, but also is ok with making and selling non-authentic copies. Somebody may come along who's willing to do that, but maybe not. This discussion could go for hours but I'm cutting my rambling ass off here. I'm excited for the future of reproductions of games, and all that comes with it. 👍
Firstly great video man, this is my first video i'm watching from you and i'm already really liking your content, keep up the great work. Now For me and repros, i usually do not buy them at all. I like having the authentic copy in my collection, though i do own a few repros. I got pokemon emerald, Sonic Advance, conkers bad fur day, paper mario 64 and sonic the hedgehog on NES. The only reasons i got conker and paper mario is that i really wanted to play those two games, and sonic advance and pokemon emerald, i got when i was little so i didn't even know they were repros until much later. As for sonic on the NES, i found it at a flea market and it looked kinda cool, but otherwise i don't buy repros unless for two reasons. Either it's an english fan translation of a japan only game(Like an english translated version of mother 3 for instance) or if it's just something bizzare that i find interesting(like sonic on NES), but other than that i'm avoiding repros and the ones i have in my collection, personally i'm having a hard time if i do consider them part of my collection or not. But yeah, that's my take on repros.
I'm pretty sure my Pokemon Pearl copy is a repro, or at least the first one I had because I had to replace it. This was because the first one would constantly freeze during gameplay and impede my progress so I eventually got fed up and had my dad replace it (i was like 8 when this all happened) and the one I own now crashes wayy less (and when it does crash it's mostly just due to it's old age). Though thats really my only issue I've had with repros personally, but it's also my biggest worry if I ever buy a repro
I own a repro copy of earthbound, and besides it not shipping with a battery, which i was able to simply put one in, it works just like an authentic copy.
Yes I own a few reproduction games myself. Didn’t know at the time what they were but since I’m a Pokémon collector the main point for me is wanting the original game. However my biggest issue with repro’s is that they have saving issues, and some don’t save or perform properly. Sometimes the audio on my repro doesn’t work properly and I have to reset the game in order for it to work properly. I overall just ended up feeling scammed.
My parents bought me and my brother Pokémon ruby and sapphire when we were little. One of the major issues with the game that I noticed was that I would get to the 8th gym or somewhere far into it and then the game would crash and delete my save. I've probably had 4-5 good playthroughs that got deleted, and I never delete my Pokémon saves. Later on I realized too that I had a fake copy as well. I always named my character glitch because of the amount of crashing and problems with the game. A year or two ago I decided to play through it and got to the elite four. I think taking the cartridge out of the ds while the game was still running could have been the problem. I tried to see if I could take the save off of the cartridge using an r4 card. I managed to get some random GBA, .sav, and a .SV1 file. The videos I watched explaining the process didn't mention getting a .SV1 file but I decided to get it just in case. After I transferred the random files to the r4 card, I checked to see if my save was still on the GBA cartridge but it was DELETED! I had gotten really attached to this run so I was worried. All I had was a bunch of random files of Pokémon ruby on my r4 card. I found out that the GBA file and the .sav could go into an emulator as long as they had the same names. But when I loaded the game the save was empty. It took a long time and lots of changing file types until I used a Pokémon save editor with the .SV1 file (I probably would never had gotten if it wasn't on chance). I was glad to see the save editor display my pc box full of Pokémon I had caught. I then converted .SV1 to .sav and managed to recover probably my last play of Pokémon ruby for GBA. It felt awesome to bring one small kilobyte save file, that could have been a bunch of random data that sat in some lost and forgotten folder, back to life. I did this all from videos and forum posts a decade ago that never really went in depth. Anyway, this is my experience with bootleg Pokémon games. Thanks for reading this far.
Tbh I don’t really mind having repos. The one reason that I can think of for having authentic copies is to send Pokémon you caught from 1 generation to the next keep in mind that you can trade Pokémon from repo to real if they’re from the same gen
Also if you live in Europe you can get a non English one for way cheaper. You can trade between an authentic and repro game. I found a German emerald locally for cheaper due to the fact most people locally don’t speak German
Haven't bought any repros yet, but I have been looking at getting basically all of mainline Pokemon games Gen 1-5 as repros just because of saving money but still getting the games. I'd eventually like to get authentic carts for the physical collection, but I'm not against saving hundreds of dollars buying repros for the time being and slowly work on authentic over time.
You can just install twilight menu++ on a dsi and download all the ROMS onto it. All for free. You can even use action replay cheats without the action replay.
I ruined my copy of Pokemon Emerald when I went to change the battery and I slipped with the solder and got it all in the the tiny little legs in one of the chips and broke one of the pins trying to rectify my error. So now I'm just hoping to get a replacement even if it is reproduction. Only thing I heard about those is that the clocks don't work in real time and (like you said in the video) the cart is apparently a millimeter too big to fit nicely in the gameboy. Hopefully that all changes for the better because I really don't want to pay hundreds for a game I got for like $10 secondhand back in the day.
This makes me feel more lucky that I kept my original dsi + games from when I was a kid. I think I have a packet of game cases too somewhere though most are empty.
Back in SNES era, my collection was pretty much made with bootleg games, I mean, I barely had any money at the time and the cost of the original games were waaay to expensive. So it really worth to buy like 10 pirated games instead one 1 original game, also, the games worked just fine, so there was no reason to get a original game instead. Years passed by and I bought my Nintendo DSi XL, so I started to collect pokemon games, the only time that I bought a repro card (really didn't knew), I had such a miserable experience because the game freezed all the time, and I decided to check forums and internet tutorials to get only original games. I never bought a bootleg since then.
I thought about buying repro games but in the end I just went with flash carts as it will be cheaper in the long run and allow to to easily try out games on the original hardware. I tried out the first Megaman Battle Network game on my GBA with a flashcart and I loved it.
I think the issue is really them not labeling it as a repro. I recently bought a repro phantasy star online on gamecube at a local game store that I visited it a lot and they disclosed it to me. Having the cheaper option is really cool, I just wish the quality is decent and doesn't crash/corrupt the save file like a lot of gba ones
My only repros are rom hacks that I willingly bought. Sadly, the typical issue of saving happened with Pokémon hardcore. I wasn’t doing well anyway, but man I was invested in the plot lol. I’d honestly love either a repro or a genuine of a few games, but in terms of ones like Pokémon with time features and save progress and trading, I’d prefer the ogs if I could ever afford it.
I think repros are a good way to cheaply keep a game 's legacyalive. Most of the time, the emulation is spot on and it'll play exactly like the original. Just think about a world without emulation. Nobody would be able to play any old title unless they had an original console and copy of the game.
I agree with you! I'd definitely would rather own the authentic version for the collector side of me. Glad some people label them as repro on ebay too, still waiting on trying to score a copy of White 2.
If you own a repro, does it bother you that you have a “fake” version of a video game, or is it something you don’t really think about? And if you don't own a repro, is it something you'd ever consider? Why or why not?
I have never gotten a repro but I was going to buy a Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver so I hope I don't get a repro
I thankfully don’t own any repros due to my obsessive comparisons and insistence on buying used games at their initial retail price, and I don’t think I ever will. If I ever wanted to play a game so badly that I’d ever even consider getting a reproduction, I’d probably just emulate it to scratch that itch for free until I could find a legit copy.
The idea used to bother me but after enjoying three separate games through repro emulation I don’t feel any regret. My wallet sure is happy too lol!
Hey, I got a platinum repro, from someone who was selling it because they thought it was legit at the time when they bought it from some one else, and I got it for 30 bucks, I agree repros are bad if you can get the games in easily, like I got a switch but no interest in new games, heck I bought old Mario games like Mario party 6 and 7 with legit copies, I believe 6 was 90 bucks but luckily 7 I got for 60, and I love the games, play it with my siblings and stuff, and of you told me I could play pokemon dungeon explorers of sky on the switch, I buy it in a heart beat, because I played darkness and never knew sky was definitive version of the game, but I can't find it unless I want to give around 80 to over 100 dollars to get it, it just sucks, so repros are good to play very old games that aren't supported any more, but bad for games you can easily to play on the new console, and for me, I'm not a collector, but I do want to play these old games I never knew or had money to play in, as a kid when I was younger
Well, my friend got me 2 repro's for my birthday in 2019, while I am thankful he got me games, when I try playing them I just can't seem to get the idea "Its a reproduction" out of my head. This leads me to stop playing the game. This friend I was talking about doesn't care weather his games are repro's or not though, even though his leaf green reproduction has had its save file corrupted countless times, he still resorts to getting a reproduction just for the sake of playing the game. Myself, I wish I would be able to do this as I'd save a LOT of money on games. But I just can't play a game fully knowing its a reproduction.
For me, I draw the line at selling fakes as genuine. I think as long as a game is clearly labeled as a reproduction, it's perfectly fine. Trying to disguise a reproduction as genuine is not okay.
100% this. That labeling is also extremely useful for those of us who actually *look for* repros. Personally, if the gameplay experience isn't worth the authentic game's price tag to me (and literally *no* game is worth $100+, imho), then I will actively seek out repros. Especially if the asking price is above the original retail price (adjusted for inflation). If an authentic copy of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap will run me $80+ on ebay, but I can get a perfectly functional repro for $15, you can bet I'm choosing the latter!
The existence of repros is also really awesome when it comes to fan-translated games. I can't get an authentic English-language cartridge for the original Star Ocean (SNES) or Magical Vacation (GBA), but both of those are available as repros. Playing a fan-translated game on official hardware instead of emulating? Heck yes!
Agree because selling the original for almost 200$ dollars is too much
agreed
Yes.
Once for Christmas my mom got tricked by someone claiming its authentic and it was for 50$
They're good enough for me. If they play the game, and my save data is safe in there, as it has been on 99% of the *newer* bootlegs I bought, they're ok for me.
And I prefer to give C15 to some chinese dude which had to build a new copy of a game which isnt produced anymore than give 300USD to a random dude which found its molden cart which he threw on a drawer 10 years ago. Also, if nintendo wants money from it, why aren't they selling it?
Agree with your points exactly
You are absolutly right. But about Nintendo not selling it anymore is because the demand for older games is in comparison way to low to make enough profit and company's (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc.) have to push the industry so people buy new console's and new games
Agreed. If an authentic copy of a retro game is much over $50-$60 it just isn’t worth it. I don’t care about the originality of the plastic cart at that point, I just want to play the game on real hardware.
@@psplayer1344 same, although there are certain games i just wont bother with if i cant find a real one, this is mostly pokemon games or other such games that have more complex save systems or hardware interactions, the repros rarely get that stuff right, mostly i use roms and isos instead of repros though
that why emulator exist, because to play the game, you have get the console, and the console is overpriced af
I actually have a couple DS repros. The ones I got actually came with reprints of all the different papers that came in the case, which I think is pretty neat. I think repros are awesome when they're being advertised as repros, but when they try to pass as authentic copies, that's when I think it's an unambiguously bad thing.
Fair. Yeah. I've thought about buying repros of the GB/GBC Pokemon games. But, I KNOW they're repros. I'd be getting 'em off Etsy or AliExpress or something for like $5 each. I wouldn't exactly be happy if I bought one, thinking it was legit, and it wasn't.
For the people that are interested and aren't tech-savvy enough to hack their systems or run an emulator on their computer or phone, reproductions are a cool option. They don't personally interest me, but I can see their value. The moment Nintendo starts selling physical copies again, I'll consider the criticism against repros. Until then, idgaf.
@@Lucifronz My only thing with Repros really, is, they're neat and all. And like I said above, I wouldn't really mind buying a few cheapo ones just to have 'em. But, at the same time, you could get a flash cart. They're more money, sure. But for like, the price of one or two modern games (depending on the console), you can get a cartridge to toss roms onto and play on unmodded consoles, and they work exactly the same as the real thing.
A flash cart is essentially a repro, but with any game or multiple games you want on it. Like one of those old bootleg multicarts, but way higher quality, and you can put your own games on it. Including rom hacks and things.
Not gonna lie, playing rom hacks, or betas and things, on real hardware, is super neat. Like, I loaded the old Pokemon Gold/Silver Spaceworld '97 demo, on my real Game Boy Color, and had a blast. Played through it properly, then ran around for like 2 hours exploring the unfinished game.
And before anyone says "but that requires the user to have some knowledge of tech", I mean, technically, yes. But it's literally just "Get Micro SD card, toss roms on it, put SD Card into flash cart", then it's done. You put the cart into the console and pick a game.
I'm in the "will it actually work" camp of repro worries. I'm mostly after Pokémon, but that runs into transfer issues for mons. For others like the GBA fire emblem games, I'm always worried that some obscure anti-piracy will show up and screw me over after hours of play. I emulate in those cases...
Trading SHOULD work with repros. It works fine using flash carts. It's still the same game, loaded the same way as the original. And the console still thinks the real game is loaded.
But yeah. Even without considering trading, repros are kind of a 50/50 shot at whether it's going to work right or not. Sometimes they're damn-near perfect. Game works fine, saves work fine, etc. But, sometimes they're not. Sometimes the rom on the cart is busted, or they copied it over badly, or saves just don't work at all. Or even worse, saves DO work, then 2 weeks later, your save just disappears.
I wouldn't go into buying a repro expecting a perfectly working game. I'd buy a repro expecting something that's not gonna be quite up to the quality of the real thing, expecting that there's at least a possibility that it won't work. And if it does work fine, there ya go. If it doesn't, it's a Repro, you probably didn't spend a ton on it.
Though honestly, your safer bet would be to just use a flash cart. For DS, you got the R4. For GB/GBC, the EverDrive GB is one I have and recommend. For GBA, the EZ Flash Omega is really good. You just put roms on a micro sd card, toss the sd card into the flash cart, and you're good to go. Pick a game and play. And it's the real game, being run on real hardware still, since it's loading the rom into memory and stuff just like a real cart would do.
@@John-Doe-Yo Games sometimes have "anti-piracy" stuff in them. It could be something obvious, like the game detecting it's pirated and throwing up a screen that you can't get past, meaning the game can't be played. Sometimes devs like to have fun with it and just ruin the game if it detects it's been pirated. GTA4 will have a permanent drunk camera effect that gets worse the longer you play. One of the Batman Arkham games disables your ability to glide making the game impossible to play right. Game Dev Tycoon actually lets you play for a bit, then suddenly all the games you create get pirated and you get no sales. Some games will mess with the physics of a game, or destroy the graphics.
Nowadays, people have figured out ways past it, at least in older games. I don't know exactly how common it is in modern current games.
It used to be the case that if the game read "Reproduction" in its Amazon or eBay listing you could rest assured knowing that it would be a high-quality game on working hardware and if it said anything else, then you're flipping a coin.
And that while DS reproductions were generally very good, GBA bootlegs were especially notorious for having bad hardware or taking shortcuts.
But I don't know if either of those are the case anymore.
A good quality DS reproduction (or flash cart) will have the communication features preserved. So Platinum for example would be able to go into the Underground with others, do multiplayer in the Battle Frontier, work with all Union Room Features, and migrate Pokemon from authentic Gen 3 cartridges through Pal Park (as well as getting the perks of the dual-slot encounters).
The only exceptions I'm aware of for features on a quality repro are that HeartGold/SoulSilver generally don't work with InfraRed (so no PokeWalker) and neither do the Gen 5 games (so no cGear features which need InfraRed).
Recently I've been trying to find an emerald cart to trade with Colosseum that won't break the bank, and that's my exact issue with repros. According to most of what I can find they can't trade with the gc, but they're soooo much cheaper that I've almost bought one just to try it anyways a few times.
I personally don’t buy repros as I like to trade up my Pokémon to newer gens after each play through. Finding out my Pokémon Emerald cartridge was a fake after 60ish hours of gameplay while trying to trade up really did a toll on me.
I don't but repros either If I don't buy the legit copy I just download a rom to play it on my modded 3ds
I agree with this, trading is a huge issue for me, I discovered my copies of ruby and sapphire were fake after this
If you get a good enough copy you can mate, I transferred my entire dex from a hacked Pokémon X to Pokémon bank, then to home and now I have a full shiny dex in sword and shield👌🏿😁 EDIT: actually I’ve done this with a fake omega ruby and ultra sun too and if I’m wrong then I was sold real copies for really cheap so Ive won either way🤷🏿♂️ but they did tell me they were all fake
@@xe8693 Fake 3DS cartridges don't exist yet.
Yeah, that trading to legit games bypass is a real hassle - especially with how long the trading animation is.
I'm ok with people pirating games, but I'm not really cool with people selling repro carts, especially if they don't make them obvious and if they try to sell them as real.
And they definitely do, its difficult to discern real or fake
I think that selling repro is not a problem if u are just putting the cost the "work" of making a repro, it means selling it almost with "production cost" even though it's easy.
@@aeryfirst4189 That's only _kind of_ ok if you make it _very_ obvious it's a repro.
I think repros are best for things like SNES Final Fantasy V (not released in US) or the uncensored Earthbound. Rare or unreleased things that don't exist.
They can make as much money as they want if they're honest about it. Happy there's another option out there to make playing the game cheaper than having to compete with collectors for copies.
I own all the Pokémon repros but I also own authentic copies of each as well. It honestly just comes down to that I wanted a way to nuzlocke on the games without losing my full national dex on each game. To me it’s honestly just emulating but with a more classic feel
Where’d you get all of them and how’d you find out if they were a reliable source for repros I want to get them all
There are better and cheaper ways of doing that though like modding a ds or using something like an r4 3ds card which is probably the easiest
@@senerio2124 I see where OP is coming from. With a modded 3ds you never know if Nintendo is going to throw a "fuck you" patch out there like they tried to do with 11.17-50 that modders found a way around in no time flat. They do that and somehow it just kills all CFW software, and your backed up save file using Checkpoint is boned. Repro for Nuzlocke and legit for 100% save file makes a lot of sense. Sure, you should probably still use Checkpoint to back it up, but you get my point.
I personally believe that collecting is a way of preserving preserving a game to reproduction games are good because it means more people will have access to this amazing games and will become easier for collection is to get into the hobby
Edit I also forgot to say that as time goes on and the authentic copies begin to break down scratch Mark whatever eventually the only way we could ever revisit these some of these fantastic games would be beer reproduction
Luckily, you can trade your pokemon from a repro to an authentic one so you can trade over to ds
The games are already preserved as ROMs, you could argue that making repros is not really "preservation" but unecessary pollution since these games can just be played on one cart or even on the PC instead of making so many plastic cases for them.
@@joshdoesnotadventure756 you can? I was pretty certain you couldn't though?
@@0008loser nah you can luckily but some bad reproduction carts don’t trade so you have to get a good repro
it's funny because while you're wasting money on buying overpriced copies I have pretty well every game on hard drives.
I actually appreciate that repo carts use different plastic because it makes it easy to have a potential seller hold the cart up to the light for DS cardts and know if it's real or fake.
This only works for 8 games, because only 8 games use the NTR-031 cartridges, which is black(red or purple when held up to light). Everything else uses the NTR-005 Cartridges, which is grey and not translucent.
@@Trio- I've only ever bought Pokemon carts so that's been my only experience
@@Trio- NTR-005 are repos?
@@Taegotgames No, most official DS games use NTR-005 carts. The only ones that use NTR-031 carts were mostly games that used IR, and there were only like 7 games that used that.
@@Trio- thanks man
before covid i wanted to do something that kid-me never got a chance to do: complete the gen 3 pokedex. I bought an authentic copy of pokémon emerald and a gameboy advance SP and began chugging away at it before realizing i would need more games to trade with to complete the pokedex. When i saw how much game prices went up during covid, I couldn’t justify the huge price for these used games.
Since FR/LG/R/S/E all trade with each other normally (whether being a reproduction cart or not), i decided to buy a repro set of all the gen 3 games and am now working on completing my pokedex.
If i want to transfer the pokémon up, I have to send them all through my legit Emerald and send them to a legit gen 4 game, but that’s not an issue for me.
In my eyes, I put in the work to get those pokémon and they’re real to me and as legitimate as any other pokémon (even when transferred all the way up to pokémon home).
Keep telling yourself that
@@ozmond damn, whatever you have to do to justify paying double for a 20 y/o game babes.
@@ozmond The ROMs on the repro carts themselves are likely the exact same ROMs as the legitimate ones. The reason why you cannot transfer Pokemon up to a gen 4 game from a repro cart is because of the physical hardware difference between a repro cart and a legit cart. It has nothing to do with the actual Pokemon being "illegitimate." The fact that he traded all the Pokemon from the repro carts to a legit Emerald cart makes the Pokemon entirely legitimate.
@@ozmond damn son you nasty
U know u can play gen 1-3 games for free on The web
I would love the original copy over a reproduction copy any day but like you said I just want to play the game without spending hundreds of dollars. I think part of the problem is the people selling them for these ridiculous prices making them inaccessible. It’s why I now buy a physical copy of every Pokémon game while it’s still available in store because I know in 10 years it’s going to cost an arm and a leg. I don’t do it to sell later on I do it so I can replay it when I want to feel nostalgic. Sadly I never owned a copy of HGSS so I move only ever had roms and pirated copies
That's also why I like to have physical pokemon games. It won't stay market price after the production stops, it just shoots up instantly. I remember I never got hgss because my parents couldn't afford it since it stayed market price until it was gone, then just instantly 35-50 at GameStop loose...I don't think I'll ever get my hands on them, unless I get really lucky at a thrift shop or yard sale. I also missed dpp because well yeah I could only get maybe 3-4 games a year due to cost. But I kinda miss the days of just walking into GameStop and grabbing something used I can afford that looks fun.
I honestly wouldn't mind repros because it's insane to pay 90$ for an N64 game in a local retro game shop. Loose even. I'm at the point in life I wouldn't care if it's fake or not just as long as I can play it lol
To be honest, my older sister pretty much has every single mainline pokemon game that she has bought since the gameboy/gameboy color days, and we have ALL of the original gen 1 cartridges that still work to this very day. Although I don't bother with it considering it can only hold one save file and I'd hate to erase my older sister's 100% completed save file for me to try out the game. So I want to back it up first safely before I use the cart for my own purposes. But then again, I don't play mainline pokemon series anyway, so it's not really something I'm interested in getting and such. The Hey You Pikachu game on the other hand I had to buy a legit copy of it because the emulator still hasn't figured out how to get the microphone part of the N64 to work properly (and it's been years since any work on it has been made. heck, even the DS's emulated microphone is still buggy at best.)
I've unfortunately had a decent number of my Pokemon games stolen over the years by former "friends", presumably because of the price, and chances are I'm never going to re-buy them due to the pricing. I've owned (almost) every single one at one time or another, and still own a lot, but many are gone, too. Red, Blue, Gold, Silver, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Leaf Green, XD: Gale of Darkness, Diamond, Platinum, Black, Black 2, Trozei, Ranger, and Conquest have all been stolen over the years, and considering I have to live in a pretty small apartment and if I want to afford my hobbies at all I can't ever go out to eat or do things, like hell I'll be able to afford copies of ALL those games. While I prefer the original copies, at that point, repro is pretty much the only way to go.
On the bright side, I recently came across and ordered a bootleg of the Pokemon Conquest Ultimate romhack on aliexpress, so I'm kind of looking forward to that. I almost always prefer flashing my own cartridges with something like a GBxCart RW, but as far as I'm aware no one's made publicly available reader/writers and writable NDS cartridges yet (other than something like an R4, which just isn't the same), so it seems like it'll be a neat addition to the library.
this is exactly what happened to me i even went to the extent of opening my repro copy of pokemon diamond i was pretty devastated but it doesnt bother me much because my beloved pokemon are in there and i will still keep it i spent 167 hours in that cartridge
in my opinion, the fun you had with the game, beats whether its a repro or not and makes it worth it.
If you have a hacked 3DS or some third-party tools, you can back up your Save files from your game.
Not all repros are necessarily going to be compatible, but I was able to back up my save from a buggy bootleg of HeartGold.
I have a copy of Pokémon Platinun that I got for a good price. I'm not sure whether it's authentic or a repro, but it works perfectly, and I am able to transfer Pokémon to gen 5 as well as receive mystery gifts. So if it's a repro, the reproducer did a dang good job.
yo mind sharing with us where you got it from?
Can repos actually copy readability? I always figured that that was just something that couldn't happen, but I never knew exactly why because I'm not a game or component maker lol
@@CrowCoded no they can't. This dude 100% has a real cartridge if it can transfer pokemon up and accept mystery gifts
@@maxd3str0y3r not necessarily, i recently discovered my copy of platinum was a repro, yet it can still trade and use mystery gift
@@asherjohnston8263 thats just not true bro. How do you know its a repo ? Because I would guarantee any cartridge that can transfer and accept mystery gifts is 100% real
I own a repro cart of Conker’s Bad Fur Day on n64, and while it doesn’t outright bother me that it’s a repro, I do have a desire to get my hands on an authentic cart since for me there’s a sense of wonder and accomplishment getting the “real deal”
Just bought one off eBay.. couldn’t be happier with my purchase .. I also had a repo and it just wasn’t cutting it for me
I have the game at my parents house tho. Lol
@@victorvalverde4526 well go take that shit lolololl
I still have pokemon platinum from 2009 ate my house
Lmao when reading that you had a cart of conkers bad fur day I was initially extremely impressed and confused until it clicked with me that you meant a cartridge and not a cart full of just conkers bad fur day games
I recently bought a Pokémon Ruby repro, since I bought it to play, and I didn't really know the pitfalls of buying repro cartridges. The save feature felt flaky. It would freeze up the whole game for a few seconds. But since this was my first experience playing gen 3, I just went along with it. Until the game wouldn't unfreeze while saving, and I lost my save game.
Since then I've been really careful to avoid repro carts.
I had a copy of platinum that I didn't know was fake and in one playthrough it bugged out right before the E4, and in a second playthrough a key story event did not load meaning I could not progress. Fun times
Hopefully you reported who you bought it from to the police and got your money back and the infringer arrested and fined.
Oh my god. I bought a Pokémon Black Repro. I really hope this doesn’t happens to me 😟😔
I think a big problem is quality on repro carts, especially for Pokemon games, and ESPECIALLY for gen 3. Most gen 3 repros you'll find are cheap Chinese bootlegs that are programmed to save in a way that's different from the real copies, which is where most of the problems come from. If you buy a higher quality board (I prefer InsideGadgets boards) then you'll generally have a better experience. That said, a higher quality board means higher costs, and it's kind of prohibitively expensive for the most part.
I use them for romhacks, since I need to be able to update the game, but if I were just playing the original games, I'd be cautious of Pokemon repros, and avoid GBA Pokemon repros like the plague.
Update, my Pokémon Black Repro works like a charm. I genuinely wouldn’t have noticed it was a repro if no one told me. Guess they aren’t all bad!
i will NEVER forget the bootleg Pokemon Diamond I got one time and Fanges, the starter "Pokemon" you get in it. as a kid, I was really confused how insanely different it was from red, blue, green which i was able to complete. Damn felt like a fever dream.
Telefang!
I stopped feeling bad about getting repros after I bought Mother 3 for GBA and loved the experience as opposed to playing an emulated copy on a laptop or phone. I now added Metroid Zero Mission and Fusion without regrets to my collection. I wish I could have the authentic copies, for that single point, it does feel a bit scummy to own these.
But the experience I have playing these is no different than someone whose playing with authentic copies except to flex that they have an authentic copy. If there wasn’t a $80-150 difference in price to own authentic vs. repro then I’d be all for authentics; that’s just not the reality. Great video man !
Have you considered getting a GBA flashcart (if they are still a thing)
I refuse to pay over $50+ on a game that is almost 15 years old. Especially when I used to own it and paid less for a brand new one back in the day. My (original) platinum cartridge became unreadable a couple of years ago and I just replaced with a $5 bootleg one off of aliexpress and it works just fine. I would highly reccomend anyone else to do same, those ebay prices are not justifiable.
I give you 10 bucks for the unreadable one
Don’t forget Amazon
What happens if it’s a real one and it’s 33 dollars
If you're gonna do this much bullsh*t just to have the game then just emulate or mod your ds lmao. Wtf?
@@bigroddempsey4082 lol what? I'd say that buying a fake one is way less difficult or time intensive than modding your ds? What are you on about lmao
I remember buying reproductions of SoulSilver and HeartGold a couple months ago and they were honestly pretty awful. They would brick savegames often and had the chance of also bricking Local and Online play if you trade too early in the game. I am going to stick to R4's and M3's for a little while but when the time comes I hope to own authentic HG and SS copy's.
Houston I have a problem I want to buy repo Pokemon Diamond even though I already have a full legit Pokemon Black 2 cuz I paid $100 but I don't think it's a need for Pokemon Diamond cuz cuz I just needed to put my save file from Twilight menu onto there so I can transfer my Pokemon to Black 2
@@NatetheNintendofan Move the save to an emulator I guess. I don't know
My bootleg HeartGold is disappointing. The only bug I've noticed is that starting the Voltorb Flip crashes the game, but it's also just disappointing seeing that the cartridge has the wrong color.
@@AlexsGoogleAccount I've been playing on an R4 card since I commented last year lol. It's worth the money, everything works and my brother's been able to complete the games multiple times without issue. He's even been able to use rom hacks to add replayability.
I think having repro carts are completely fine, personally I own a reproduction cart of Pokemon Red and will be getting a repro cart of mario 64, it's something I wanted to ensure I have without breaking the bank, and while I am happy to own authentic copies of Red and Crystal. Knowing I don't have to really play them as much due to the age is great! As it preserves their build and ensures I can still play the games, even if the cart itself isn't authentic!
Man I’m glad that I have emerald, platinum, soul silver, and white all with original boxes and they’re all real, purchased when I was a kid. It’s crazy how valuable these things are now, I’m very glad I held on to my original copies
Gimmi
Same here
I've definitely got a couple repros in my own collection, biggest one that comes to mind is one of the Mother 3 fan translation. Can't say I had a bad experience with it either, game plays perfectly and they used the shell of another GBA cart so it feels like a legitimate cart would. They even included a little hand written note thanking me and drew a little doodle, definitely someone who just wants to provide something for people like me. Besides that though, I usually just look for a flashcart or another way to run ROM's off of external storage. Pretty much always works as I expect it to, and in the case of Pokémon I can just take my save file and transfer stuff through programs people have made to work around those features not working.
I have an old repro Emerald version. It doesn't bother me that it's a repro (It was a gift), but one of the major downsides to them (at the time anyway) is that they had a tendency to just randomly yeet your savedata for no reason.
I had the same exact experience
Id think there are viable reasons for repros to exist beyond just the price gouging of authentic copies. There are a couple games that simply just didnt leave japan so having fan translations physically are pretty cool. Theres also the odd case with gba ffs where their sound quality was scuffed during their ports, well there are fan patches for sound quality and some of these “remastered” versions are sold as repros. Its not only about authenticity, repros offer experiences that are not available for other reasons than a dollar sign
repros of fan translations of jp only games im fine with as long as the fan translators are fine with the repros or even better, are the ones selling them
There's physical fan translations of N64 animal crossing and I kinda want one
It’s not price gouging it’s just the price people are willing to pay due to the popularity and scarcity.
Is there anywhere that you could get the old rom files free to make your own cartridges just to play the old games you never got to play as a kid?
Your point about piracy is soooooo true! I have purchased all the pokemon games on my DS and I LOVE the fact that they made this available. But I have no clue why they wouldn't want to cash grab selling old pokemon games for $10-15 per game on the Switch. The only reason I ROM some games is because I just can't find an affordable way to play the real version easily. Great vid!
I think I have a couple Pokemon repos for the GBA that I unknowingly bought a few years back. Didn't even know reproduction carts were a thing until way later. They worked perfectly fine surprisingly.
I knowingly purchased a copy of the Castlevania double pack on GBA (copy including both Aria Of Sorrow & Harmony of Dissonance.)
The price of an original cartridge was around $80 or so, and the repro just $15.
Once it arrived I was SHOCKED at how nice the build quality was!
The plastic/label was indistinguishable from an original. I even opened up the cartridge and the internals seemed comparable to what Nintendo would actually use.
It genuinely felt like I had picked up a legit copy, without anyone else years of wear and tear/cheeto dust fingers all over it.
I never had any issues with saving or crashing and there were no load time errors.
I've had this repro for approx 4 years now and my saves are still there and everything plays the way it should.
I've had a similar experience with another repro of Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga.
I understand that not all repros are created equally but I implore anyone who is interested in playing gba games on original hardware to at least give them a shot.
$15 is a drop in the bucket compared to the prices that some of these things go for now.
Hope this helps!!
Pokemon games are the only games I've ever bought in the aftermarket, and I was sure to buy authentic copies due to the known compatibility issues with reproduction carts. Unfortunately, some of the authentic carts had tons of hacked Pokemon on them, but after resetting the save file I was good to go. Fortunately, there were no signs of the game itself having been hacked, so that's good news. I'd consider buying a repro if there weren't any known compatibility issues with it. The closest I've come to buying a repro was when I bought a limited official production run of the original Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii. It was CAN$80 when the going rate on Ebay for an authentic copy was over CAN$250. I wonder what the going rate for it is now with the remaster on Switch readily available.
Xenoblade on the wii is a much more reasonable price now. Last time I checked, there were multiple ebay copies for around $25usd
I once sold a copy of Pokémon Sun to a CeX, would’ve been down in back in like 2017, South Wales. I thought it would be nice if I sold the game with all the Pokémon on it since I had a game shark, and cheated all of them onto the save file, but I had accidentally left a lot of unhacked Pokémon I had gotten from previous playthroughs or from wonder trade since I did a lot of wonderlockes when they were popular, still miss that save file and everything I lost.
Moral of the story don’t cheat I guess? Idk
@@ethancampbell9096 I got the Switch Remaster for $10 at Walmart when someone accidentally put it on clearance online back in March. Thank God I was working that day and a kid wanted to buy it. I worked in Electronics and I almost didn’t sell it to him because I knew it was a mistake but I was given the okay when I was told it was a mistake done by someone higher up and found out it was a US wide mistake.
My first Pokemon Emerald was a repro from a toystore, I got into Gen III much later after Gen I and skipped Gen II entirely when I got a PS1. It was a good experience but I was disappointed that berries didnt grow. At some point I got hold of a legit copy but I still kept the repro
Minor inconveniences like berries not growing don’t bother me as long as it doesn’t affect the story it’s fine by me
if you had a dry internal battery issue, it was a genuine emerald cartridge. you’d just have to replace the internal battery and reset the save file to get everything working, or work w an RTC if you had a DS.
IS THIS WHY MY BERRIERS NEVER GREW D: !!
@@DriftingGoose I have an authentic copy of Emerald and the berries don't grow because the internal battery is dead. If this is the case, Shoal Cave also won't work as intended with the tides and you won't be able to get a Milotic iirc. Otherwise it's playable. You can replace the battery with a bit of soldering or I've heard of people using conductive glue or electrical tape as well.
I recently discovered some of the Pokemon games I bought when I first got back into back in 2017 are fake. I think the part that bothers me the *most* is that they were sold as real games. If the sellers mentioned that they are not genuine copies I think I would feel better about it. They have played fine thus far, but it just feels dirty knowing I got scammed.
Honesty you need a lot more subscribers. You're content is really good and the videos are funny.
Personally, I feel that emulating games is THE way to experience the older pokemon games. Especially considering all the quality of life features you can action replay into some of the roms like instant dialogue, instant xp, etc. On top of that, there's also the plethora of romhacks like Renegade Platinum or Stormsilver that reinvent the classic experience. And on top of this, it's all free. Obviously it's not the same as owning a cartridge but you don't have to worry about damaging it or losing it.
Yessir!
I have a vita emulator but it can’t emulate ds or 3ds :/ just gameboy advance and gb color so I’m missing out on those
Pkhex
@@upsethoneybadger_1577 Use a computer
Emulation was fine by me until i wanted to complete the emerald pokedex and gold symbol every battle frontier facility. It just felt like the accomplishment would be diminished if i did it on an emulator. The victory would feel hollow. I ended up settling for repo carts to accomplish it because im not spending $200 per cart.
I do prefer the Drayano remakes to the original though. They are most definitley the best way to enjoy Gen 4 if you appreciate a challenge.
I own exactly one repro NDS cartridge, and it's one of those combo cartridges with a ton of games. Why? Some of the games on it were never even released in Europe (where I live), and getting them was a pain even back then when the NDS was still somewhat popular. I don't even want to know what I have to pay to get my hands on a legit copy of, let's say, Pokemon Conquest nowadays. There's also all of the NDS era Pokemon games on there, which is great if I want to experience the game again without deleting my original file on the legit version. Because the only thing more painful than paying 100€+ for a game that retailed at 40€ is paying 100€+ for a game that retailed at 40€ WHICH YOU ALREADY OWN A COPY OF.
I paid 30€ for my cartridge, but considering how many games are on it, I see it as more of a service fee in this case. Could I buy a blank cartridge myself, look up all the games I want on it individually to find the game files, and put them on there? Maybe. Do I want to do so if I could pay someone 30€ to do it for me? No.
Where did you get those cabinets and what are they called? I'm looking for a way to store my game collection in a more compact way and your cabinets with the shelfs on the inside of the doors looks like a great way to do that!
I don't currently have any reproduction carts but in the past I have been known to use them as a placeholder for a particularly hard to come by or expensive game until I can get my hands on an authentic copy
0:49 I feel like everyone had those speakers.
I personally wouldn’t buy a repo game. I feel “wrong” owning it. I want the original good quality one. I am a collector and own 95% of all my childhood games though. I am looking to buy Pokémon Alpha Sapphire because I accidentally donated mine(😑). Thankfully cart only looks to be $30. I do see repos go for less, but I feel better having the real one. Just my opinion/feeling on the matter. Great video!
Yeah, it is weird seeing 3DS carts getting repros though, I always thought it would be a few more years before that happened
am i trippin, how do you spot platinum repros like in the thumbnail? those are remarkably similar, only thing i see is the contrast in pokemon logo outline?
Ngl, the only reason why I care if my game is authentic is for things like Mystery Gifts and being able to trade/travel my Pokémon across different versions. If the fake version was able to do everything the authentic version was able to do, then I’d just buy the fake version without hesitation.
For me, I'm a tech preservationist and having the official hardware is very important to me.
Sounds like addiction with fancy words
@@pascalsimioli6777 Nothing wrong with wanting the original hardware. It's _his_ money to spend, after all
I have a reproduction soul silver cartridge. It works well, you can trade, receive and play through the game with no save corruptions(yet). The only issue I’ve had is some of the older ds systems have trouble reading it. It’s insane that these games go for so much now. DS systems have seen a inflation in price too. I’ve seen used 3DS XL systems go for $200+. You could’ve bought it new 3 years ago for that price.
tbh for ds just buy a n3ds/n2ds xl (ll if you don't mind region as jpn ones are cheaper and you can mod em) and an r4 card (research which ones are legit as there''s repros for those now -_-) and just play dumps or pirate some. no point in paying for a fake experience as repros have become better over the years... the day they begin makine ntr-031 carts is when i stop buying them.
To get around older consoles not reading it, start new game and get to the point of where you can move then soft reset and it will load your save file no problem.
@@alucard8433 Facts
i recently bought a soul silver cartridge at game stop (in person) for 89.99. it was pretty expensive but i really wanted it to complete my gen 4 collection. i have a legit copy of diamond (japanese version i got for like $13-18 from ebay), pearl, platinum, heartgold and soulsilver. i've had the same pearl, platinum and heartgold english copies since 2010-2011. the soulsilver cartridge i bought had a lot of trouble reading at first, but it was 100% legit because i could trade to it from my heartgold copy. i rubbed the pins with a cotton boll with a drop of 90% alcohol and it worked like a charm! it reads perfectly without fail now.
@@meyekol just so you know, repros can trade with real games 👀
I recently just bought a repro Emerald cart. I don't usually consider doing that, partly because the real thing is 10x better. However, I did have an Emerald cart waaaaay before the price hikes, so I ended up getting my copy for about £30, wasn't fussed with that, I love Emerald the most still to this day. I broke that copy using the wrong flux to change the battery, so the whole board basically corroded hard, rusted lots of the chips etc. I was gutted, and I was planning to potentially get a new one, which would be real, but I can't really be bothered to go through the hassle again. I'm actually a gamer before a collector, so it doesn't matter to me if I don't have a collection piece. As long as the cart plays like normal, then I'm more than happy to have a repro.
I bought a repo platinum from eBay it came in the case and all the paperwork it looks so good I couldn’t believe it was a repo, even the boxes shiny details are spot on, the thing which is even more bizarre is that it can trade with other games I don’t understand how it’s possible
This was a very interesting video. I enjoyed your perspective on it because you went much more in depth then "the game is fake so it's bad". I have a pretty big collection of games spanning over every nintendo console, ps1, ps2, and the original xbox, and among some of those games are some reproduction carts or 'repros'. I honestly don't mind because I'd much rather buy a copy of a game that feels or looks slightly weird compared to an authentic copy for $15, then shovel out over $200 for a game that's completely trashed and barely works but IS authentic or even having to spend more to get the same game in a cleaner state. To me, I usually turn to repros when the cost of the game by itself is much more then the original selling price of a game. I agree that it's not ok for someone to make money selling other people's work, but when it comes to repros and the company not doing anything to preserve their games or make them available, I think when you buy a repro you're more so paying for the price of the custom cartridge and the labor they put into making it more available for people to experience. The company isn't losing any more money then they already are by not making it available. I'd 100% disagree with switch piracy, but when it comes to older games, I think preservation is important. For example, there is currently no way to play the original Mario Party 64 trilogy without having the original hardware. The games at the time went for $90-$120 each for authentic copies. So I turned to repros and managed to buy them for $20 each, paying less then a single authentic copy for all three. And for that reason, I was actually happier with the reproductions carts. If you look close and compare them to official cartridges you could notice some differences, but to me I'm still popping a cartridge of the game into my original 64 to play with my friends/family. One thing with reproduction carts is that some sellers can be pretty sketchy when trying to buy. Like you said, things like ending up with the completely wrong game. But I'm glad we have reproductions because there are so many games I've gotten to experience on the official hardware that I wouldn't have gotten to without them.
If the game I want is impossibly rare and expensive, I'd go for a flashcard. Repros are just waste of plastic and space IMO.
The exception is for unreleased games, like Star Fox 2, or translated cartridges (for games that never left japan, for example), I'm totally fine with a Tales of Phantasia, Seiken Densetsu 3 or Final Fantasy 5 repro cartridges, in english, for the american SNES model.
There's one situation where I think repros are kinda acceptable too: When the original game was buggy as hell. On top of my head I can think of Lufia 2, wich received a rushed localization, so there are menu bugs, graphical corruptions and other problems not present in the original japanese game.
If the console is disc based, I'd burn copies or mod them to run games from other sources, like HDD, SD card, etc.
I don't really like emulation, and avoid it like the plague. If I can, I'll definitely try to purchase at least the console.
The only downside I see to flashcarts are games that require certain hardware from the cartridge (like SF2, as you mentioned, and the Gen 2 remakes of Pokemon, along with Gen 5, which include IR transceivers for communication).
true, if i can't afford the authentic game, i'll at least get the real console itself
@@Lucas-ir7co Those are also starting to creep up in price iirc
@@TylerFurrison ikr
I have about 3 R4 cartridges with many games in each one and the truth is that having them doesn't bother me but I'm always afraid of losing my saved files or that the games stop working after a while (because it already happened a few times) :(
I had one of those 50+ games in one cart for the DS more than a decade ago. Needless to say, my game corrupted and I was devastated when I lost several hours of my Pokémon Emerald game. Now as an adult, I just buy legitimate physical copies or from the digital store. Bought all the games I wanted on the 3DS before the eShop closed so I’m content with the games I have now.
I was unfortunate enough to buy a used copy of Platinum at a GameStop years ago for $30 and it happened to be a reproduction. I got a good way through the game before it completely crashed and stopped working. I was so upset that GameStop of all places sold me a fake copy and refused to give me a full refund
i have a fake version of the minish cap on gba, i really don't mind it! i have played through the game 100% 3 times over the years and there have been 0 issues, yes. the build quality is worse. but that does not take away the enjoyment i got out of it.
You're absolutely right! The weird looking Metroid Zero Mission repro I have worked perfectly fine and still has my save file on it!
Lol broke
@@HIPHOPHEAD1031 imagine spending 60 dollars on an old game
@@Lorenzovd yeah I can do it cause I’m not a broke toddler
@@HIPHOPHEAD1031 why so negative dude? Who hurt you?
Great video one thing I was hoping you were going to cover is how you tell the difference? I’ve been looking over the past few days on eBay and I don’t want to take people word for it. I would rather there be a way to check.
I have the originals from when I was a kid. Actually a few copies of heartgold and soulsilver from when the price was low. But in 2021, I got a repo of every game from GB, GBA, and DS. They are all mostly fine with the exception of the Silver. It is annoying that the infrared sensor on the Heartgold and Soulsilver. Also, these ones are able to trade for some reason.
I’m so happy my idiot kid self never lost my copy of platinum, it to this day is still my favorite Pokémon game of all time. I replayed it recently after being extremely disappointed with sword & shield and I had so much more fun playing it. Sure it’s far slower but you at least feel like you are earning your progression with the limited EXP share and not being able to get tons of XP candies from the max raid dens
You choose whether you use candies and do dens . The game doesn't force you
I usually try to go for real copies, but when the prices of the original are insanely inflated, I really don't think repros are that bad of an option. I got a reproduction Pokemon Yellow at a con partially because I considered the possibility that it could actually play better than genuine old hardware with the known internal battery issue.
personally, I just bought a fake copy, the person told me it wasn't a real one, but the only thing that cared for me, is the feeling and the experience to play the game (and the original sold by the same shop was twice the price WITHOUT the case) so I took it and I love it! It's fun and work just as well as all my other games vintage games!
I was just worried that the game would not work 'cause nintendo do things that block fake ones. But it didn't! I was SO happy!
THIS is what thruly matters for me! 😌
*And the quality is nice!
I ended up getting a couple repros of heartgold when I couldn't find my original copy and didn't wanna pay so much to replace what I had since release (eventually did find it and am currently playing through it again). The only issues I've had are voltorb flip crashing the game, and since i started one of them on my 3ds I can only play that file on the 3ds, it won't load on any regular ds systems. Otherwise the repro plays fine (halfway through kanto so far on the 3ds locked one with no other issues or crashes outside game corner), trades fine (used them to get the other 2 starters over to my legit), and everything else that I can see works
my two biggest problems with repro's is that you may be indirectly funding organised crime and that they are often sold as originals scamming people trying to fine real copies.
I live in the Philippines and as a child who had no idea where to buy games, I got to have a lot of reproduction/fake cartridges of GBA games. I was in denial that they were fake since they were bought at the big supermarkets at our place. Think Target. Although they were 1/4th the price of original games.
The old reproduction cartridges(around 10-15 years ago) all used batteries for their save files.
Majority of the GBA carts reproduction nowadays uses flash saving, which solved a significant problem they had in the past.
There are specific problems for carts though.
Fire Red and Leaf Green are probably the most ideal repro carts if you consider playing FRLG in original hardware(Some GBA prices are cheaper than these games today) since they don't have a real time clock.
Because there are no batteries in Ruby and Sapphire Reproductions, you are locked from Day and Night cycles.
Pokemon Emerald has it worst since your progress in the Battle Frontier gets reset whenever you restart your game. It is still possible to complete all symbols but you will need to do it in an ironman fashion wherein you do not turn off the game. I tried completing the Battle Frontier many years ago like that but I still wasn't able to get the Gold symbols for Tower, Factory, and Arena. The battery died before ahahaha. But that shouldn't be a problem for newer repro carts.
Also, the new reproduction carts look good. Their stickers are prone to scratching, but at least there are some effort done to make them more similar to the originals.
As for transferring from repro carts to DS games, I haven't tried this personally, but apparently it deletes the save files of the reproduction carts. This is apparently due to where are the save files are usually stored, but I don't understand the deeper mechanics behind it. In addition, there are no backup saves in repro carts.
My recommendation will be, if all you want to do is play Gen III in original hardware, then Reproduction carts are PRETTY GOOD since you don't have to fork over $50-$150. They have shortcomings as mentioned above but I think this method is more authentic than playing via Emulators.
IF you want to play a variety of games though, although a little expensive, I'd recommend you buy a FlashCart(Everdrive or Ez Flash Omega, the Definitive Edition is out but it's significantly more expensive than the former)
As for the DS Repro carts.... the only thing I find of value there is if you want to have a reproduction case of Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, since these games often comes with a repro case as well(sadly most of these are sold as if they're original, but the prices should be a dead giveaway if their very cheap)
The Gen IV Repros(DPP and HGSS) tend to be clunky while the Gen V repros(BW B2W2) are just horrible, they could hardly even count as repros since they are just sd card readers.
If you don't want the repro cases that comes wth DPP(gen IV) I'd strongly recommend just using an R4.
If you want to collect the 3DS games... now might be a good time since they are still cheap hahaha. They'll become very expensive too sooner or later.
I hope this wall of text help someone and WELL done Snivy102! Great video.
I had no idea the Battle Frontier would have that problem with repros! It would really suck to get all the way there and run into that problem
For the longest time I wondered why my copy of Pokemon Platinum felt... wrong. The ESRB E was missing. Everything about the cart checked up fine, until I realised I got a US box, but an australian cart. (I'm in the US) Still works, still played and had a blast haha, good to know I have an Authentic australian copy
I'm going to try and get 1 of each main line games (not including remakes), should I just get the enhanced versions or stick with the original?
At a certain point, a fake copy has replicated the original SO WELL that it’s no longer a fake, it’s the real thing.
Although i originally purchased Pokemon Ruby, Fire Red, Diamond, Platinum, Heart Gold, and Black from Gamestop, I lost all of them overtime except for Fire Red. I recently purchased a repro off Amazon of Platinum and bought an original Japanese copy of Crystal locally, both for $20. Seeing your collection made me disappointed at 10 year old me for not taking care of my old games. It’s impressive!
i own repro gen 3 pokemon games, but i also have authentic one becuase occasionally the repros would crash and lose the saves, but anytime my sister wanted to play pokemon with me she could just grab one of the clones and play along, so it was handy to have them but i never played them a whole lot
For me, unless a video has big drawbacks to buying a fake, I’ll buy the real one unless it’s more than $80-$90.
3:28 I love how an encounter happened the moment he said “encounter”
Thanks for making this video! Yea, I need to have an original copy, first print is preferred because I don't like the obvious red label/green label. I just can't unsee it once I have it. The reproduction copies just don't do it. I know what an authentic copy looks like it and having a fake just doesn't bring the same nostalgia.
For the Pokémon games, not being able to use the GBA stuff for DPP would be a big deal for me. For most other repros, I’d feel way more comfortable buying them if I could have proof they work just as well as the original- since I’d only have the sellers word to go off of, I don’t feel comfortable buying them online currently.
My copy I got off eBay was a good price that didn’t come with a case. When putting the card in my 3DS I noticed it would kinda get stuck which was super odd. My friend told me it was fake and I was mildly disappointed, not because it was fake, but because of how hard it was to put in my 3DS. The game worked fine and that was what I was okay with haha
Ironically enough, the intro of this video is surprisingly accurate to how i somewhat felt when discovering the Pokemon platinum i bought on Ebay was a repro. At the time i bought it, I also lost some other pokemon games (which i bought the legit copies of now thx to my lesson of my repro Platinum).
Looking at the this repro card now, i always think it sucks that its not the original, but it plays the game and honestly, all i wanted was some form or copy of Platinum along with the other copies of pokemon games i lost, so i definitely don’t mind it. It works fine, plays well and never froze on me, so its a pretty good repro.
Yes it sucks i supported the practice of reselling a game someone didn’t pay for, but i learned my lesson then and I honestly will keep a sharper eye out for stuff like this, as i plan to get a legit Platinum copy sometime in the future, hoping the prices lower around the low 100’s atleast.
They will only keep climbing higher in price.
Love these type of videos, keep it up!
I think my Playinum is an original. I don’t recall buying it or how much I paid, but it has all the markings of an original and plays beautifully. But if it is a Repo, then it makes the case for them for sure. I do have a Repo copy of Fire Red and other than a slight stutter when saving, it works perfectly.
I do have a reproduction copy of both pokemon black and white. It wasn't being advertised as the real thing and both games were on the same cart. It even had an ejectable micro SD card where I could put more games on it. I do not regret buying it, I actually like having it. It feels amazing being able to play these games on the original hardware
I always wanted one of those as a kid lol, ya probs seen them the ones where they have like 400 games lol
@@itzsmurfyt9421 R4 cards were the best.
5:14 I actually would really like a video about you going on and on about your thoughts on video game piracy. Your videos are so chill and relaxing I love them :)
I was never really bothered by my repro Pokemon Emerald (got it second hand from gamestop in the mid 2000's so definitely an older one). I used to think it was cool that the sticker on the cartridge had a slightly different pattern than my sibling's.
But a few weeks ago I wanted to start a new Emerald one and my save file was wiped. I made a couple new ones and they also wiped, like a gen 2 cartridge with a dead battery. All my other gen 3 cartridges still save functionally, even though they are older. This has made me much more wary about fakes, at least for platforms where the save data is held within the game.
I just recently bought reproductions for all the Pokémon games and I’ve been really enjoying playing them. I haven’t had much issue except for so far and my copy of Pokémon blue sometimes when I deposit Pokémon into my boxes, their names get all weird like a missing no. But no other issues I would love to have authentic copies of these games, but the prices are ridiculous.
I would buy those repro carts if they just made them in similar quality with all the features. It would be amazing if we could get modern repro carts built with higher quality than the original. With that, people like me that just want the game can snag those, and real collectors dont have to worry about people like me getting the original.
Only repros I'd buy were mods/translations of unreleased games. This is starting to change though with newly released "official" repros like the Wily Wars and Shantae GBC releases. I missed out on the first run of Wily Wars sales but I made sure to grab a Shantae gbc from LR. I really REALLY hope more games get released like this back on their original hardware. I'd kill for Capcom to do this for Tron Bonne.
as of now, i currently own four repro gba cartriddges. one bought intentionally, another 1 i recently discovered was a repro, and the remaining 2 are just speculations, considering i got them from the same seller (and feel exactly like my other repros). the one i bought deliberately was drill dozer, and while it was missing its defining feature, the rumble, i wasn't ready to pay the dreading 200 euro they were asking for an authentic, loose cartridge. and it came with an european rom exclusive to the wii u's virtual console, so that is pretty neat. the other ones... yeah, it felt like a kick in the nuts learning they are quote unquote "fake", but then i realized it never affected my experience too much. sure, one of them was a pokémon game, where it is objectively detrimental to play using a repro cartridge (eg: can't transfer pokémon, ingame time is locked, etc), but other than that, i never really noticed anything that could be off. specially with final fantasy v, my current most played gba game. i guess i fear the save data might corrupt at some point, and that i might also not be able to back up the saves on my laptop, but at this point in time, i am simply really happy i am getting to experience these games in real hardware at all, at a price point that honest to god mightve been the greatest deal ive ever seen (15€ for drill dozer, 6€ for final fantasy iv and v and 3€ for pokemon emerald)
I might consider one day getting a repro of a outragious expensive game, for now I'll stick to my collection as an excuse to play the one I already have. Great video! I like the way you speak calmly and wahtching you play banjo, haaa good times! hehe 😊
Although it may be a flawed way of thinking, if I’m gonna play a repro I might of well just buy a flash cart, or use an emulator. Because those get the same job done, have more options, and aren’t as flimsy. Although I understand why some would buy them.
The only repro I’ve ever bought was a Megaman and Bass fan translation, mainly because it was a Japanese only game, (despite the fact that I’ve already took out the tabs in my SNES to play imports)
This guy's furniture and organization are sick. Everything looks so clean.
I usually have a mix between reps and reals, for example, the only game i prioritize being original on my gbc is Tetris because it means a lot to me, anything else can be fake as long as it works. But there is one and only console that i only buy originals. It is the n64. Im slowly building my collection
Great video! I think the discussion is really interesting, and I think that it brings up good points about what the value of the "real experience" is. When we see old games get more and expensive, often very sporadically, I think it's good to have competition in the form of repros for people who aren't really collectors and just want to enjoy a game they played as a kid or something. I have a decent chunk of the 3rd-5th gen Pokemon games that are really expensive right now, but I'm thinking about what I would do if I didn't and wanted to enjoy those games again.
Pokemon emulation has come a long way since the old ROM hacking days. Now with emulation, you can trade and transfer between emulated versions of the game and real ones! They're hosted on servers like Wiimmfi, which removes the sting of not being able to transfer your buddies up to newer versions, or even just real copies of the games. If I'm honest with myself, even though playing Platinum on an actual console would be enticing, I think that I would settle for emulation when looking at the prices of current games. And I this extends beyond just games I've played in the past.
If I want to go back and enjoy some of the older games in the series, the high prices of games that I don't even know if I would enjoy is daunting. I got into playing Mario Golf Toadstool Tour on Dolphin recently (because I saw that the new one wasn't very good and I thought it would be funny to play a better, older game out of spite), but if I did have a GameCube, the $80-$100 price tags are kind of ludicrous! It'll probably be a while before that price goes down, and would I really want to go through the headache of finding a real copy that was in good condition, or a repro that might be of shoddy quality? Not really! But I believe that the future of repros is bright.
Making low volume PCBs is super easy nowadays, so if you just find a version of the original game, making copies of it is simpler now than ever, when it comes to cartridge based games of course. And with the proper tools, a skilled person like a modder who has an eye for quality versions of the original hardware could make PCBs that work just like the original, and even make good cartridges for them. Now, the problem becomes the paradox of having somebody who holds the authentic, original release of a game in high enough regard, and has the experience to make good copies of them, but also is ok with making and selling non-authentic copies. Somebody may come along who's willing to do that, but maybe not.
This discussion could go for hours but I'm cutting my rambling ass off here. I'm excited for the future of reproductions of games, and all that comes with it. 👍
Very insightful comment!
Firstly great video man, this is my first video i'm watching from you and i'm already really liking your content, keep up the great work. Now For me and repros, i usually do not buy them at all. I like having the authentic copy in my collection, though i do own a few repros. I got pokemon emerald, Sonic Advance, conkers bad fur day, paper mario 64 and sonic the hedgehog on NES. The only reasons i got conker and paper mario is that i really wanted to play those two games, and sonic advance and pokemon emerald, i got when i was little so i didn't even know they were repros until much later. As for sonic on the NES, i found it at a flea market and it looked kinda cool, but otherwise i don't buy repros unless for two reasons. Either it's an english fan translation of a japan only game(Like an english translated version of mother 3 for instance) or if it's just something bizzare that i find interesting(like sonic on NES), but other than that i'm avoiding repros and the ones i have in my collection, personally i'm having a hard time if i do consider them part of my collection or not. But yeah, that's my take on repros.
I'm pretty sure my Pokemon Pearl copy is a repro, or at least the first one I had because I had to replace it. This was because the first one would constantly freeze during gameplay and impede my progress so I eventually got fed up and had my dad replace it (i was like 8 when this all happened) and the one I own now crashes wayy less (and when it does crash it's mostly just due to it's old age). Though thats really my only issue I've had with repros personally, but it's also my biggest worry if I ever buy a repro
I own a repro copy of earthbound, and besides it not shipping with a battery, which i was able to simply put one in, it works just like an authentic copy.
I got a repo earthbound too.. way to much for the real thing
Yes I own a few reproduction games myself. Didn’t know at the time what they were but since I’m a Pokémon collector the main point for me is wanting the original game. However my biggest issue with repro’s is that they have saving issues, and some don’t save or perform properly. Sometimes the audio on my repro doesn’t work properly and I have to reset the game in order for it to work properly. I overall just ended up feeling scammed.
How did you know I had just started to collect DS games and have been searching around for videos like this...
My parents bought me and my brother Pokémon ruby and sapphire when we were little. One of the major issues with the game that I noticed was that I would get to the 8th gym or somewhere far into it and then the game would crash and delete my save. I've probably had 4-5 good playthroughs that got deleted, and I never delete my Pokémon saves. Later on I realized too that I had a fake copy as well. I always named my character glitch because of the amount of crashing and problems with the game.
A year or two ago I decided to play through it and got to the elite four. I think taking the cartridge out of the ds while the game was still running could have been the problem. I tried to see if I could take the save off of the cartridge using an r4 card. I managed to get some random GBA, .sav, and a .SV1 file. The videos I watched explaining the process didn't mention getting a .SV1 file but I decided to get it just in case.
After I transferred the random files to the r4 card, I checked to see if my save was still on the GBA cartridge but it was DELETED! I had gotten really attached to this run so I was worried. All I had was a bunch of random files of Pokémon ruby on my r4 card. I found out that the GBA file and the .sav could go into an emulator as long as they had the same names. But when I loaded the game the save was empty. It took a long time and lots of changing file types until I used a Pokémon save editor with the .SV1 file (I probably would never had gotten if it wasn't on chance). I was glad to see the save editor display my pc box full of Pokémon I had caught. I then converted .SV1 to .sav and managed to recover probably my last play of Pokémon ruby for GBA.
It felt awesome to bring one small kilobyte save file, that could have been a bunch of random data that sat in some lost and forgotten folder, back to life. I did this all from videos and forum posts a decade ago that never really went in depth. Anyway, this is my experience with bootleg Pokémon games. Thanks for reading this far.
Tbh I don’t really mind having repos. The one reason that I can think of for having authentic copies is to send Pokémon you caught from 1 generation to the next keep in mind that you can trade Pokémon from repo to real if they’re from the same gen
Also if you live in Europe you can get a non English one for way cheaper. You can trade between an authentic and repro game. I found a German emerald locally for cheaper due to the fact most people locally don’t speak German
Excellent video as always! Given scarcity/insane prices of authentic games, are there any repros that YOU would be happy to purchase in particular?
On my deathbed, I will order an Earthbound repro from Amazon if I never find an authentic version for a good price in my lifetime
Haven't bought any repros yet, but I have been looking at getting basically all of mainline Pokemon games Gen 1-5 as repros just because of saving money but still getting the games. I'd eventually like to get authentic carts for the physical collection, but I'm not against saving hundreds of dollars buying repros for the time being and slowly work on authentic over time.
You can just install twilight menu++ on a dsi and download all the ROMS onto it. All for free. You can even use action replay cheats without the action replay.
I ruined my copy of Pokemon Emerald when I went to change the battery and I slipped with the solder and got it all in the the tiny little legs in one of the chips and broke one of the pins trying to rectify my error. So now I'm just hoping to get a replacement even if it is reproduction. Only thing I heard about those is that the clocks don't work in real time and (like you said in the video) the cart is apparently a millimeter too big to fit nicely in the gameboy. Hopefully that all changes for the better because I really don't want to pay hundreds for a game I got for like $10 secondhand back in the day.
This makes me feel more lucky that I kept my original dsi + games from when I was a kid. I think I have a packet of game cases too somewhere though most are empty.
Back in SNES era, my collection was pretty much made with bootleg games, I mean, I barely had any money at the time and the cost of the original games were waaay to expensive. So it really worth to buy like 10 pirated games instead one 1 original game, also, the games worked just fine, so there was no reason to get a original game instead. Years passed by and I bought my Nintendo DSi XL, so I started to collect pokemon games, the only time that I bought a repro card (really didn't knew), I had such a miserable experience because the game freezed all the time, and I decided to check forums and internet tutorials to get only original games. I never bought a bootleg since then.
I thought about buying repro games but in the end I just went with flash carts as it will be cheaper in the long run and allow to to easily try out games on the original hardware. I tried out the first Megaman Battle Network game on my GBA with a flashcart and I loved it.
I think the issue is really them not labeling it as a repro. I recently bought a repro phantasy star online on gamecube at a local game store that I visited it a lot and they disclosed it to me. Having the cheaper option is really cool, I just wish the quality is decent and doesn't crash/corrupt the save file like a lot of gba ones
My only repros are rom hacks that I willingly bought. Sadly, the typical issue of saving happened with Pokémon hardcore. I wasn’t doing well anyway, but man I was invested in the plot lol. I’d honestly love either a repro or a genuine of a few games, but in terms of ones like Pokémon with time features and save progress and trading, I’d prefer the ogs if I could ever afford it.
I think repros are a good way to cheaply keep a game 's legacyalive. Most of the time, the emulation is spot on and it'll play exactly like the original. Just think about a world without emulation. Nobody would be able to play any old title unless they had an original console and copy of the game.
I agree with you! I'd definitely would rather own the authentic version for the collector side of me.
Glad some people label them as repro on ebay too, still waiting on trying to score a copy of White 2.