Have you ever bought a reproduction?

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JWK
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Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby JWK » June 21st, 2017, 8:23 pm

So, just bought a reproduction of the Sega Saturn holy grail, Panzer Dragoon Saga. If I had gotten into Saturn collecting years ago, I would have been more than willing to drop $250 on this RPG. But it's now $700 regularly on eBay and I've seen it sell for as much as $1000. There's holy grail and then there's "holy $#%*!!!" I don't care how hardcore a collector you are, that's insanity.

So I bought a reproduction off the Internet. The artwork is pretty high quality on both the cover and all four discs. You can easily tell it's fake, but I just wanted to play the game and still have something nice to have on the shelf, too. I plan on doing the same thing for Policenauts (Saturn) and Front Mission 5 (PS2) as I've found repros for both with English translations. I own the Japanese versions of both of those games but now I'll actually be able to understand them!

I'd love to own Saga legit, but the price is so exorbitant that it's unlikely. Sega has reportedly lost the code to the game so, short of a full remake, this is likely the only way I could play it. I understand a lot of people have hesitation with emulated gaming, but I figure most people understand that only resellers-- the same resellers who have pushed the game to over 10 times it's launch price-- benefit from buying the game used. I personally have no problem with a reproduction in this case. And emulation is the most likely way to bring demand (and thereby, price) down for PD Saga. To be clear, retro sellers can't legally make money off selling isos on discs or ROMs on carts, so they skirt the issue by charging for the artwork and including the game disc for "free." That's sure to raise an eye brow or two, but as I said, I personally don't have a problem with the practice as long as the seller is upfront about the games not being originals. The retro bubble doesn't look likely to burst any time soon and purchasing some of these games is ridiculous for those of us who got into collecting when the aftermarket exploded.

We'd all agree that trying to pass off reproductions as originals is a horrible thing, but what do you think about *knowingly* buying repros? Have you ever bought one? Would you consider doing so today for some high priced games that you want to play? What are your thoughts?

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scotland
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Re: Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby scotland » June 21st, 2017, 8:45 pm

I have, but not of any expensive game.

I like playing on retro equipment, but my standards beyond that are low. So, I have bought fakes of games like Golden Axe 3 for the Genesis. No box, no manual, and no chance of anyone mistaking it for something its not. Pretty cheap, and scratched an itch.

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ptdebate
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Re: Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby ptdebate » June 21st, 2017, 10:14 pm

I have bought a few reproductions in my day.

I bought a very, very nicely done repro of Final Fantasy III for the NES back in college. It had the fan translated version of the SFC rom. I wish I could remember the name of the company. The only problem I had is that FF3 is extremely hard and I didn't finish it.

eneuman96
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Re: Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby eneuman96 » June 21st, 2017, 10:31 pm

I bought one of Mr. Gimmick and Rockman 4 Minus Infinity both for NES several years ago, but honestly, if you want to play a rare game or ROM hack and it absolutely has to be on the original system, you're much better off buying a flash cart so you can pretty much put as many games on it as you want.

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Atariboy
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Re: Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby Atariboy » June 22nd, 2017, 6:01 am

I have the homebrew translation of Retro Game Challenge 2 on cartridge for the DS.

That's my only one, with multicarts usually getting the job for me on cartridge based systems. But if I were to buy another, I imagine it would again be for something that doesn't exist in the wild. Luckily for me, I'm not a big RPG fan so most of the big ticket items like Panzer Dragoon Saga aren't even releases I'd care about.

Sadly though, prices have largely kept me away from the range of shooters on the Saturn. As a casual shooter fan that doesn't spend a lot of time with each release to master them, I just can't justify the prices here for a game that I'll likely never spend more than 5 or 6 hours with.

JWK wrote:So, just bought a reproduction of the Sega Saturn holy grail, Panzer Dragoon Saga.


Does this reproduction require some trickery like a mod chip or disc swap like in the old days, or is the Saturn cracked well enough where reproductions boot on factory hardware?

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ActRaiser
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Re: Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby ActRaiser » June 22nd, 2017, 7:48 am

Hah! I did the exact same thing for Panzer Dragoon Saga and Policenauts. I also picked up Bomberman for the Saturn as it was a simple, add to cart option. I 100% agree with you. I'm much more into the experience of playing it than collecting it for the sake of collecting it.

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Gentlegamer
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Re: Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby Gentlegamer » June 22nd, 2017, 8:07 am

"Reproduction" is euphemism for pirated bootleg.

bluenote
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Re: Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby bluenote » June 22nd, 2017, 9:22 am

I've bought a repro of Little Samson and Snow Bros for the NES. I also bought repro boxes and manuals for them. They look great! The games play perfectly. I honestly don't know how someone could pay $1500 for a Little Samson cart when you can get a repro for $50. At least, it's good enough for me.

I also have started buying repro boxes for my modest NES collection from "Box My Games". They look fantastic! Real cardboard, printing is near perfect. It makes my NES collection look brand new. The prices of original NES boxes is crazy, so this is a good alternative for me.

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Retro STrife
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Re: Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby Retro STrife » June 22nd, 2017, 10:03 am

First, good choice on finally getting a version of Panzer Dragoon Saga. I waffle between whether it's my 1st or 2nd favorite game of all time. I got lucky to have an original, though not at the crazy prices people pay today. If you can imagine, my first complete copy of the game cost me just $100 on ebay in like 2002, and that was considered insaaaaaaaane prices for a game back then. I certainly don't blame you for not paying $600 for it on ebay, since I wouldn't do it either... (unless I prophetically knew it'd be my favorite game ever..then I'd have to). Anyway.. it's been 15 year since I've played it, so let us know how it holds up!

Back on topic... I'm fine with repros, as long as they are clearly marked as such to prevent counterfeiting and as long as the seller isn't price gouging. I don't agree with Gentlegamer's take, because repros do not take any money away from the original creators. Still, personally, I much prefer owning the originals. I only own a few repros and always for the same reason--like JWK, it's for games that I'd like to try on the original system (I don't do emulation), without paying crazy prices for the original. I think the only repros I have are Earthbound, Keoi Flying Squadron, and The Space Adventure (Sega CD). I'm interested to try each, but don't care enough to pay ebay prices, so I'm happy to pay someone $15-$20 to make me a "reproduced" copy of the game. In my mind, I'm paying them for the service of putting the game together for me. Sure, I can download games myself and burn them to a disc, but rather than go through that process, I'm ok with paying $15 to someone else in the rare case that I want it. Plus, the disc looks much better from them than the blank CD-R with black marker that I'd use if I did it...

JWK
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Re: Have you ever bought a reproduction?

Postby JWK » June 22nd, 2017, 10:46 am

Atariboy wrote:
Does this reproduction require some trickery like a mod chip or disc swap like in the old days, or is the Saturn cracked well enough where reproductions boot on factory hardware?


Good question. It's something called Pseudo Saturn. You flash an Action Replay cart and as long as the cart's in the Saturn, backups/cd-rs will play like the real thing. It required me to do the swap trick once to load the application onto the cart, but after that you don't need to. It does take away the ability to save onto the AR cart, but it retains its capability to break region lock and still acts as the 1MB & 4 MB expansion.

And I realize that I've been incorrectedly using the term "emulation" in my first post, so that was probably confusing. Pseudo Saturn isn't an emulator as it's on the real hardware. As Gentlegamer said, repros are bootlegs, but Retro STrife is accurate in saying the only financial "hurt" this causes is to resellers on the aftermarket. Can't say I feel too bad for them, to be honest. Despite the reputation of a "bootleg," I've reached the point in my gaming where I can make compromises. Originally I wanted to own physical copies of every single Saturn game I was interested in. I'll buy games on the after market if it makes sense-- sometimes even when it doesn't! I've owned a Saturn for about a year and I've bought a few $100+ games. But $700 for PDS? $300 for Cotton Boomerrang (Saturn)? $250 for Zero Gunner 2 (Dreamcast)? No, I'm not making a reseller rich on those. In fact I just bought a repro for ZG2. Been interested in that one for a while, but wanted the real disc. This is a nice compromise, I think.


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