Pretty clean KOF97 Boot

I figured I'd add this to the obvious boot archive. It's a damn clean KOF97 boot considering others I've seen. It also has a decent looking label, as shown in the comparison shot below with a real one. The "1996 Made In Japan" as opposed to "1997 Made In Japan" is a dead giveaway.

Got it in a cheap lot of carts a few weeks ago.

Jeez.... that IS a very nice looking boot... It's when I realize games like KOF97 and Puzzle de Pon have been bootlegged that I feel the need to go back through every single cart I own and check NGH numbers, or open them up for a general look-over, or whatever.... damn...

It also seems to play perfectly in a side by side comparison with my original, so whomever did it, did a good job.

I've also seen a lot of boots with shitty soldering jobs (as we all have), but this one looks neater than some official SNK carts. Its spotless. I added the tape to the windowed EPROMS, as it looked like whatever was over them previously fell off, or got pulled off.

It blows me away at how advanced the Neo bootleg scene got. This stuff was manufactured.

For as clean as your'e saying it is, it almost has to be a more recent boot, no?

I just find it bizarre that someone would bootleg KOF 97 these days....

It could be fairly new, but I doubt it. The boards shine like a mirror though. Not a single flux fingerprint, smudge, or pool. I figure it had to have been made at some point when '97 was still hot. The person I got it from clearly had no idea it was a bootleg, and sold it as original in a cheap common lot.

Another thing I find funny is the label quality. It even matches other SNK '96 labels in print quality and paper luster exactly. They went to such trouble to create a quality bootleg, and then went and screwed up the MFG date on the label for a game with "97" in its title.

mmsadda said:

For as clean as your'e saying it is, it almost has to be a more recent boot, no?

I just find it bizarre that someone would bootleg KOF 97 these days....

Click to expand...

It's more likely it's not recent. Bootlegging was big business back when these games were new.

The character PCB was made in the late 1997.