- Joined
- Mar 27, 2005
- Posts
- 23,647
Holy fuck, I just got this in the mail today, and boy is it a convincing bootleg. The first thing that stood out was that it was slightly tall for the cart slot on my OG GBA, all other games sit flush with the top of the system, while this one sat about half a millimeter above the surface. But the label looked good at the time (more on this to come), so I was thinking this has to be real.
So I played the game a bit, and ran into something weird... the game locks up for a whole second or more when you save. I've owned 2 copies of this game in the past and there was never any lag when saving, so this is what started me thinking about it's authenticity.
I opened up the cart with a triwing screwdriver that I fortunately had lying around from when I did an OG Gameboy mod and behold! Epoxy glob, right in the center of the board.
Then I started looking closer. The label looks really, really good. But the colors are just ever so slightly off and the the label even has a number embossed into it like a legit copy. The biggest tip off was that the 'D' in metroid has white in the center, while the legit games I started comparing pics with all have black in the middle of the 'D'.
Looking closer at the cart shell again, there are slight font differences in the "GAME BOY ADVANCE" text on the front, and on the back text as well. The fake has a slightly less bold font, and the letters are actually in higher relief than on the real cart.
TL;DR - This motherfucking cart looks really good unless you take a lot of time picking it apart. If it didn't lag while saving I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it's legitimacy.
So I played the game a bit, and ran into something weird... the game locks up for a whole second or more when you save. I've owned 2 copies of this game in the past and there was never any lag when saving, so this is what started me thinking about it's authenticity.
I opened up the cart with a triwing screwdriver that I fortunately had lying around from when I did an OG Gameboy mod and behold! Epoxy glob, right in the center of the board.
Then I started looking closer. The label looks really, really good. But the colors are just ever so slightly off and the the label even has a number embossed into it like a legit copy. The biggest tip off was that the 'D' in metroid has white in the center, while the legit games I started comparing pics with all have black in the middle of the 'D'.
Looking closer at the cart shell again, there are slight font differences in the "GAME BOY ADVANCE" text on the front, and on the back text as well. The fake has a slightly less bold font, and the letters are actually in higher relief than on the real cart.
TL;DR - This motherfucking cart looks really good unless you take a lot of time picking it apart. If it didn't lag while saving I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it's legitimacy.