Pc-Engine bootlegs and Tobias Fudoh Reich, thoughts?

Monolith

Pleasure Goal
Joined
Jan 17, 2007
Posts
146
Sorry, I lurk more then I post these days because I have had family issues going on past few years. Well that and I live in the country, so I have to wait to get good net access until I go into town and visit family or friends usually.

But this struck me of something of importance since I know people here also play the Pc-Engine a bit, so I wanted to post about it.

Granted this is not Neo related, but I have a friend who has been giving this bootleg seller some real hell as of late on the Pc Engine forums tricking him into giving over his shipping address/name and some info on his future releases then exposing him. The bootleg seller is Tobias Fudoh Reich.

Many people know of him from this:
http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/

A lot of people don't know however is he is the one that flooded the Pc Engine scene years back with Sapphire bootlegs passing them off as legit.

Currently the guy is a bit more honest about his wares being "reproductions", but he acts very official about the whole thing, giving the initial impression he has a right to publish and distribute the games.

https://pceworks.wordpress.com/category/pc-engine-memories/

My friend was able to get the guy to admit to/send a copy of some of his future releases he planned to put out there. One of them is the yet unannounced Dracula X limited edition set.

It gives off the impression that Tobias is not concerned about the legal ramifications at all concerning his bootlegging Konami games. So this got me to wondering, is there even a way that they can go after him since he is located in Germany?

If anyone is curious as to the Dracula X thing, here are pics of it that my friend took and posted:

2yjvajt.jpg


25kpjb5.jpg


10717wh.jpg


4sdy05.jpg
 

Yodd

Iori's Flame
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2002
Posts
8,214
While that looks incredible, it's most certainly a bootleg and he has zero rights to make or sell them.

I am honestly surprised that he didn't get shutdown after the PCE Memories stuff. The guy has some fucking huge balls to keep doing this.


edit: Also, is that Drac X in english?

If so, he probably stole the work of the english translation project over @ PCEFX forums. And the team leader of that project made it very goddamn clear that his work was not to be sold.
 
Last edited:

Monolith

Pleasure Goal
Joined
Jan 17, 2007
Posts
146
Yes, the second disc is some English translation. The title screen and in game voices are in English, and the intro has subtitles and my friend said the audio is different from the original.
 

Yodd

Iori's Flame
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2002
Posts
8,214
Yes, the second disc is some English translation. The title screen and in game voices are in English, and the intro has subtitles and my friend said the audio is different from the original.

loooool. What a cock.
 

themisterfalcon

Buriki-One Fight Promoter
15 Year Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2005
Posts
4,023
All bootlegging whatever aside, that box set looks awesome.

What I DO like about his efforts is that he is taking the packaging to a new level that NEC and crew never thought of. It's the DracX equivalent of a Falloy 4 Pipboy edition :lolz:

Maybe I'll buy one just to put my real copy into :keke:

I'm also a huge fan of the smaller releases he does e.g. extracting Cycho Rider or Twin Bee Returns onto it's own CD. For people like me, digging into other games to get to the mini game I actually want to play is tiresome.
 

Teddy KGB

Капитан Борода
10 Year Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2010
Posts
2,744
Yes, the second disc is some English translation. The title screen and in game voices are in English, and the intro has subtitles and my friend said the audio is different from the original.


I just got this link from my friend, so I am posting it here. Tobias knows Konami has been notified. I guess he is just does not care because he is starting sales of the Dracula X stuff he has made now as of today.

https://pceworks.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/gems_bundle/#more-509

Bootleg and Konami morality aside, if you read that link you'll see that it's the Japanese game of the version only that's included. At some point down the road, he'll be giving out the English translated disk for "free"... to those who bought one of his bundles I presume.
 

Monolith

Pleasure Goal
Joined
Jan 17, 2007
Posts
146
That was not what he originally intended. He got caught selling other translated games prior without the translators ok and got flak over it. He is probably backtracking on this one now too because of the attention its getting on the PcEngine forums. The thing is he was forced into announcing the sale of Dracula X early because my friend exposed him on the other forums yesterday. His intention was to announce it at a later date and sell it as a two disc set.
 
Last edited:

Yodd

Iori's Flame
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2002
Posts
8,214
All bootlegging whatever aside, that box set looks awesome.

What I DO like about his efforts is that he is taking the packaging to a new level that NEC and crew never thought of. It's the DracX equivalent of a Falloy 4 Pipboy edition :lolz:

Maybe I'll buy one just to put my real copy into :keke:

I'm also a huge fan of the smaller releases he does e.g. extracting Cycho Rider or Twin Bee Returns onto it's own CD. For people like me, digging into other games to get to the mini game I actually want to play is tiresome.



Regardless of how nice his bootlegs look, i wouldn't give this crook one penny.

He purposely flooded the market with high quality Sapphire bootlegs years ago pretending that they were legit copies found in a warehouse or something.


He doesn't deserve anyone's business.
 

GohanX

Horrible Goose
20 Year Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2001
Posts
12,490
That was not what he originally intended. He got caught selling other translated games prior without the translators ok and got flak over it. He is probably backtracking on this one now too because of the attention its getting on the PcEngine forums. The thing is he was forced into announcing the sale of Dracula X early because my friend exposed him on the other forums yesterday. His intention was to announce it at a later date and sell it as a two disc set.

It seems that after the whole backlash from selling the translations, he now will give away the loose translated discs for free to anyone who asks. Still gotta pay for pretty packaging. Releasing the Japanese version with a spot for the "free" disc is kind of a stroke of evil genius.
 

FinalbossNYC

Zero's Tailor
Joined
Mar 14, 2015
Posts
557
I bought a Sapphire of his years ago around the time PcengineFX community forum started outting his work and warning us.
I don't mind people charging for their work and materials so someone can keep a physical copy, but write Repro a descent size on the covers and discs and maybe don't use the Companies logos. As for Konami's legal reach I'm curious to see what happens with this.
 

Thunderblaze16

New Challenger
Joined
Mar 29, 2013
Posts
58
Can't seem to find any pictures so I'll just ask. Have people yet found a way to fake/bootleg hue cards of the pc engine? What's it about the design or software that's preventing it?
 

pixeljunkie

Whilst Drunk., I Found God., Booze = Bad.,
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 12, 2003
Posts
7,107
Sapphire B.S. aside - how in the hell is it any different from countless people selling MD/SFC repros with fanslations on them? These cost more because you get more with them. Just seems to be a lot of double-standards going on.
 

GohanX

Horrible Goose
20 Year Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2001
Posts
12,490
Can't seem to find any pictures so I'll just ask. Have people yet found a way to fake/bootleg hue cards of the pc engine? What's it about the design or software that's preventing it?
It's simply a matter of cost. Atlantean is a homebrew on a hucard released recently, so it can be done, but it costs a lot.
 

mjmjr25

went home to be a family man
10 Year Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2010
Posts
2,866
Sapphire B.S. aside - how in the hell is it any different from countless people selling MD/SFC repros with fanslations on them? These cost more because you get more with them. Just seems to be a lot of double-standards going on.
bingo
 

themisterfalcon

Buriki-One Fight Promoter
15 Year Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2005
Posts
4,023
He purposely flooded the market with high quality Sapphire bootlegs years ago pretending that they were legit copies found in a warehouse or something.

Well yeah. That sucks pretty bad. Never knew the full story. At least his newer stuff is clearly marked as a reproduction.

Regardless of how nice his bootlegs look, i wouldn't give this crook one penny.

haha, and thanks to this thread I found out about Force Gear and ordered one :-J
 

Jibbajaba

Ralfredacc's Worst Nightmare
10 Year Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2009
Posts
5,611
I have really mixed feelings about it all. The shit he did with Sapphire, and the shit that he pulled with the Xak III and Startling Odyssey II translations is bullshit. The former because he lied about the source of the discs, and the latter because he is selling someone's fan translation without their approval. That being said, making a translation in the first place is a grey-area to me, and as has already been said, this isn't *that* different than all of the repro carts that you can buy now. But it still doesn't excuse what Tobias did. I bought the first two sets off of him, then got free loose disc copies of Xak III and SOII, then bought Beyond Shadowgate and Might and Magic off of dub^3, so I'm a total hypocrite if I try to say anything too negative. Fact is, the dude is filling a void in the market. He charged up the ass for those Beyond Shadowgate and Might & Magic games, but it's still way the fuck cheaper than buying the real thing, and it comes with cooler shit.

All that being said, I feel like I'm kinda done with the guy's stuff. This Drac X shit is just over the top. Would be kind of cool to see someone else take his releases of games like Twin Bee and Force Gear, re-bootleg them and undercut his prices.
 

Yodd

Iori's Flame
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2002
Posts
8,214
and the latter because he is selling someone's fan translation without their approval.

That's what pisses me off the most. Stealing other folks work and then selling for a profit. Especially when they have explicated said it was not to be sold for profit (the Rondo english translation for example). I'm willing to bet had the lid not been blown off this and he had included the English translated disc, it totally would have been a copy of BurntLasagna's work.
 

F4U57

General Morden's Aide
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 25, 2004
Posts
7,632
That thing looks amazing!




yeah it's a bootleg, it's shit...





Oh wait, it's still amazing!
 

Black_Tiger

Kuroko's Training Dummy
Joined
Feb 7, 2005
Posts
72
The problem with his bootlegging of fan translations, is that some of the people who actually work on these PCE projects have publicly stated and reaffirmed multiple times that if their work is professionally pressed and/or sold, then it will either discourage them from starting any new translation projects, or in the case of the key member of the teams who did the dub for Ys IV and the translation patch for Dracula X, he won't do any more PCE projects at all.

So Tobias has already killed a number of projects that likely would have come out down the road.

The cheaper Dracula X repro makes no sense either, as you can buy an authentic copy for the same price.
 

Burning Fight!!

NIS America fan & Rent Free tenant
10 Year Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Posts
4,340
Tobias is the PCE scene's own brand of Dion Dakis. What I meant to say is "fuck PCEWorks".
 
Top