Slightly dodgy looking Slug 1 MVS

From my post on some carts I've recieved from Yaton (http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138194&page=1&pp=25) I've got a slightly dodgy looking Slug 1 cart.. however I am a little confused as the majority of the roms look legit, the game plays fine and the CRC of the region and rom banks check out ok in the unibios menu:

Cart


Board 1


Board 2


Close-up on nasty soldering


The majority of the roms look too good to be a boot... could this be a repair job of some sort? (not a pro one, obviously!)

Boot

Dammit... this was supposed to be one of his legit ones.

Don't know if it's worth sending it back unless he has a proper one.

That's one bootylicious cart you got there dude

Boot, I also got burned with 2 boots out of 4 carts I ordered from Yaton. I send one back and sold the other one to somebody who wanted it. Anyway I don't think I'll buy from him ever again.

Actually, I dont think that is a boot for a number of reasons, admittedly none of them are conclusive though. This is a metal slug with 16 meg sound output instead of 32 meg, ive had 5 of these previously and all of them contained original labels, and all of them worked flawlessly. The piggie backed chip is because there is no space for a V4 chip on the board. The game converts to the AES formatt just fine, with a samurai shodown 2 I might add (usually the cart used is kof 95), the wire that you can see is for the sound channel to function properly.

Boot legged MVS carts are usually of titles that have a popular history in terms of prequels like puzzle bobble and bomberman, slug 1 hardly blew up at the time of release, so it was hardly worth making boots of it.

Couple this with the fact that it works with unibios and phantom 1 (as well as the fact the most boots eventually go faulty, and i have a copy of this that has functioned since 2000 when I got it) and its very doubtful this is a boot at all. 5 with original labels? More than just a cooincidence im afraid....

Looks like a bootleg copy.

ninja maestro said:

5 with original labels? More than just a cooincidence im afraid....

Click to expand...

Yeah, this has an original label, but it's been sliced up pretty badly - literally in half.

This is almost identical to the cart pics posted by Mutation (http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137179&highlight=slug+boot) in another thread....





That too has the MS* labelling on the roms, two identical eproms (one yellow stickered, one white stickered), along with the single jumper wire and the resoldered resistors.

Neo Ash said:

Looks like a bootleg copy.

Click to expand...

How so?

Like I said in the other thread (before I saw this one), it looks messy but not booty. There's just too much original stuff on it to be a boot.

You just explained a couple reasons why it **IS** a boot.

First, you can make exact copies that will pass a CRC check, which can only be performed on the Px data. Even with that, you could split the Px roms into 100 rom chips and it can still compute out the same CRC since this is a calculation based on the 68K's accessible data, not what number of roms are residing in the cart itself. CRC can't be performed on the other roms because they are not directly accessible via the 68k.

SNK has never double-stacked roms. MSlug uses 32Mb V roms, so using 4 x 16Mb, with one stacked it a definate giveaway. And SNK never marked their V roms with "Wx."

Something working/not working with the Phantom-1 is not an indicator of a boot.

This cart, a bootleg through and through.

Jeff

ninja maestro said:

Actually, I dont think that is a boot for a number of reasons, admittedly none of them are conclusive though. This is a metal slug with 16 meg sound output instead of 32 meg, ive had 5 of these previously and all of them contained original labels, and all of them worked flawlessly. The piggie backed chip is because there is no space for a V4 chip on the board. The game converts to the AES formatt just fine, with a samurai shodown 2 I might add (usually the cart used is kof 95), the wire that you can see is for the sound channel to function properly.

Boot legged MVS carts are usually of titles that have a popular history in terms of prequels like puzzle bobble and bomberman, slug 1 hardly blew up at the time of release, so it was hardly worth making boots of it.

Couple this with the fact that it works with unibios and phantom 1 (as well as the fact the most boots eventually go faulty, and i have a copy of this that has functioned since 2000 when I got it) and its very doubtful this is a boot at all. 5 with original labels? More than just a cooincidence im afraid....

Click to expand...

The only original parts are the SNK boards and maybe the MVS casing.

Jeff

Murray said:

Like I said in the other thread (before I saw this one), it looks messy but not booty. There's just too much original stuff on it to be a boot.

Click to expand...

They were forced to piggyback one of their 16Mb V roms because they used a PROGGSC board that has only three V rom locations while an original Metal Slug has a PROGBK board with four V locations (but only two are actually used, with 32Mb roms as Jeff said). The CHA board is clearly taken from some other game with different jumper settings so they had to change them and what a sloppy job they did!

Wherever you look at it it screams bootleg.

Ok, will attempt to get a replacement or refund for this one, thanks folks.

Yup, it's a boot, it matches the boot from the pics I posted last time. You'll notice it has weird names stamped : Dx for Cx, Q1 for P1, Wx for Vx. You 'll be also able to notice that W4 's superimposed on W2...
the legit Metal Slug has 2 V's only, not 4.

Thanks everyone for posting the additional details on why this is a boot. I've definitely learned something.

Me too, like how much trouble people will go to in order to have original labels on bootleg carts. Im not dismissing what others say, but im far from convinced that this is a boot.

Jeff, I dont really think it can be said that SNK 'never' did anything out of the ordinary like stacking chips. True, these metal slugs seem to be the only example so far, but SNK hardly have a consistency for presentation in their carts. Kizunas out of left over savage reigns, puzzle bobbles from power spikes to carts just to name a few. Fair enough, these carts have similarities which make them obvious choices to be made into different games, but what about that kof 98 that was displayed on the boards here a while back, the one that looked like it had a prog board similar to the one found on slug x or even kof 99? Bootleg? You stated that maybe the label is original. This is the sixth one of these I have seen, previous ones were seen in the flesh and they ALL had original labels.

Original puzzle bobbles have more eproms and absolutley no indication that it is NGH 083 on any of the chips. Reasons such as this mean that it takes more than a few abnormalities to identify a boot. And if it is a boot, you can be forgiven for thinking otherwise, as its the most convincing one ever.

wow, i was going to try to snipe some of his metal slug auctions today but after reading about the boot you got i will have to pass. Where can i get legit metal slug 1,2 and x mvs cartridges?

Are not the MS chips a giveaway?

More than likely what has happened here is that you have gotten a number of boots from the same bootlegger.

Just to bring some closure to this, I got a replacement cart through the letterbox this morning:







Filthy, but legit. The case is also in much better condition.
James/Yaton didn't quibble about replacing the cart, he also refunded my postage, so you can't really ask for any more than that. I think I'd probably use him again, but just take into account that it may take a couple of weeks to get everything sorted out.

That MS1 is a 100% bootleg, the legit MS1 board pic supports this.

What I don't understand is why people don't buy their MVS and other Arcade game needs from www.excellentcom.net
You get 100% legit carts in FAR better condition than anything from Yaton.

The prices aren't as cheap as Yatons but the extra you pay is worth it as you know your cart is legit and in almost new condition.