How to identify a fake GBA cartridge ?

[thatgui]

I bought my first GBA games the other day (Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission) on eBay and I am now wondering wether they are fake or not:

• when I bought them there was only one item of each game listed, but now I see that the seller at least sold 5 items of each game (no "tricks" on the sellers side, I just did not pay attention)
• two user ratings complain about fake modules, but for another game (Pokemon something) which he also sold several of
• officially, seller and items are based in Austria, but the module (only one arrived yet) came from Malta

The cartridge has no easy to spot sign of forgery (no "Nintondo" logo or something like that) but as (regarding to my research) people doing this kind if thing learned a lot on how to perfect their work that is no sign that its a legit module.

As there can't be a definitive list of clues to look out for I wondered if anyone knows some kind of picture database where people put pics of legit modules up, so I could compare.

Or does anybody around posses those two (EU, not NA versions) and would be willing to share some peculiarities their legit ones have ?

 

[rygD]

I don't know of any resources to help, but I can offer my observations with the one fake I have (that I know of).

Check the plastic. I can't remember if the feel and such are different, but the color of mine is slightly off. If you don't have it next to real ones it is impossible to tell. Even when it is mixed in with real ones you don't really notice unless you know it is a fake and are looking for a sign.

I will have to check again, but I think the label was ever so slightly different. I don't know if it was just a lower quality or the colors were slightly off again. Also, I am pretty sure real ones have some letters or numbers kinda stamped into them, sorta like cut into the material. I could be getting my cartridges mixed up, and it is possible that both fakes and real ones have them.

The biggest indicator for me was when I opened it. I can't remember if the interior of the shell was different, but I want to say it wasn't as nicely finished as the real ones. The board was totally different, and didn't look like a real one at all. It had none of the Nintendo markings. Try to find pictures of a real copy of the game, including the board (and if it doesn't match, Nintendo may have just changed it at some point, so that may not be reliable). Edit: since this is what you are asking for, no clue why I suggested it...

The game played fine, and as far as I know it is still doing fine after more than 10 years. All of the indicators I picked up on may have been fixed since then. Back then it was hard to tell without opening it up, so if they are more accurate now it may be nearly impossible to tell now.

An additional note: As far as I know the only differences between different regional copies are the languages. There is no region locking that I recall. The labels are possibly/probably different. The board may be different, and have the region marked on it, I can't remember. I know you want to look at EU copies, but if no one here has any I have US ones. I actually know where those are, while I would need to search for the fake game (Minish Cap or something).

 

[comradekingu]

Open them up and see.

 

[thatgui]

I know you want to look at EU copies, but if no one here has any I have US ones. I actually know where those are, while I would need to search for the fake game (Minish Cap or something).

The "fixation" on eu modules, is just about comparing the labels, as I have a european version.
But one thing could/may be region independent: can you look into the module where the plastic covers the contacts> on the opposite side of the contacts, there may be some rectangles "etched" into the case, with one may be containing an "F". I found a forum post somewhere, where this was mentioned as a sign for a fake module - but that was for another game again, so I do not know whether this is just a particularity of this certain games case, or if every gba game case has this rectangles.

Open them up and see.

I did, but I can't see anything super suspicios, but looking at the latest, confirmed fakes this does not mean much

 

[___]

hmm maybe try the nintendoage forums if noone can help here. There are several threads where people try to identify fakes. I just know this from neogeo mvs fakes, and they are easier to tell because there are pretty obvious signs (like handsoldered things on pcb, eeproms having been swapped out, eventhough all of this could have been done by a service person back when they were deployed in arcade.)

I'd ask the question "is it worth it to produce fakes" first. I see both games for around 40€ with case and manual on German ebay. I doubt that it would be worth it to pump out fakes for that price. Then again I do not know the gba market.
For supernintendo it makes sense to produce fakes of certain valuable games but that goes into the hundreds of euros... most reproduction carts that are sold as such cost around 50-60 euros. Acquiring cases, eeproms and pcbs isn't super easy, so the cost of producing a fake/repro is pretty high. Not sure if this is the same case with gba carts though.

Anyway, it's almost impossible to tell a good fake from a real cart. If done right, there are hardly any indicators left. Would it even make a difference? If the quality of the cart and chips is so high, that you can't make out a difference and the cart isn't something you paid collectors prices for, then who cares?

It's like people in the neogeo scene buying prototype carts. They want to possess something unique and are able and willing to pay a few thousand bucks for. then they get the cart, it's bland and the insides are all hand soldered (obviously, as it's a prototype) and want to know if it's a fake. Well there is noone left on earth who could tell, except for the people who originally worked on that particular prototype. Just be glad that you didn't pay 14.000$ for a prototype that might potentially be fake, and just 40€ for a game.
[doublepost=1461240271,1461239764][/doublepost]http://kuro-rpg.net/guest/gamefaqs/gba_insides_004.jpg

here are two different versions of the cart. both are official US versions, left one has eeprom, right one battery supported sram. it's going to be hard to tell. EU version apparently has two versions for each game aswell.

 

[rygD]

@thatgui I will try to check tonight. Just wondering, are you planning on reporting the seller if it is fake? I wonder if the feedback claiming they are fakes were accompanied by being reported. That should have resulted in them not being able to sell those games, or maybe any game (pending investigation or something, maybe, I don't keep up with such things).

@xnopasaranx I don't think the cost to make a fake GBA cart is that high. Mine cost less than what you are saying, and it was when the game was still new. Not sure about current costs with the more accurate board and prices of real copies of these games (since prices vary greatly from game to game, often with ones that should be readily available, due to the number of original sales, going for a higher price).

It makes sense to be suspicious if the seller offers only high profile titles like Pokemon and Metroid, there are no heavily worn copies, and there aren't many signs of it being an actual used game dealer. I just remembered I know someone that might have a connection for new fakes... Anyway, I understand the preference for the real deal, and I want real ones, or I would use an EverDrive (for GB/C, and most of my older consoles) or one of my two GBA flash carts. These fakes may cost us more in a decade or two when they die and the price for a real copy is even higher. If the fakes are of comparable quality to the originals it may not matter to anyone other than archival type collectors that don't actually play the games anyway. Also, if you pay for a real copy you should get a real one.

 

[Exophase]

I got hit with GBA bootlegs off eBay once, and the way I found out was because one of the games had a bug that only occurred in a known bad ROM dump

But that probably didn't happen to you. The game with the bad ROM was Lufia: The Ruins of Lore. Metroid Fusion was one of the other games.

There were a ton of other obvious signs, like the games having a really unusually low cost and coming from Hong Kong or something with a package labelled "samples." I was just too naive to really see it at the time.

I might go digging some time to see if I still have them, then I can open my fake Metroid Fusion up for comparison. One thing that I'm really curious about is if the fakes actually use mask ROMs. That'd have a high initial overhead and would lock them into having to make a lot of that particular fake. If they're making new ones today it might make more sense to use some kind of EEPROM or NOR flash instead. In this case you should be able to easily spot the difference based on the pinout. But if it's using the same technology for the ROM and the save backup as the original it might be really hard to identify; I'm assuming they silk screened the PCB the same. Don't know about the chips, if it's as easy to give them fake markings. Push comes to shove, at the very least the actual traces on the PCB should give it away, I doubt they were able to reproduce the originals perfectly.

 

[fusion_power]

I remember we've buyed one fake GBA Game once for my exGF's Handheld. Sonic Advance...something was that. Of course we have expected the original game. Fake one was easy to spot, no Manual and the game version had the same savegame bug like every other (german) Version of that ROM I know so far: you could not save anymore at a certain point. I had a Sonic Advance-ROM on my Pandora with the same bug.

 

[levi]

I might go digging some time to see if I still have them, then I can open my fake Metroid Fusion up for comparison. One thing that I'm really curious about is if the fakes actually use mask ROMs. That'd have a high initial overhead and would lock them into having to make a lot of that particular fake. If they're making new ones today it might make more sense to use some kind of EEPROM or NOR flash instead.

I was wondering that also. In this day and age, you can probably build a cart just using NOR flash and still make enough of a profit selling it - I'd be surprised if anyone risks making a ROM mask and printing new ROMs. It might even be cheaper to use NAND flash and put a small SoC on there to load pages of it into RAM.

Then I started thinking, what if Nintendo did that also? There must be NAND flash as well as a masked ROM on a standard cart that can save games. What if they decided to up the size of the flash and forget about the ROM one day?

 

[Exophase]

I was wondering that also. In this day and age, you can probably build a cart just using NOR flash and still make enough of a profit selling it - I'd be surprised if anyone risks making a ROM mask and printing new ROMs. It might even be cheaper to use NAND flash and put a small SoC on there to load pages of it into RAM.

I think this isn't realistic for GBA games, the data is read from the cartridge bus like 4-5 CPU cycles after the address is asserted, or just a few hundred ns. And there's no way to assert extra delays. So it's not realistic to be able to always have NAND flash blocks ready that quickly. Just responding with anything at all using a microcontroller would be challenging.

For DS games it may be viable to use NAND flash, although you may still want some CPLD or something to interface it instead of a microcontroller.

Then I started thinking, what if Nintendo did that also? There must be NAND flash as well as a masked ROM on a standard cart that can save games. What if they decided to up the size of the flash and forget about the ROM one day?

Wario Ware D.I.Y. may have done something like that.. it uses a NAND to get a bigger than usual save space and the game communicates with it on the same bus as the cartridge. But I don't know what the PCB looks like, so I don't know if they didn't just tie two different chips to the same chip select and rely on the command types to arbitrate the bus.

I do know that the save addresses don't start above the game ROM addresses, so that'd have to be abstracted in hardware somehow.

 

[iprice]

I unknowingly bought a fake GBA game off of eBay years ago. There are often a number of ways to tell, just by looking at the cart itself, without opening it up.

Some carts have "Nontendo" embossed in them as the logo!
Some carts serial number (on cart and sticker) don't match up with the official version.
Artwork is poor or differs from original
Colour of cart - sometimes greyer/lighter in colour than official carts.
Games can have a hacked/cracker logo before loading the game (my Mario Golf does), although mine never actually loaded the game - it always crashed afterwards, hence I started looking at the evidence that it was indeed a fake game.

 

[thatgui]

thanks for the hints and offers, but they are not needed anymore:
As it looks like every game usually has their game code (its in the string on every GBA cartridge: "AGB-%Fourdigitgamecode%-%region%") on one of the chips, which isn't the case on mine (mine looks a lot like http://i.imgur.com/tz6BJxB.jpg, but with out the right epoxy blob).
I contacted the seller and demanded a return - he probably won't answer to that but I feel he needs to have a chance to do it. If he does not answer in the next 48h (or so) I'll open a case with ebay - as I payed with paypal (but not through eBay) I might have a chance to get my money back.

as to the "why the hassle":
- if its not a legit game, there is a not so small chance that its a bad romdump with problems
- if I did not care whether its a legal copy or not, I would just download the romdump from somewhere
- I bought something, which I would not have if the description was right - so I got an inferior product > if it was something else, like a toaster where the toast would not stay down, I would return it too
[doublepost=1461308945,1461307057][/doublepost]Interesting development:
The seller answered 2 minutes ago, already having send back the money I payed, telling me that he will talk to his supplier about that and asking me not to give a negative or neutral feedback. What now ? I'm inclined to give him a neutral feedback, stating that I got a fake module but got the money back - would that be wrong ? In theory he could be a victim too - but I doubt that as he is selling the same set of games for some years (always pausing for a few months or weeks between "lots").

 

[WizardStan]

On the one hand, there's no way this guy is selling fake carts and doesn't know about it, he totally knows what he's selling isn't legit; he only refunded you to keep you quiet about it so he could keep scamming people and you should totally leave negative feedback.
On the other hand, it literally won't matter: odds are he has thousands of positive feedback and your one negative will just be a blip that can be waved off as a mistake; and even if not, even if your feedback causes him problems and he stops his business someone else'll just step up and claim his sales, so it's net-zero.
I wouldn't waste my time.

 

[___]

holy crap! I never knew gba games were such a pitfall. that is crazy!

 

[TrashyMG]

holy crap! I never knew gba games were such a pitfall. that is crazy!

Well I know one GBA game that is pitfall...

 

[slaeshjag]

^ That's a real pitfall in multiple ways. The Windows 95 version was a lot better.

 

[rygD]

@thatgui The board you linked to is kinda what my fake looked like to. Maybe it did have Nintendo stuff silkscreened, but either way it doesn't look like a real one (as compared to my other ones). I totally support your decision about this (although I wish there was an easy way to get grey and black market stuff in a somewhat safe way, other than ebay, although some items are easy to get your hands on).

As for the seller, I would tell them that they need to tell ebay that found out their supplier is sending fakes and they intend to fix this. Also inform the seller that you will be letting ebay know, as you don't want other buyers getting screwed. Give them the chance to do right, and if they don't, at least you warned them you were going to talk to ebay. If they get thrown off ebay it is their own fault, as I really doubt they didn't know. You might want to let PayPal know, too, otherwise they might just create a new ebay account and continue duping buyers on ebay (also, remember the issues PayPal had with ED selling EverDrives? I am pretty sure things like this are not permitted according to the terms of use.)

I do feel that this is a battle worth fighting. Please let us know what you do.

 

[thatgui]

@thatgui
I do feel that this is a battle worth fighting. Please let us know what you do.

Despite the sellers repeated request to not give him a neutral or negative feedback, I gave him a neutral feedback stating that the game was fake but that I got my money back in no time, through Paypal. I was not as polite as you suggested and did not warn the seller before reporting him to eBay, but I doubt anything will come out of it. I reported him (or to be more exact, the item he was offering) five days ago, without even a auto reply from eBay as of yet.

 

[rygD]

Their investigation wouldn't even be that difficult. They could check feedback and sales history, then buy a cartridge to see for themselves. I don't know how they usually deal with such things.

If they are going to allow people to sell known fake carts they may as well allow flash cartridges and such. Maybe burned copies of games, movies, and tv shows, too.

 

[HelenF]

I have reported to eBay about listings for fake Bandai Digivices, and they never did anything about it.

I also report emails where sellers add me to a mailing list without permission. I've never had a response, one time I got an auto-reply months later basically saying "we didn't have time to read this", and one time the same seller added me to the same mailing list again a few months later.