N64 Repros are Real! WORKING Zelda Master Quest, and How to Spot a Fake Cartridge
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.พ. 2017
- Check out this Master Quest cartridge working on original hardware! Plus, learn how to spot a fake N64 cartridge.
Check out John Riggs here! - / @johnriggs
Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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Thanks so much for the support everyone!! Just hit 1600 subs, up from 1400 only a few weeks ago! New video coming this week. :)
And again, sorry about the compression issues - that was my bad, and I've corrected the export settings for future videos. Thanks for checking out my content!!
Damn this video is full of flaws. Original Nes and SNES games did not use flash memory, they used masked rom memory that were easy&cheap to replace with standard, through hole solder, 27c series eprom chips.
It's just that The masked roms on n64 cartridges are high capacity, in totally non standard package and harder & more expensive to replace.
Well, thanks for the clarification. I was working off of what information I found, but it may have been inaccurate. Cheers!
the number embossed on the back of the OOT cartridge is actually showing the version number.
number with no letter- version 1.0
number with letter A- version 1.1
number with letter B- version 1.2 (this version took out the chanting in the Fire Temple music and Ganondorf coughs green blood instead of red)
I'm not sure what this imprint means on other games but it's basically a serial number of sorts.
Honestly dude how do you not at least have 100,000 subs. This video was amazing!! XD (love your studio btw!)
Koidess, Thanks so much! We're still climbing at 2600, and I couldn't be more excited! :)
What I love about Nintendrew is that he doesn't overact or emote wildly like some annoying TH-camrs. He just seems like a decent, humble guy with a passion that he knows a lot about.
True, but he does flex on us in his videos by showing off his gaming collection.
HEY GUYS ITS YO BOY ANNOYING TH-camR THAT SCREAMS AT HIS MIC
Exactly
I'm all for repro carts, they bring a lot of good games to the table. So long as they're not trying to be passed off as the real thing.
Also dont forget. Legitimate Nintendo Cartridges will have the battery soldered onto the board. The repro cartridges will have a removable battery.
Patrick Hindman imo that's better for convenience, as if it runs out, you can swap it immediately and easily
I've swapped a couple batteries on my legit NES games for holders just for future convenience, but I'd never do it on a rare/expensive game unless it was actively corroding and damaging the board. It's also pretty easy to get batteries with tabs if you want the flush, soldered look, and I've seen a couple repros with them.
Interesting, you think that repros ain't. Are you kinda purist? This is clearly a fake cartdridge and not a repro, since in case of repros it is stated on the cardridge istself.
Also by looking at the chips: this repro has much newer surface-mount chips all over the place. This technology was not available at that time. Also you can date a cart by how the board itself looks like; old boards are yellowed while newer boards are made out of almost transparent fiber glass. I can see an FPGA there, too (ALTERA I assume) acting as a CIC chip perhaps?
So, in other words the repros are better... got it.
There has really been some serious engineering put into that repro board. From a first glance, it looks like it has battery backed SRAM for saves, some flash memory, and an Altera Max II CPLD along with a platform flash chip (the little 8-pin package) holding the CPLD design - which will likely contain a lot of the glue logic and the lockout chip implementation.
The interesting thing is that this design is very similar to the likes of the Everdrive, except instead of an SD card, it's using a flash chip. It would also likely be possibly to reprogram that flash chip with a ROM of your choice through the unpopulated header at the top of the board (I would guess that the flash memory can work in SPI mode as well as parallel). May not be that simple though - I'm no expert on N64 cartridges, but I know that in the Gameboy and SNES carts there were different memory mapping chips and it might be the case that the one specific to Ocarina of Time is implemented in that CPLD - meaning that potentially games that use a different mapper would not work. Then again the CPLD could be smart enough to detect how to map the specific game on the flash into memory and work accordingly.
Would you be able to take some high resolution photos of the board and post them online (front and back)? If you could also point me to where you picked this up, that'd be great. I'd be interested in working out how it ticks.
For sure - I'll try to find time to do that this week
Darren do you think these can be re-flashed?
Let's Talk Retro Hard to say without getting my hands on one, but looks like it has flash on the board and a programming header. Probably JTAG on that for the CPLD, and I'd bet that the on board flash is exposed there too. Can probably be programmed via SPI and then read in parallel mode by the CPLD.
Darren the Flash chip is an S29GL256N as you can see at 8:39. It as an normal parallel Flash with 32 MByte of memory. There is no "special SPI programming feature" on this thing. It is even outdated (not recommended for new designs). The unpopulated header will simply be JTAG for programming the CPLD. They will be programming the Flash using the parallel edge connector, I'm pretty sure.
The CPLD has internal memory. It does not load from any SPI Flash. The 8-pin chip is no Flash at all. You can read the part number at 8:43, it is an Atmel AVR 8-Bit MCU. This is the N64 CIC clone that has been reverse engineered a few years ago. So the CPLD does not have to handle any lockout stuff. CPLDs are in fact very ressource limited. In this case it will have to do only some simple address latch / decode / count and chip select tasks. The N64 always starts a transaction to/from the cart by sending the start address. The CPLD has to decide if the address belongs to the game ROM or to the savegame SRAM and than forward the data to/from the selected chip.
There are other games that have EEPROMs (with a custom serial interface) or Flash memory (with a parallel interface similiar to that of the mask ROM or SRAM, but with a more complex command structure) for savegames. This will be much more logic for the CPLD. On this board there are two 32Kx8 bit SRAM chips. This is more than enough for the EEPROMs (there are 512 Byte and 2048 Byte variants). But the Flash is 128 kByte so there had to be four of the SRAM chips to emulate the Flash.
It is very similar to the everdrive, and like the everdrive, in order to deal with CIC lockout, it probably does a code injection when loading the ROM for the Altera to handshake with the console. I'm surprised the repro is profitable when you look at the bill of materials is around $20 alone, unless the Altera Max II has come down in price (last I checked bulk quantity was $12\ea per 1000 units orders on Alibaba)
As long as people mark repros as repros I have no problems with them. I have been collecting for years and years and have been able to determine real and fake myself but not all collectors can, and new collectors are really vulnerable to this.
Well shouldn't they try to become knowledgeable about something they are spending a good chunk of change on? Not saying duping people is cool but if it's a well know problem and people still throw caution to the wind. I have very little sympathy for them.
Absolutely they should. I'm not excusing people from doing their own research, especially the people who have more dollars than sense. I am just saying it can be a really intimidating thing to new collectors. Having to double check and make sure games are legit, and finding out the tells can be daunting.
@@aspaceproductions no people shouldnt need to be knowledgeable or careful, sellers shouldn't be commiting fraud
@@aspaceproductions No people should not be jerks and committing fraud. It ruins the fun of collecting and playing the games.
Sadly, people aren't that respectful and want to screw people and take their money. I'm more of a fan of legitimate retail games anyway. The only type of repros I think should even exist are any that either region didn't receive. Space Invaders or the Japan version of Super Mario Bros. 2 for Famicom/NES for example.
i dunno why but when u opened the cartridge and i seen the inside of it, it felt like my childhood kinda died a little knowing that its just a green board with some chips on it, when to me it felt like a magical world that i held so dear to my heart, to this day it still pulls me in just thinking about playing it on my old 12 inch box tv sitting in my room for hours on end, and seeing that slight gameplay u showed really makes me wanna go back in time todo it all over again, growing up sucks sometimes.
What exactly were you expecting it to be if not a chip?
I am the opposite. Now that I am an adult I find all the old technology and video codecs to be very interesting.
DUDE! SUPER MARIO STAR ROAD CARTRIDGE!!!! THAT WOULD BE SO DOPE!
If I recall it can't be played on original hardware due to how the ROM was expanded. It has to do with byte alignment and a hardware quirk emulators ignore.
yeah but a certain EVERDriVE 64 allows the ROM to be played on the N64! not certain how it works but they could implement that onto a repro!
No wont work extra ram that is 4MB not 8MB (the N64 has 4MB to start with so the Expansion adds another 4MB making the console use a total of 8MB) the extra Ram is only accessed if instructed to do so, while alot of hacks work anyway on the N64 some don't because the ROM was expanded and the console can't load all the data even with the extra ram....MARIO STAR ROAD wont work 64mb ROM boards only hold 32mb
slowcheet could modified Expansion Packs be made to use more than 4mb of ram?
I want a Last Impact Cartridge.
The repro card has an Altera EPM240 chip, which is a CPLD/FPGA programmable logic device. Original cartridges are very unlikely to have those since, for the large manufacturing volume of cartridges, FPGAs are more exprensive than dedicated ICs with custom hard-logic.
I love your Nintendo Power rack in the background. Wish I had one to display the boxes and boxes of these I have from when I was a kid.
Thank you! I bought an old tacky rack for $10 and painted it black. Works pretty well!
I am going to seriously consider doing this. I have every issue from 1997-2002 along with about 100 issues of EGM just sitting in boxes. Great videos by the way, from one Drew to another, instant sub.
Wish game informer was collectible like Nintendo power lol I got those as a kid
The missing "Nintendo Seal of Quality" should be the first huge red flag
I'm hoping for a F-ZERO X Expansion Kit on a cartdrige. The ROM was already created.
Totally man. I'd buy it.
Gigidag77 ghey might need a bigger sized rom cartridge
A Skilled Roy n64 got 500mb
A Skilled Roy
A skilled rom can fit any cartridge.
william the slayer Then they might need to patch the rom because the game doesnt run on a flash cart withought the cartridge running a moded os.
Hey I just found your channel! I thought you were a very big channel but I couldn't believe we are almost the same number in subs even though you have Double than me so I subbed, thanks for letting us know about master quest cartridge!
Only just found this channel, you have an awesome games room. I especially enjoy all the sprites on the wall.
Hey man love the videos! Ive noticed that sometimes your camera gets a little pixelated or lags, if you are using OBS to record you can turn off "Low Light Compensation" on your camera and it will stop that from happening! Keep making vids, Keep being awesome!
I like how this opens the possibilities for N64 homebrew games. This console was a huge part of my life, so getting to play fresh games is a nice prospect for me.
Nintendrew, you're about to see explosive growth man. This content is legit and ranks up there with the best of the best. No surprise that you uploaded this a week ago (looks like you had 1600 subs) and you're already up to 2800 as of when I'm leaving this comment. Get a better mic like a RODE because great audio makes or breaks the watching experience way more than video. I'm starting a channel this month and seeing growth like yours keeps me excited for the future. Remember my comment when you reach 1 million subs because it's gonna happen quick. Huge congratulations!!!
i like repros because it gives us a chance to play games that are super rare / super expensive, or games that were only released in certain regions, sure you could use an emulator, but theres been games that are nothing but bad roms so its impossible to emulate
Nothing like playing it on the real thing! :)
Especially seeing as for whatever reason the newer releases demand more horsepower out of the computer than the older ones, I find...no particular reason at all except for what I personally think can be rounded up to a fuck you from the plugins, lmao
butch if you can perfectly emulate mysitcal ninja staring goemon without sound or graphical glitches / lag, let me know :///
The reason is cos project 64 is about emulating the nintendo 64 as accurately as possible. After a certain point speed was no longer a concern and it was about more accurate emulation, it runs slower but it's closer to the original hardware (in theory) (there claims not mine)
Well, I guess I could give them that...besides, my old Rage 128 Pro isn't suitable for more than SNES emulation anyways.
Although I'm glad I don't use that and the system it's in as my daily anymore for obvious reasons. Lol
I was about to purchase a repro Bomberman Hero 64 without realizing it was a repro, then I stumbled upon this video and boy how grateful I am for your content. After watching it, I'm now more careful searching through eBay and Facebook for an original cartridge! I thank you for your channel, and I'm subscribed now!
Hay Drew it's nice to see the quality that go's into them I noticed that the battery looks like it's removable
My Brother brought me here. I have to say this video was interesting. I don't think I've hear of Nintendo 64 repros before, but this video really does show some neat things about them. Got to give props to whoever made that repro for trying to emulate the inside of a regular N64 cartridge. You sir have earned a new subscriber.
Nice video! I like your videos, so I subscribed.
Thanks so much!
Glitchex64 That's usually how it works yes
I am always facinated with channels getting new intro, I see this is an older intro than the one I am used to on your channel
Oh, nice! I didn't know Master Quest got ported. I've been looking into a few repros for the harder to get games (Sculptor's Cut for sure), but it's cool stuff like this is out there. Might have to track a copy down.
having so many smds (surface mount devices) is also probably pretty rare in an original n64 cart, smd is the most common mounting tech these days, but back in the mid 90s through hole soldering was much more common than today.
Good vid. Love your style man. Ive subscribed. Cheeers
I'm a little disappointed that someone went to the trouble of putting MQ on an N64 cart but didn't replace the gamecube style HUD and button sprites with N64 ones.
aleckermit Some sellers on aliexpress accept game requests. You could send them a patched rom with the n64 hud and have them put it on a cartridge
I just subscribed to you dude your channel is awesome! I do have a question for you though I hope you'd answer, how old are you? It's driving me crazy, you look so young and old at the same time!
Very cool. Thanks for the knowledge about these N64 board differences. Didn't even know the N64 had any DRM-like lock outs.
I'm glad I stumbled upon someone very informative
The difference between the Nintendo logo on the back of the cart is because the genuine cart has the logo as a part of the mold, whereas the logo on the repro is cut into the plastic after it has been moulded. You can tell by the sharper edges on the repro.
You didn't mention this, but the repros also use SMT (Surface Mount Technology), which, if I recall correctly, is too new for N64 cartridges to possibly use, while the originals used through-hole technology, the norm (and possibly only available option) for that time.
Fantastic content, you are gonna be *HUGE*
Oh man I've been waiting for this.
i dunno why for a split second i saw "repros" and thought repossession. My brain can be weird sometimes lol
Great video ! I didn't know that n64 repros didn't exist till now, its pretty weird how the games were so differently made but maybe it was because of how the games worked different :/ idk. Keep up the good work.
Thanks a lot! :)
Both retail NES and SNES games used mask ROMs as well. Most NES games used two - one for the program and one for the graphics (some used RAM for graphics, copied from the program). There's no "reprogramming" being done for NES/SNES repros/bootlegs, they're removing the old ROMs from donor cartridges and popping in EPROMs with the new ROMs. The main reason why N64 reproductions only became a thing in the last couple years is mainly down to chip sizes and demand - the size of the chips necessary to hold the games was big enough to still be somewhat expensive, and N64 collecting was still coming up. Now that there are several N64 games going for a fair amount, and more collector interest, its made more sense for the Chinese repro makers to devote the attention to it.
In general, I'm ok with repros/bootlegs of things that were never released. I've made quite a few NES reproductions of fan-English-translated Famicom games like FF2/3, Sweet Home, etc, plus a few ROM hacks. Nobody is going to mistake them as rare, expensive games even if I die unexpectedly and someone who knows nothing about games is cleaning things out. I do have a problem with bootlegs of released games intended to duplicate expensive games - not only can they add confusion in the market, but even if I don't intend to ever try to sell them myself you never know what'll happen in the future. We've already had issues with Gamestop's program sending people repro games, and it's probably only going to get worse.
Thanks for the clarification!
Exactly right. No flash chips for storing game program in retail carts, just ROMS. SNES was a bit more of a challenge though and you couldn't always just drop in an EPROM as the traces would need to be altered for the difference in pinout. These days it is easy to buy empty circuit boards for ROM carts for next to nothing.
Good video though.
The 100-pin Altera MAX II chip there is a CPLD that have the authentication chip and address decoding inside. This also means that yes there is a Verilog or VHDL implementation of the auth chip out there.
Hi, I just wanted to point out one of the most noticeable differences on the outside of the repro cartridge. On the back of the cartridge where "Nintendo" is engraved just above the label, notice the third "n" in "Nintendo". The right side of the "n" is noticeably shorter than the left. This, along with the round dot in the letter "i", seems to be consistent with almost all the repros (however, I've seen a PAL repro of Conker's Bad Fur Day where the "n" is the same as the official version; although the dot in the "i" was still round instead of square). On the official cartridges, both sides are always the same length. When looking at often low resolution images on ebay, the differences in the "n" will be much easier to see than the dot in the letter "i".
Where the *LEGEND* started
Speaking of bit crushed, wtf is up with the video when you showing the carts closer? Every time you move, the image gets utterly wrecked.
I think it's the background. Because it's so spotty, the TH-cam algorithm can't handle the detail it needs to render it. Similar things happen with confetti or snow.
Yeah, that's my bad - I'm still getting acclimated to this format and I think I had my export settings messed up (lower bitrate). Shouldn't happen again. Cheers!
The Altera MAX CPLD at the center of the knockoff is a 'blank chip' that can be programmed to act as any other logic circuit would, someone just wrote the CIC handshake onto the CPLD to avoid having to deal with sourcing an original. This is alongside the fact that CPLD converts the signals from the flatpack style memory ICs into logic the Nintendo 64 can understand.
Andrew you're awesome, love the room and collections man!
7:34 for what I know a lockout chip must be very simple because its function is just to send the license code, so if that cartridge can be played in a regular n64 I would guess that the lockout chip must be the smallest one, the one that is below the two rectangle shaped chips.
Drew, I notice the reproduction board also uses surface mount components instead of through hole like the original Nintendo cartridge. Is that something else that separates them, or is that something some original Nintendo cartridges used as well?
I don't know if he or anybody else mentioned but on the Master Quest reproduction, in the precautions listed on the back of the cartridge, on the 3rd line it says "LOSE TOUR" information instead of "LOSE YOUR" information. This type of typo is commonly seen in reproductions with slightly less attention to details. Moral of the story? Always read the precautions!
The Animal Crossing Translation has been on a cart for a while.
FYI:
The encircled M stands for "mask work". It is a copyright symbol for the circuit and IC chips' layouts.
The encircled D means the design is registered. This means protection by industrial design rights.
I'm excited.
The battery "Pocket" is the big tell-tale on the repro. It's very common on fakes to look like that and the original is almost always as bare as in the original one.
Is the newer IC packaging also a tell? like with the high-pin-density ultra-flat surface-mount stuff compared to the DIP packages in the legit cartridge?
Also IIRC the way the battery is mounted to the board is also a tell - the repros/pirates use that modular button cell holder while Nintendo spot-welds the batteries in place.
Great video although things did get a little blurry on the close ups. I personally am excited for repros. I buy the originals when I can. I am proud to say I have originals of "Conker's Bad Fur Day", "Indians Jones And The Infernal Machine" and "Stunt Racer". The original "Clayfighter Sculptor's Cut" is so expensive I can't justify the price to buy it so I bought a repro. I am still waiting for it to arrive. I hope it is a quality reproduction like the one you have. I just love playing games on the original hardware with the original controllers and I think repros allow use to do that with games that were previously out of reach for people. What I can't support are repros for current games or games currently in production. Keep up the great work. With all this said I have to give a nod to the N64 games on the original Wii VC. What Nintendo did with those emulations is incredible and I believe you can still buy them today. They look and play great on modern TVs. The Wii VC was truly an underappreciated service.
John Riggs is pretty freaking cool (:
I think ROM Hacks, homebrew and fan translations are awesome, I just ordered this before seeing the video. However I'm getting sick of repros. I'm not a store owner and I dealt with 6 repros of expensive carts last year. It's cheaper just to buy a flash cart than to buy 4 or 5 of these and those play nearly every game for the given system. I doubt we'll see as many repros because a lot of the good games are still at or under $25 and the 64 didn't sell as well as the NES or SNES.
Thanks for the video man!
Honestly I don't give a fuck. The n64 market has the most ridiculous false inflation for any system. Games that clearly aren't even close to being rare or games that have a shit ton of supply get their prices jacked up to ridiculous levels. There are hundreds of Super Mario 64 copies on ebay alone at any given time. Yet, you still see people trying to sell it for 40$ or more. Honestly it needs a shake up and if repros make people stop price gouging I'm all for it.
pelleman02wb I agree that the prices are outrageous but they aren't as bad as SNES games. My problem comes when fake copies of Sculptor's Cut and Second Attack start popping up the way we've seen fake earthbound a show up.
A nice and concise video. The problem? The encoding. I don't know if it's your camera adjusting the resolution, or if you're using a program that's encoding it weirdly, but it's VERY blocky throughout the video. If it's software, try to find the cause. If it's the camera, time for an upgrade!
For tour first video, this is pretty good
Great video as always, if i can manage to do this i may start selling labeled reproductions for a solid price.
it might be the network I'm on at the moment but your video seems to be compressed at weird times and places. I dont know too much about how to fix it but if it is a problem with your vid i figured you'd want to know about it, my best guess is to change the file type or codec. But great vid btw, really clear and high production quality.
Edit: Read the pinned comments
Nice vid! one question: Will it damage the console? I've heard some repros have thicker pcbs than the original ones, resulting in a looser connection when attaching the original games (thinner pcbs) . How safe are they to the console overall?
Repros are a good chance of us playing game that were not relished in our region, games that are fare to expensive for us or games relished with fan translations which is very common with a few JRPG's. Also another good thing to look into is N64 rom hacks/ home-brews as their are some really good ones on the Nes, Snes and Mega Drive.
I didn't get a good look at the back of the original board but it looked like it had all through-hole mounted (THM) DIP chips, where the repro had much newer tech surface mount chips (SMT) with much higher pin count on all sides of the package acount and finer pitch between traces.
Great videos! Just work on your encoding bitrate because this video goes really pixelated at times
If it is not a person trying to scam you, the game usually will have Reproduction print on the label. Scammers will not put this on the label.
What if it's on the price tag but not the label?
Seeing that this board does not have the Nintendo verification chip, it is possible it shorted (and thus broke) the one in the Nintendo 64. This would allow the game through without verification. This was a common practice in NES repros, but it would do permanent damage to the console itself. Watch out for that!
Eric Pratt I bought the N64 version of master quest I hope it doesn't damage my N64 I bought the system in July.
I think the biggest giveaway is the surface mount technology. N64 carts used through hole technology (meaning the legs of the chips go through the board)
not gonna lie. I am insanely jealous of the magazine rack. I think I will do that someday as well. thanks for the inspiration.
Im looking forward to both.
Quality repros are good for games that had limited runs or that Nintendo's never going to release on Virtual Console. Run-of-the-mill bootlegs are often awful, though. Thanks for the video!
The Max ll is a CPLD that can mimic many chips. Its probably what is used for the lockout chip.
this is as old as you can get, i've been playing this kind of games since the day, there was even an adapter which you'd use a original and a repro some times.
Imagine Super Mario Last Impact or Star Revenge on a real n64
Well I would also say that another good indicator is that Repros use SMT/SMD Soldering instead of the classic through-hole Soldering method.
The Ocarina of Time Master Quest was originally made for the N64 DD, but went through the same ordeal as EarthBound 64, fortunately however, it was ported to the Gamecube instead of being canned
After repros for n64 stuff came to my attention i've seen some pretty rare stuff at my local zias and bookmans.
Oh no
I highly doubt it but Star Road/ Last Impact on OG hardware would be awesome.
Cool. I just recently bought a reproduction cart of a Zelda ROM hack. Way cool to play it on original hardware. Question - these carts have a battery in them - do they save this way for any game?
great vid bro :)
May have been asked before, but, what do you use for capture on your Retro systems?
The most humble man ever!
hey Nintendrew, random question.... where would I be able to buy that Super Smash Bros decal/sticker you have?
A few other things to keep in mind:
The solder looks like garbage on the repro, the pins aren't a gold color like they should be, and the cart appears to have a more standardized board, as evidenced by the empty IC area on the right side. A real cart almost definitely wouldn't have these, as it would waste material.
Good points, thanks for the comment!
CIC can be programmed into a simple 8 pin PIC like the ATTiny
You missed what, to me, seems like the most obvious difference. The original cartridge used only PDIP (plastic dual inline package) style chips, whereas the repro used surface mount chips.
While not a dead give away PDIP style chips (which were very common through the early 2000s) are becoming increasingly rare to the point that you would almost never see anything but surface mount chips on a current production circuit board.
Thanks, because of this video I realized I had a fake OOT cartridge.
I think its pretty cool to have repros as long as ppl understand that’s what they are
Well internally what stands out is the technology, Nintendo was Dual Inline Package, the fake was Surface Mount Technology. I don't know if they used SMT much for cartridges, but my guess is it was cheaper at that time to go DIP.
Yes, thanks for pointing that out!
My guess would be that the handshake is static, so you just need to record it once. Even if not, This hardware is so old that you could record every possible outcome with just some patience.
I want to see Super Mario 64: Last Impact working on a repro cart
not only were they able to reverse engineer the whole thing, they were able to describe it in VHDL and load it onto an Altera.
I will remember to check out. 😀👍🎮
Do all n64 cartridges have batteries in them? What are the symptoms of a dead or dieing n64 cartridge battery, i know the memory card won't work once the battery dies in them, so what is it for in the cartridge, just games that save to themselves?
I just checked the few N64 games I have and I did notice that one didn't have any numbers at all just says "PATENTS ISSUED AND PENDING. SEE BOOKLET." Yet my EA Sports Knockout Kings 2000 has the exact same look a even some of the feel but the Knockout Kings 2000 does have that imprint if you will which says "19" and has all the numbers and that D especially. I just find it odd how the other game that I don't think his original has the same outer case such as the the dotted i identical for example. Either way I think I need to truly open it up to see if it's a repro or an original but then again it only cost me $4.99 at the local retro gaming store for NBA HANGTIME
Great video 👍🏽
Where did you get that hylian shield?? its the nicest one i've seen :O
Nice video! I thought the Zelda OofT master quest only came out on the GameCube disc?
I think in that particular one the most obvious difference is that the original cartridge has all DIP chips while the repro has all surface mount chips.
Pretty crazy that they have used an FPGA for the board. I would imagine it is not that cheap to manufacture that repro. I was honestly expecting a cheap board with a black blob! I don't think this is going to be an issue for a seasoned collector that knows to open and check carts before purchase, but it is cool to be able to get some games that you could not have gotten otherwise like this. Even demoscene stuff on actual cart would be great. Anything new brought to the N64 is a good thing in my book, but just watch out for bootlegged original titles.
This is a great first video
Great vid, even 5+ year later. In 2022, it sucks realizing that the N64 games that required a CR2032 battery to save progress are soldered to the PCB rather than held in place via a retention clip. Lucky for me, I was able to obtain some tabbed CR2032 batteries to replace my Ocarina of Time and Smash Bros batteries, as those are the only two games I own (legit copies) that require batteries.
Personally, I get kind of excited any time I can bust out my soldering iron.
There are a lot of hacks of WWF No Mercy. It will be awesome to see them on repro
I have no issue with repros as long as they are sold as repros. Some games are crazy expensive(Conker) and you can get a repro for like $20. It really does help some people get into the system without spending a ton of money.
I just worry about buying games for my collection, but that’s less of a worry since I only buy CiB today