Final Fantasy VII for the NES was originally created as a Chinese bootleg by a group called Nanjing. The bootleg was pretty messy, but it was updated by hacker Lugia2009, cleaned up, and made more accurate. There have been several updates to it since, and the version I got is the most up to date version, put on an NES cartridge, featuring Yoshitaka Amano renditions of Cloud, Aeris, Barrett, Red XIII, and Cait Sith for its artwork… awesome! For those of you who might not know, Yoshitaka Amano is a famous Japanese illustrator, who did iconic character designs for the Final Fantasy series, up until Final Fantasy VII, so all the NES Final Fantasy games featured his artwork, while the original, PlayStation 1 release of Final Fantasy VII did not.
Sometimes, when games are released in North America, they are either edited or not translated as well as they could have been. Earthbound Uncut is a version of Earthbound very similar to its North American release, but is free of all the minor edits that were made to the game (ex. crosses that were removed from the fronts of hospitals are brought back). Final Fantasy IV and VI are better translations than their original North American releases.
Star Fox 2 is a very unique repro cart, because it is a completed version of a game that wasn’t ever finished. The game was finished, many years after the Super Nintendo was finished, by some of the staff who were originally working on it, and released online. Reproductions of it are usually more expensive than other carts, because they can only be ripped onto certain boards. The game runs best on a Doom cartridge, but won’t have a working save feature if that’s the case. I opted to get a cart that includes the save feature, but sometimes has slowdown.
So how can you start collecting reproduction cartridges? They can definitely be found on eBay, which is how I got Terranigma and Final Fantasy V, but usually for around $100, which is much more expensive than they usually are if you buy them directly from a repro site. A better-priced site will charge closer to $40 for an NES game, and $60 for a SNES game (USD). Sadly, Timewalk Games, my favorite repro site, closed up shop. The created all the boxed sets I own, which include instruction manuals and maps, and definitely had some great graphic designers working for them. Here’s a list of currently operating repro sites: http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=57823. My new favorite site (included on that list) is OCDreproductions.com. They make really good looking carts, have a very impressive selection, have lower prices compared to other sites, and have a very quick turnaround time: less than two weeks until shipping (sometimes Timewalk would take months). I got FFVII NES, Dragon Quest V and VI, The Firemen, and The Violinist Of Hameln from them.
At Fan Expo in Vancouver, I found a weird nomadic shop (meaning they have no store/grounded location) called NewGame+ which had some very rare games at very good prices. They also had soundtracks, and repro carts; I got the Shin Megami Tensei games, and Live-A-Live from them. I believe their non-visitable location is somewhere in Alberta.
I got Earthbound Uncut, Final Fantasy VI, and that weird, translated Super Famicom cart (which somehow works fine) of Tales Of Phantasia, for really cheap, from a friend of a friend, which is sometimes just the way.
I’m a cartridge collector, and I obviously recommend buying legitimate versions of any games that were released in North America. But as for all this weird stuff that was never released here, as far as I’m concerned, it’s fair game. Most repro sites, including OCDreproductions, won’t make repro carts of games with North American release.
I hope this article piqued your interest, or got you excited about something you didn’t know about. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to comment. There might be future articles on COGconnected about the repro scene, or a more in-depth look at my collection. And check out my Retro Review series for future coverage of some of these titles, right here on COGconnected.