Homebrews, Bootlegs & Unreleased Games

Your objective is to destroy all the enemies that are present on the map while trying to defend your home planet Corneria from enemy attacks. If the planets damage level reaches 100%, you have failed your mission and the game is over. To protect the planet you will have to destroy the fighters and incoming missiles that are headed toward the planet. To permanently prevent the attacks you have to deal with the planets with enemy bases that fire the missiles and the battleships that deploy the enemy fighter ships.

Bootleg Games

Alana Dunitz

Pipe V

So fast forward 4 days and I read something online that set off an alarm in my head. Pirate copies are made to work with famiclones not the original console. So when I got home I grabbed my Yobo NES and famicom converter and plugged it in.

Pirate Games

Derek Heinbokel

GameBoy Color 23 in 1 Cartridge

I’m not going into great details of each game, but I will say Bonk’s Adventure and Bomb Jack are my favorites of the bunch, and my least favorite game would really have to be Minesweeper. I thought I would never have to see that game again, I was wrong. Ninja Boy is an interesting adventure game and Klax is great for those of you who love Tetris type of games. Stack things up in a row to get rid of them and repeat. The tennis game aint half bad either. Of course Battle City is a classic and everyone should give that a try. It’s even funner on 2 player.

Pirate Games

Derek Heinbokel

Pirate Games: The KT-Super 90 in 1

My top 3 games from this cartridge would have to be Battletoads, Duck Tales, and The Punisher. I’m very aware of Duck Tales and Battletoads, but the Punisher was a nice little surprise. I hadn’t played that game before and it’s actually a lot of fun.

Pirate Games

David William

Castlevania Dracula X

There’s not a whole lot different from this pirated version, except if you look very close at the artwork on the label, it’s not as clear of an image. The game is also in Japanese. Other than that I believe it works like a charm. Thought I’d share a few photos of the game.

Hack Games

J.A. Laraque

Castlevania for the Atari 2600

Ever hear of the game Roc N Rope for the Atari 2600? It was not that popular or well received when it was first released in 1984 based on the Konami arcade game. However, thanks to this game we now can play Castlevania on our Atari 2600 emulator.

Homebrews, Bootlegs & Unreleased Games

David William

Nightmare Busters

The fine folks over at Super Fighter Team have a new run and gun game for the Super Nintendo called Nightmare Busters. The first game made for SNES in 14 years. Works on both SNES and Super Famicom and PAL. The game appears to be pretty awesome. Seems like a mix between Alice in Wonderland meets Castlevania. The colors and graphics are spot on. Play alone or grab a friend to play on the 2 player cooperative mode. Nightmare Busters is available for pre order and is expected to be shipped out 2013. $60 will get you a game cartridge with authentic plastic shell and a full color instruction manual that come inside a sturdy full colored box.

Homebrews, Bootlegs & Unreleased Games

David William

Super Bat Puncher

Here’s something to look out for…. Super Bat Puncher. Created by Julius Riecke. Currently still in the works but has a lot completed so far. Punching bats has never been so much fun until now. I asked Julius if he plans on having cartridges of this game made and he stated that yes they will be made. There are a few demo carts out there right now. More later in time.

Homebrews, Bootlegs & Unreleased Games

Luis Zena

Pirate Games: Pokemon Stadium

The game consists of two modes, arcade mode and vs mode. I’m sure you can tell what these do but just in case you don’t know, arcade mode is like the story mode where you will do battle against the computer until you defeat all the pokemon. Vs mode is the mode to play against your friend and works the same way except the game won’t get you anywhere. The way to win in this game is quite simple. You power up your pokemon for an attack, when the power meter builds up you’ll be ready to attack. There are attacks that uses your whole power meter so you won’t be able to use them unless you are at your max. If your opponent gets to attack first, you’ll have two options to choose from.

Bootleg Games

Luis Zena

Street Fighter 2

The game’s music is just awful and deserves the mute button. This is what you can expect from a pirate though. This one is an original pirate that got hacked to different other franchises. I’m sure there is a Mortal Kombat that is a clone of this game just with a different title screen and a better character select screen but I could be wrong. Overall, you will get a good laugh playing this game with a friend after a couple of beers. You can also pick this game up for a good price of around 5-10 usd so at least we can be happy it’s affordable.

Bootleg Games

Luis Zena

Super Donkey Kong 2

You play as Diddy Kong in the ship level but at the third and final level you’ll be the snake mutation of Diddy Kong. This one really creeps me out but being serious and all, it’s just the jumping snake you turn into in the game(Not sure what happened to riding the damn animals). The game does show signs of being incomplete especially since you can collect coins for the shop which you will never reach as the game only has three levels. You can also collect the 1-up balloons as well as the bananas. If you get hit once, you are a dead monkey so make sure you know the controls real well.

Bootleg Games

Luis Zena

Earth Worm Jim 3

The gameplay was done quite well and is very responsive. The level design is decent and does its best to mimic the SNES version. They even added the select button function to switch from your head whip to your gun since the NES/Famicom controller doesn’t have as many buttons as the SNES controller, now that’s impressive. The bosses are awfully easy so you’ll be able to get through with ease. The music is so-so as they tried to copy the SNES sound score although they felt short from making it successful, it was a good attempt nonetheless. You will be able to tell which song is which so no worries there. For 8-bit music, it’s what you get for it.

Bootleg Games

Luis Zena

TMNT 2

There is also the super move that each turtle has. They are all the same and as effective so it doesn’t matter which turtle you use, you’ll be alright with either one. There is an added movement that will work on the pirate which helps you hit both ways with the super move. it’s quite easy to do if you are quick with the d-pad. All you have to do is perform the super move and then as you are doing the move you’ll need to tap the d-pad to the other side of where your turtle is facing resulting in the double super move! Things like this makes you wonder if pirates really intended to leave this bug in there or if they were too lazy to take it out but I think I’ll go with the first one as the game was hacked to aide you into finishing it without cursing and throwing the controller out the window.

Bootleg Games

Luis Zena

Tekken 2 (SNES)

Pirates come in crappy shapes and sizes. From the Famicom to the Nintendo 64 (Believe it or not) But there are some that just seem to good to be true. This is where Tekken 2 for the SNES comes in. Yes! You heard it! It’s Tekken for your 16-bit console. You might be getting all excited about this “gem” but it’s far from being a “gem”. The game is memorable in many ways and none of those ways are good. We are going to have a brief chat about Tekken 2 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Remakes

Patrick Scott Patterson

Choplifter HD

I’m always mixed when it comes to retro remakes, especially if it was a game I really used to enjoy. Choplifter was one of those games I never thought caught on like it should. While it had a popular run on the old Apple II computers, I really got into the 1985 version from Sega and it’s counterpart on the fledgling Sega Master System. Sadly, these versions never really came during a time or place that allowed a large audience to see them, forever making a solid game a bit of a footnote to the 8-bit gaming era.

Homebrews, Bootlegs & Unreleased Games

Luis Zena

Kart Fighter

There is not much more to say about this game, it’s quite easy but surely one you have to try out mainly because of the weird factor it contains. You can also get this game via-reproduction which is cheaper than finding the pirate cart which usually goes for 30 plus but I could be wrong. You can play this game two player which will go great if you are high or drunk or both, I’m sure it’ll give you a good laugh. The music is also just out of this world, it’s like they change some notes of Mario songs to make it sound different. I have a theory about this game, it was made to be mario kart for the NES but they must have gone through some programing problems and what’s the cheapest alternative?

Unreleased Games

J.A. Laraque

Dirty Harry

Do you feel lucky, well do you, punk? The fans waiting for the Dirty Harry videogame to be released for both the Playstation 3 and X-Box 360 don’t because it actually looked like a really good game. Dirty Harry was developed by The Collective Inc and was to be published by Warner Bros Interactive.