What's the deal with bootleg PCBs?

[cave hermit]

I want to get into playing on PCBs, and one thing I noticed is that it is very common to run into bootleg PCBs for more obscure titles. For example, I'm eyeing a $140 bootleg Ninja Baseball Batman PCB.

So what's the deal with these boards? Why are there so many even for obscure titles? Who is making these? How are they making these? Are these functionally the same hardware as the original PCB, or is the ROM somehow being run on some weird proprietary hardware? Or are these boards being converted from another game sharing the hardware? How about being converted from a game with completely different hardware?

Would I be foolish to pay $140 for a bootleg Ninja Baseball Batman? Would it play any different from authentic hardware? If I just want to play the game as accurately as possible without caring too much about collector's value, is a bootleg PCB a good option?

So many questions, so little time.

[XtraSmiley]

Well, for NBBM, there are bootlegs (I'm not sure of quality or sound issues, if any) and then there are Korean versions, which I don't think anyone knows for sure if they are official license or not, but consensus seems to be that the chips are of Korean build. Whether that's worse than Japanese or not, I don't know, but having a Korean one and a Japanese one, the game looks/sounds the same.

Post a picture of the board you want to buy and I'm sure someone will ID as bootleg or Korean (or do a search, there are some pics out there).

[XtraSmiley]

Also, if you are not getting the original PCB, IMO, you might as well emulate or get a MiSTer b/c it's not the real PCB anyway, so there is no collecting factor, why not just save the money?

[kamiboy]

Bootlegs were unlicensed reverse engineered copies of games made by many PCB pirating outfits often working out of China.

Buying a PCB came with a rather large price tag for Arcade operators, as the makers were expecting to sell comparatively few copies, and would have to make back development costs with 100’s to 1000’s of copies sold of a game.

The cloning groups would get hold of the game PCB and attempt to reverse engineer it so they could sell it as a cheap alternative to arcade operators. Since they didn’t need to actually invest money in making the game their profits only needed to exceed the cost of reverse engineering and manufacturing of the clone PCB.

Since they would make more money by rounding corners and using cheaper components and their reverse engineering work could not always be perfect bootlegs have a reputation for being far worse than the genuine article.

And as they were significantly cheaper for arcade operators to buy they were popular and could often outsell the real version many times, so there are more of them, making them more of a commodity and driving down the second hand price further among collectors.

This is why arcade game makers started employing draconian anti copy measures in their PCB design later on. These cloned were really eating into their profits.

In certain parts of the world the clones were ubiquitous.

[cave hermit]

Well here's the board I'm trying to bid on:

I think this might be a genuine(?) Korean board?

Edit: I think it is in fact a bootleg, as there is no daughter board.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For cave hermit,

Yes, that's a Korean bootlegged NBBM pcb. You'd be better off with an original Irem M-92 powered Ninja Baseball Bat Man pcb even though it's gone up in price over the years. Less than 850 NBBM pcbs were made for the Japanese game centers during it's initial release and fewer than 30 NBBM pcbs kits were released for the USA arcades/American arcade operators -- thus making the NBBM pcb kits themselves a limited low production run overall indeed.

The only minor gripe with an original Irem M-92 NBBM pcb is, the brightness output is low thus requiring the arcade RGB monitor's brightness pot to cranked up to make up the difference for that particular well known issue at hand (as is the case with all Irem produced M-92 pcbs).

Hobbyroms can burn the essential all-English language NBBM rom set to convert a JPN region M-92 NBBM pcb to the USA region if so desired for you once a geniune Irem M-92 NBBM pcb has been sourced/bought.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Sumez]

Also, if you are not getting the original PCB, IMO, you might as well emulate or get a MiSTer b/c it's not the real PCB anyway, so there is no collecting factor, why not just save the money?

This is my take. I understand why bootlegs had a place among seedy arcade operators who just wanted the profit at a smaller expense, but I don't get why you'd want one nowadays. To me, the entire purpose of playing on arcade hardware is to play "the real deal" - and if you aren't, why bother? Everyone's perspective is different though.

I wouldn't assume bootlegs play accurately though. Potentially they will, and a lot of them do. But in my experience, almost every bootleg I've somehow come into possession of has had some kind of issue. Graphical glitches are the most common thing you'll see.

"Conversions" are common, too, and can be much harder to spot than a complete bootleg. I've even seen people argue whether a conversion is technically a bootleg or not, due to them still being the real hardware. And quite often you'd see conversions issued officially by the original developers. From a collector perspective it obviously makes a difference, but at least you can typically rely on those games playing like they should.