Identify Sapphire Fakes?

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Sun May 21, 2006 7:28 pm

jp wrote:I really need to buy another copy of Sapphire... wish I hadn't sold mine on Ebay (and sadly, at the same time those damnable bootlegs started popping up).

Hey, you really want to make me feel guilty, eh? Just out of curiosity, how much would you offer to get it back?

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Sun May 21, 2006 11:59 pm

but if no money is going back to the people that made it, there's no point.

So why don't you just walk in and steal the entire used games section of an EB? I guess it's pretty apparent to anyone of moderate intelligence of how stupid your argument is.

So if you download/burn something now, and Hudson decides to do a reprint of Sapphire, do you then destroy your burned copy and go buy an original? The point is, someone always owns the copyright, and when you copy it, you're stealing from them. Period. Sugar coat it all you want.

Hey, you really want to make me feel guilty, eh? Just out of curiosity, how much would you offer to get it back?

Yeah, what are these going for? I have an original w/o spinecard that I may one day get rid of.

pixelcorps · Post by **pixelcorps** » Mon May 22, 2006 12:15 am

Ceph wrote:
DC906270 wrote:i am already crying about how much i paid for Sapphire a while back you can now get it on the bay for around half the price i paid..probably due to the avaiability of cheap bootlegs..
Don't be too sad, the original is still one of the rarest and most desirable games out there and a crown jewel of anyone's collection. And a bootleg is worth NOTHING. In the long run as more and more people learn to distinguish the fakes, prices will probably go up again.

@sven666 : Exactly. And by paying money for bootlegs you support piracy.

your outlook is nigh on hysterical, it seems like elements of your precious collection are only prizeable by its market price??

Do you ditch your girlfriends when other people don't find her desireable???

the bootleg game is only worth NOTHING to you. it's still a game, a 100% digital clone of the software to be exact..

how do you people deal with your home computers? I guess it's a life of mental anguish that your investment plummets only months after your purchase!!!!

strangely i'm still waiting for an answer to my question on wether any of you would buy a reprint or a virtual console version.

why is that?? I assume its because all that matters to you is the instruction manual and a spine card, not the game itself... because isnt that what you buy it for????

PIRACY is a crime that affects the publisher/developer by forcing them to lose profits due to illegal copies.

HUDSON are losing NOTHING, they made their cash 10 years ago on it.

If they cared, they'd press charges and make examples of individuals concerned, but... guess what!! THEY DON'T

so, without the developer seeing this as an affront, theyre not gonna take legal action, and because the only person being truly, LEGALLY affected is THE DEVELOPER, why the hell should you get so upset over it??

Seriously.. go call the cops.. say you want to press charges against an individual that sold you an exact binary copy of an out of print video game, on a game system thats been defunct over ten years with a manual and spine card with cosmetic differences.. I'd love to hear what the cops have to say...

if this "crime" really affects you, stop whining, and actually act on it, let's see where it gets you.

Like I said, it's only glassy eyed collectors that are being "hurt" over this with their own little stockmarket of extinct video games circulating around the world.

anyone else wanting to play this game can buy the bootleg, and enjoy it in exactly the same whay a normal person would, so isnt that worth the money THEY paid, to THEM? course it is.

Only difference is, there's someone else that paid ten times more that's stamping his feet and shrieking injustice.

Well, ive asked the same question several times, and nobody seems to have either read what I said and thought about it , or you realise that if you said "no" you wouldnt buy a repress or legitimate retail copy, your whinings of "hurt", as seems to be the reocurring theme in your defence are only relating to your glassy eyed obsessive motives and not reflecting the developer, who in real cold objective fact is the only person that can call this a crime.

so with that i'll leave the thread because, it seems that anyone offereing a different point of view is labelled laughable... a viewpoint labelled laughable by someone whose own self rigteous logic calls "hurtful" or a "crime" when presented with cold hard FACT that nobody is being "hurt", that nobody is losing money, that the legal system doesnt give one flying fuck about your drooling otaku plight, and that all you give a shit about is a fluctuating value of an extinct computer game, and that YOU, and ONLY you have MORE right to enjoy it that someone else who has LESS MONEY and MORE SENSE than you..

if anyone takes this as such an affront, then I await your legal crusade.

[/b]

jp · Post by jp » Mon May 22, 2006 12:24 am

Ceph wrote:
jp wrote:I really need to buy another copy of Sapphire... wish I hadn't sold mine on Ebay (and sadly, at the same time those damnable bootlegs started popping up).
Hey, you really want to make me feel guilty, eh? Just out of curiosity, how much would you offer to get it back?

Ack! I keep forgetting a board member wound up with it!!!!!

Heh, I don't know, IF I HAD A PC-ENGINE DUO RX I'd probably offer around the same I sold it for or $50 more. But I know you'd been looking for it for awhile so I would never ask for it back, that'd be like greg asking for his Blast Wind back.

DHG Hunter · Post by **DHG Hunter** » Mon May 22, 2006 12:33 am

@Ceph
Sorry about that. =) I actually did quite a few searches that brought me to this site in the first place, so I was probably a little tired of doing even more searches at that point. ;P I thought I had looked, but obviously not well enough. >_<

@All
Sorry about starting a battle here over pirate vs. non-pirate, or something, hehe.

My own $0.02 is that if you are going to pirate something, it's one thing to download an ISO or pick up one of those $5 copies from pirates, but its entirely another thing to try and make an exact duplicate like this, portray it as the real thing, and honestly sell a $60 copy for what likely only cost them $10-$15 at most to manufacture. If flipping through the instruction manual is what you want to do, download a PDF.

As to the other point about publishers reprinting games, that's the tricky business about being a video game collector. Whatever game I buy with the intention of storing it away can very easily become the bargain bin title of tomorrow at a used games retailer. Xenogears, Final Fantasy Tactics, and the SNES Final Fantasy's immediately come to mind in regards to this as well as the aforementioned Gitaroo Man. Now obviously Sapphire is going to drop a great deal in price, but in this case because of a forgery and not a reprint.

I see your point about being able to play said classic games, but I think that's what the beauty of things like the Wii's Virtual Console come in. For I imagine a few bucks, you'll be able to download several TG-16, Genesis, and Nintendo system titles and play them on your new console. For collector's, however, there's something about owning the original disc or cart - as opposed to a ROM - that causes us to pay sometimes "outrageous" prices for a game.

It's kinda like baseball cards... Certainly if I was a collector I could download a BMP of a Honus Wagner baseball card and see everything that someone with an original card would. For the collector, however, there's something about having the real card that you can hold in your hands, take in all of the minute details of the card, and maybe even detect the scent of the bubble gum it was sold with.

Granted games are a little different (no smelling involved, hehe), but it’s for reasons like this that a forgery - and not so much a pirated copy - annoy me so much.

That's my $0.02. =)

Later.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Mon May 22, 2006 12:33 am

PIRACY is a crime that affects the publisher/developer by forcing them to lose profits due to illegal copies.

HUDSON are losing NOTHING, they made their cash 10 years ago on it.

Yeah, companies never make money off of reprints and collections.

DHG Hunter · Post by **DHG Hunter** » Mon May 22, 2006 12:38 am

Oh, and FYI, I would buy an official reprint, sure. I'm a gamer as much as anyone here, not just a "collectwhore". =P I have some Player's Choice & Platinum/Greatest Hits too.

Situation here is someone made a forgery and is trying to pass it off as legit, not a reprint.

Later.

pixelcorps · Post by **pixelcorps** » Mon May 22, 2006 1:07 am

GaijinPunch wrote:
PIRACY is a crime that affects the publisher/developer by forcing them to lose profits due to illegal copies.

HUDSON are losing NOTHING, they made their cash 10 years ago on it.
Yeah, companies never make money off of reprints and collections.

i'll await the reprint then eh? how long shall we give it?? another 10 years??

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Mon May 22, 2006 1:15 am

i'll await the reprint then eh? how long shall we give it?? another 10 years??

The point is it's not out of the question, and definitely not for you to decide. I slightly agree w/ you on the new systems and all that shit in theory, but it just doesn't work in the long run.

Fuck, I'm not saying burning stuff is the end of the world. I've got a computer full of Roms and shit, but I never try to justify it. Grey area? Not really. I just can't possibly own that many PCBs.

umi · Post by **umi** » Mon May 22, 2006 2:00 am

GaijinPunch wrote:
i'll await the reprint then eh? how long shall we give it?? another 10 years??
The point is it's not out of the question, and definitely not for you to decide. I slightly agree w/ you on the new systems and all that shit in theory, but it just doesn't work in the long run.

Fuck, I'm not saying burning stuff is the end of the world. I've got a computer full of Roms and shit, but I never try to justify it. Grey area? Not really. I just can't possibly own that many PCBs.

You just tried to justify it with your last sentence...

VERY grey area. Like idiotic clauses and disclaimers on contracts and products that are only there for the sake of it, and to cover every possible situation, but that no one takes seriously, unless you're a really pitiful, paranoid person. Old video games aren't just digital data... they're irreplaceable art and history. Old developers don't give a fuck. NO ONE makes games like those anymore. I'm sure if anything that they're just happy that people still enjoy them. Games that are profitable enough ARE re-released, and DO still sell, and lesser known games that are re-released are usually bundled, and also do sell quite well.

If there's one thing you can say for a lot of collectors (well, myself anyway), they hate ROMs. I don't use 'em. They've never been appealing to me. How many roms does the average shmups forum user have, I wonder? And I don't care, I'd very well do it if it interested me in the slightest, but it doesn't -- and I don't care who does it, as long as they're not games that are still being sold (or, if you LIKE the game you pirated, BUY IT if you can).

Oh, and paying high amounts for original games is not and will never be a crime. I'll buy new games only when they appeal to me (thanks play-asia). And aside from those rare releases, my favorite games will always be the ones that aren't sold today (portable systems aside... they're probably the best systems around atm).

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Mon May 22, 2006 2:05 am

You just tried to justify it with your last sentence...

Justiying it tries to explaing why it's okay to do. I didn't do that... just explained that I'm not going to exert that much effort into games I'll likely play only once. I know it's wrong... I don't try to tell people it's not.

pixelcorps · Post by **pixelcorps** » Mon May 22, 2006 6:04 am

GaijinPunch wrote:
You just tried to justify it with your last sentence...
Justiying it tries to explaing why it's okay to do. I didn't do that... just explained that I'm not going to exert that much effort into games I'll likely play only once. I know it's wrong... I don't try to tell people it's not.

so that wasn't an attempt at sarcasm when you said you stole porsches?

DC906270 · Post by **DC906270** » Mon May 22, 2006 6:19 am

GaijinPunch wrote:Yeah, what are these going for? I have an original w/o spinecard that I may one day get rid of

probably around $250 for a spineless copy at mo..

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Mon May 22, 2006 11:19 am

pixelcorps wrote:so that wasn't an attempt at sarcasm when you said you stole porsches?

Well if I stole a Porsche, I think it's fairly obvious I wouldn't tell anyone about it. No doubt in my mind that burning games is far the lesser of the evils, but I still don't see any reason to rationalize why one does it.

Sonic R · Post by **Sonic R** » Tue May 23, 2006 5:02 pm

pixelcorps wrote:strangely i'm still waiting for an answer to my question on wether any of you would buy a reprint or a virtual console version.

YES

I'm crazy like that. Here is my example. I own multiple versions of Gradius for many systems. The Gradius collection is arriving on the PSP next month and I am going to buy it. Why because I want to.

Chaos Field- I bought the DC japanese version and last fall bought the US GCN release.

Ikaruga - I have both the DC and the GCN(US) release

I am a collector so don't hate me but I play what I collect. I spent $100 on Radiant Silvergun, $110 on Panzer Dragoon Saga, $250 on Dynastic Hero and $117 on Super Air Zonk and I could care less if they were worth $1 in 5 years. I like the games, I play the games and I pay what ever I have to with in reason for original games.

I don't own an original Sapphire as the "online price" was a bit out of my price range. I have a pretty high limit but couldn't justify the expense at the time(plus I don't have an arcade card and a CD player to use in conjunction with) Now for me to spend money on a "bootleg" is even harder to justfy when I could just dl the iso. Yes I have done this as well as I have cd-r's of Rondo of Blood, Sylphia, and Gradius II for PCECD. Again I don't have the system requirements to even play a dl Sapphire. I can't justfy paying money for a artificial copy when I could make my own at the cost of a cd-r.

I collect games like some guys collect sports cards or toys. I do not collect for the value of a game but rather I enjoy obtaining games and playing them on my TV with the original console they were made for. I do it for fun. The fun of finding and hunting the game, buying the game, playing the game, and talking about the game.

poieo · Post by **poieo** » Sat May 27, 2006 4:50 am

GaijinPunch wrote:No doubt in my mind that burning games is far the lesser of the evils, but I still don't see any reason to rationalize why one does it.

Rationalization is a step in the process of making sense, jackass. Give it a whirl.

NTSC-J · Post by **NTSC-J** » Sat May 27, 2006 6:51 am

Skipped the rest of this thread to preserve my sanity, but in short:

I don't consider myself a collector, but if I buy an expensive game, I want it to be original. This is not unreasonable. If I want a bootleg, I will pay .50 for the CD so someone can burn it. If I go to Barnes and Noble and ask them to hold a book for me and pay for it in advance, then a week later they show me a Mead notebook where someone has transcribed the whole thing in Bic pen, I'm gonna say wtf Barnes and Noble. "But the handwriting is top shelf and there are no typos!"

The Gitaroo Man reprint is way different. The reprint is legit. It may have made my copy worth less, but it's still a real printed copy and if I didn't have one already, would get it without worries.

BTW, I can get folks here an original sealed Sapphire if they so desire. PM me if you care.

Palmer Eldritch · Post by **Palmer Eldritch** » Mon May 29, 2006 6:07 pm

Just don´t buy those goddamn bootlegs at any cost or for any reason. Is is so amazingly hard to understand?

They´re ILlegal copies made by morons who have absolutely no motives beyond making a quick buck. I don´t even want to go into a discussion about this. Unless the copyright holder specifically states that it is okay to do as you see fit, no argument, however well presented, is even remotely valid.

Get over it.

jp · Post by jp » Mon May 29, 2006 7:41 pm

I agree with GaijinPunch 100%. Downloading "teh roms" is definitely the lesser of 2 evils. The people who made and knowingly purchased the Sapphire bootlegs are jackasses.

Tony Gradius · Post by **Tony Gradius** » Mon May 29, 2006 7:50 pm

GaijinPunch wrote:
it is a really impressive game and the "original" copies are too expensive,
My exact thoughts on this year's Porche. So I stole one. I can now fully enjoy it without having to worry about foolish things like spending money.

My exact thought about this old classic car AC Cobra. Way too expensive, so I bought one of these replica-kits to be finally able to own one. Am I a thief?

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Mon May 29, 2006 10:41 pm

poieo wrote:A bunch of horseshit. Something along the lines of "rationalizing sense out of asses".

Okay.

doctorx0079 · Post by **doctorx0079** » Tue May 30, 2006 3:36 am

Just buy LoT or Spriggan and be done with it. Who gives a #($*&#$ about Sapphire anyway? If you're a collector then fine, but from what I have seen it just isn't that great of a game. If it WAS really THAT awesome it would be selling by the truckload, and the rights holders would probably be cranking out more of them like yesterday.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Tue May 30, 2006 3:38 am

price = quality ok

radiant silvergun proved this two years ago!!

Palmer Eldritch · Post by **Palmer Eldritch** » Tue May 30, 2006 7:07 am

Twiddle wrote:price = quality ok

radiant silvergun proved this two years ago!!

I´ve got numerous examples proving otherwise. Planet Joker anyone?
There´s no exact guideline to this. I agree about RSG, it´s a good game. Sapphire is worth what I paid for it also and so are Battlesphere Gold (Jag) and Shinrei Jusatsishu Taromaru just to name some that are extremely expensive.

Palmer Eldritch · Post by **Palmer Eldritch** » Tue May 30, 2006 7:30 am

doctorx0079 wrote:Just buy LoT or Spriggan and be done with it. Who gives a #($*&#$ about Sapphire anyway?

Only shooter on the system that´s better than Sapphire IMO is Nexzr (Summer Carnival ´93 version). LoT and Spriggan are both good but nowhere near Sapphire. Also, Sapphire is interesting because it´s one of the most polished and technically impressive achievements on the system.

jp · Post by jp » Tue May 30, 2006 10:58 pm

Palmer Eldritch wrote:
doctorx0079 wrote:Just buy LoT or Spriggan and be done with it. Who gives a #($*&#$ about Sapphire anyway?
Only shooter on the system that´s better than Sapphire IMO is Nexzr (Summer Carnival ´93 version). LoT and Spriggan are both good but nowhere near Sapphire. Also, Sapphire is interesting because it´s one of the most polished and technically impressive achievements on the system.

During the brief period of time that I had a PC-Engine Duo R, Nexzr was easily my favorite game on the system.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue May 30, 2006 11:01 pm

Twiddle wrote:price = quality ok!

I'v egot two words for you.
Renny and Blaster