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Posts: 86
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« on: November 29, 2006, 05:51:56 PM » |
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Has anyone else been viewing the Gameboy Advance Category recently? (im speaking on behalf of the eBay UK one) I know it has always had alot of bootlegs coming from around the world, however recently it seems there has been an incredible increase in the quanity of bootleg GBA games...
I was recently trying to browse thru, maybe catch a few bargains, however i was flooded by an ocean of 'Dogz', 'Barbie' and various other Kiddy games for the GBA. It appears as if the sellers (being fully aware of what they are doing) are selling Kids games, knowing full well that the current generation of kids will ask their parents for these. These (unlucky) parents, check eBay (as obviously its the place to be!) for the games, find these bootlegs (not realising, notice theyre only £4.99 (as apposed to the £29.99+ in the shops) and before they know it the deal is sealed.
To the kids and the parents of these kids, im sure they will never ever realise they have a bootleg, until their game is placed side by side another kids (who went out and bought it). However i doubt that will matter, as the game works, its what they want, the parents are also happy as they are saving money, everyone is happy?
Well Im not happy... These bootleg games are starting to appear all over the place! A few weeks back i visited a local game shop called 'Game Trading', and in the second hand gameboy case was a quite obvious bootleg of Rayman Advance. The label picture had been stretched, the colour/quality of the print was bad... It was a blatant bootleg. I mentioned this to the shop employee/owner, who then began to patronise me and tell me it was an american import... He obviously knew better than me (NOT) so i dropped the issue and left. (who is employing these people! That game had to be TRADED IN to be sat there waiting to be sold!)
However thats not the only place they have appeared. Im not sure if any of you have seen my Car Boot thread, however theyre appearing at the Boot Sales too... The other week two bulky dodgy looking men had a stall and they started putting out Gameboy Advance games... Needless to say i jumped to the table to make sure i wasnt missing a bargain, however they were all bootlegs...
It didnt end there though, upon looking over the table into the boot to see if they had any other Game stuff, there was a box with 100s of flat packed GBA Boxes and loose carts. These guys were making up the boxes, dropping in the carts and selling off these bootlegs. Wether they had made them, bought a huge load... i havent a clue. There was a family near by considering a few for their young boys, so i quietly brought the mother to once side and explained the situation. Promptly they walked off and thanked me.
The other time round, my Dad who also goes round the Boot sales with me (looking for old toys, comics, items he had when he was young) found some Gameboy Advance games for me when we split up (as we search for items for each other while looking for ourselves). He bought the lot, rang me up and i met up with him. I was very pleased with the bundle, some great games in there, alongside 1 Bootleg. All credit to my Dad for finding these, he knows what i collect and knows a great deal but im yet to train him in spotting bootlegs. So currently sat in my room in the darkess corner is a bootleg of soem GBA Tom & Jerry game which i will curse everytime i see it... Why i havent binned it? I dunno, something tells me i might play it/try it sooner or later...
Back to eBay... You only need to look at these Power 'Bootleg' Sellers feedback to see whats going on. Despite their feedback reaching the 10k range, they are recieving a good 50+ Negatives a month saying 'Bootleg Game, Do Not Buy' How people purchasing games from the seller seem to miss this on their feedback is beyond me... Personally i will check feedback before bidding, to make sure i wont get scammed.
But this brings me to my next point... Im sure many of you sell on eBay, i do myself (blatant plug but please goto retrogamedepot.com and buy buy buy!) When listing next gen games, you have to pretty much agree that the game you are selling is not a 'Bootleg/Copy'... So if these sellers are agreeing to this, yet are recieving 50+ negatives going against what they agreed on... They why on earth are they still able to sell these games!?
Dont get me wrong, i have bootlegs for Megadrive/Genesis and a few other older consoles... but the reason i enjoy/find these acceptable is because custom artwork is placed in and usually you get around 5+ games on a cart. 90% of the bootleg Megadrive games i own, i already own he originals too, so i guess that isnt really an issue.
I guess the main reason im ranting is because for the last year i have hardly looked in the GBA category because 99% of the time i can never ever find what im looking for. and when i do find that 1%, im always hesitating incase it is a bootleg. As stated, the bootlegs are going further than eBay now and its not good! You never see copied Disc based games in 2nd hand game shops, so why arent employees trained to spot bootleg carts!? eBay really needs to sort this problem out as its not only a problem online, its a problem offline too.
Thoughts?
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