CLONES & BOOTLEGS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once you start to expand your collection beyond the licensed NES games, things can get confusing pretty fast - especially if you're collecting games from outside of the USA. When organizing your collection in terms of the game cartridges there are two basic categories: Licensed and Unlicensed. Licensed games are officially approved for release and play on the NES by Nintendo, published either by Nintendo itself or by a legally licensed 3rd-party publisher. They only exist in the NES cartridge. Unlicensed games can be one of three things:
1. Unlicensed NES Game: These games were manufactured and marketed to be played on the NES, where the software was legally licensed by the publisher from the software company that developed it, for distribution and sale in a particular country or territory. The software isn't stolen, the cartridge design is original (kind of), and the legality of making a game for Nintendo's hardware without their consent and without compensating them for it is debatable at best. Whether Nintendo liked it or not, these are NES games.
Box Art from Bee 52
by Camerica
2. Clone: The NES and Famicom systems weren't sold everywhere, for a variety of reasons, and as with any other successful product there were companies cashing in on their success by making imitations. These 8-bit 60/72-pin home video game consoles are known as clones (or sometimes NESclones or Famiclones), and there are hundreds of them that were produced in all shapes and sizes all over the world. Some of these systems are illegal direct copies, no different than the fake Rolex watch you can buy on a street corner in Times Square. Others were completely legal, despite the fact that they were obvious copies, because they were developed and sold where Nintendo was not doing business.
Either way it is important to make the distinction between a clone console and a clone game. Clone games (as opposed to bootleg games, below) were legally licensed and sold to go along with their corresponding legal clone systems. The companies making these clone systems and games couldn't manufacture the titles Nintendo owned the software for, like Super Mario Bros., but they could license the same games offered on the NES by Nintendo's approved publishers, and produce them for their own systems in the territories where Nintendo did not hold the exclusive rights. Therefore just like the Unlicensed category of games above, Clone game cartridges aren't guilty of software piracy, they were legally licensed and produced in their particular markets. Also, you'll find that a lot of Unlicensed games exist as Clone system cartridges in other countries too. The software companies that developed these games either took the opportunity to get their games into other markets on the clone systems, or games that originated outside the USA for the NES that weren't approved found a home with unlicensed manufacturers in the USA.
One very successful legal NES clone console was the Phantom System by electronics giant Gradiente in Brazil. It came packaged with Ghostbusters by Activision (the exact same game you could buy for the NES) and used copied design elements from other Atari/Sega systems, a company Gradiente was already doing business with in Brazil.
Phantom System by Gradiente with Ghostbusters
Some games were only ever made for an NES clone system, and this creates a major gray-area for collectors. Crime Busters, for example, was made by Gradiente for the Phantom System. It was never an NES game, licensed, unlicensed, or otherwise. So it's an 8-bit 72-pin video game that will play on an NES (and it's a Zapper game), but it's not an NES game. Clearly it's a cool part of your video game collection, but is it really part of an NES collection? Like I said on the home page of the site - whatever makes you happy is the right answer.
Crime Busters
Phantom System Game Cartridge
3. Bootleg: Bootleg games are illegal in every way. They are unlicensed copies manufactured without any legal approval or anyone's consent. Therefore learning about them and collecting them can be tough. Some companies that were making bootleg games were also making the illegal clone consoles and were passing everything off as a separate, different system. Other bootleg games were intended to be used on actual NES/Famicom systems, and were even marketed that way. NESclones, Famiclones, and bootleg games often co-existed in the same places, so 60-to-72-pin adapters were just as common as controllers, and sometimes even included with the clone consoles. For this reason it is also very common for a bootleg game to have a 60-pin PCB with a 72-pin adapter inside the cart. This was much cheaper than producing two separate versions. To further complicate things, there are bootleg copies of some of the more successful legally-licensed clone games too!
For a great example of how confusing bootleg games can be, let's once again look at Gradiente in Brazil. Not only did they develop a legal clone system and license the same games developed for the NES from Nintendo's partners, but they were also making illegal bootleg games of the Nintendo-published NES catalog (like Hogan's Alley, below) for their own Phantom System console under a shell company called Falcon Soft! Wow.
Bootleg copy of Hogan's Alley titled Shooting In The Alley, released by Falcon Soft (which was actually Gradiente), for play on the Phantom System NES clone in Brazil.
Choplifter was originally released in 1982 for play on the Apple II computer and was eventually released for 18 different platforms, including the Famicom, but never for the NES. Unless of course you count this bootleg copy that was made for the "Entertainment Computer System" NES clone by a company called NASA from Taiwan.
Bootleg copy of Galaga produced for play on the NES by Supervision. It says Japan all over the cartridge, but Supervision was actually from Taiwan. Supervision bootleg games use the same style and light-gray color cartridge as the Asian Version and Hong Kong Version licensed NES carts.
You've never played Super Wonderful Mario? Actually this is a bootleg of the USA version of Super Mario Bros. 2 with an alternate title screen that reads "Super Bros. 5" copyright 1991 by ECE.
Tetris anyone? This bootleg copy of Tengen Tetris from Dimasa in Spain features a screenshot on the label that at first glance is unrecognizable as Tetris when you're picturing the licensed NES version.
This copy of Super Dimension Fortress Macross by Hydron in Brazil is a bootleg of the Famicom game that has a 72-pin connector on one end, and a 60-pin connector on the other. So whether you had a NESclone, or a Famiclone, it would play without needing an adapter.
The Smart Boy series of bootleg games were produced by a company that primarily sold furniture and electronics to rental stores. The idea was to offer games to rent at a much lower cost than buying them at retail pricing. The main flaw in this plan was that anyone that purchased these and then rented them out essentially became an accomplice in the piracy scheme, so this idea quickly failed. There were only a few Smart Boy titles produced, pretty obviously made by hand, in at least 3 different cartridge form factors.
ROM HACKS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another type of bootleg game is a ROM Hack. As detailed on the PCB's page of this site, a game's ROM chips store the software, graphics, and music that make up the game. When referring to a ROM Hack, it is understood that "ROM" refers to the game's software. ROM Hacks that were produced as physical game cartridges during the NES era usually replaced the game's playable character graphics, known as "sprites", with different characters to create the illusion of a new game. This could be a fun passion project for programmers, and also another creative way to steal game software while also having something new and different to sell. ROM Hacks of popular games are still created today, such as updating the player roster in Tecmo Super Bowl with current players.
At first glance this copy of Flash & Batman by Spica in Taiwan appears to be a completely new NES game. However, it's actually a ROM hack of Monster In My Pocket. If you're going to steal game software, why not borrow a couple comic book characters while you're at it?
Flash & Batman
ROM Hack game by Spica
MULTICARTS --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One final type of bootleg NES game is the Multicart. As the name implies, multicarts contain multiple games on a single cartridge, anywhere from a few games to a few hundred games. 72-pin muticarts can be cool because they often contained games that were otherwise only produced in 60-pin format for the Famicom. The games found on these carts are almost always ROM-hacked in some way. At a minimum the publisher and copyright info on the games' title screens is typically removed. Most multicarts that claim to have more than just a few games actually contain several ROM-hacked versions of the same game, each of which simply start you on a new level, with more lives or power-ups, etc. Multicarts were almost entirely imported from Asia, with a few examples produced in North and South America.
110-In-1 Multicart
Supervision
Taiwan
Multi-Pak 40 Games In One
unknown publisher
Canada
Super 76-In-1
Tsang Hai
Taiwan