Are People Really Counterfeiting Nintendo Games From The 80s?
from the something-seems-wrong-here dept
Not quite sure what's going on here, but it certainly sounds like an AP reporter might be a bit confused -- or, at least, has written a confusing article. The article claims that four people were arrested for selling counterfeit Nintendo consoles -- and even says 60,000 counterfeit consoles were seized. Of course, it's not entirely clear why they would be faking consoles instead of the software, so in the very next sentence, the story switches and says that they were counterfeiting games. Which games? "Donkey Kong," "Mario Brothers," "Duck Hunt," "Baseball" and others. Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt and Baseball?!? Yes, that's Nintendo's cream of the crop from somewhere in the mid-eighties. Is there really so much demand for Duck Hunt that it needs to be counterfeited? What's next, Mike Tyson's Punchout?
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http://www.christopherwu.net/
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Best example I can think of is Nethack...ever play that? Its a very rich hack/slash RPG type game completely in ASCII (although you can get frontends that will overlay graphics...but for the real experience, play the original). Its very popular, development is on going and its addictive as hell. I've known people who played this thing for days non-stop (Myself I've clocked over 5 hours on one session...never beat the thing tho)
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The demand is there
It certainly makes sense: low development costs (ie, just re-package the hardware, load the software onto a ROM and you're ready to go), so why not re-release them because, as someone already mentioned, people want to play these games? It's not a huge revenue stream, but it's there, so tap it.
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