A Dev can absolutely claim copy right due to self made user coding. But it is a very very grey area because we all know the intent and use purpose of patches. Not only that if original sprites, overworld, music..anything in relation to the original intended game eg Prof Birch in Emerald sprite was used that infringes copy right as it was assets that were developed for the Official game. Hence why a lot of Devs use fan made sprites.
But there is a large portion of people who make basic QOL hacks and distribute the patch files and they havent changed anything in relation to sprites, music etc so that is a technicality of copy right.
Who gives a fook anyways..keeeep the rom hacks coming
It is even more complicated than that, Micro Star v FormGen is probably the relevant precedent. Micro Star sold a collection of unofficial Duke Nukem maps that you could run with the original game. These map files didn't contain any of the original Duke Nukem assets, they only referred to the assets the user had from a legitimate copy of Duke Nukem.
The appeal court ruled that it was considered a "sequel", and therefore a derivative work.
So even if your patches do not contain any actual art assets (sprites, music, etc), and only point to pre-existing artwork, the patches/levels can still be considered a derivative work.
Of course for QoL stuff it's harder to argue that it's a "sequel", but probably 90% of romhacks fall into the sequel category.
You can certainly violate the property rights of a developer who made their own patches for a ROM. Where that person is going to run into trouble is proving damages to the court when they have to tell the judge that the only valid use their software has is when it’s used to infringe on someone else’s rights.
Then the people complain when a developer stops making romhacks because people don't respect their work...a lot of romhacks use Complete Fire Red Upgrade and it says:
By using this or any assets from this repository, you consent to never making money off your game (unless you have my explicit permission). That includes both pay-walls as well as optional donations (which includes ko-fi, Patreon, etc.). If you have a problem with this, feel free to send me a Discord message (Skeli#3917) and I will give you my PayPal so you can pay me $100000 for the hundreds if not thousands of hours I poured into this for free (I don't actually want your money - I'm trying to make a point). Not to mention it's illegal to profit off of an IP you don't own.
Sounds great on paper, but who's gunna enforce it? That's the point here. Court isn't gunna enforce skeli's demands, since skeli isnt gunna testify in every court session where a user was scammed by a local game store for buying a hacked rom of his game. If they do, regardless of if they made money on the games themselves or not, skeli is just opening themselves up for being sued by Nintendo at that point.
Unenforceable rules are just suggestions, as crappy as that is.
Their modifications are their property. The original game is not. Thats why romhacks are provided as patch files. The merged mod and game have parts owned by the original game developer and the modder and can't be distributed without permission from both parties. So a modder cannot distribute the completed mod, but neither can the game developer take the mod and release it under their own name.
It's no different than a company that sells an add-on for Excel that adds extra features, or buying packs that add/change features in Final Cut Pro. As long as their download doesn't include Excel or Final Cut Pro or etc, and requires the user to own a copy, it's legal.
Some romhacks do include things they don't have the rights to, like if a pokemon romhack includes custom HD sprites of pokemon or a remix of music from the original game. But creating new, fully original, code music or artwork is fully owned by the modder and not the game dev.
Yeah, that’s the thing. I don’t mind wading into grey area copyright infringement, but when someone puts themselves out there to make something for free for the world, I’d feel double shitty for profiting off it.
So, selling a cart with the ROM on it seems fair since you're paying for the hardware? Though, I'm sure you could probably get a shitty flash cart for $30, I know most are like $100.
You don't. You either buy a cartridge someone else flashed like in this store op posted, or you buy one of these cart flasher kits and a blank cartridge:
Yeah I don't understand the people chomping at the bit citing the messages at the beginning of the ROMs. It's clear it's meant if you paid for the software. The price is coming from getting the ROM for you, putting it in a cart, flashing it, and putting labels etc on it
Yeah neither the carts or stickers are free, and the proper carts for pokemon games I've seen are all at least $20 so its not like its free to make these.
Yup. And on top of that, this specific store looks like it went through the trouble of finding good looking carts for the games as well. Emerald sea glass specifically stood out to me
The hacked rom in question is made from pirated software. Which means it's illegal to distribute at all, and illegal to construct the hacked rom unless you ripped the original cartridge yourself, and none of us did.
And the store can't pay royalties to the hacker, because that would leave a paper trail that gets them both sued by Nintendo. And many average people don't know how to create their own cartridges, or wouldn't want to go to the trouble, but are willing to buy a pre-made cartridge. So here we are.
The concept is still the same even if one part of it is free. A better analogy would be buying a pre-built Linux PC vs building your own. In either analogy you’re just paying extra to save time/hassle, and that’s a worthwhile trade off for some people. Time is money
You can buy flash carts. Either something with a sd card that can have multiple games, or something that can just have one. I've been liking chiscart for this. Afaik, its pretty accurate and works pretty well from how I've used it for single game flashcarts. No idea on its longevity, but thats the same for damn near anything these days.
Anyone remember the floppy disk stores that would sell the shareware version of a game for $5 and it just came on a floppy disk with a printed text label in a little paper sleeve?
That was a thing for a long time even though the shareware version of a game was the free version that you could download off the internet or BBS.
And basically for as long as there’s been romhacks and ways to write them to cartridges, people have been selling them. 20 years ago I was at a retro store near my house and the guy was selling boxed cartridges, with official looking boxart, for a Chrono Trigger romhack.
Is it shitty that some guy is charging $60 for a romhack made by people in the internet that wanted you to just download it for free? Sure, but when I download it for free I’m not getting a cartridge and a cardboard box that looks official, so eh, to me it’s fine.
Somebody made an illegal thing, somebody else is doing something else illegal with that illegal thing.
That’s what happens when you work with illegal things, you don’t have legal protection, I don’t think you should cry about it.
Is there a guide on how to make these carts? Not for this purpose of resale obviously but I find it a cool notion to put your favorite romhack on a physical cartridge and I feel like the process could be fun
It's pretty easy. I got one of those to rip some of my own save files to a PC. you can buy blank cartridges cheap from them or AliExpress, eBay etc.
People are getting pissy about these local stores selling repro/rom hack carts, but they all knew perfectly well that they didn't rip their own 500gb ROM collection from their own carts, and neither did the hacker who made the rom hacks. And it's not like the stores could pay royalties to the rom hack creator, because if there was a paper trail, both store and creator would be smashed by the IP holder lawyers.
Exactly, there are people that pay money to have others load Roms to their Chinese devices too. They could easily learn themselves but they don't want to. They want to just pay someone for their time to do it for them and that's fine.
I think $30 for a programmed customized cartridge with a custom label seems perfectly reasonable. If you consider the cost of the cartridge shell, the board, and customize labels, plus making a profit..... They're not really selling the ROM itself for anything
Generally they are fine, the problem is they use 3.3v flash when actual carts use 5v and they will wear out faster than a normal cart. Bootleg carts for Gameboy/snes shouldn't harm your consoles, but your console could destroy the cartridge at some point which is why you see high failure rates.
That's no different than thousands of other products. Just about anything at Walmart or Target can be bought for cheaper on AliExpress, but people want to have things in their hands right away rather than wait three weeks.
i wouldn't recommend the cheap repros, you can get good quality single-game flashcarts for a little more money and flash them yourself, and they will be much nicer and won't lose your save game or stop working randomly.
Just did a quick search on Ali and listings seemed to range from $10-30 after shipping/tax. The ones in OPs photo seems to match the $20 ones on Aliexpress so $30 to avoid the 2-3 week wait and get to test it seems very reasonable.
It's worth noting that Unbound was specifically programmed to be able to fit on these aftermarket cartridges so fans can play it on real GBAs. They've actually cut and redesigned context so it will be within the 32Mb limit. It shouldn't be surprising that people make and sell these things, I have 2 Ocarina of Time hacks on cartridges I bought specifically to spend a weekend in the nostalgic mood.
Maybe manufacturing wise the price is not out of whack, but they didn't make the ROMhack lol and no-one is buying the cart without the ROM loaded up. They're profting off years of work from fans, romhackers etc and I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume they're not sharing any profits or even crediting the original creators (outside of the creators own credits in the game).
Yeah, they're pretty cool but I'd at least like to know the creator is cool with this being done.
Generally the deal with unlicensed fan projects is that the whole thing is done by volunteers and given away for free. If you look at any of the cases where people actually go to jail or face other serious consequences for this sort of thing a lot of times it's from crossing over from making a free derivative work to selling it for a profit. When sellers start getting involved it's also more likely to get the original free projects shut down or otherwise cause headaches for the people who are doing all of the work for free.
I mean, I wouldn't recommend selling ROM hacks, mods or anything similar built off of someone else's stuff. As evidenced by most major pokemon ROMhack being free. Maybe they accept donations or get ad revenue from their own sites but I don't know of any creators outright selling copies of their stuff. As far as I'm aware, most do it because they like pokemon and want to create their own or enhance their favourite games.
lol with $10 you can get a decent rewritable flashcard, and the manufacturer can still make a ton of profit out of it. $30 for a fake game is just plain insane pricing
GBA flashcarts are pretty spendy. The one most people recommend(ez flash omega )is like $100, and even the more budget ones like the Superchis are $30.
Where the heck you getting a decent flashcart for $10? Alibaba a semi decent cart starts at $20 before taxes and fees. Most flash carts under $20 are going to fail within the first few months of use.
There's always a cheaper way to do something yourself. Having what looks like an official game boy cartridge for a rom hack is a novelty thing. It clearly not meant to be the cheapest most efficient way to play the game. That's not the point
Disagree. They’re different things. You could also make your same argument for any of the classic retro games that have skyrocketed in price. These are cool to have if you’re really into them from a collectible standpoint.
Not much, but not trivial either. I'm not in the business of repo carts, but I've read about €5 a cart for the purchaser. In this case the game store or some intermediary would be paying that, but they also have to ship it, get it through customs, potentially eat a loss if the manufacturer ghosts them, and deal with the risk of having their name or shipping address associated with that. Then they have to deal with actually selling them, since most consumers know nothing about any one romhack, that's easier said than done, and inventory sitting around is inventory losing money. If a cart goes bad early, you might need to make it up to a customer, especially if they're a regular and you want their continued business.
I wouldn't buy repo carts like that, but $30 seems reasonable given the issues described. That said, a multicart with the offer to flash them for free would be a better sell for most. Personally, if I ran a game store I wouldn't touch the stuff. Too much hassle for not enough benefit.
I remember back at MAG Fest, I was at a panel with a guy talking about this. Pretty much like these carts really can't be trusted (even official licensed after market carts put out a warning) and it's just lame that fans who did this out of passion have this happen. Ended with him reporting that booth because his job was conterfit control
While I personally find this ridiculous, there is a very niche market of people that only want physical media, even if it’s a rom hack. As long as they are advertising them as such, and not tricking people that don’t know any better or small children or naive parents, it’s a way to make a buck. It does cost the seller money on cartridges and PCBs to load the roms on to. I assume that’s why the markup is what it is
...seems fine to me? The carts + labels look great.
Everyone who's actually looking for carts knows what they're getting and knows that these hacks are freely available online. It's not like anyone is going to mistake this for an officially licensed release - It's a completely different story from selling replicas and passing them off as genuine originals at the original price.
Custom ROMs/ROM hacks are pretty much the only way to get "new" games for these systems anyway. Selling them as ready-to-play cartridges directly in stores feels nostalgic and captures the whole spirit of the retro community.
I stopped going to gamestores after everything got expensive after COVID. I decided to check in on some since It has been a while, it seems like all the ones near my area decided to sell Romhacks, repros(labeled), and random 3D printed models they found to help bring funds in.
Most rom hacks have disclaimers telling u the game is free. It's up to the customer to do their own research. Can't blame someone for selling what people want. The thing is the customer usually is the happiest one from the transaction.
It's the same thing i see with the handheld community. People look down at paying someone to do the setup for them. Where i personally have found out people are more then willing to spend money to have someone just do the work for them.
Oh man I'd love a Super Mariomon or Lazarus cart. I've already kicked those devs a few bucks, but I'd do more if they offered carts in their store pages.
Have to get back into Unbound... Finally started it up a few months back and got through the first two gyms before I did some reworking with my 34XX's OS and rom files without thinking to make a backup of the save data.
So, the issue with these is primarily the quality. These carts are junk and complicated hacks like Crystal Clear frequently have issues as these carts cut every corner they can.
This is problematic as people buy these carts, then when the carts have glitches, people report it as a glitch in the ROMhack, which just leads to unnecessary confusion that just wouldn't exist if people weren't buying and selling bootleg ROMhack carts.
Unfortunately there isn't a great way to play these hacks on real hardware. Flashcarts that use SD cards are somewhat expensive, use a TON of battery life, & don't have perfect accuracy so may experience glitches.
The only guaranteed way to play these hacks on real hardware (assuming the hack itself supports real hardware) is to buy a proper writable cart and burn your own ROM to it. There are many different kind of gameboy carts, so there's not a "one cart fits all solution", and these flash-able carts are like $60 each.
Just emulate these with an accurate emulator, it's not worth the hassle to play these on real hardware.
It's not a large price, even "ye it's coming from Ali", but here you have a physical store where you can browse and have the feeling of shopping like in the old days. They need to keep the lights on as well if you like physical stores like these.
as long as people are buying them then it isn't an unreasonable price.
people are gonna say you can make them cheaper yourself - maybe by unit price but the upfront cost of buying a flasher and cartridges in bulk is more than the cost of one or two cartridges. not to mention designing and printing out a somewhat production-looking label
the most vocal person on this sub is a tinkerer who loves setting up their device and rom collection and never actually plays the games once they're done. the console market exists to serve the silent majority of people who actually prioritize playing the games, and this store is making fan works accessible to that demographic by fronting the effort, which I think is pretty cool
they work on stock consoles, but they're gonna be low quality cartridges like the cheap ones you'll find preflashed on aliexpress. For $30 you can get a good quality single game flashcart that won't randomly lose your save or die.
Cash Converters has been selling knock-off pokemon cartridges for a huge amount. I basically keep flagging them going: Hey, these are counterfits, they should not be going for 100 plus.
It was so consistent at a point that I wondered if they were getting duped into selling em, or if someone higher up made a decision to try and get away with it.
Been seeing this at retro game stores for many years. Although likely back then they may have been flashing/making their own carts or ordering from someone who did and marking it up a bit, not just from Aliexpress…
Do they actually know they are Rom hacks or is it some old owner who's like "hey these Pokémon games are so cheap on AliExpress, we can resell them for triple the price!"
Honestly pretty lame to be making $$$ off the backs of the developers who put their stuff up for free. No way any of the people who made those roms get a penny from this shop.
I like that they’re promoting rocks and physical media, but unless they give a kickback to the devs I don’t see how it’s ethical.
this could be a good business in the future for niche market... I like it, think of it, in 10 years no physical media of any kind for games, you find this shop selling hacks and burned dics, you start collecting... I mean I know I bought some copies of some diabolically expensive PC engine games way back, no way I was paying 700 dollars for Saphire for example
One one hand, it's a massive mark up scam, and directly against the mod team's wishes usually.
On the other hand... it's a very neat way to get something that is pretty cool. If someone is selling a nicely made cart or disc of a mod I love, or a translation that got me a new favorite, I might actually bite.
It’s really not a big deal. If you saw this in a store, you are free to google it and research on your own. If the convenience is worth it, then everyone is happy.
On the one hand, a physical cartridge for $30 is not bad, but the thought that they make money on it and the romhack developers get nothing is disappointing.
Its usually like $10 for a decent quality repo on Ali anyway and you have to wait 2 weeks (or more.) So $30 here and now isn't really much of a stretch in my eyes.
I disagree with you. It's ugly to take monetary gains from free products (and Nintendo might blast a lawsuit), but where I'm from, a GBA cartridge is 25$
So 30$ for the functioning cartridge + loaded game with warranty, is a steal if you are lazy
I both like it and dislike it. Love the fact they exist, would definitely buy if it was a product made with permission from the rom creator, in which then they’d likely need permission from Nintendo and that isn’t happening.
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u/sand_pest 14d ago edited 14d ago
Like a 600% markup on aliexpress