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Warning: No cartridge or PCBs were harmed in the making of this article. Well, two of them don't have the sticker anymore but they'll be used in another project. And my deepest apologies for the amateurish photo quality but it is what it is to explain all this. Also, being a translated article I did my best to convey all the information written in my main language to English. And now, on with the show
The 90s are definitely my favorite period in videogame history, where eternal classics were released all across the more popular platforms of the era. With the rising success of certain consoles, it was expected for bootlegs/repros/fakes (call it what you will) to pop up everywhere. Some of the more infamous are the cartridges used on the Famicom clones (aka Famiclones) such as the Family Game, which were sold for cheap well below the originals on the NES, and were available everywhere from markets, small shopping malls and even places that didn't sell videogames at all. But the ones we're focusing on are the Game Boy cartridges, since that console is one of my favorites ever, and I've the fondest memories of all.
It was very common to find Game Boy bootlegs, some more elaborated than others, with box and even instruction booklets.
However, the print quality was something that gave away the origin of the product itself. Even as a kid, I quickly started to notice the small details and differences, and knew how to distinguish an original cart from a fake one, even though I keep some in my collection since the original are quite pricey these days. Nowadays there's still some of these carts circulating among the retro scene as well as some more recent ones that are even more easy to tell apart. And how can one distinguish an original from fake? That's what we're going to see through this little guide.
