On Saturday, while driving on Long Island with a few hours to kill, I stumbled upon a video game store in Stony Brook called The Revolution.
I don’t hang around game stores much — when you spend most of your waking hours playing and writing about video games, the stores aren’t quite as appealing — but something about this one really stood out to me. Maybe it was the free arcade machines, or the rows full of old PS1 role-playing games, or the way the friendly owner assured me that if I couldn’t find a game I wanted, I could order with him and get it within a week, guaranteed.
While browsing the shelves, I spotted the coolest thing in the store: a rack of SNES games that weren’t actually real SNES games. They were ROM hacks — unlicensed reproductions of SNES ROMs like Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes and Japan-only releases like Tales of Phantasia — placed onto cartridges that can be played on certain devices.
(If you’re curious how these repro cartridges come about and whether or not they’re actually legal, check out this interesting piece from USgamer.)
The whole thing made for a nice contrast to the store I usually use, which is, uh, GameStop. Something about independent game stores will always feel really special.
Comments
7 responses to “Super Metroid: Zero Mission And Other Neat SNES Repro Carts”
Oh man I need that Zero Mission cart. Well, a PAL one would be nice.
Also Fusion.
http://melbourneconsolerepros.com/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=102
*glares*
*glances at wallet*
*breaks out in sweat*
Actually, no. That box is all wrong. It says PAL Version on it, but the box art style is that of a US box.
For that much money, you’d want every aspect of the design to be perfect.
I’m still hoping that Nintendo will one day go all “Super Mario All-Stars” with Metroid, and release all the 2D Metroids in one package.
But why do that when they can just sell them individually on Virtual Console multiple times across different platforms!
Sucks they didn’t put LttP on the GCN’s Collector’s Edition. Like, just… why?
Actually come to think of it, the Cube is the one place where you can play every Zelda and every Metroid up to that point. So long as you have a GB Player, anyway. Which makes me wonder if there’s any kind of hacky way to connect a GB Player to a Wii, since it’s basically a GameCube anyway. Hmm.
Ramble.
Free arcade machines and PS1 RPGs…. ugh
All I have near me is an EB full of “loot” ???
If your after repros Aliexpress is bursting at the seams with them.