Lately, there has been a surge of BS Zelda (and a Radical Dreamers) repro carts appearing on eBay. This is in spite of the fact that Mottzilla earlier set up an officially endorsed repro cart seller specifically to attempt to avoid this circumstance.
This auction, for example, is just the latest in the string.
I would like you all to think of something before seeking out these repro carts yourself.
The most popular Satellaview games sought out as repro carts – those being the BS Zeldas and Radical Dreamers, of course – are based on ROMs which have had heavy hacking to work on a regular SFC/SNES hardware setup by hobbyists. For the BS Zeldas in particular, I myself was a debugger and bugtester.
These games were being hacked before repro carts were even a thing. However, there’s been an upsurge in them lately. I find this highly troubling. Why, you ask?
Look at how high these prices go. BS Zeldas can go over $100 on eBay even if the seller innocently sets a low starting bid, simply on demand alone.
Now, think of who’s getting all that money. Are any of the people getting the money involved in either the production of the original game or the ROM hack? Neither!
It’s been unsettling for me to see a project I worked on for nothing, and expecting nothing in return, be sold on eBay for profits by people who, on top of basically ripping me off for my work, had no involvement in the project, and thus are ripping EVERYONE off for their work. Mottzilla, Con, Duke Serkol… everyone!
On top of all that, I don’t even have a BS Zelda repro cart of my own yet, which I would consider to be the one thing I WOULD’VE liked to have gotten for all my work. Instead, the BS Zelda repro carts go up on eBay!
(For anyone asking, yeah, I’ve reported a few to eBay before. Unfortunately they are not keen on shutting down auctions which end up “hot” like these.)
Please, folks who want a BS Zelda repro cart, go into the BS Zelda forums and ask for one from Taco. Not only will you be supporting the BS Zelda Homepage forum better, but you’ll be paying less money, too!
eBayers beware. BS Zelda Map 1 and 2 Repro carts are not hard to make now, and don’t require any particularly rare donor cart. It could be very easy to flood the repro cart market with them. THEY ARE NOT WORTH HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS.
Also, whoever bought that Radical Dreamers off eBay? Please give the fan translators your support. Also, figure out how to change the ROM on that so it’s Unofficial 1.4 so you can get some saving! Jeez, eBayers, selling an outdated, broken version on a repro cart…. That’s another thing that gets on my nerves!
Excuse me for having a vent instead of actual Satellaview news today.
