So where did bootlegs come from BITD....?

parkway

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I was thinking about this the other day, but forgot to post. Just reminded me after reading a couple of posts here:

How did one find/buy bootleg boards and games BITD? These days, obviously, if someone is looking for something, they can find it in any of a myriad of places using Google, etc. However, back before/in the early 80's (and I guess even after that for some time), how did your average op and/or bar/restaurant/movie theatre owner find and purchase these? Did you have to "know a guy who knows a guy" or something like that? We, or at least I, take it for granted that it's so easy to hop on a computer these days and find and buy pretty much anything one needs or wants, I sometimes forget that things weren't always as accessible. I'd be interested to hear any info or stories you guys have about this kind of stuff.
 
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I've wondered the same thing. I've also wondered who all manufactured bootlegs. Nowadays it would be called a reproduction and there would be a preorder thread for it right here.

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I've wondered the same thing. I've also wondered who all manufactured bootlegs. Nowadays it would be called a reproduction and there would be a preorder thread for it right here.

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LOL. I had a similar image in my head while I was typing my original post. :)
Good question as far as who was making them too! I'm sure someone around here has some info. Is there anyone who frequents here that was an op back then or anyone who was working for one?
 
my theory is that they were sold in cabs from distributors or resellers and nobody really noticed them. Those bootlegs were sold on the aftermarket alongside regular boards and nobody REALLY noticed.

Except for various obvious exemple.
 
**edit** im dumb and thought you were asking how you found out if it WAS a bootleg back in day without internet help :)
 
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I would imagine there were certain distributors that would carry/sell such things back then much in the same way as certain record distributors will carry/sell bootleg vinyl and CDs.
 
A good portion of the PCB's actually came from Canada due to U.S. copyright laws lacking relevance and enforcement. I worked for an amusement company back in high school and
there were actually suppliers that visited us from Canadian board houses that manufactured the bootlegs.
I'll try and dig up some information.
 
A good portion of the PCB's actually came from Canada due to U.S. copyright laws lacking relevance and enforcement. I worked for an amusement company back in high school and
there were actually suppliers that visited us from Canadian board houses that manufactured the bootlegs.
I'll try and dig up some information.

Cool, thank you. Our neighbors to the north, huh? I was envisioning surreptitious phone calls to a guy who was only known as "AL", a check mailed to a P.O. box, and then a couple of weeks later a PCB showing up in a non-descript package with no return address. :)
 
Makes sense. In the thread about those big satellite dishes, I remember back in the 80's, one of my uncles had one, and had a descrambling unit so he could watch the scrambled channels, and he had to buy the chip for the unit from someone in Canada, since they weren't illegal there.
 
Makes sense. In the thread about those big satellite dishes, I remember back in the 80's, one of my uncles had one, and had a descrambling unit so he could watch the scrambled channels, and he had to buy the chip for the unit from someone in Canada, since they weren't illegal there.

It was the same way in the late 90's. I wonder if it's still that way.
 
It was the same way in the late 90's. I wonder if it's still that way.

Most if not all signals from cable and sat companies are digitally encrypted (depends on how up-to-date the cable system is)

The company I work for uses 256bit encryption with a random key.

I HIGHLY doubt, anyone will be able to hack a 256bit Qam feed.

Yeah I know, famous last words.

Who would want to anyway? There isn't shit worth watching anymore;)
 
A good portion of the PCB's actually came from Canada due to U.S. copyright laws lacking relevance and enforcement. I worked for an amusement company back in high school and
there were actually suppliers that visited us from Canadian board houses that manufactured the bootlegs.
I'll try and dig up some information.

I've never heard of that...not that it isn't true.

Almost all boots I've seen have come from somewhere in Asia or Europe(Primarily Italy).
 
The game that I had the MOST personal experience with that was a bootleg was a "Crazy Kong" machine which came in a small cabinet with the same kind of woodgrain siding that the Atari cabarets came with. I THINK that it had a 13" monitor as well. For some reason, I think the operator who bought it paid something like $1,600 whereas an "official" DK would be more like $3,000 or so new. So, it was understanding that the lure of saving money was hard to pass up for some operators (but not many around here), not unlike those who gobble up the Chinese in-1 boards that are so popular these days.

There was a shady arcade on the "other side of town" back in the day that was run by some middle easterners (from "Persia" as they like to claim, I am sure) called "Fantasia". It was one of those places that you heard stories about, such as "there was a stabbing there" and such. Anyhow, I was never allowed to go there except for one time in the middle of the day, just to "check it out". I walked through there rather quickly, while my mom waited outside for me in the car. There were LOADS of games in there, and NOT A SINGLE ONE in an original dedicated cabinet! It was the only place where I have ever seen basically ALL bootleg equipment. I felt dirty just being in there, and could not get out of there quickly enough. Even back then, at a relatively young age, I still knew the place was bad news. Aside from the lone Crazy Kong machine mentioned earlier, this was the only place in our area that I am aware of that ever had bootleg equipment on location...

Lee
 
I was in the amusement industry in those heady days. I actually visited a few manufacturers of bootleg PCBs in those days in Korea. They were mostly small operations with 20 or so staff and the PCBs were hand assembled.

They were pretty easy to buy in Australia as most operators were approached by sellers who were buying them in - again mainly from Korea although I was told stories of some Japanese ones this could have been a ruse as it was perceived then that Jap was superior to Korean.
 
The game that I had the MOST personal experience with that was a bootleg was a "Crazy Kong" machine...

Hmmm...I think I've heard of that one :D That's probably the one I saw the most too. We had at least 3 of them locally when it came out. One at a mini golf course, one at a skating rink and a cocktail in a small town arcade, then they all disappeared. I also saw one Crazy Junior, and one time I saw a Pac-Man that didn't look right, and even my dad noticed (we asked the guy at the arcade about it and he said it was a real Pac-Man)
 
It says on Wikipedia that Crazy Kong was "officially licensed for non-US markets", but it also says "citation needed". Does anyone know if that's true? In the comments for the article, someone wrote:

I am unsure if this ever was a legitimate licensed release. For one, Falcon specialised in bootleg boards as KLOV reveals. Also, if it were a geniune license, why would the licensor go to great pains to rewrite the core Donkey Kong code in such a way that the game looks, sounds and feels significantly different. Wouldn't they have just been better either manufacturing the boards themselves or reselling them, without having to go through the coding and playtesting process again that Nintendo had already performed?

Another tell tale sign is that the copyright is missing and both Crazy Kong games feature glitches in graphics.

I am of the persuasion that this game was based upon an early leaked beta version of Donkey Kong that was subsequently decompiled and re-engineered by bootleggers in order to run on established existing hardware such as Scramble and Crazy Climber.

Does anyone know for sure?
 
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