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

[Laschek]

I don't think Pole Position was ever bootlegged either

Actually it was. It' s called Top Racer: http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10685

I have a PCB and to me it looks even crappier than the original boards. I might post a picture if I find the time to snap one.

 

[Laschek]

Here's an actual name and address of a bootleg company from Korea:

(Hammerin' Harry DIP Switch and pinout sheet)

Interesting that bootleggers where so out in the open with their identity. I somewhere have a copy of a fax where a bootleg company even gave technical support.

 

[MaximRecoil]

There was a lawsuit in Tokyo District Court between Namco and Arrow Electric Co. for their bootleg of Pole Position called Top Racer in 1983/1984.

Actually it was. It' s called Top Racer: http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10685

I have a PCB and to me it looks even crappier than the original boards. I might post a picture if I find the time to snap one.

That's interesting. I wonder what they did about the custom chips. This seems to be what's preventing the cloning of the board today. For example, from Adam Courchesne's blog:

10xx headway

The 10xx custom is nearly done. The system resets and passes all self tests, but the watchdog goes off right before the track appears. Which tells me it's a bus control scenario between the 10xx and the 08xx. I'm tracing the Z80 bus to see where it gets lost in the weeds and once I figure that out, should be an easy fix. Stay tuned for a complete overview on how I've helped automate the reverse engineering of the customs. It's saved me tons of time.

 

[gamefixer]

The bootlegs came from China, Taiwan, Korea and other places like that. I knew of an operator that used to travel to these countries, but a CRAPLOAD of bootlegs and bring them back here to the states and sell them as knock off kits. There were also "not so above the board" distributors that you could get these kits from.

 

[CrazyKongFan]

I've got a Crazy Kong manual that has the address on the cover. I assume it's a company that imported the boards and assembled the machines. It was from a company called "Games Ltd." in Arlington TX, and included parts lists for the game cabinet, monitor chassis w/PCB drawings, dipswitch options (which called Mario "Mr. Uncle"!) and schematics for both the Orca style board and Falcon style board.

 

[CHALLENGER]

You should read "The Ultimate History of Video Games..." By Steven Kent

The best part of the story is that their next enhancement kit was for the original Pac-Man machine. It is what ended up becoming a full fledged game after a legal dispute with Atari. The game it ended up becoming......Ms. Pac-Man

Anyway...great book. Highly recommend it...

Jess

That is interesting to know.
You just helped Steven Kent sell a book.

This sounds like the same thing that happened to Capcom During the SFII craze days. A Taiwanese company made a few bootleg editions to Street Fighter II CE. Then Capcom not only took a lawsuit action against them, this also lead them to release Hyper Fighting ED. Because of the popular demand uproar from the fans that the bootlegs caused. Of course I think there was another story to it, something like Capcom had already made HF and wanted to claim that the bootlegs were stealing it's thunder. That game is kind of hard to find, both American and Japanese versions. I have the Japanese version and I'm also getting a Bootleg "Red Wave ED" board. I'm going to try and collect them all.

 

[Level42]

The best part of the story is that their next enhancement kit was for the original Pac-Man machine. It is what ended up becoming a full fledged game after a legal dispute with Atari. The game it ended up becoming......Ms. Pac-Man

That was Crazy Otto. The legal dispute was with Atari about Super Missile Attack.
GCC sold Crazy Otto to Midway who turned it into Ms.Pac without Namco even knowing about it, so Midway was in fact bootlegging themselves.

A very common practice in the earlier days (let's say end 70's) when the Japanese companies Nintendo, Sega, Taito etc. all had "about" the same games available.

There are even rumors that Nintendo bootlegged their "own" DK boards because Ikegami (the guys who originally developed the hardware, Nintendo couldn't at the time) couldn't produce enough PCB's. That is supposed also to be the reason why Nintendo does't mention their arcade history very often nor "chase" their rights on the arcade stuff....

 

[RedlandMan]

A friend of mines father had a shop that used to build and sell arcades and he made all his money selling Mortal Combat bootleg machines. Another friend of mines father also had and arcade shop at the time i did not realize i guess he was building all bootleg machines. Just the other day i ran into a friend and since now i collect arcades i asked about our mutual friend and if he ever took over the buisness. To my surprise years ago the shop was raided just like a drug operation and shut down. I think the fbi was investigating them for a long time for selling so many bootleg machines. I was told it looked like a drug sting with machine guns and all.

 

[RColtrane]

Sorry to bump this old thread but I found it very interesting...

We had tons of bootleg boards here in Brazil too. I believe most of them came from Korea/China and Europe (Italia maybe).

I remember playing a Karate Champ bootleg which had different dialogs between the little girl and the white fighter after winning a match. Instead of "My Hero", the talking baloon was bigger, white and had something huge written in italian. I suspect she was saying something nasty to him, because the fighter does that face of shame after that.

The end of the phrase was "...la Fin!" or something like that, that's why I suspect it to be italian.

To this day however, I've never saw one of these again. I'm still looking for one of these KC bootleg boards to buy, but they became very rare.

A lot of other games from the 80's had their names changed too, such as the Pole Position being renamed to Top Racer, New Rally-X was called Stock Car and so on...


EDIT: By the way, TODAY I've found a video on Youtube from 2013 that is the bootleg version I'm talking about. In fact, the little girl says "My Hero Deserves The Fair". Here are some screenshots:

If someone here happens to have this board, I want it badly!! PM me

 

[casm]

Another bump because bootlegs are really interesting

To add to what RColtrane said above, there was a fair amount of bootleg activity going on in Europe as well. Some of it was just distribution of Asian-sourced PCBs, but some of it was actual production.

As he mentioned, Italy was one hotspot for this. Ditto Spain: the Spanish economy was essentially closed at the time, with very punitive import duties and taxes on imported goods; locally-produced bootlegs were one way around this. Greece was in a similar (though smaller-scale) position.

There were also bootlegging operations in the UK, Germany, and France, but my understanding is that most of those were focussed on distribution rather than production.