Hi,
I was looking through some old NES carts today, and came across something odd. It's a NES cartridge made by Hong Kong Game Cartridge Co. Ltd (according to the text moulded into the back of the casing). There's no label. The casing is the same shape as those shown at http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/odd/scans/hkgc.html. On playing it, the cart contains the PAL version of Slalom. Wow, that's the first pirate PAL game I've ever seen, or so I thought...
But on opening the casing, I saw a genuine Nintendo PAL Slalom PCB (with 3195A lockout chip) inside. However, it has been modified. CIC pins 7 (RST) & 8 (GND) have been cut, and there is a capacitor between CHR ROM pin 20 (/CE, goes to PA13 on the cart connector) and CIC pin 1 (OUT). The effect of that is probably similar to that described in the Macronix CIC-defeating patent. I need to test it with an unmodified NES console though.
If I remember correctly (and I quite possibly don't ), I bought this cart along with a used Hong Kong version NES. My guess is that HKGCC imported PAL NES carts, modified them to work with non-European NES consoles (i.e. the Hong Kong NES) and put the boards in their own casings for sale in Hong Kong. Hopefully I'll upload some pictures of this shortly.
Has anyone else got any HKGCC carts? Are the boards inside genuine or pirate? Maybe some/all of their other carts in fact contained genuine PCBs?
-- M
I was looking through some old NES carts today, and came across something odd. It's a NES cartridge made by Hong Kong Game Cartridge Co. Ltd (according to the text moulded into the back of the casing). There's no label. The casing is the same shape as those shown at http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/odd/scans/hkgc.html. On playing it, the cart contains the PAL version of Slalom. Wow, that's the first pirate PAL game I've ever seen, or so I thought...
But on opening the casing, I saw a genuine Nintendo PAL Slalom PCB (with 3195A lockout chip) inside. However, it has been modified. CIC pins 7 (RST) & 8 (GND) have been cut, and there is a capacitor between CHR ROM pin 20 (/CE, goes to PA13 on the cart connector) and CIC pin 1 (OUT). The effect of that is probably similar to that described in the Macronix CIC-defeating patent. I need to test it with an unmodified NES console though.
If I remember correctly (and I quite possibly don't ), I bought this cart along with a used Hong Kong version NES. My guess is that HKGCC imported PAL NES carts, modified them to work with non-European NES consoles (i.e. the Hong Kong NES) and put the boards in their own casings for sale in Hong Kong. Hopefully I'll upload some pictures of this shortly.
Has anyone else got any HKGCC carts? Are the boards inside genuine or pirate? Maybe some/all of their other carts in fact contained genuine PCBs?
-- M