20 INCREDIBLE & "Unlicensed" Games You Never Played!

[@st1ka]

Please Consider Subscribing: kzbin.info Or supporting me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/St1ka

[@IplayallGames-hh2qk]

Bro I don't know how to special moves in super fighter 2001 help!

[@Doiteify]

Have you ever tried using Parsec to play 2 players games online? Im sure doing that you could find some people to help you get footage and testing for the channel

[@Pridetoons]

Please make more Bootleg videos.

[@st1ka]

@@Pridetoons First I'll have to see how the video does :P

[@st1ka]

@@johnpisser1983 whoops! fixed! ^^

[@OrfinMusik]

There's plenty of talent out there abroad that make "bootlegs" that are on par and sometimes better than the original. Thanks shed more light on these games bro!

[@st1ka]

I try! ^^

[@JLCL01]

​@st1ka Honestly, I think more videos on bootlegs that are actually good would be nice to see. Oftentimes, they're known for just being a random game with replaced sprites (Looking at you, Grandad).

[@st1ka]

@@JLCL01 Yep, I'm hoping this video will change a few perceptions

[@ssg-eggunner]

@@JLCL01 people have been bashing on the hummer team bootlegs and those aren't even sprite replacements, they're remakes

[@franciscor390]

That Swat Police bootleg game has some crazy well animated characters. They really put some effort into it.

[@st1ka]

right?! It's awesome

[@paxhumana2015]

@@st1ka , had they put as much effort into making their own backgrounds and music, it would have impressed me more, and ditto for Hard Time. Oh, and speaking of games that are like those, Taito had a pretty good entry like that of its own that was called Empire City 1931.

[@marhawkman303]

@@st1ka I think I may have actually played SWAT Police. I did visit a few Korean arcades in Korea in 2000 and played games that were... not in English. not sure what they were but I do remember them having similar mechanics to what you mentioned, and similar look and feel.

[@paxhumana2015]

I just wish that they did the same with the other graphics as well.

[@sneakyskunk1]

This was fascinating. I really do hope this becomes a series on the channel. I would love to see more well executed bootlegs.

[@st1ka]

I hope so too! ^^

[@MrGarthboy]

My thoughts are I don't know how well ms dos emulator works on retroarch, but I have used even if it is a demo magic msdos, name maybe different, remember if you expect to see a reply to check your gmail if thats your profile on yt, because there's no notifications to replies on yt if your using chrome, I have played fallout 1 for pc on the phone with magic dos, because its a iso or cd loader an fallout had a msdos on the cd, the demo only let's you install 1 game per device, so you should be able to play some of these games on your phone, it takes a lot of experimenting to figure out how to make it all run smoothly, but not only did I find how to get the mouse an keyboard to work flawlessly on the touchscreen, the hud was invisible, so you don't see the buttons, also I found a loophole for greatly upping the speed for msdos games, this is for phone mind you, if you can still find it there's a very tiny file you can download and replace another file an change its name back to the 1 it was, and it will make the system maximize the amount of memory it can use, it makes fallout amazing along without adding any speed buttons to it so your still stuck real time. There's also a fancy emulator for ps1 I don't remember the name of right now, an another 1 made by a mexican that you need a password to unzip, but it's in the description even though there's no english subtitles, his already rigged ps1 emu is so op it perfectly at exact speed runs games like kingsfeild on most phones like a champ, which is wild but in my town they were trying to sell a hard copy or original ps1 cd for 180$, so it is in demand to someone. The neat thing about the other emulator is that you can run 2 different mods to 1 game I told the guy showing it off if its still on here how I managed to annex 1 cd mod and another to get a homebrew of final fantasy tactics to play it looked interesting and had a different movie an mainscreen, I never played the original or that 1 unless it was a minute or so, but its fascinating, also there's a game called disgeae thats psp version has a perk where you can skip the attack animations , but it needs a mod or hack also because there's a cheese cheat you can find on accident and its a curse in disguise if you find it, its kinda like, 'wow I finally found a too good to be true version of this game the sky is the limit, game is complex if you never played and has a whole lot more content than the main story line, well over 300 hours of game play even with skipping the animation of every attack, but like I was typing, its more than a substantial letdown to anyone that's experienced it before, because if you know what the game is like, and it is definitely 1 of the best games ever in existence an probably always will be, then you know the curse of the doing whatever you can to get more powerful, not even with considering the attainable eventual possibly hidden character classes an levels, but just because you actually need to be that tough in general, even early enough on you make it to what is normally an unpassable level where you fight a dragon thing, and you definitely die, but for the ones that know the cheese cheat is pretty much impossible to pass up because they throw it in front of you if you pay close enough attention, and then all your hopes and dreams and ways things could have gone are out the window, which is part of the joke I think, its in the name of the game, disgeae hour of darkness, on psp is disgeae afternoon of darkness. Which emulator is easy enough to get running probably an there's probably not such a good 1 on retroarch, the other 1 requires testing works fine but I doubt they've uploaded the rom hack hombrew that I'm talking about that doesn't have the cheese cheat available, its not like a code you can just forget so it literally completely ruins the whole game because your thirst for power is just too hi caliber whether your a veteran or not.

[@okendo011]

Something about bootlegs has captivated me along my years. I don't know what exactly, but it's so fascinating

[@Daniel-be6cj]

Glad to see some praise for the creativity and cleverness of the bootlegs, even the ones that aren't great are still pretty fascinating

[@st1ka]

yep exactly! :D

[@safebox36]

I remember meeting one of the twins who made the Dizzy series in university. He was really nice. They still both have fond memories of the series, which is probably why they keep making new versions of it for modern systems.

[@st1ka]

Makes sense. The games are really fun too

[@DanielSanGMR]

You are absolutely right about CD-Man, I remember being a child in the early 90's and see it being played in a computer store, what a nice memory

[@st1ka]

It's funny because PC gamers remember it, console gamers usually have no idea it even exists :P

[@DBinitiate]

I even remember my father having it on our computer at home. I never got good at it though, haha.

[@CABROWN]

Great video. I love when a bootleg is actually great.

[@st1ka]

Thank you! glad you enjoyed it ^^

[@miketate3445]

I love the look of the DOS SF2. It's so endearingly bootleg. The composite video dot crawl is baked into the graphics! Amazing.

[@st1ka]

Right?! :D

[@metalman_j]

I think there is an important distinction to be made between "bootleg" and "unlicensed" games. The Codemasters and Tengen games you showed are not "bootlegs" in my opinion, as they had the rights to use the characters and properties (as far as I know), they just didn't have Nintendo's permission to release the games for their system... which I would consider to be a separate issue. I also wouldn't consider Metal Force to be a bootleg (other than maybe the obviously ripped off mouser from TMNT). But great video, nonetheless. These all look like great games.

[@st1ka]

That's fair :)

[@MathewHaswell]

@@st1ka Two of the four Sega conversions - After Burner 2 and Alien Syndrome - Tengen published on NES *were* licensed releases in Japan, AFAIK. Published by Sunsoft. Tengen's version of Fantasy Zone is a distinct conversion to the one Sunsoft released for Famicom. Tengen's Shinobi - while made by the Japanese studio Sanritsu, who did NES/FC Alien Syndrome - is a US exclusive.

[@CptJistuce]

In my experience, a lot of people view Tengen games with the same outright scorn as bootlegs, and original unlicensed titles as cheap and lazy. If it doesn't carry the Official Nintendo Seal Of Quality(TM), it isn't a real game. Because what's most important in a game is whether Daddy Nintendo got his protection money.

[@metalman_j]

@@CptJistuce That's ridiculous. A lot of the NES Tengen games are actually more well-made than a lot of licensed games.

[@CptJistuce]

@@metalman_j You are absolutely right. But voicing that opinion means, sadly, that you will never pass Nintendo QA and bear the coveted Official Nintendo Seal of Quality(TM).

[@sirlol]

Swat police is a little gem i found thanks to emulation. Fun fact: at the level 8 or so i found myself recognizing the tune. It was a midi version of I'm alive by Helloween

[@SevenCompleted]

now i wanna hear that lol

[@st1ka]

haha that's great

[@MatthewHolevinski]

oh man I forgot about helloween, good shit

[@TheRagingIcenogle]

What system is Swat Police for? MAME?

[@inktendo]

What an awesome list! I have a sweet spot for the bootlegs on the GBC and NES and this was an amazing showcase

[@st1ka]

The GBC has a surprisingly good selection of Bootleg games that are actually good

[@TheFieryWind99]

The creators of Mars 3D would later go on to make Hero 3D (based on the Romance of Three Kingdoms with at least one new character) and Tao (based on the Weird Tales of A Chinese Studio) with the same engine, although also featuring a third-person perspective. A few months ago they both received an unofficial translation. Go check them out as well!

[@st1ka]

Yep! I almost covered hero 3D, but decided to save it for a future video

[@ColeFam]

Man, i love the sprite work from Final Fantasy X Fantasy War. I gotta find that one. It looks like a lot of fun. Hoping for another video like this!

[@st1ka]

If this video does well, I'll make another one ^^

[@gswanson]

The music in Gunbee F99 is Devo's "Some Things Never Change." That's funny.

[@st1ka]

Hah! I didn't recognize the music

[@WilliamRoyNelson]

I noticed that too! I was thinking it might have been ripped from Neuromancer but it sounds like a unique mix.

[@zanegandini5350]

A great compilation here! I've been interested in bootleg games since I came across Shui Hu Feng Yun Zhuan, which eventually did get bought out by Piko Interactive and changed to "Cloud Margin - The Tale of Clouds and Wind." It's basically a Genesis beat em up that lifted assets from various games and took huge gameplay inspiration from Capcom's Knights of the Round. It's an amazing game! Metal Force actually did steal more than that TMNT enemy, the sound engine was directly lifted from Konami's Tiny Toon Adventures. Final Fight 3 also lifted its music directly from Mighty Final Fight. Also that shopkeeper from Swat Police is some gorgeous pixel art, when I saw her in the preview I assumed it was from some unofficial PC-98 eroge novel.

[@st1ka]

Oh I have that same Piko release too and it's how I started looking into bootlegs too

[@paxhumana2015]

@@st1ka , ironically, the OST to Mighty Final Fight was way better than the one to Final Fight 3/Tough.

[@thestripedmenace]

​@@paxhumana2015Ugh yeah... FF3's soundtrack sucks lol

[@Pridetoons]

These are some of my favorite videos from you St1ka. 😊

[@st1ka]

aww thank you! ^^

[@TheProgressiveStyle]

We need more videos like this. Always thumbs up for Stika. 👍

[@st1ka]

thank you! ^^

[@ilfaro9130]

Your videos are really informative and often help me to find new games I wasn't aware of. Good work!

[@st1ka]

Thank you! I try! ^^

[@megadizzy9320]

I haven't played a single game from this list, but now I feel inclined to check each and every one of these out. I think this may be my favorite of all of your videos now.

[@st1ka]

haha thank you! I try

[@Treychik]

OMG! I remember CD-MAN from my school's computer class! we had a bunch of games pre-installed there and were allowed to play anything once we were done with the assignments :)

[@st1ka]

Man those were the days

[@ryancurtis5425]

Top Fighter 2000 is such a sick bootleg! World Heroes 2 is another bootleg fighting game that's a crossover. It has your usual fighting game characters Ryu, Chun-Li, and Mai Shiranui, but it also throws in characters like Raphael from TMNT, Goku, Sonic the Hedgehog, and even Mario.

[@st1ka]

Ah yeah I've played that one :D

[@joezar33]

Hey in Top Fighter how do you pull off Special moves ? I can't do any finishers , the A.I be spamming lol

[@st1ka]

@@joezar33 the moves are the same as their regular official counterparts o.O

[@rexthesheep]

IT'S HAPPENING

[@st1ka]

it is! :D

[@inc2000glw]

All on her feet

[@amruzaky4939]

It's not joever yet

[@KAZ3EM]

As you said "I have no friends" for multiplayer I became a little sad!!! Hope it was a joke!

[@nobody5280]

​@@KAZ3EMyes, was joke

[@ankosgbx]

Thanks for the shout out. This is a great video. I'm always happy to see people give these games a chance

[@st1ka]

Thank you for the help. I really appreciate it ^^

[@ankosgbx]

@@st1ka No problem. I'm always happy to help out when it comes to this sort of stuff

[@st1ka]

@@ankosgbx hehe ^^

[@fqsm]

Please, make more videos like this one! Also, would be funny to have "the worst bootleg ever" video 😂

[@st1ka]

Oh, I prefer focusing on the positive ^^

[@Hartior]

Some of these called my attention, I'm definitely gonna grab them. Personally, i would love to see a video about the eroges of the FDS, the only one aside for this video that i know of is Bodycon Quest, a Dragon Quest parody that was translated by fans in 2012

[@st1ka]

Oh I actually considered doing Bodycon Quest

[@primalconvoy]

Micro Machines is also famous for having a real life character called "Violet", who was based upon "Violet Betlin", the presenter of the British gaming show, "Bad Influence". The show featured a feature on the game and showed Code Masters putting her in the game.

[@st1ka]

Hah yep! Violet also had a cameo in Gabriel Knight 2

[@nesmario123]

for the record, when a bootleg has good music, they might be stolen from another game... especially if it's on the GBC

[@paolonavarro8318]

In the case of Vast Fame, they composed most of the soundtracks for their games (sometimes they just recycled from their previous games)

[@st1ka]

Yep, very true

[@spicybreadproductions1972]

I mean if you really think about it, bootlegs are the grandad of homebrew games. Most of them are pretty bad, but they set the groundwork that we stand on to this day. For that alone, I hold a solid amount of respect to these developers

[@st1ka]

Yep pretty much, especially when you consider the lack of tools they must have had

[@ssg-eggunner]

haha "grandad"

[@berdo2595]

AWESOME VID, ST1KA! I WAS SO HYPED FOR IT AND IT DID NOT LET ME DOWN! GREAT JOB! PLEASE, MAKE A SEQUEL, ST1KA!

[@st1ka]

Glad I could deliver! :D

[@fqsm]

38:42 I did play this version of Micromachines on NES when was a child. It was great!

[@st1ka]

it's a pretty great version

[@elodvezer1790]

OMG MICRO MACHINES..... I had no idea!!!! that was def. one of my favs as a kid!!! gotta get it again!!!

[@st1ka]

Such a fun game

[@Doiteify]

I had Micro machines on the NES back in the day. One of my fave games for the system. It had a golden cartridge too.

[@st1ka]

That's pretty cool! :D

[@Tony_Cardoza]

I loved that game. Never knew it was a bootleg.

[@timvangenechten5258]

Very good video, I love bootleg games and its nice to see a compilation of the better ones. Thanks for making this one.

[@st1ka]

Glad I could help! ^^

[@immediateegret2120]

This was really fun to watch! I bet these would perform well with each game segment released as a YT short. In any case, thanks for the video, you clearly put lots of work into it 👏 The ones I'm most interested in trying are SWAT Police, FF9 for GBC, and the last one, because I am a cultured person who enjoys good pixel art.

[@st1ka]

Yeah I'm considering turning my videos into shorts. Just need the time to do it ^^

[@grizzlehorn7387]

Another awesome video filled with cool games

[@st1ka]

Thank you ^^

[@sumdood8563]

Can't wait for your commentary on all the crazy stuff that the enemies in Mars 3D scream at you when you shoot at them.

[@st1ka]

I'll be honest I didn't understand a single word they said >.>

[@sumdood8563]

@@st1ka I know some of them scream KISSAH MAH ASS! And some others yell DAYMIT!

[@st1ka]

@@sumdood8563 aaaah makes sense haha

[@Mystemo]

Great video! There are so many cool bootleg games out there that I never knew about. I did use to play CD-Man a lot though.

[@st1ka]

CD-Man was great :D

[@Volair]

Some bootlegs definitely feel more like indie games, and that's pretty rad. But many bootleg games were... not great, charged money for assets that were stolen, or both. But for me, so long as they weren't charging money, then a bootleg is fine, but since they were developed and it took a lot of resources, they were most definitely charging money. The exception then would be those bootlegs that were sold in countries where folks wouldn't have access to, or be able to afford, the official.

[@st1ka]

Oh, all bootlegs were charging money back then. It's not like today where we have the internet. You'd have to buy a physical copy for these.

[@Volair]

@@st1ka Yeah good point. Great video btw, editing and subject matter is excellent.

[@st1ka]

@@Volair thank you ^^

[@TarikA]

Great video! Wow man I had a big "OH MY GOD" moment when I saw CD MAN. It was one of the games I played as a child but had completely forgotten.

[@st1ka]

Haha glad I could bring back some memories

[@segamanxero]

These are all pretty interesting and even creative, not what I expected from things that are bootlegs.

[@st1ka]

Yeah, the point of this video is to change perceptions ^^

[@SaviourV]

I don't think anyone has made anything similar to "Aki to Tsukasa no Fushigi no Kabe" over the years. Not so much the eroge content, but the top-down Arkanoid / Breakout perspective? I think it could deserve a revisit in this age.

[@st1ka]

Yeah, the only other game I can think of that does this was the Power Glove launch game

[@Scyllinice]

I'd certainly argue that unlicensed doesn't necessarily mean bootleg. The Tengen and Camerica games weren't licensed, but they didn't steal IP from anyone. As far as the Deck Enhancer goes, the enhancement capabilities were vaporware. They didn't exist. The only game that got any "enhancement" was another Dizzy game and that was because they rewrote parts of it for that version :D. It should be noted that Micro Machines was a completely legit game from an IP standpoint since Codemasters and Galoob were working together, so it's only unlicensed in terms of Nintendo.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

Weren't Aladdin carts sold for less than other new games , since the deck contained common cart parts shared between all titles? Or am I misremembering?

[@Scyllinice]

@@juststatedtheobvious9633 That was the plan for it. The lockout chip bypass was in the deck portion along with some character RAM if I remember correctly. The cartridge portion contained the game ROM itself so they were cheaper to make since they didn't need to include all of the chips like normal carts. It wasn't a terrible idea, in theory. Had they been able (and willing) to do what the marketing said, it probably would have sold well, but the company tanked before they could really deliver.

[@st1ka]

Honestly, I agree, bootleg and unlicensed mean different things, but this is youtube and I sometimes had to muddy the terms for the sake of brevity >_>

[@styrkjarsteibjorn1860]

Great Video as always 👍

[@st1ka]

thank you ^^

[@TheDecatonkeil]

Oh, my goodness. CD-MAN! We played this game in the "ICT" class when I was a child. Our teacher, who sadly passed away this very summer, exposed us to this and other games: Supaplex, CRB (a Spain themed Pang knock off and Cartooners). I still have some of the Floppy disks he copied for me with these games with "cover labels" I painted on them.

[@st1ka]

Hah! CD-Man was a staple of Ms-Dos gaming lol

[@noop9k]

Yeah, CD-MAN was well known here too, though haven't seen most of the other games. Tetris Pro was very popular, IIRC.

[@MrLuciusrm]

“I can’t show you because I’ve no friend” That’s not true, we are all your friends ❤

[@st1ka]

haha thank you

[@analogmoz]

Maybe if you invited some co-workers to a round of skate ball, you'd have some friends.

[@st1ka]

haha

[@kissthistwice5]

Great video as always St1ka

[@st1ka]

Thank you ^^

[@BATCHARRO]

It's a bit sad that people want games to be art, but their view of what games "count" is so narrow. Just because something is not licenced by Nintendo or is just full of stolen assets doesn't mean it's not part of "games" as a whole.

[@st1ka]

You know that Office gif where Steve Carell hits the table and shouts "Thank you"? I'd post that as a reply to your comment if the KZbin comment allowed gifs.

[@PopnMarco]

Congrats on the video! Didn't knew most of these games. It's cool to see some new stuff, "hidden gems" videos on KZbin usually show the same games as aways.

[@st1ka]

I try to show lesser known stuff ^^

[@Ratralsis]

I'm so curious about what he's actually saying instead of "Skate Ball." Is it "Basketball" with the first syllable cut off? Or a foreign word I just don't know?

[@st1ka]

I believe the original King of Fighters character says "Death Bound"

[@swordman521]

24:15 That's Choi, who is definitely a KOF character, and not Gen'an

[@ThePageofCups]

JODEN is saying 'Death Bound' He's a reskin of Lucky Glauber from KoF.

[@st1ka]

aaaah thank you!

[@xalberrious]

Nice video. I will watch when I have some time.

[@st1ka]

Hope you'll enjoy it! ^^

[@fm-retrogamemaster]

Wasn't Alien Syndrome officially released by Tengen in America and by Sunsoft on Japan?

[@st1ka]

Yep. In the west though it launched illegally ^^

[@chuchoggaming2132]

Yeah tegen was in the gray area of legality because it was a subsidiary of Atari

[@raafmaat]

@@chuchoggaming2132 its weird, they used backwards engineering to bypass copy protection and also they used that subsidiary name to release more games than allowed! so they should have been totally illegal, but i guess its hard to proof since its pretty much just a plastic rectangle.... it just happens to work in a certain system but you cant proof it was made specifically for that purpose i guess haha

[@zenitpro]

Very nice selection! I remember back in the day some NES original one-on-one fighting games from China that looked really cool and was smoothly animated, and IIRC, it was some "World Heroes" of sort. I really love the nifty scaling effects seen on the stars at the start screen of Metal Force and the bouncing ball of that Super Pig's Famicom Arkanoid clone! Quite smooth for the system!

[@st1ka]

Glad you liked the video :D

[@silentfanatic]

Wow, SWAT Police looks really similar to Wild Guns, and I'm absolutely here for it!

[@supercrownjosie7732]

thanks for spotlighting some awesome games that don't get enough love. I'm a massive beltscroller fan, and I love seeing old school beat em ups I haven't played before.

[@st1ka]

Glad you enjoyed it ^^

[@zestful713]

Fantastic video, thanks for sharing!

[@st1ka]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@tacoman6697]

Now one of my favorite KZbin videos. I've been dying for somebody to do this exact video subject. I eagerly await the sequel video(s). Now, if only someone would take on the project of porting MissionCraft to a home console like the Genesis or something...

[@st1ka]

Hopefully the video does well. 😅

[@TheRoninteam]

great video man!

[@st1ka]

thank you! ^^

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

One of those videos the algorithm doesn't respect, but gets a community excited and is great for your reputation. I shouldn't make it sound so cynical, but KZbin comments are rarely so hyped and positive when learning something new...it's wonderful to see what you've built here.

[@st1ka]

Thank you! I try ^^

[@AndrevusWhitetail]

Despite both being "unlicensed" good "bootleg" games are usually called "homebrew" to differentiate the good from the bad, even if it's...kind-of a misnomer.

[@st1ka]

I feel the difference is that homebrews don't try to pretend they're official, whereas bootlegs usually pretended they were official games and were sold as such

[@JimLeonard]

Thank you for the SF2IBM coverage.

[@st1ka]

I had to. I grew up with that game.

[@suntaxis]

I sincerely want to play a lot of these now. The RPG beat em ups look great, Mission Craft is still a sight to behold and WAIT, HARD TIMES HAS SOUNDS NOW??? I remember it being a silent game for more than a decade! That's great news!

[@st1ka]

Oh I didn't know Hard Times used to have sound emulation issues

[@suntaxis]

​@@st1kaI kinda followed the MAME scene for a while, in 2006, if I remember correctly, and it was mute at the time. But I'm sure that it was mute also a couple of years ago... Probably something change recently and that's great! Maybe somebody found another board to dump here in Italy and extracted the sound. Other Playmark games have no sound issues so it shouldn't have been an hardware emulation problem.

[@fredmetzge4666]

Thanks for this episode! Love to learn more about 'bootleg' games!

[@st1ka]

glad you enjoyed it! :D

[@psychoticgiraffe]

starcraft as a bullet hell is fire

[@st1ka]

Right?! :D

[@armorbearer9702]

The dude you play in the Ice Age game(39:52) is Sid the Sloth.

[@st1ka]

thank you! :D

[@MAGA_Patriot2024]

First timer here. I never saw CD Man before, but those levels are gorgeous! 👍👍

[@st1ka]

Oh yeah CD man is awesome:D

[@leandrusi4533]

5:02 Cyclops walk LOL

[@st1ka]

Haha

[@jbmaru]

Never heard about those! Thank you! Ice Age is good, you should give it a go!

[@st1ka]

Yeah, I never got around to watching it, but I probably should

[@DeaDGoD_XIV]

I swear I heard Devo's Gates of Steel during Gumbee

[@st1ka]

I think someone else said something similar haha

[@TonyToon]

The intersection of people who are familiar with the Amiga, Twinbee, and vintage Devo is such an interesting group.

[@st1ka]

@@TonyToon haha

[@yoymate6316]

great video as always! the ice age one really threw me out, they even copied the goomis lol. i wonder if any of the levels are downright copied from the wonderswan or gba klonoa games. i would love to see more videos like this, it’s always good to see some positive coverage of unlicensed games :) sachen is one of my favourite NES developers from back then, you can really see how much they cared about the games they made. q-boy, pyramid ii, popo team, magic cube… they all could easily compete with the licensed stuff if it weren’t for the distribution problems that kept them marginalised. another really interesting unlicensed NES game is C&E’s magic bubble, which is a very unique falling blocks game that looks like it was inspired by puzzle bobble - except it is older than that. it also happens to be an eroge lol anyway, sorry for the rambling lol abraços

[@st1ka]

Glad you enjoyed the video. And yeah i hope to make more videos on this topic soon

[@sk3tch982]

Borat talking about bootleg games is awesome!

[@st1ka]

Lol

[@joe-raysix]

Seeing as we're talking about Tengen, which, yes, technically bootleg, I always found it wild that Sega was basically putting bootleg games on Nintendo consoles. After Burner on the NES is actually pretty good.

[@st1ka]

Yeah, for some reason Sega had a lot of its arcade games on Nintendo and NEC systems. Definitely an odd decision

[@elodvezer1790]

did the algorithm not like tour PRO bootleg video 👹🤣👍🏻🤟🏻 excellent vid! plus the game nudity! 😂

[@st1ka]

Thank you xD

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Ahh that batman by sunsoft music to start the mood off.

[@st1ka]

I aim to please

[@dacealksne]

this made me wanna boot my leg

[@st1ka]

Do it! :P

[@noop9k]

SWAT Police - Wait a minute, that's ninja roll from Dark Souls 1 :D

[@st1ka]

Swat Police was a trendesser :P

[@JaxCoolKartunes]

Here are other good bootlegs you did not show: Magic Kid Googoo Qboy Jurassic Boy 2 The Lion King (NES) Hyper Pac-Man Squirrel King/Super Mario World (Genesis)

[@ilkeryoldas]

These are great!

[@st1ka]

Glad I could help! :D

[@svartfrasr9755]

"And you even got a co-op option, which I cannot show you because I have no friends." I refuse to believe such a chill guy has no friends. This is an injustice and I'd gladly play bootleg games with you lol

[@st1ka]

Haha, worry not, it's just a joke

[@jocothemen]

Mais um grande vídeo! Awsome conteúdo 👍💪

[@st1ka]

Obrigado 🤙

[@chrisb1236]

Best thing about that Starcraft / Mission Craft game is it's playing Warcraft 2 music at 34:27 😆

[@st1ka]

Haha

[@renzokufc]

Oh great. When you were asking about bootleg games, I thought mentioning Twin Eagles Group, and I never replied the tweet. You found them anyways, great!

[@st1ka]

hehe :P

[@deatho0ne587]

Remember spending multiple hours on Micro Machines, never thought it was not licensed back then. Still enjoy it today time to time.

[@st1ka]

Yeah the NES version is unlicensed. The other versions are official

[@krzbrew]

Very good review, thank you.

[@st1ka]

Glad you liked it! ^^

[@ninjahedgehog5]

I personally have an appreciation for bootleg Demakes or backward ports. Although admitting it's due to the history and business sense behind it rather than the quality of any of them😅

[@st1ka]

Haha understandable

[@larsonkilstrom1875]

Another great video! I definitely would try out some of these.

[@st1ka]

Thank you! Glad you liked it ^^

[@noop9k]

One of my favs was Rebel Runner. I even made my own save file editor for it with cool graphics somewhat matching the main game. But lost it with dead HDD.

[@st1ka]

Oh, is that one a bootleg?

[@noop9k]

@@st1ka No, just remembering it as an semi-obscure Korean PC game.

[@noop9k]

But I can suggest you some local product made with "borrowed" audio samples and music ;) Not sure if you'll like it though..

[@mugen8studios]

45 minutes! niceee!

[@st1ka]

Hope you'll enjoy it! :D

[@mugen8studios]

@@st1ka stika do you work at the gaming industry?

[@xnightshadyx]

The music in that Starcraft schmup seems to be music from Warcraft 2... neat.

[@st1ka]

Oh that's where the music is from? It seemed familiar

[@xnightshadyx]

@@st1kaYeah, I definitely recognize at least one of the tunes as “Orc 2” from the orc campaign in Warcraft 2.

[@st1ka]

@@xnightshadyx Makes sense, It's been a while since I've played Warcraft 2 ^^

[@azazelleblack]

Dizzy didn't reach wide popularity because the main character looks really strange. That's really all there is to it.

[@st1ka]

That's fair. I assume it was inspired by humpty dumpty

[@theflyingninja1]

Dizzy was massively popular in Europe and the UK. We got loads of merch. I think the gameplay is very Euro in style though. It's just not Americas cup of tea.

[@azazelleblack]

@@theflyingninja1I really don't think it has anything to do with the gameplay; Americans liked games such as Prince of Persia and Nosferatu, which, while different, have a similar sort of platform-adventure gameplay. I really think it just has to do with the main character design; Americans are infamous for being overly serious with their media, and especially at the time that Dizzy was around, American media was sheeding its cheese and growing ever darker and edgier. A game about a friendly-looking egg man was never going to move units in the US, no matter how good it actually was.

[@azazelleblack]

Great video by the way! I had heard of most of these, but I'm an aficionado of the format. :)@@st1ka

[@st1ka]

@azazelleblack oh dude the fact you knew about most of these is impressive. Hat's off to you

[@maskedllama7775]

Very interesting games!! I hadn't heard of many of these.

[@st1ka]

Glad I could help ^^

[@Indie-A-tom]

Nice video. Found every game I wanted to test pretty easy, exept for final fantasy 9 gb and super bomberman 3 gb. xD One bootleg I like a little is Squirrel King, for SNES.

[@st1ka]

You can find them both on a website called handheld underground:)

[@ix8750]

Hey bro hope you're having an awesome day. Im sick so im in bed watching youtube. Thanks for the entertainment. :)

[@st1ka]

Aww dude, get well soon

[@chamchamtrigger]

"Final Fantasy 10" with "GB King of Fighters 95" music? I guess it works.

[@st1ka]

Haha yep

[@PlayerLin]

Mars 3D actually was used a custom Engine that using DooM engine spec as base but possible "borrowed" some Build engine things too : the maps and graphic assets were in a similar container format(MAD) like WAD but not totally the same - but someone did converted that to WAD, sounds just WAVs and animations for level result screen using ANM format from Duke3D, both stored on the directory with game executable as loose files, not in the MAD. And the author of the engine did confirmed that so yeah. :P

[@st1ka]

Oooh thank you for thr extra info

[@Highretrogamelord]

I have a weird fascination with unlicensed and bootleg games but I don't think I have ever heard of the FF IX GBC bootleg game (yet I have of the FF X one) and I also can't recall ever having heard of Mission Craft. So thank you for this fantastic video!

[@st1ka]

Glad I could help :D

[@DeathMetalDerf]

I know there's absolutely no way you'll actually see this, but, I just found your channel and this is the very first one of your videos I've watched. Very enjoyable content indeed my good man!! I'm very much looking forward to seeing what else you've already done and posted, and I'm very interested in see what it is you'll cover next. Thanks very much for a fun and informative video! I'm going to have to see if maybe I can get some of these games to run on the emulators I like to use, and see if I like any of them!

[@st1ka]

Haha thank you! I try. I hope to have a Halloween video out next Tuesday at the latest. P.S. I saw your comment;D