The Console Made To SCAM Collectors

[@SaltPyramids]

it's very funny to me that they'd go through all the effort of making it so convincing and then fill the back with completely avoidable typos

[@Dick_Trady]

lazy translators are the plague of the counterfeiting world

[@janmeyer8150]

That surprises me every time too. I wonder why the original text isn't simply copied 1:1.

[@dieseldragon6756]

I believe it's to do with copyright circumvention. Back when these came out it was pretty hard to prove a _patent_ infringement (If someone makes a compatible with different hardware, your patent doesn't stop it; At the time patents didn't extend to covering logic inputs and outputs) but _copyrighting_ your box art and text meant any 1:1 clones could be dragged straight into court for copyright infringement, and the damages sought would be equal to a reasonable assessment of the business lost from the counterfeits plus case costs. 💰 Using misspellings and intentionally poor resolution images would often be enough to throw _reasonable doubt_ over whether the fake box-art was a _poor quality copy_ (Infringing) or merely a different work _inspired_ by the official art (Not infringing) and it would be a lottery for Nintendo whether to pursue a case that they might lose along with a lot of money and potentially unhelpful case history against them. ⚖

[@OxTheHerdzz]

Helps in court if they ever get caught out for it. They can say the typos were they to make it obvious it wasn't a real model.

[@Razorbun]

Proper hardware clones like this are way more interesting than the typical systems on a chip to me, with all the effort that went into reverse engineering and manufacturing the proprietary chips, I'd love talk with someone who helped make em.

[@sayingnigromakesyoutubecry2647]

I agree. Good clones are awesome. As a kid I played my whole life in a cloned Sega Genesis lol. I thought it was real. 90's clones are way better than today's clones. And also most model 1 Sega Genesis clones are capable of Sega CD and 32x

[@Razorbun]

@@sayingnigromakesyoutubecry2647 I've seen the model 1 clones your talking about, they're rad! I really wanna get my hands on one someday.

[@victorvillacis6764]

It def had to be someone who worked at the factory, maybe not. But who knows. I feel like all sorts of interesting documentaries could be made of these stories

[@launchedkode]

This isn’t a clone is it tho I’m assuming the board n chips are same no?

[@sayingnigromakesyoutubecry2647]

@@launchedkode they aren't exactly the same but they are called clones

[@bacon.cheesecake]

I find it hilarious how them cheaping out actually made the knock-off better than the original in a bunch of ways.

[@JollyPower69]

Really, most of the changes are cool for the hobbyists, but the region unlock is really nice

[@adre2194]

what not engaging in price discrimination through damaged goods does to a mf

[@DimT670]

​@@adre2194what?

[@oscarcacnio8418]

​@@DimT670 What _"Not Engaging in Price Discrimination Through Damaged Goods"_ does to a mo'-fo'. (I still don't understand what it means.)

[@aserta]

@@DimT670 Prolly reffers to sh!tty nintentrash practices to make products different based on where they were sold. One can argue that exports were pretty garbage by comparison to domestic.

[@ultra0000_]

to be honest, at some point i was expecting it to turn out to be a famiclone disguised as an SNES

[@BushidoBrownSama]

Same

[@avegee24tv]

tag you're it

[@AltimaNEO]

Yeah the fact that it runs SNES games just fine is pretty awesome.

[@SKCro.]

@@avegee24tv tag

[@RadeonVega64]

same

[@MikeStavola]

Knew a dude who bought one of these off eBay during the flood of bootlegs, and he fully believed it was a legit NIB one until 2012ish.

[@2beJT]

i never knew about the fakes. Pretty sure I bought both of mine from a forum I was on in 2004. Just checked them and they both are real.

[@TRJ2241987]

I had two of the boxed controllers in this era and thought they were legit for at least a year or two before one day I noticed how the color of the Super Nintendo logo wasn't right compared to all of my other boxes and then I started to get suspicious and opened one of the boxes up and i was pissed.....that said, I do own one of the legit loose late release controllers

[@bldontmatter5319]

Did you cry, weenie? ​@@TRJ2241987

[@Arz2003]

😂

[@mrx_yai1991]

for some reason, the fact that 20 different companys chips are inside the bootleg motherboard makes me happy

[@Yewtewba]

It's a party, everyone's invited, and everyone leaves slightly disappointed.

[@jordanl5444]

There's something about a random assortment of parts bin crap cobbled together that's just charming for some reason lmfao

[@mrx_yai1991]

@Yewtewba everybody leaves dissapointed from the party when toshiba was invited

[@MattSuguisAsFondAsEverrr]

reminds me of the fact that ibm pc is just made of random ass chips as well

[@spookynutsack]

unite

[@emmettturner9452]

The official SNS-101 SNN-CPU-01 board has PAL/NTSC jumpers too (bottom side). Nintendo stopped using different motherboards for each region with the 1chip-01 in the older SNS-001. I’ve found a couple 1chips that were PAL-modded in Thailand and they cut the trace between one of the jumpers and soldered a crystal to one side to inject the right frequency (Nintendo would’ve populated the board with a different crystal) and they bridged another jumper. They also replaced the RF modulator with one of their own.

[@Games_for_James]

Ohh, I didn’t know!

[@bigjohnsbreakfastlog5819]

I'm just more impressed that they made a bootleg that wasn't a Famiclone. That takes effort.

[@TrimeshSZ]

One defect in your theory is that these things were made back when the original ones were in the shops - which is honestly pretty obvious just looking at the construction. There wasn't any "collectors market" back then. My guess is that someone found a stack of them in the back of a warehouse in Taiwan or HK where they had been sitting for years and just decided to sell them.

[@irtbmtind89]

This was almost certainly made in Taiwan. Before they joined the WTO in 2002 Taiwan actually wasn't that integrated into the world economy (it even used to be kind of a pain in the ass to fly there), which meant (among other things) that industrial level piracy was more or less legal until around 2002-2003 (Anyone who was into anime then will probably remember the Taiwanese bootleg OSTs that every other comic book store seemed to sell). So a Taiwanese company could hire engineers to decap and reverse engineer all the SNES chips and Nintendo really couldn't do much to stop them.

[@TrimeshSZ]

Yeah, I was never really into Anime, but I can certainly remember those Son May discs because they were everywhere. Assuming those chips are the same as the ones used in most of the full-size SNES hardware clones (which they probably are, since the numbers match) they were fabbed by UMC - but never branded as such because they were still covered by some of Nintendo's patents and the optics of a company that was majority owned by the Taiwanese government making bootleg parts was pretty bad. Something similar happened earlier with Micro Genius/XTC/小天才 and the Famiclones - the company was formed by a bunch of ex UMC engineers and the chips were "officially" designed by them after they left UMC, although the timescales involved make that rather questionable. @@irtbmtind89

[@eDoc2020]

The board in this one has a datecode of mid-2003.

[@TrimeshSZ]

If you are talking about that "2503" on the PCB, I seriously doubt that's a date code - the whole board is full of through-hole components, and by the early 2000's the low cost manufacturers had turned pretty much entirely to SMT. Also, these cloned new style SNES were definitely in HK in the late '90s and being sold for less than half the price of the original Nintendo ones. @@eDoc2020

[@eDoc2020]

@@TrimeshSZ It's the exact same font as used on date codes and James said these started popping up online around 2005. 2003 seems reasonable for year of manufacture. They probably started production in the 1990s and then kept making them.

[@StephenBanyar]

A wise man, Stuart Ashen, once said... "Maybe it was something for the collector's market. "Collector" being a euphemism for idiot."

[@ongakuwotabeta]

Which video was that?

[@Wing_cap]

Ironically, the last video I watched before this popped up was an Ashens video. He may be eternal

[@maskettaman1488]

Nothing wrong with collecting stuff you're interested in

[@Gestersmek]

​@@ongakuwotabetaThe joystick roundup IIRC

[@lmcgregoruk]

No, but a lot of collectors collect for the sake of collecting, or to try to make a profit later, they have no intention of even playing the games. I mean I remember they started GRADING games and putting them in SEALED CASES that mean NOBODY CAN PLAY THEM unless they break the case.@@maskettaman1488

[@ScrambledAndBenedict]

We had a gentleman try and sell one of these at my store a while back. He insisted it was "worth several hundred at least". I told him it was fake. worth at most maybe around $20, and that I wasn't interested in paying anything for it. He got quite irate. I can't 100% confirm since I don't remember, but I'm pretty certain the one put in front of me had the same serial number too. His had a different RF switch with it too, so maybe these were cobbled together out of whatever oldstock they had lying around. Don't know if it was the same inside since we didn't crack it open, of course. Something that might particularly interest you is the box his came in had almost the exact same kind and level of damage: it's like the counterfeiters realized these things would never pass in front of the kind of collector who will pay for mint-condition oldstock, but also recognized that no collector would fall for a mint-condition item being sold at the cost these were selling for.

[@G1sandG1rlsGaming]

Based on the pieces show in the video, it wouldn't really surprise me if they were just gathering any old cables they could find and just slapping stickers over them. Pretty smart on their part if they intentionally gave the product wear and tear to fool the average buyer.

[@Myriadys]

Honestly, they probably did at least some of the "errors" intentionally to easily weed out the people who would actually check for those kinds of things. It's like the Nigerian Prince scammers having typos and being generally unbelievable, it's so that only the people who could easily be fooled wouldn't immediately discard them. Kinda sad when you think about it.

[@blarghblargh]

​@@Myriadyssome of it, yeah. Reproducing active Nintendo copyrights is also hugely financially risky. If they Nimtundo them, it's got at least some defense. Seems like it might not really hold up in court to me, but that doesn't stop em from doing it.

[@ScrambledAndBenedict]

​ @G1sandG1rlsGaming @@Myriadys Yeah. Sad to say, the entire retro game industry is kind of a massive scam. There is basically no money in making legitimate retro gaming hardware, so they have to try and make these fake bootlegs to scam people into thinking they're somehow rare and valuable. I mean hell, for not much you could get a Retron console, which is a reproduction NES with crisp 1080p HDMI out made of brand-new parts which will last the rest of your life, and an Everdrive Cartridge, which is an NES cartridge with flash memory that can hold every NES game ever made. Or just download roms and play them on an emulator for free which, with nothing more than an HDMI cable to connect to TV and a USB NES controller, will be practically indistinguishable from playing on a real console.

[@MultiCool55]

@@blarghblargh Bootlegs like this are usually made in places like China or Russia, where it's very difficult if not impossible to actually enforce your copyright, that's why these bootlegs have existed for years and nothings really been done about it.

[@samsniper2000]

really accurate counterfeits are heroic, if they flood the market and drive the price down that is.

[@ToTheGAMES]

It's harder to get a real one though. But with a bit more research it's worth it!

[@GuyDude-hk8uy]

@@ToTheGAMES Other than the whole "trying to fool people" aspect (which admittedly is a huge part of their MO) I think companies like this are doing a great service. Legit consoles are becoming so expensive with all the bullshit going on these days with the collector's market, so decent alternatives for the average Joe who just wants a console they can hook up to a CRT and get something close to the original experience is welcomed imo. If these things are compatible with flash carts or SD-card mods, that's fantastic.

[@the-NightStar]

That's a funny way to spell "scumbag", that word doesn't even start with an H

[@Thesnakerox]

As a Yu-Gi-Oh player, a hypothetical: Pros of counterfeit staples: Drives the price of the genuine articles down if they flood the market Cons of counterfeit staples: I have to jump through hoops to make sure I don't accidentally buy a counterfeit

[@G1sandG1rlsGaming]

@@GuyDude-hk8uy I've honestly resigned myself to acknowledging that corporations are not consumer based and will go out of their way to prevent us from having the things we want so they can sell a rental license to us later. I've started buying so many custom cartridges and discs so that I can guarantee I can play them whenever I want. Games were meant to be played, not hoarded.

[@Larry]

Have you tried any Super FX games on it? A lot of the cheaper clones tend not to wire up/soldier those parts of the connector, same with Mega Drive's.

[@Games_for_James]

I didn’t know those were an issue on clone consoles, I know mario rpg usually won’t run on anything dubious and I actually bought that years ago for testing a CIC chip workaround I made but my cart doesn’t care and runs with no CIC communication for some reason

[@YoungBasedChefBeezy]

Where’s the uploads! We miss you!

[@chiarosuburekeni9325]

@@YoungBasedChefBeezy he’s been at it for a long time. Maybe he’s just chilling out these days

[@Larry]

:@@YoungBasedChefBeezy i'll be back soon :) just been a bit under the weather.

[@Larry]

@@Games_for_James Yeah, since only a handful of games ever used it, they tend not to solder them in. You can do it yourself, it's literally not bridged to the motherboard, that's all!!! Most of the Mega Drive knock-offs won't play Virtua Racing or Gargoyles.

[@K-Anator]

Give me an OG controller and I'd happily use this little pirate box; would sit right at home between my N64 with a smashed top shell and my NES. Right now the only SNES component I have is the power adapter... for some reason.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

True, it's probably fine for playing games and cheaper, but why not use an em-you-later or FPGA box?

[@K-Anator]

@@thewhitefalcon8539 Because I've already got those on my phone and PC. I like having something to play my cartridges though, and if it looks and works like an original SNES, well, I'm in.

[@obeseperson]

@@thewhitefalcon8539there’s something cool about using this over an emulator

[@blarghblargh]

​​@@thewhitefalcon8539emulators are legal. I don't understand why someone would try to disguise the word. FPGAs are also emulation. It just is hardware emulation instead of software emulation.

[@K-Anator]

@@thewhitefalcon8539 Can you not say that word? Is that why my comment got disappeared? I have all the games on my PC, and phone actually... but it's nice having a way to use original carts. This thing is technically an FPGA anyway, it just looks like a real SNES.

[@Jdbye]

At least it's easy to tell the fake apart from the writing on the box. This thing actually impresses me, it's rare to see 1:1 hardware clones like that Famiclones are obviously everywhere, in every form factor you can imagine. I imagine this thing wasn't cheap or easy to make, or we would probably be seeing a lot more SNES clones alongside them.

[@nathan_tasker]

James has one of the truly underrated channels on KZbin. Keep up the amazing work mate.

[@emmettturner9452]

These boxed fakes existed in the year 2000, possibly earlier. 2000 is when I first saw them on auction sites. That’s also when I took a risk and ordered a 30 dollar SNES from Overstock. It took months and I was sure the listing was in error but it did eventually show up. I was expecting a fake but ended up with a brand new genuine Yoshi’s Island SNS-101 set. I tried to order more but they canceled and removed the listing. The Yoshi set was supposed to be a Walmart exclusive but I guess they somehow got the unsold stock. There weren’t many collecting such things back then but I kept it new in the box until I got hit by a tornado a few years ago and had to say goodbye to most of my collection. :(

[@Gatorade69]

Was going to comment "That's awesome" and then I got to the end. That sucks. My stepdad threw away my 2x NES, Genesis, PlayStation, accessories and all my games when I moved out at 18. Glad I took my PS2 with me though I later gave it to a friend for his PlayStation collection in 2015. I look back and I would love to have my old collection. Oh well, at least there's emulation.

[@Gawlakman]

Sorry for your loss

[@Sugurain]

There were full-size counterfeit SNES too, I've seen a bunch here in Brazil, really convincing stuff, until you take a look inside.

[@carpespasm]

Watching this I was guessing it was likely originally made for the Brazilian import grey market. For those that don't know, Brazil has some unusual import laws which made Hong Kong clones of Japanese and US consoles a significant enough market to end up with a lot of clone consoles making it there. Maybe these were originally intended to pass the sniff test in Brazil, where the SNES held on a lot longer once the N64 had come out, then once the US collectors market got big enough someone realized there was more money to be made hocking them on Ebay to folks in the US. Also I just learned Brazil is one (the only?) country that used the same mains plug with both 127v mains and 220v mains in some places. Banonkers, but thankfully switchmode power supplies make that far less of a concern, and it's typical these days to put a red sticker over 220v plugs so you stand less chance of blowin up your stuff.

[@Sugurain]

@@carpespasm It could be for the brazilian market, yes. Despite the Megadrive outsolding it here, I believe it because the Megadrive and Master System were manufactured for DECADES helped a lot in these numbers. Back in the 90s things were a lot closer between the snes and MD. Back then I didn't know a single person who had the MD but knew relatives and friends from school who had the SNES. Even some whose their first console was the Master System. Brazil is actually larger than the USA if you take Alaska out, truly continental in size, like 100 years ago when electricity became mainstream third world countries begun buying their electric transformers and generators from first world countries, this includes Brazil. Some regions regions here found benefits and cheaper prices going with the american system (110V) others chose the european standard (220V). Our old wall socket standard accepted both flat pin american plugs, and european plugs with round pins (extremely convenient and the best design IMO). Some high power stuff like dryers and Air conditioners even used the australian plugs for some reason. Lol Around 2005 they created a brand new standard that like... Only Brazil uses, it can accept 2 pin european plugs though it's lost all compatibility with the american standard. Even before switch mode power supplies, most electronics would had a mechanical switch for selecting the voltage. My SNES has a switch, my N64, GC and up all use switch mode power supplies. All my nintendo consoles were manufactured here.

[@matheuscabral9618]

​@@carpespasm are plugs different from 110v and 220v outside of Brazil? Like you can't accidentally plug it on the wrong one?

[@carpespasm]

@matheuscabral9618 YEP! most countries standardized around 220v full-stop for their standard consumer plugs. In the US our 120v 15A (standard) plugs look like | | with a ground pin below and 240v 15A plugs (quite uncommon) look like | - with a ground pin. High-current plugs for 240v plugs are larger and different depending on current they can supply (20-50A typically). Japan makes things even weirder....

[@matheuscabral9618]

@@carpespasm yo that's cool I had no idea, I wonder why Brazil doesn't have that. This year a vacuum cleaner broke in the house because it was put in 220v, would be quite a handy feature.

[@Jaymic]

My dad bought me a boxed version of the same console in about 2014 for Christmas, so I had a bit of a anxious time watching this video, there would have been absolutely no way he would have been able to tell it was a fake. I definitely did my box and console a once-over just to make sure I had the real thing. Thankfully I do. My heart was ready to drop at just the thought that I would have to tell my dad he got scammed ten years ago and never knew. Thanks for the informative video so I knew I had a legitimate console.

[@ShoelessJP]

Your content is genuinely good, and you seem to be getting a lot more comfortable behind the camera. Keep it up ol' mate James, we love you.

[@Games_for_James]

Thanks, will do!

[@blakegriplingph]

I remember reading a blog post about this one quite a while back, and it was quite intriguing considering how most clones tend to at least somewhat deviate from the original than make a 1:1 counterfeit down to the packaging.

[@frank97865]

I once got scammed like this but on a DS lite. it was marketed as New, but it was a fake box and fake chassis, but it did have the original motherboard at least Ive never seen a home console scam pull that stunt before, and they used a clone console motherboard too!

[@DimT670]

There was a massive influx of those ds some years back. The case for the ds both og and lite broke super easy espe the hinges so the refurb market was huge

[@pinkipromise]

its refurb, not fake

[@dennisthemenace567]

refurbished?@@DimT670

[@kbhasi]

I remember seeing videos about them, and later thought they were low quality third-party refurbished that wasn't indicated as being refurbished.

[@andreigtx1711]

They're refurbished consoles, there are also phat ds consoles with custom shells that make them look like an enlarged ds lite

[@joshreiman]

I actually was among those who purchase counterfeit SNES and dogbone NES controllers around that same time. I still kept them though, because I figured someday it might be a neat conversation piece. Great video!

[@Dick_Trady]

It could have value as vintage counterfeit

[@Trn-u1n]

I ALWAYS forget about the cat at the end of the videos and it cracks me up every single time 😂😂. Best part of the videos 😂😂

[@johntracy72]

Meow

[@TatsuMakiSeppuKyaku]

I remember these, because they sold the boxed fake controllers too and I bought one. I was 17, I'd just bought my friend's old SNES off of them, and it had an original controller with a busted L button post, so when I saw a boxed new SNES controller I jumped at the chance. I never thought a counterfeiter would go out of their way to print up fake boxes and everything. I remember the buttons feeling insanely stiff, and the decal around the ABXY was discolored- not quite like the one that came in your system is, it was almost a marbled beige. I specifically remember it using the wrong screws too, because I was able to take it apart and re-spray the shell black. Fun to see these again!

[@Str4ngerr]

Bootleg consoles were super common in South America, I had a famiclone and then a bootleg Mega Drive, bought in '95 at the same shop where they sold originals. The box was poorly designed, probably not close to real hardware but it was a bit cheaper and it allowed me to play games from every region. It was somewhat more reliable than my neighbor's original early 90s MD. I never had the chance to try Virtual Racing or Gargoyles though, but my S3&K worked like a charm every time. Comparing it side by side with an original MD you could see it was really close (same Z80 & 68000 chips) but not as tidy, including the functioning CD expansion slot and a small 6 button joystick (mimicking the japanese one). Owning an original MD years later convinced me that I wasn't missing a thing with a bootleg, the main experience was there. In a market where consoles were not officially released the options to get one were usually from people who traveled abroad, so being a PAL/NTSC capable console meant a lot more fun than sticking to just the overpriced toy store games (usually region locked to the console they were offering). The PAL/NTSC divided latin america in a way that these bootlegs flourished, suddenly you could get cheaper games from other countries. I remember playing tons of games, at least a 100, while some friends with original NES had to play always the same bunch of games, so I believe in the end these bootlegs helped a lot to popularize gaming in the region.

[@eightcoins4401]

IIRC Nintendo refused to sell to alot of SA ccountries, same with Sega. And when they did, they didnt adjust prices to local economy.

[@fatfurie]

if it was presented as a replica id be so cool with this...reusing old chips is awesome

[@No-mq5lw]

Finally, a James video on a console I actually own. Though there's an early revision where the audio chips were mounted on a daughter board.

[@Netbug]

Imagine going through all the trouble to manufacture that box and not get the text right... even if you can't read English, just get the letters in order. Crazy.

[@actuallyasriel]

Man, they did so good on this that they could've sold it as a repro instead of trying to pass it off as an original and I think people would've bought them still. Not that Nintendo was gonna not go after them anyways.

[@PrototypeSpaceMonkey]

Yeah, Nintendo would have sued their souls straight out of their bodies and into the sun, Bayonetta style.

[@PlayMadness]

It's always a good day when James comes round to show off some neat old gaming hardware oddity.

[@Into.resting-guy]

As a man living most of his life in the Eastern Europe I can tell you that this type o console are just bootleg consoles of Nintendo consoles of the time that weren't available back in the 90s, because they were extremely expensive for people that just went from spending the first 8 hours of the day sitting in line for a bloody cabbage, the original consoles were also extremely scarce, so this bootlegs were extremely popular in the ex soviet union states and other 3rd world countries (I assume) as none got the money for the originals and so, bootleg were the only viable option.

[@mactep1]

I dont think anyone is making those anymore, i can only find famiclones and emulation boxes, that thing is probably rarer than the real one. Kinda of a shame, since this looks like a pretty high quality clone and could have been a more affordable alternative to real thing, if disclosed properly.

[@cardboardsnail]

Huh. The pirates put in more effort than just making an emulation box. Neat.

[@aserta]

If someone had enough time to sink, they could probably pin point exactly where these fake consoles came from. Also, this one you have is a revision. So someone made multiple versions of this product, fixing some issues. There's another one online, with the same box, serials etc, a small dot on the power button... but the serial number of the board is KF388, not "-A" and that one has a larger aluminium heatsink. The cluster of chips (trio) is also flipped on the left side. Single on bottom, double on top.

[@nachiopistachio]

We’ve all seen so many Famiclones over the years but I’d never seen a SNES clone until now 😮

[@KuchingKingVideoGamer]

SNES and Super Famicom clones are popular in Asian and Latin American countries in the 1990's and 2000's..They look like the real one but priced at $60 to $40

[@nachiopistachio]

@@KuchingKingVideoGamer Well I’m from Chile and I’d never seen one. It’s always Famiclones especially of the Polystation kind

[@arturoorutra61]

I buy some of those years ago, those cost me like $20 USD at the time (in a flea market in my country), but the one i buy where bettter than yours IIRC, I don't remember all the details, but, the only piece looking odd was the a/v cable, everything look and feel legit at first, i remember because i compare with original products. Fakes exist for years (like famiclones), but this console was well made for the time, but again, i remember the ones i own looking better, at least the A/C adaptor and joysticks.

[@catzzara]

this might be one of my favs from u "it's a party in here" i choked on my water 💀

[@Thewinner312]

Wow! The effort they put into this is very impressive.

[@ItsAubreeyy]

5:48 this is because if your consoles region is foreign to the CRT, it cannot display the image in color due to different encoding. I remember being really confused when playing an american copy of the simpsons game on my crt and it being black and white, then realising this. only seems to apply to crts, digital tvs will display it as if nothing happened

[@Games_for_James]

Nah, it’s a professional multiformat crt, it takes everything and is automatically happy

[@seanmckelvey6618]

Never knew these existed, I had to pause the video halfway through to go and check if my SNES model 2 was a counterfeit or not 😂 (it's not).

[@2beJT]

me too haha, i got mine in like 04-05 iirc

[@mswi2595]

yo, it's ol mate James

[@vsully360]

I still have one of these that I had bought on eBay back when they were on the site. I knew right away that it was fake but I kept it and it's still in really good shape. I've always wondered if it worked or had any real value. Thanks for all the mechanical insight!

[@east-in-west]

I could spend hours looking through your collection, its beautiful.

[@dylanrobinson4658]

Every time you upload i go back and watch all your other videos, I’m so glad I found this wonderful channel

[@Games_for_James]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@atomicskull6405]

So I assume the three GF-6976 chips are FPGAs. Audio may be crackly because the FPGA used to replicate the audio chip might not have the hardware filter that the real SPC700 has and/or the output volume may be too high for the bit width of the DAC.

[@Games_for_James]

That could definitely be true

[@medicman4444]

Oh the precious ginger baby is back at 6:35 :3❤❤❤❤

[@kaisersoymilk6912]

You need an RGB cable in order to get color from PAL, most likely. I'm from Europe and I need an RGB cable in order to get color from NTSC. By using a regular composite cable on an NTSC console connected to a PAL TVs you also get a black and white picture.

[@lieftheshinigami]

I'm glad I got mine from an old family friend. I've had it since I was in middle school, and didn't realize the rarity of them until I got older. I had the original model and I either sold it or gave it to someone, and I'm super glad I held on to my "junior" model. I kinda like it over the original anyways. (not to say the original model wasn't cool, but I liked the uniqueness for the Jr models.) I was not aware how rampant the clones of this particular version was though.

[@lostapostle76]

The second system is called the SNES jr. It was a revision that got rid of the RGB as the system didn't sell well in Europe so they dropped support for it. A common thing is to buy a jr and get the RGB mod. It gives you the most stable hardware and sound along with a more stable RGB color palate. I have one of them modded. The only version people want more than a jr is the SNES 1 chip. The RF sheilding isn't required for FCC compliance. Compliance requires the device accepts interference, not that it blocks from interference.

[@eDoc2020]

FCC rules most definitely require that the device doesn't cause any radio interference. If the raw board puts out too much RF then shielding is needed to attenuate it.

[@ike-2357]

Have you tested any special chip games?

[@j5962]

50 and 60 hz are not referring to the picture refresh rate or fps. It's the ac input frequency.

[@HIDHIFDB]

Those cloned snes where common in latin america in the late 90's

[@danlongname]

4:47 hey, where's Brazil? We had PAL-M, which has PAL but 60Hz.

[@Sanjidub]

I love how the box gives you small clues all over the place hahaha

[@classiccustoms2010]

2:37 It also looks like the power and reset buttons are a darker shade of purple, at least to me.

[@k.n.s.t]

Hey I know this is your channel and it's separate from all Wade's stuff, but I wanted to thank you for making all wades mechanical and technical stuff possible. I'm another one of the do-it-all type of people and sometimes it gets to be a lot, making stuff work for people. Especially when it's a Mercedes. A bad Mercedes. Thank you James, appreciate you.

[@JoshNotJohn0]

So have you tested games that normally trip clone consoles on these? Like Super Mario RPG, SuperFX Games, Earthbound, Out Of This World, and Super Ghouls n' Ghosts?

[@MrCed122]

I've been wanting one of these for quite some time, but they're not that easy to find nowadays. You can sometimes find one sold as a real SNES Junior, but there's no way I'm paying $150 for a fake SNES.

[@gorfelbt]

Wow... I did not know they made fake super nintendo console boxes.

[@FreakGeSt]

Green background: "look at this piece of crap, I'm gonna smash it". Red background: "look at this piece of crap, I'm gonna fix it".

[@Thomasjwood]

Parodius and Unirally are some of my fondest memories on the SNES. Unirally's soundtrack is unnecessarily good!

[@BenjaminSpencer-m1k]

Still can remeber when i got my first snes, it came with a coupon for Mario All Stars. Good memories, that was almost 30 years ago.

[@PSR2024-w3v]

6:01 looks like the anti-piracy screen of DKC2

[@kbhasi]

I've seen (both elsewhere on KZbin and once on local online classifieds) that fake Mega Drive 2 (Genesis model 2) consoles did exist (they notably had region selection switches in place of the Mega CD connector), and I didn't think there were also fake Super NES 'new style' consoles too! (both probably made by the same counterfeiter following a clue at 2:04 into the video)

[@justonemori]

Thanks for scaring me with the title, making me laugh then letting me known mine was legit.

[@notpsicoh2107]

thank you for not mentioning the rarity of uniracers, that game deserves to be owned by every retro enthusiast

[@stuff31]

Random aside, I LOVE your little Trinitron! I wanna know where I can get one like that it's so cool

[@edz]

I really enjoyed watching this. Great comparison of real vs counterfeit. Awesome work.

[@Games_for_James]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@burntalive]

I didnt even know they released an alternate SNES. I've only ever seen the blocky one with the rectangle buttons in the states!

[@whaduzitmatr]

we were late to the video game party as a kid and got one of the redesigned SNES systems for Christmas one year, I believe my brother still has it

[@deviantarsenal]

I really enjoyed this video! I love learning about things like this. How these older consoles were made and the comparison between the real and fake is very interesting to me. I subscribed to the channel and hope to see more like this in the future.

[@Sakamoto196]

The New Style SNES (or SNES Jr) was very popular in Latin America for being a much cheaper console than a "Fat" SNES or an N64.

[@decomodus]

I wonder if the counterfeit works with special cartridges, like Starfox, Street Fighter Alpha 2, etc

[@MavHunter20XX]

The fact it's not emulated is actually worth something.

[@Xch3l]

This video reassured me I have a genuine console. I don't have the box anymore for reasons (I was a dumb kid, nowadays I'm just dumb) but I do remember it had the cutout and having opened it before I saw the shielding and wide lad of a heatsink 😌

[@poeticsilence047]

The only counterfeit things I like to bootleg is my anime and maybe my snacks.

[@codycast]

I find it amazing that they can sell enough of these fake ones to actually make a profit after all the work that goes into making a clone, and then the cost of each individual clone

[@joshuaanothereraseddad]

You had me at, "It's a party in here..." :)

[@MrHack4never]

Is there a term for a knock-off console that is hardware compatible with what it claims it is? I personally find that too many knock-off systems are some sort of NOAC-based junk

[@wilburie]

found your channel today, and now im trying to fix an old atari 2600! i think the voltage regulator is fried, but i dont have a multimeter. love your videos!

[@50TBRD]

I remember them in the mid 2000s. They were so prevalent that like you said, I assumed pretty much all the boxed SNES jrs were fake.

[@ExitCode808]

One thing that’s really cool about the fake is that they cheated out on the outer detailes, but on the inside, made the snes we wanted but never got

[@based_department_agent]

Despite its flaws, its still a decent version of the console.

[@nevadaxelizabeth]

4:44 mind that 50hz doesnt always mean PAL, the Netherland Antilles is NTSC but power is 125v 50hz

[@KingHenryVR4]

Gotta check my $5 SNS-101 that came from yard sale years ago and make sure its genuine lol

[@ViddyOJames]

Finally a counterfeit I wouldn't care about being tricked into getting. If it was cheap.

[@1337Shockwav3]

And soon those will be "collectible" as well. Seems to offer quite some bang for the buck.

[@xpro718]

This is one of the most interesting videos I've seen in a long time. It astounds me how rip offs like this get very close to looking exactly like the real snes console.

[@pragmaticmusing6923]

ironically at some point, getting ahold of a genuine counterfeit might someday be collectible itself...

[@Akuajin]

I have a SNES jr clone almost identical internally to the one in the video, it does RGB native and play’s all the SFX/SA-1 games flawlessly, no graphic issues, no audio issues, plays perfect. I use it as my test machine now, crazy it has almost as good RGB output as my 1chip. Mine was held together with the standard game bit screws not Phillips head.

[@joweraDE]

You can actually switch the refresh rate while the console is on? I really didn't expect that to work

[@HammarixSwe]

Ah yeeeh, Unirally! Loved that game when I was a kid. Awesome soundtrack.

[@EnforcerX71]

Was anyone else expecting James to put the parts of the real console inside the fake one or vice versa like the mad scientist he is?

[@TechX1320]

The Gray Scale nature of the PAL switched games is fairly universal. Back when I was a teenager, pirating Dreamcast games, i accidentally grabbed a few PAL games. I'm in the USA. The PAL games played in gray scale, while NTSC american iso's played in full color no issue

[@TheJadeFist]

Imagine going through all that effort including trademarks, to then just misspell Nintendo on the packaging without checking it.

[@kulilin3104]

I have the real SNES mini and back around 2005 to 2006 my sister lost the original controller. I went on ebay back then and got what was advertised as an official new in box replacement controller. After watching your video I went back and took a look at that controller. Turns out I was duped by counterfitters as well. Thankfully it was just on the controller.

[@Louis_Marcotte]

My question: if the price is right, and there are few meaningful differences, do counterfeits matter? Assuming honesty about the fact that it's a counterfeit

[@maskettaman1488]

For the sake of collecting, absolutely yes

[@Louis_Marcotte]

@@maskettaman1488 I understand your point, but at what level of similarity would you say "I know this isn't original, but this is the same"

[@maskettaman1488]

@@Louis_Marcotte It has literally nothing to do with similarity. If I sold you "The hat Abe Lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated" but actually just gave you a modern day hat that was very similar... would you feel like you got what you paid for?

[@jahblessin3996]

Yoshi on the bootleg box looks gone off the percs

[@Klook6950]

Finally, a "Super Famiclone"

[@ash36230]

Actually impressed at some of the detail (minus the spell-checking) to counterfit this. Hell real games these days don't even give you manuals and books now