Scammed!

With my recent purchase of another Game Boy system (that is another post) I've been picking up more Game Boy Advance games especially Pokemon titles.  They are hard to find, so I've been looking on eBay.  I bought two games off eBay, Pokemon Ruby for Logan and Pokemon FireRed version for myself.  These came from China and were pretty cheap and the shipping was free, so why not?

I gave Logan his copy of Ruby which he played and then saved the game when he was done.  Later when he went back to play it some more the save file was gone, there was no game at all.  Game Boy Advance cartridges use a battery save system, so if the battery fails there is no way to save your game.  I assumed that the battery just died.

At work I was talking to Ian, a fellow Pokemon, and he was telling me about how he bought a copy of FireRed on eBay that turned out to be a fake.  He told me how to spot the pirated versions from the real ones, so when I got home I checked my copy and it turned out to be fake.  Scammed!

One way is by looking at the game case itself.  The main Pokemon games all have coloured cartridges.  The official carts will be more of an opaque case, while the fake versions tend to be more transparent so you can see inside them.  But the best way is to check inside on the game card itself.  If it's the real deal it will say Nintendo and a serial number right on the card and if it's fake there will be nothing.  Also, the fake versions use crappier parts including cheap crummy batteries that never work.

There should a copyright Nintendo and serial number on the circuit board.

I got suckered and bought two fake Pokemon games on eBay.  The seller didn't actually say they were "official", but he didn't actually say they were fake either.  I'll chalk it up to a lesson learned the hard way.  Who would've thought that pirated products would be coming out of China?  Somebody should put a stop to that.  What is next, pirated DVDs?