Games 5, 6, 7, & 8: Four in One Pirate Cart Special!

I knew it was going to happen. Eventually, I would get to one of those less-than-trustworthy cartridges. You know the ones. You're in a flea market. You find a cartridge that has a weird shape, the color of the plastic is just slightly wrong, the label is peeling off. 128 games on one cartridge? It sounds too good to be true -  but it's selling for $5 so you pick it up. What's the worst that could happen?

You just wasted $5 that's what because when you actually load the cartridge nothing works. You might as well have bought a notebook that just listed the names of games you'll never, ever play.

Well, today we're going to talk about not just one, but FOUR pirate carts. Mainly because none of them work at all and I don't want to do this crap four days in a row. Also I think it's funny

First up is 1993 Collection 128-in-1, pictured above. I don't know why it's so important to tell me the year this was released, but it is a fairly stark realization that this game is 20 years old. Think about it - 20 years ago a bunch of pirates were hastily throwing together this list of games that you can't play. Maybe they were trying to support their kids (who are now in college) or their aging parents (who are now dead). Maybe they just wanted the cash.

Regardless, this is an intriguing list of games. Mario World 2? You mean, like, Yoshi's Island on the SNES? That's pretty fascinating because Mario World 2 was released in 1995. Maybe these folks were time traveling pirates, shoddily ripping off the latest games from the future. I can't even imagine what Yoshi's Island would look like on a game boy in 1993.

And what about Spider Man 3? A little bit of research reveals that there actually WAS a Spider Man 3 on the Game Boy in 1993, which obviously I'll be playing at some point. But I can't help and imagine a Game Boy version of mopey spider-man doing song and dance numbers like the Sam Raimi movie.

Ah well, none of them work anyway, so let's move on.

...indeed.

Next up is 58-in-1. All I get is this wonderful glitchy screen. It makes weird noises when I push various buttons but freezes when I hit start. It's great. Nothing to see here, move along.

Beautiful

Here we have 72-in-1. Unlike the first list, this one is in stunning blue and orange, the official colors of the Game Boy Pirates (slogan: Sailing the Pixel Seas since 1989). Similar to the first list, however, none of these options do a damn thing. I would love to play Sky Destryoer though. Actually most of these look like NES games rather than GB games, which is weird. Ah well, it doesn't really matter because I can't play any of them anyway.

Dan Laser, MD

Finally, we have this beauty, 8-in-1 in Color. This is the only entry on the list that looks at all legitimate. Look, they even put a copyright symbol and their name! They weren't afraid of the consequences obviously.

Actually I don't recognize any of those games. A quick search reveals that these games, while all stand-alone games, were also all published by Sachen primarily in "Asia" according to GameFAQs. Turns out Sachen is a Taiwanese developer that published tons of unlicensed games for the NES and Game Boy among other less popular consoles, such as the bizarrely named Mega Duck. This is one of about a billion different GBC multicarts compiling a bunch of Sachen's older games and recoloring them, but I only seem to have this one.

Unfortunately, just like the other entries, none of these work at all. It just goes to a blank white screen. Why? Why do you tease me so? I guess I'll have to wait until I get to them alphabetically, which is a bummer. It's gonna be a while before I play Zoo Block...

I don't know if it's my emulator or what but I don't honestly think that these were all complete duds when they were originally sold. That's just madness. No, I think what they did was include special, unlicensed hardware to be able to fit all these games on one cartridge. I'd also bet that when the games got dumped by hackers, not all of the data was present since it was all janky on the inside.

At least, that's my theory. Could just be that my emulator sucks and some other one would work better. I did try a few on my PC and couldn't get them to work either, but hey. I'll probably keep poking around because I am nothing if not irritatingly persistent.

In any case, I'm looking forward to playing some of these games on their own, especially the strange unlicensed games from Sachen. In fact, my next game is called "2nd Space" and is published by Sachen...so we'll see how that goes! I hope it doesn't have any porn in it like some of their games apparently do...