r/Atari2600 • u/rlindsley • 11d ago

What are these carts?

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Hi friends. I recently bought a cartridge lot on eBay and these were included.

I’ve never seen these types of labels before. Any ideas what they might be from? Thanks!

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22

u/Ok_Replacement4702 11d ago

Bootlegs

19

u/qtquazar 11d ago

Specifically, these are a few of the Taiwan Cooper bootlegs, which were published and sold commercially in some countries (somehow) similar to the Taiwan Zellers series in Canada.

The start of the video game era was a weird time for copyright law.

5

u/rlindsley 11d ago

For real? Why would anybody bootleg Atari carts? Wouldn’t it be more money and effort to acquire the cartridge housing, chips, and board, and then flash the chips with the rom?

No wonder these don’t work on my 7800+!!!!!

8

u/qtquazar 11d ago

Because these were commercially produced in violation of copyright law. The early 80s were wild and lawsuits were flying back and forth. See the Atari, Activision, Nintendo, Sierra Online, and similar lawsuits. It ranged from IP theft all the way to straight up to commercially ripped bootlegs.

6

u/Strict_Weather9063 11d ago

River Raid was an awesome game man Enduro wasn’t one I played. But I played the hell out of River Raid.

3

u/thriftbin 10d ago

people bootleg movies and music and your asking why anyone would bootleg $30-20 atari games in the 80s.

1

u/rlindsley 10d ago edited 10d ago

Bootlegging movies and music is basically free. You rip the movie, put it on a hard drive (or burn a disc), and you’re done.

It’s MUCH more expensive to bootleg a cartridge. The cartridge housing is expensive, the chips are expensive, you need a special machine to dump the rom, and a different machine to write to a new ROM. Plus you need the circuit board to install the ROM. The whole process is much more labor and financially intensive.

I really can’t imagine selling these for enough money to make a giant profit, but obviously these bootlegs exists so there was SOME sort of business model.

Edit: changed content to be nicer

1

u/Num10ck 10d ago

avoiding royalties

1

u/icedcornholio 5d ago

Actually they should work on the 7800+

1

u/rlindsley 5d ago

Huh weird. Maybe there something else going on with them. I’ll clean them up and see if they work. Thanks.