I have encountered a number of pirated Game Boy Color carts (featuring ROMs of licensed work) in pawnshops and popular hacks such as the NES’s Somario (where Mario was transposed into the original Sonic the Hedgehog title) appear regularly online. Many of the ROM collection carts are deceptive to customers anyway, as a cart that claims, let’s say, 36 games on one cartridge, is usually just 12 different games reproduced exactly the same three times each.

Many people may not realize this, but in many smaller countries overseas, pirated products can be more common in public than licensed products. I have a good friend who vacationed in the Philippines last year and he made note of the large number of pirated products blatantly displayed for sale in stores and malls. He also noted many of the arcade machines he saw were home console games doctored inside of a cabinet.

This included a Dance Dance Revolution machine that was gutted and contained a Playstation One (at that time last summer, he said the Playstation One became more affordable and was a huge deal over there with games such as Crash Bandicoot just now becoming more popular) and the title Dance Dance Revolution Konamix. He noted the pad was one of the most unsafe playing surfaces he’s ever seen (he owns and operates arcades for a living and visits other locations frequently). Get this – the playing surface was two Playstation One console pads stuffed underneath the arcade sheet metal with no Plexiglas covering up the panels. When you stepped onto a panel, your foot sunk into the pad.

Through all the piracy, Nintendo isn’t the only entity affected, though. Nintendo states more than 100 other companies who independently create, license, market and sell Nintendo products.

Tan Announced as Miss MaxGames

Deborah Tan of Puchong was crowned Miss MaxGames and walked away with a Playstation 3 after topping 14 other contestants at the Hotlink Games and Anime Festival in Sungai Wang Plaza, Singapore, China.

The 20-year-old Tan, part of the MaxGirls All-Star Team along with The Jenni, Kammy Aw and Chrysalis Chae, have also been awarded a MaxGames ambassador contract for the year. The contest pitted 15 female contestants from across the country on stage in mobile phone tournaments based on the games Antopia and The Duel Online.

The mobile phone industry is a multi-billion dollar facet overseas and is quickly becoming wildly popular among Malaysian mobile users. Companies such as MaxGames, which offers subscription-based gaming and services, are looking to expand in territory as a revenue steam of nearly $57 billion dollars is predicted by Juniper Research for the mobile gaming market in the next six years.