Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Genesis "Wily Wars" Auction?

I'm a bit bewildered as to what exactly this is, but one thing is for sure: you guys will be all over this one.

Ebay is hosting an auction for an english version of the Wily Wars for the Sega Geneisis. Yes, the Genesis--not the UK variant, the Mega Drive. As you may (or may not) know, the Wily Wars was only available to North America through Sega Channel, a now defunct online distribution service. The game was never released as a hard copy here, but saw a cartridge release throughout the UK and in Japan.

With that in mind, what exactly is this? The packaging, booklet and cartridge reek of legitimacy, however the auction description seems to imply this is some sort of modded UK version:

For auction is a US Genesis Mega Man Wily Wars, it is a conversion with region lock out removed of the european version, so it works perfect on all US consoles with save feature as well. Fully in english with high quality insert, sticker and manual. It is in near mint to mint condition. Shipping within the US is $6 and $25 elsewhere in the world.


For a mod, somebody really went all out. Just look at the manual--they even went so far as to include Capcom USA copyright and warranty information. Seriously, is the a custom mod or something much grander?

You can view the auction in question right here.

10 comments:

  1. Then it is pirate!

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  2. This is actually very interesting.

    Rockman history is fun.

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  3. Wow with the bid at only $1 right now, and it ending on jan 30. Even I'll be able to bid on that

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  4. Just got this response from the seller:

    "it is an eprom with custom packaging, everything looks like a real sega release, but it only came out in the europe and japan."

    So there you have it.

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  5. Seller also had this to say when asked who programmed the cart and how:

    "I didn't do it, I bought it off someone from the sega-16 forums. From what I can tell it uses an eprom with the euro wily wars on there with the game genie region patch applied, then soldered into a nba jam tournament edition game or similar since it uses a specific type of save feature. He made the art and manual himself."

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  6. I'd really like to try and get it, but I don't even have a Genesis...

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  7. @Someguy, beware because this could be clever copy and pirate cart because this booklet is actually pirate because at the last page show CAPCOM USA and it was never released in the USA, obviously.

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  8. Auction has ended early for some reason. It is not a pirate cart so much as it is a homebrew cart.

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  9. eBay might have taken it down.

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  10. It looks like they took the original PAL cartridge and opened it up and re-soldered the region bridge in order to change the lock-out to NTSC-US rather than PAL (which would be easier than having the end-user change the system that way). The packaging looks like they simply printed high-quality inserts and an edited version of the manual and a new sticker. So, it is probably legit in that it is the original cartridge, but it just comes with modified pack-ins.

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