One of the joys of looking after the DS section of a European-centric website is you spend a lot of time studying the Japanese and US release dates of games you know won't surface over here for months.

Hence the need to trawl the various game import sites, to ensure we keep up-to-date with the latest reviews. But what with the downfall of Hong Kong-based games importer, Lik Sang, we've increasingly had to rely on the Wild West environment that is eBay.

And we were unpleasantly surprised when one of our most recent purchases, Mario Hoops 3-on-3 (due to be released in Europe as Mario Slam Basketball on 16 February), turned out to be a fake.

Perhaps the best clue was the price – the 'Buy-it now' price was £4.99, with P&P at £12 – which was significantly lower you'd expect for an import DS game. However, the seller, heyh_sz, seemed like a good bet. A member since 7th December 2004, his feedback score was 990, of which only 16 were negative.

The game arrived promptly, too. And when trying it out, it worked fine. Only some close attention to the goods revealed its counterfeit nature.


From the front, the pirated game cart itself (right) looks quite similar to a real import game (in this case Pokémon Ranger, left). One subtle difference is the cutoff on the bottom left hand corner of the sticker on the fake is slightly more rounded then it should be.

The differences become more obvious when you turn the cart over.

The first thing to notice is that while the fake says 'NTR-005 PAT(ent) PEND(ing),' it doesn't have an individually printed number beneath. The back of the cart is smooth, not indented like the real game, too. And finally, although impossible to see on this resolution of image, the bottom of the PCB board on the fake says 'Nintendo 001-01' instead of a more complex manufacturer code (in the case of Pokémon Ranger, it's I N-5 003-10).

The game box of the fake was also made of lower quality plastic – it felt cheap – and didn't have an official Nintendo logo embedded next to the game cart holder.


Finally, the quality of the printing of the cover and instruction manual was much lower than an official game. In fact, in the case of this fake, the instruction manual was actually just a game review from a US website. Being real gamers of course, we only bothered looked at the manual last, even though this was the biggest give-away.

Heading back to eBay to make our case for getting heyh_sz kicked off, we found he'd already been removed. Indeed, checking through his feedback listings, it was clear he had already been pointed out as an alleged seller of fake/pirated games by a couple of other buyers.

So the moral of this story is if it's too good to be true, it probably is. Of course, sometimes you do get bargains on eBay and other import game sites, but it's always worth doing a bit of digging around, especially on eBay feedback, if you're suspicious.

So is it really worth the $69.95 to import this thing? To put it simply, only get it if you live in Japan or have a homebrew capable PSP. Even then the Map This! software isn’t nearly as user friendly or complete as Maplus so it’s probably a better option to just buy a phone or some other piece of hardware with a GPS and mapping software. Then again after looking up what other GPS devices the homebrew supports on eBay, it’s actually not worth it at all. You can get a Holux GPSlim236 for a whopping $9.99 when I searched so unless you live in Japan or really want a Sony themed GPS then skip this until it’s released in your region with the appropriate software.

Import Friendly?

Nope, there is no software for outside Japan.

Pros
Works
Looks sleek
Cons
Expensive
No software for outside Japan
Homebrew option costs $9.99

Another newsbit from our pal JoeyBuckets, this time he happens to be directly involved. After downloading what he swears was an old Zelda cartoon from BitTorrent, his ISP was contacted by the ESA with the following letter. In short, be careful what you download and stop downloading illegal games unless you want to lose your internet service and possibly deal with other legal issues. Now that the Virtual Console is out, Nintendo can and will take a hard stance against even older ROM’s if they wish. We highly suggest just getting the Wii system and playing your favorite games legitimately and supporting those that put in the work to bring them to us. We at The Wii Experience do not condone downloading illegal software and the following letter is an example of what your ISP may receive if you do such activities.

Here’s the letter in full:

Attention: Intellectual Property Enforcement
Telephone: ###-###-####
E-mail: [email protected]

19 Jan 2007 02:32:59 GMT

ISP: PenTeleData
ESA Reference Number: ###-#######

Dear PenTeleData:

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is a U.S. trade
association that represents the intellectual property interests of
numerous companies that publish interactive games for video game
consoles, personal computers, handheld devices and the Internet in the
United States and in other countries (collectively referred to as ESA
members). ESA is authorized to act on behalf of ESA members whose
copyright and other intellectual property rights it believes to be
infringed as described herein.

ESA is providing this letter of notification to make PenTeleData aware
of material on its network or system that infringes the exclusive
copyright rights of and is unlawful towards one or more ESA members.

Through the Berne Convention and other international treaties covering
intellectual property rights, ESA believes that its members’ rights in
such entertainment software products are entitled to the full
protection of the intellectual property law as well as other relevant
laws of your country.

Based on the information at its disposal, ESA has a good faith belief
that the IP address below infringes the rights of one or more ESA
members by offering for sale or download unauthorized copies of game
products protected by copyright, or offering for sale or download
material that is the subject of infringing activities. The copyrighted
works that have been infringed include but are not limited to:

Title: Zelda
Infringement Source: BitTorrent
Infringement Timestamp: 19 Jan 2007 02:52:24 GMT
Infringement Last Documented: 19 Jan 2007 02:52:24 GMT Infringer Username:
Infringing Filename: The Legend of Zelda
Infringing Filesize: 2351679488
Infringer IP Address: ###.###.###.###
Infringer DNS Name: #######################
Infringing URL: ############################

The unauthorized copies of such game product(s) or the material that
is the subject of infringing activities appears on or is made
available through the above-listed IP address. Those items are listed
and/or identified thereon by their titles or variations thereof,
game-related listings/references/descriptions, or depictions of
game-related artwork. Such copies, titles, game-related
listings/references/descriptions, depictions, and material that is the
subject of infringing activities, are hereinafter referred to as
“Infringing Material.”

Accordingly, ESA hereby requests PenTeleData to immediately do the following:

1. Notify the account holder of the Infringing Material.
2. Remove, or disable access to, the Infringing Material detailed above.
3. Take appropriate action against the account holder under your Abuse
Policy/Terms
of Service Agreement, including termination of a repeat offender.

Please inform us whether you will remove or disable access to the
Infringing Material as requested. PenTeleData or the account holder
may contact ESA at the above-listed contact details, with email
preferred. Please include the above-noted Reference Number in the
subject line of all email correspondence.

Thank you for your cooperation and prompt response in this matter.

Sincerely,

Intellectual Property Enforcement
Entertainment Software Association

Our buddy Joey Buckets promises he wasn’t downloading the game, but seeing none of this was worth the movie he did download, he fully deleted the file and uninstalled all of his file sharing software. It’s truly just not worth it.