So I was doing a deep eBay browse when I found this: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com.au/ulk/itm/172650773658 On the Sega retro wiki, Stone protectors is said to be unreleased with a prototype dumped. Is this an official release on Russia? Perhaps I should buy it and dump it with the everdrive... But I don't want to shell out money if it's a bootleg.
Don't think it's an official release since most Russian games are bootlegs that come in that style case and cart (Cases are smaller than normal Genesis/Mega Drive cases) I do own a few myself, the quality isn't all that great on them, and the PCB's aren't properly chamfered, so they can be a bit tricky to remove from a Genesis console sometimes. Most of these Russian games usually consist of most of what you'd see from normal reproductions. Sprite hacks, NES games rebuilt from scratch on new engines to run on Genesis, homebrew, etc. So yeah, don't spend the money on this one. I think it's just a repro of the rom that's been floating around.
Now this is a story all about how your life got twisted upside down and I'd like to take a minute just sitting right here to tell you about Russian bootlegs. Take a ROM of the interwebs, translate it into Russian, shove it on a cart. That's what they do, and there's so many it hurts. Real games, prototypes, weird hacks, games that were unlicensed to begin with and even the occasional PD release - NewGame's got you covered. I go through phases where I try and make sense of this stuff. I usually don't get very far.
It's an insane rabbit hole, no doubt. I do agree that they like to grab ROM from the internet and make carts out of, especially non-commercial homebrew releases that weren't intended to be sold in mass quantity. There's even a game that I've worked on graphics-wise in the past they seem to have made into a cart. lol The stuff they make from the ground-up seems cool, but most of it runs off the same code, so even the quality of the software doesn't compare to the original (Like Darkwing Duck or Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers NES ports to the Genesis... Both games don't function 1:1 like the NES originals, and seems like mostly just the art assets were taken.) Y'all need a full scan of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers cart+cover? I have that game "complete".
Oof, that's a rabbit hole I didn't know existed. Probably won't be buying this then, seems overpriced for what it is. On this note however, I came across a really old bootleg of Insector X at a flea market today (pal/ntsc form factor). The cart runs on Mega drive 1 just fine, but Mega drive 2 has a complete panic attack and the video output is completely broken, scared it might even damage the system. The sega license screen starts rolling and is in a really deep green, and black screen with noise sounds after that. I dumped it with a retrode, game reads fine, however the checksum appears to be incorrect. File in Question: https://send.firefox.com/download/5f335bf6cc6b36a5/#d3Ca2vIZGfFCG-ABRQmaqQ Does mega drive 2 have some kind of checksum panic attack that the Mega Drive 1 doesn't? Or perhaps the bootleg wiring to the chip inside is incorrect for mega drive 2? I can take pics of the internals but they seem very clean considering the age and bootleg nature.
It might be failing the TMSS check? It's been ages since I knew all of this, but doesn't the model 1 lack the TMSS chip?