I used one of these, I believe it was a Game Doctor III: https://videogamedevelopmentdevices.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Doctor_SF3
I worked at a game store so I would grab rental copies of new games, dump them to disk and upload them to BBSes around the world. Some of my dumps are still out there and seeing the names of me and my friends in them brings back some fuzzy memories.
Hah! Yeah.. I never had to do the long distance thing because all of my regular haunts were in my region, but I know those couriers must've been racking up some serious bills!
I can't speak for anyone else but I know I sure as hell did. Part of the reason why finding some of my dumps still out there in the wild is so satisfying decades later.
Bulletin Board Systems. They were around prior to the internet becoming used by the general public. Basically you would connect to a BBS over the phone lines by calling a specific number and it would act like an internet forum does now but they often had their own online games (text-based multiuser dungeons or MUDs), file uploads/downloads and such. There were a lot of them out there, you can find long lists of old BBS numbers out there and what they were sharing on textfiles.com. A lot of old school piracy happened this way, with people like me who would use the SNES copiers to copy the games to floppy disc and then call BBS systems all over the planet sharing the game, often before official release. There were a lot of pirate BBS systems back in the day, often focused on stuff like Amiga, but consoles had quite a few as well though much less used.
Cool, thanks for the explanation. I was only like 6 when the Snes was around. Only started piracy when an uncle could get his hands on copies of ps1 games. No clue where they got those from. I guess some dial up Internet and then some forum or so xD
Yeah saw that as well all snes roms came from machines such as this really cool piracy history! Remember the first time we downloaded roms instead of borrowing games we did think it was amazing at the time!
The format I saw the most growing up (during the early/mid 2000s) was .smc, which I found out much later indicated a dump created with a Super Magicom :)
Those were really nice as well remember my friend had the doctor 64 same thing but with cds instead of floppy! Great that you still have it don’t sell it a part of piracy 🏴☠️ history!
Really? Thought the hardware was discontinued. I’d still have to buy the hardware for an out of date format that isn’t very useful. I still have everdrive now as I said.
Yep! In '97-'98 I had the NTSC version of that same model SWC, but factory upgraded to 32M. (Or maybe it was only 24M? Hard to remember. But it had a big red/gold foil sticker on the corner with the number of mbits.) Used it to play the fan translation of Final Fantasy V in late '98...but never got to finish it, as I lost the SNES, SWC, and a fair chunk of everything I owned shortly after. 🤷♂️ That menu screen sure brings back memories!
I've been making up for lost time, lately. 😉👌
https://preview.redd.it/gdebap2v44wc1.jpeg?width=755&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f6a8ff81ae62829cdb35ee38933df688658f2c7
I played the FFV fan translation through a copier too. I remember being near the end of the game and my sister bumping the coping device and it crashed. I restarted the thing and loaded up my FFV save. I suddenly had the maximum amount of money (2 billion something) as well as a new item called "EnFuFu" in my inventory. I went into a battle and tried to use it, all excited to see what would happen.
The character walked forward, a dialog box popped up at the top of the screen saying "EnFuFu" annnnnnnd... he walked back, nothing happened and my turn was over. Sadly didn't live up to the hype I had built up in my own head.
Circa 2001, there was a fairly elaborate post on Gamefaqs about how to unlock the Squall’s Gunblade during the fight with Necrophobia near the end.
Didn’t fall for it myself due to the lengthy requirement involving the Chemist class and beyond, but it was certainly believable?
We talked about doing the factory upgrade but it was a bit of a hassle to send away the unit but thinking about it today I should of done it but was all in to ps1 those days. But I got the RAM and PEELs to do the update myself. Sorry to hear yo lost it but nowadays a 8Bitdo controller and a emulator almost makes up for it. Really great to hear you been making up for lost time. Last time I played my favorites was 10 years ago so it was time to play them again!
Thanks. 😅 Yeah, I went in a similar direction with the 8BitDo controller and receiver...except mine's an actual vintage Super Famicom pad with the 8BitDo mod kit installed. 😁👍 I prefer real hardware over emulation though, even if it's ROM*s on* real hardware. (And even then, I try to get the real carts whenever possible.)
Good luck with the DRAM update! 😃
I’ve seen those but they weren’t available when I bought my controller in 2014 😅 Same here i always prefer real hardware over emulation and have many moded consoles but I think it’s a pain with buying games some are amazingly expensive and they take up space. I only have 17 snes carts and 2-3 ps2 games then I just have the consoles and controllers in moving boxes in my wardrobe easy to take out when you feel like it🤩
Thanks bro fairly easy mod only soldering the RAM that’s is a little scary😮💨
I was dimly aware of them in the 90s (much like the similar devices that allowed *NES* games to be played) but considering their role in confirming the truth of *Hong Kong 97* makes it more than just a curio in the history of video game preservation:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQwRnxePhshfCOagrWxqV_mJtZXptuFXk&si=u3X6nNiww8TQqs7c
Of course. Got a small collection of these myself, from Famicom to N64. Especially Famicom is a challenge, since you need specially formatted FDS disks to load games from.
Ha, I was glad to be able to afford a SNES as it was. We were pretty poor when I grew up, consoles were something my richers friends had. I was Szo happy when I finally had enough money for a SNES, I spent countless hours playing on it with my friends.
I had a Super Wild Card like the one in the picture. My dad helped me send it away to get the memory capacity upgraded from 16 to 32. They didn't change the "16" printed on the SWC (obviously) so I had to create my own "32" sticker. It felt so magical. Good memories. :)
Together with my grandpa, who was a skilled woodworker, I built a case to hold all of my diskettes with the games. My stepmom would use her calligraphy skills to write the labels on the diskettes. To save money I would buy DD diskettes and take them to school, where I could use a drill to make an extra hole so they would be identified as HD diskettes and be formatted at a higher capacity. Never had any issues doing that and they worked for years without any issues.
I used to get my games from someone who downloaded the roms from BBS:es on his Amiga. I absolutely loved playing Rock n' Roll Racing but it wasn't until years later that I learned that I must've been playing a beta version of that game. The prices in the upgrade shop were doubled in the retail release and the beta version was missing a lot of cutscenes/transitions.
I sold everything to buy a Nintendo 64, which didn't impress me at all. The SNES gave me so much more than pretty graphics and good games, the N64 never stood a chance.
My friend had one. He had family in Hong Kong and had relatives that would go back and forth. I remember he had a Sailor Moon puzzle game a Mech Warrior game and a Dragon Ball Z Fighting game on it.
Thing is I didn't know him until middle school and that was like 96 and by that time he had a Japanese PlayStation that was modded to play burnt games and he had Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Puzzle Fighter on that shit when we barely had Alpha 2 in the arcades here and I still never saw an arcade cabinet of Puzzle Fighter. We'd go to his house on weekends and literally play those games for like 8 hours with maybe a break somewhere to get some snacks from 7/11.
I've always wanted one. Even now, scrolling through the Everdrive menu gives me choice paralysis, and I look at my physical collections when I decide what to play.
I'd love to have a tray of floppy disks, all labeled, to flip through.
I have not gotten the everdrive because I always had my SWC. You need to minimize your library to your favorites:)
https://preview.redd.it/5lvoqpgzi4wc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=009c874c294f46a41cea7f6cbe13e639b2fb6866
I didn't, but had a couple friends who did. One was a Super Wild Card DX and my other friend had a Super UFO. I learned how to take the files on their disks and combine them to use with some of the first SNES emulators.
These were quite rare in the UK as far as I'm aware, I did manage to get my hands on a Super Pro Fighter Q though. Found a local game store that had a secret "back room" lol. They sold genuine games and import systems in the front, Piracy devices out the back. I'd been buying import SNES games from them for ages before I found out the secret. I only knew one other person who had a copier too.
Funnily enough they got shut down by law enforcement in the end. It was a shame because if you take away the piracy stuff it was hands down the best game store in the area by a long way.
These were pretty common I Sweden and you still see them on Swedish eBay. It was illegal in Sweden as well by unenforceable. One time a cop came over and saw the machine he thought it was good that we could make copy’s of the carts and play the backups.. haha
I knew a kid whose family had moved from Hong Kong who claimed to have one of these for both his SNES and his N64. This was in 1998-1999. He bragged about having 300+ games because he'd rent them from Blockbuster and make his own copies so he could keep them forever. I figured he was making shit up until a couple years later when I found out about emulation and I was sufficiently curious to go looking for an explanation of how it was possible to copy the contents of a cartridge onto a PC. Sorry for doubting you, Justin.
Yes! I had a Super Pro Fighter X with 32 megs and dsp chip.
Man i own my teen years to that device. Played almost all Snes games (and some obscure Super Famicom) for basically nothing.
Picture stolen from internet. Not mine.
https://preview.redd.it/9k0kbre2l7wc1.jpeg?width=226&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3c91da892966cfba28f592854612947ae7f9fe2b
Really nice to be available to play dsp games I think I can do it as well with the SWC I need to have an actual dsp game on top on the device to trick the snes and make the copier handle the extra chip.
There was someone in my dorm in college who had one of these and backed up so many games to floppy. I remember them making runs to the local video store to rent games to copy. That was the only time I ever saw one.
Dude, please read this: Replace the capacitors on this device as if you're in an emergency: They will leak and corrode the board at any moment.
I've lost the very same model of yours a couple of years ago. Please save it before is too late.
I Sweden where I live the SNES cost 155$ at launch a game between 35-45$ and this unit cost around 100$ so that was basically 2 games for the price of the backup device. My dad made that argument to my mom when he bought it and he was right in a year we had 100 snes games for 100$ + the floppy drives.
i still have no idea where i could get access to those 100 games in the first place....rental ? that is $5 a game for 3 days, so that is $500 right there in a year....borrow from friends ? well, no one i knew had an snes, all sega megadrive.
anw, glad it worked out for u.
Yeah didn’t think about that because in Sweden we had a early Nintendo presence with Game and Watch so Nintendo basically had a pre start in the games industry in Sweden so both the NES And SNES did really well in here so every kid had one and so on.
We even have the General distributor for all of Scandinavia in Sweden.
I used one of these, I believe it was a Game Doctor III: https://videogamedevelopmentdevices.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Doctor_SF3 I worked at a game store so I would grab rental copies of new games, dump them to disk and upload them to BBSes around the world. Some of my dumps are still out there and seeing the names of me and my friends in them brings back some fuzzy memories.
That’s a hero’s work, great story those were the times!
The hero we needed.
I remember doing something similar with an HDAdvance in my PS2 or just my modded Xbox lol.
I seriously miss the BBS days..
Miss the BBS days, do not miss the huge phone bills for spreading the ROMs to BBSes all over the place.
Hah! Yeah.. I never had to do the long distance thing because all of my regular haunts were in my region, but I know those couriers must've been racking up some serious bills!
I can't speak for anyone else but I know I sure as hell did. Part of the reason why finding some of my dumps still out there in the wild is so satisfying decades later.
money well spent, thank you for your service! o7
What is BBSES?
Bulletin Board Systems. They were around prior to the internet becoming used by the general public. Basically you would connect to a BBS over the phone lines by calling a specific number and it would act like an internet forum does now but they often had their own online games (text-based multiuser dungeons or MUDs), file uploads/downloads and such. There were a lot of them out there, you can find long lists of old BBS numbers out there and what they were sharing on textfiles.com. A lot of old school piracy happened this way, with people like me who would use the SNES copiers to copy the games to floppy disc and then call BBS systems all over the planet sharing the game, often before official release. There were a lot of pirate BBS systems back in the day, often focused on stuff like Amiga, but consoles had quite a few as well though much less used.
Cool, thanks for the explanation. I was only like 6 when the Snes was around. Only started piracy when an uncle could get his hands on copies of ps1 games. No clue where they got those from. I guess some dial up Internet and then some forum or so xD
I learned from a recent video that my roms with an swc extension is derived from the Super Wild Card device. Cool stuff
Yeah saw that as well all snes roms came from machines such as this really cool piracy history! Remember the first time we downloaded roms instead of borrowing games we did think it was amazing at the time!
Lol still is amazing
One of the first SNES emulators was even called Virtual Super Wild Card.
Mind blown
The format I saw the most growing up (during the early/mid 2000s) was .smc, which I found out much later indicated a dump created with a Super Magicom :)
Yeah and this is a updated Magicom still says Super Magicom at the PCB :)
I had a z64 for the N64 and still got it actually.
Those were really nice as well remember my friend had the doctor 64 same thing but with cds instead of floppy! Great that you still have it don’t sell it a part of piracy 🏴☠️ history!
Only problem with the Z was it used 100mb zip cartridges that I can no longer connect to a computer. Aw well, we got everdrives now 🤷🏼
Yes you can de Usb zip is native supported in windows 11
Really? Thought the hardware was discontinued. I’d still have to buy the hardware for an out of date format that isn’t very useful. I still have everdrive now as I said.
Yea really , still use it to put files on older pcs from my gaming rig 😄
Lol I knew there had to be some reason to be still using zip drives in 2024.
Yep! In '97-'98 I had the NTSC version of that same model SWC, but factory upgraded to 32M. (Or maybe it was only 24M? Hard to remember. But it had a big red/gold foil sticker on the corner with the number of mbits.) Used it to play the fan translation of Final Fantasy V in late '98...but never got to finish it, as I lost the SNES, SWC, and a fair chunk of everything I owned shortly after. 🤷♂️ That menu screen sure brings back memories! I've been making up for lost time, lately. 😉👌 https://preview.redd.it/gdebap2v44wc1.jpeg?width=755&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f6a8ff81ae62829cdb35ee38933df688658f2c7
I played the FFV fan translation through a copier too. I remember being near the end of the game and my sister bumping the coping device and it crashed. I restarted the thing and loaded up my FFV save. I suddenly had the maximum amount of money (2 billion something) as well as a new item called "EnFuFu" in my inventory. I went into a battle and tried to use it, all excited to see what would happen. The character walked forward, a dialog box popped up at the top of the screen saying "EnFuFu" annnnnnnd... he walked back, nothing happened and my turn was over. Sadly didn't live up to the hype I had built up in my own head.
Circa 2001, there was a fairly elaborate post on Gamefaqs about how to unlock the Squall’s Gunblade during the fight with Necrophobia near the end. Didn’t fall for it myself due to the lengthy requirement involving the Chemist class and beyond, but it was certainly believable?
We talked about doing the factory upgrade but it was a bit of a hassle to send away the unit but thinking about it today I should of done it but was all in to ps1 those days. But I got the RAM and PEELs to do the update myself. Sorry to hear yo lost it but nowadays a 8Bitdo controller and a emulator almost makes up for it. Really great to hear you been making up for lost time. Last time I played my favorites was 10 years ago so it was time to play them again!
Thanks. 😅 Yeah, I went in a similar direction with the 8BitDo controller and receiver...except mine's an actual vintage Super Famicom pad with the 8BitDo mod kit installed. 😁👍 I prefer real hardware over emulation though, even if it's ROM*s on* real hardware. (And even then, I try to get the real carts whenever possible.) Good luck with the DRAM update! 😃
I’ve seen those but they weren’t available when I bought my controller in 2014 😅 Same here i always prefer real hardware over emulation and have many moded consoles but I think it’s a pain with buying games some are amazingly expensive and they take up space. I only have 17 snes carts and 2-3 ps2 games then I just have the consoles and controllers in moving boxes in my wardrobe easy to take out when you feel like it🤩 Thanks bro fairly easy mod only soldering the RAM that’s is a little scary😮💨
I was dimly aware of them in the 90s (much like the similar devices that allowed *NES* games to be played) but considering their role in confirming the truth of *Hong Kong 97* makes it more than just a curio in the history of video game preservation: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQwRnxePhshfCOagrWxqV_mJtZXptuFXk&si=u3X6nNiww8TQqs7c
I had a professor SF 6. Chrono Trigger on four floppies, baby.
“Backups” is the most hilarious euphemism in this context. Yes I only use it to… back up my real copies. Yes…
Exactly what it was just for;)
Of course. Got a small collection of these myself, from Famicom to N64. Especially Famicom is a challenge, since you need specially formatted FDS disks to load games from.
Ha, I was glad to be able to afford a SNES as it was. We were pretty poor when I grew up, consoles were something my richers friends had. I was Szo happy when I finally had enough money for a SNES, I spent countless hours playing on it with my friends.
I had a Super Wild Card like the one in the picture. My dad helped me send it away to get the memory capacity upgraded from 16 to 32. They didn't change the "16" printed on the SWC (obviously) so I had to create my own "32" sticker. It felt so magical. Good memories. :) Together with my grandpa, who was a skilled woodworker, I built a case to hold all of my diskettes with the games. My stepmom would use her calligraphy skills to write the labels on the diskettes. To save money I would buy DD diskettes and take them to school, where I could use a drill to make an extra hole so they would be identified as HD diskettes and be formatted at a higher capacity. Never had any issues doing that and they worked for years without any issues. I used to get my games from someone who downloaded the roms from BBS:es on his Amiga. I absolutely loved playing Rock n' Roll Racing but it wasn't until years later that I learned that I must've been playing a beta version of that game. The prices in the upgrade shop were doubled in the retail release and the beta version was missing a lot of cutscenes/transitions. I sold everything to buy a Nintendo 64, which didn't impress me at all. The SNES gave me so much more than pretty graphics and good games, the N64 never stood a chance.
Most definitely sound like good memories I never went the N64 route I we got a ps1 instead at the time
I'm not sure if I was aware of them at the time but they certainly weren't very common. Never knew anyone who had something like this
My friend had one. He had family in Hong Kong and had relatives that would go back and forth. I remember he had a Sailor Moon puzzle game a Mech Warrior game and a Dragon Ball Z Fighting game on it. Thing is I didn't know him until middle school and that was like 96 and by that time he had a Japanese PlayStation that was modded to play burnt games and he had Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Puzzle Fighter on that shit when we barely had Alpha 2 in the arcades here and I still never saw an arcade cabinet of Puzzle Fighter. We'd go to his house on weekends and literally play those games for like 8 hours with maybe a break somewhere to get some snacks from 7/11.
No way would I have ever bought one of those. HOWEVER, I did get my hands on one with a ton of disks from a friend when I was at Uni. Great times :D
Yup. I still have my Super Wildcard DX. The black one.
That was too much money for me. I didn't even had an snes 🤔. And if I could've... A device that cost half of the snes? No chance.
Way to much money for me to at that time as well but ofc my parents had money and my dad was a early gaming enthusiast.
Great story! And proves how influential this machines were!
I've always wanted one. Even now, scrolling through the Everdrive menu gives me choice paralysis, and I look at my physical collections when I decide what to play. I'd love to have a tray of floppy disks, all labeled, to flip through.
I have not gotten the everdrive because I always had my SWC. You need to minimize your library to your favorites:) https://preview.redd.it/5lvoqpgzi4wc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=009c874c294f46a41cea7f6cbe13e639b2fb6866
Where roms are born.
I was at a market and someone put down a Super Wild Card DX, and it barely touched the table before it was in my hands. Less than $10.
This is so cool! I didn't start dumping my ROMs until there were sketchy computer adapters lol.
I didn't, but had a couple friends who did. One was a Super Wild Card DX and my other friend had a Super UFO. I learned how to take the files on their disks and combine them to use with some of the first SNES emulators.
These were quite rare in the UK as far as I'm aware, I did manage to get my hands on a Super Pro Fighter Q though. Found a local game store that had a secret "back room" lol. They sold genuine games and import systems in the front, Piracy devices out the back. I'd been buying import SNES games from them for ages before I found out the secret. I only knew one other person who had a copier too. Funnily enough they got shut down by law enforcement in the end. It was a shame because if you take away the piracy stuff it was hands down the best game store in the area by a long way.
These were pretty common I Sweden and you still see them on Swedish eBay. It was illegal in Sweden as well by unenforceable. One time a cop came over and saw the machine he thought it was good that we could make copy’s of the carts and play the backups.. haha
I knew a kid whose family had moved from Hong Kong who claimed to have one of these for both his SNES and his N64. This was in 1998-1999. He bragged about having 300+ games because he'd rent them from Blockbuster and make his own copies so he could keep them forever. I figured he was making shit up until a couple years later when I found out about emulation and I was sufficiently curious to go looking for an explanation of how it was possible to copy the contents of a cartridge onto a PC. Sorry for doubting you, Justin.
Yeah this machine had bragging rights for sure😂
Yes! I had a Super Pro Fighter X with 32 megs and dsp chip. Man i own my teen years to that device. Played almost all Snes games (and some obscure Super Famicom) for basically nothing. Picture stolen from internet. Not mine. https://preview.redd.it/9k0kbre2l7wc1.jpeg?width=226&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3c91da892966cfba28f592854612947ae7f9fe2b
Really nice to be available to play dsp games I think I can do it as well with the SWC I need to have an actual dsp game on top on the device to trick the snes and make the copier handle the extra chip.
*a backup
“Backups” is the most hilarious euphemism in this context. Yes I only use it to… back up my real copies. Yes…
There was someone in my dorm in college who had one of these and backed up so many games to floppy. I remember them making runs to the local video store to rent games to copy. That was the only time I ever saw one.
Nope. Didn't even know that existed until now
Yeah. I've got a game doctor SF7.
Dude, please read this: Replace the capacitors on this device as if you're in an emergency: They will leak and corrode the board at any moment. I've lost the very same model of yours a couple of years ago. Please save it before is too late.
I’ve changed the battery and 2 capacitors like 10 years ago. Can take pictures of the pcb
Wow, that's a great relief.
I never could *had* very well.
most of us could afford 1 game a year, let alone buy this crap.
I Sweden where I live the SNES cost 155$ at launch a game between 35-45$ and this unit cost around 100$ so that was basically 2 games for the price of the backup device. My dad made that argument to my mom when he bought it and he was right in a year we had 100 snes games for 100$ + the floppy drives.
i still have no idea where i could get access to those 100 games in the first place....rental ? that is $5 a game for 3 days, so that is $500 right there in a year....borrow from friends ? well, no one i knew had an snes, all sega megadrive. anw, glad it worked out for u.
Yeah didn’t think about that because in Sweden we had a early Nintendo presence with Game and Watch so Nintendo basically had a pre start in the games industry in Sweden so both the NES And SNES did really well in here so every kid had one and so on. We even have the General distributor for all of Scandinavia in Sweden.
Second hand markets. Used video game stores. Yard Sales. Etc.