fates

I got it! And it's definitely legit. Box had an old EB/Gamestop sticker. All the materials are there too, the instruction book, advertisements, usage/warning pamphlet... the instruction booklet is in pristine condition too, if I didn't know it was used, I'd suspect it was brand new. The game cart itself has the correct brandings and all. On the downside, the cart is a bit beat up. The back has a few scratches, probably from being inserted/removed from a GBA so much. Upon deleting a file to restart the game (the previous person beat it 3 times already), it froze up. Blew into it, been working fine since. I'll take it. At least it's not a bootleg. I guess I should make a formal intro in the other board now since I plan on hanging around

The Nintendo seal is not a good measure, it seems. The pirates easily duplicate that. Quality is a bit weaker, and it's usually misplaced, but these are things you may not notice until you KNOW what to look for. I found a helpful post on NeoGAF here. There is one "surefire" method of identifying GBA bootlegs apparently. Underneath the cart, where the prongs are, there is a Nintendo stamping with the cart's code on it. This is one thing bootlegs never appear to duplicate. I'm not so much worried about the store willfully ripping me off, they sound like an honest business and they've already told me they'd refund me if something was wrong. Problem is, I'm concerned someone ripped THEM off by having them buy a bootleg to resell. However, this copy, although used, comes with a box and instructions... and those are easy to spot if it's a bootleg (look at the back of the box in the link, terrible). So I'm hopeful this could be legit. Kinda hoping this is just someone who had it, got tired of it and sold it to these guys. Yeah I get the money back, but I kinda want a copy of this game. Well, I'm in Baltimore and it shipped from Pennsylvania, so it shouldn't be a HUGE wait. When it arrives I'll post images.

There's a few ways, pirated games always have some kind of fault. Some less obvious than others. I contacted the seller, they assured me that it is an authentic copy but also told me that should I have any problems I'll get a full refund. Seems trustworthy enough. Maybe I'm just paranoid. This one has a box and instructions too, so I'm guessing it's just a copy someone got tired of it and sold to the shop I bought it from.

Cool, thanks! Is the bootleg problem really as big as everyone lets on? I realize buying something suspiciously cheap from a shop in piracy hotbeds (Hong Kong, Taiwan) is asking for it, but otherwise...

Hi I recently found an used copy of FE with box and instructions selling for a decent price at Amazon marketplace so I decided to go for it. However, I realize there's a rather prevalent issue of GBA bootlegs floating around so I want to make sure I don't get ripped off. Does anyone have images of the actual game cart so that I can compare when I receive it? Thanks.