Bootleg games will never cease to awe and amaze gamers out there. They may be illegal, but in terms of the sheer gall of some of these companies, well, it’s hard not to hold some sort of appreciation. Most of them are hacks of other games repurposed for a foreign market who may not know better.
For instance, one could take Mario and put him in another game like DuckTales, or something and call it MarioTales. Anyway, let’s focus the vision today on the console that started it all: the NES. And just as a side note, many of these games go by multiple titles online so finding the exact game can be tricky.
10 Bio Hazard
Bio Hazard is a NES demake of Resident Evil. It has the same layout and story, for the most part, but the gameplay is different. It mirrors Resident Evil Gaiden from the Game Boy Color.
Once players run into a zombie, or other creature, a sort of active time battle will occur. Equip a weapon, strike within the designated range, and damage will be done. When the rom was found online it was all in Chinese, but it has since been patched into English.
9 Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII, or Zui Zhong Huan Xiang VII, is also a demake of a popular PS1 game. In a crude way it follows the story of the original with redrawn sprites and everything.
It looks similar to Final Fantasy III, which was the last main release on the NES. It is fairly impressive for a bootleg game even though it is definitely not the best way to play Final Fantasy VII.
8 Donkey Kong Country 4
If one can believe it, this too is a bootleg demake. The difference here being that this is a backport of a Super Nintendo game aka Donkey Kong Country. This is actually the model used for many ports based on this rom including The Jungle Book 2 which replaces Nintendo characters with those from the Disney movie. There is also the Panda Prince, which is seemingly not tied to anything besides some creators love for pandas.
7 Pocket Monster
The previous three games were actually pretty good. Now it’s time to step into the weirder side of bootlegs with Pokémon of which there are plenty to look at online. Pocket Monster is a rom hack of Athena with Pikachu, who looks like the Ditto clone from the anime, replacing the titular star.
It looks ugly and plays as one would except based on the slurred design. The only thing good about this knock-off is the adorable title screen.
6 Somari
Somari is a ROM hack and a back port of the original Sonic the Hedgehog for the NES. It replaces Sonic with Mario if that pun name and the screenshots weren’t a dead give away already.
The difficulty as been cranked up due to the unfair advantages with the enemies along with Mario, or Somari, controlling poorly. It is almost legitimately impossible to get past the initial three seconds of the game without practice.
5 Titanic 1912
For whatever reason there are actually a few original, albeit bootleg, Titanic games online. Most blockbusters, no matter how weird they were, usually got a tie-in game in the 80s and 90s. The same is not true for Titanic despite its success.
Seeing a gap in that market must have made bootleggers itching for that James Cameron money. This one in particular is a turn-based RPG wherein Jack fights bugs on the ship. That sounds just like the movie.
4 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers III
Speaking of licensed based games, this is an NES port of the SNES original, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
The game was, and still is, a highly sought after brawler by fans. It looks great, the music is pumping, and it gives players the feeling of being a Power Ranger. This back port isn’t as good, but it is at least impressive for what this hack accomplished with the hardware.
3 Alien vs Predator
Pitting Aliens versus Predators is one of the best concepts in crossover media. It also made for one heck of a video game via the arcade brawler from Konami. This version of Alien vs Predator, or Yi Xing: Zhi Tai Kong Tan Xian Zhe, is an RPG.
It might be a demake of Chrono Trigger as the opening dungeon looks like one of the labs from the future like where Robo was found. It is probably 20% Chrono Trigger and 80% original for whatever that means for a bootleg.
2 AV Pretty Girl Fighting
AV Pretty Girl Fighting, or AV Mei Shao Nu Zhan Shi, is a fighting game that crosses over female characters from Street Fighter, Ranma 1/2, and Sailor Moon. For example, players can play as Chun-Li or Sailor Mercury. It may look crude and the controls aren’t as smooth as one would hope from a fighting game, but the crossover idea does have potential.
1 Angry Bird 3
Based on the content, this appears to be a port of the original phone game. That game never looked amazing and the gameplay was also simple, which is why this port is fairly competent. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to program a slingshot that shoots birds at pigs. The one downfall though is that it can’t quite replicate the physics, which is the whole point of the game.