Have I received a bootlegged Minish Cap? (with pictures)

My first eBay experience has turned out to be a bit crap.

I was on a little game-buying spree from Amazon.ca when I decided I'd check out eBay for great deals on games! After a bit of searching I finally found Minish Cap, for $15 (which seemed too good to be true -- turns out it was). I bid against another eBayer for a few hours, and finally I won it! I was so excited. I wasn't worried at all, because the item was supposed to be sending from inside Canada, have the box and manual with it as well as the game itself. Not knowing eBay, I thought that it must just be a used copy that someone wanted to get rid of. . . I was wrong.

The package came this morning, and as soon as I saw the return address was Hong Kong and felt how light the package was I knew I was in trouble. . . When I opened it up the box was obviously just folded by the seller, the manual was a cheap 6-page one made with screencaps, and the cartridge itself was obviously not like a normal cartridge in that it had gaps and spaces where it shouldn't have.

I've taken pictures of it all so you guys can assure me that it IS a bootleg, even though I am 99.99% sure it is. I don't even want to start playing it because I read on another forum that many bootlegs save to a battery as opposed to the game itself, meaning when the battery dies so does your save file and saving ability. it pains me because I was so excited to play a Zelda I'd never played before! Plus, I just feel rotten for even owning a bootleg. I love Nintendo too much to do that to them on purpose.

Anywhoo, here are the pictures. Please tell me what you think:

This is what I was sent. I put really badly drawn red circles around important areas: in this one I've circled the crappy screencaps they used for the 6-page booklet. That's right, the booklet only has 6 pages. You can also see in this one how badly the box was folded and crushed, I actually had to tape it together when I got it.

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This is the squished and folded box. The first thing I noticed was the typo saying "Engush" instead of English. The other languages could very well have spelling errors too, but I can't understand them. Anyone? Also, this is the PAL boxart as opposed to the NTSC boxart. The artwork on the 6-page booklet is the same as this, but actually squashed to fit the rectangular pages.

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The label isn't even on straight. . .

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Finally, the cartridge itself is not closed tightly, and you can see the electronics inside of it. It doesn't fit into my GBA or DS well because of the gap on the side. I've never seen this on any Gameboy game before, they are always enclosed with only the bottom green bit bare to plug into the system.

Has this ever happened to any of you before? What did you do?

P.S. I have emailed Nintendo about it, and am trying to figure out how to tell eBay/if I can tell eBay.

wait you paid 15 bucks for used minish cap and thought it's a good deal? I sold mine for 10 bucks last year on ebay. anyways that one is def fake.quocthai

Seeing as all of the Minish Caps in my city are $40 Canadian at stores, or $20 used I did think that $13.50 (plus $2.50 S&H) was a prety good deal, yes. *^_^*

Tell the seller you want a refund, or use the dispute console.93jam

I definitely will be asking for a refund. What's the dispute console?

Sorry man. That's a fake. Just to be sure, take a look at the back of the cartridgeBuryMe

What will the back of the cartridge looks ike? I compared it to my other GBA games and it looks the same, except the model number ends with 004 rather than 002 and the small indeted circle in the middle is slightly smaller. Are those the signs?EDIT: I looked at the link and I see what I was supposed to be looking for.The cartridge itself looks to be real, but everything else is pointing to bootleg. . .

do you still have a link to the auction just to see if we see anything funny that you should have noticed? With that much money I would definately use ebay's dispute function. Contacting Nintendo was FREAKING WORTHLESS. What do you want them to do? Replace it? lol. Not happening. I've never had to dispute an auction so I dont know how to do it either. I have baught 20 things off ebay and they have all been smooth sailing except one. One game I got for the ps1 had a chip on the side of the disk and it affected the audio portion of the game and some other parts but I could still play through the missions so I didnt care and didnt fight it.

Just to compare to your copy, here is the box art for a pal game

The English thing is deffinately weird on yours.

This is the squished and folded box. The first thing I noticed was the typo saying "Engush" instead of English. The other languages could very well have spelling errors too, but I can't understand them. Anyone? Also, this is the PAL boxart as opposed to the NTSC boxart. The artwork on the 6-page booklet is the same as this, but actually squashed to fit the rectangular pages.Linake

[QUOTE="Linake"]

This is the squished and folded box. The first thing I noticed was the typo saying "Engush" instead of English. The other languages could very well have spelling errors too, but I can't understand them. Anyone? Also, this is the PAL boxart as opposed to the NTSC boxart. The artwork on the 6-page booklet is the same as this, but actually squashed to fit the rectangular pages.BuryMe

That and the fact that the Nintendo seal in the bottom right hand corner (It has not said the word "quality" since 2003) means it's fake... or at least the box is.

Well, if you are planning on getting rid of it, I would advise NOT putting it in your system again. Bootlegs are sometimes made of a thicker plastic, or just assembled wrong(as you showed in a picture, there is a gap), it may crack the plastic around the GBA slot because it's too big.bionisam

Will do, thanks! *^_^* Turns out my friend had a copy all along, and he just up and gave it to me for free. . . so I will definitely not be putting the bootleg in my DS again.

That seedy-looking big blue sticker is announcing (from what i can tell) "Kaizo sound ROM", seemingly denoting that Kaizo (Kaizo industries ?) were responsible for having a hand in that exceedingly sloppy-looking chipwork there.

I don't know what the B stands for...... perhaps the A-grade chips are sent to legitimate buyers and the B-Grade ones are sold off cheaply in Hong Kong on the sly.

:P