Neo Geo CD Fake Bootleg Games
Lately, I have ran into a few Neo CD games that looked unique. I had a few people inspect them, and they thought that they were unique games or maybe prototypes. They had odd looking discs (different color printing, bad text quality, bad quality manuals, etc), but the discs still had the holographic NGCD-### around the inside disc… so we thought they might be 1st runs or prototypes. We found out that they were bootlegs and came from Taiwan and China and were sold for around $4.00 new.
Common Signs
The first thing you notice is the CD label differences. The labels on the CD are bad quality (jagged quality graphics and text), the labels may be white or a different color other than black, the text on the labels may not be the same as the original Neo Geo CD game, and the manual colors will appear more dull – especially with the shiny silver ink used to outline text on many Neo Geo CD game manuals. The manuals also seem to have a dirty look to the white background on the manual. On legitimate Neo Geo CD games, the white backgrounds do not look dirty.
The genuine Neo Geo CD games have the holographic text (NGCD-###, or other letter/number combinations) in the center of the CD disc, near the spindle hole. The difference is that the bootleg games do not have the holographic bar code near the center of disc. They tend to have a solid bar instead of the bar code and that is the best way to tell if your Neo Geo CD game is a fake or not.
Report Fake Games
Nobody wants to pay for fake, bootleg video games that will never be worth anything in the future. If you spot these fake games on Ebay, please report them. And we strongly recommend to not buy these games, as they are worthless, and you will never get any future value from them in the future.
For additional support and discussions, visit the dedicated Neo Geo CD Forum.