I bought a used copy of Yoshi’s Island DS ages ago online. I received it, played it, finished it. My 3DS’s activity log can attest to over 20 hours of gameplay. Yesterday when I popped it back in to check out the enemy museum, the system consistently gave me an error message when booting it. Other 3DS and DS systems also refused to run the game.
What I (and indeed the store that sold it, I think) failed to notice at the time, is that there are some very subtle differences between it and a genuine DS game card. Let’s play spot the difference. I apologise for the photos, but hopefully with careful observation you can see something wrong.
The first warning sign in fact was difficulty inserting it. The card when pushed in turned at an angle and there was an internal click before it slotted into place. Nothing seemed wrong visually but comparing it to another card, I noticed: 1, the small notch on the right side of the rear is smaller. 2, the logo and text stamped into the back is slightly bigger and with a smaller space between them. 3, the green board visible through the contact slots reads “Nintendo”, instead of a series of numbers and letters like other cards.
Looking at the front, I also noticed that the printing on the label was of a lower quality than genuine games. The “E” on the ESRB rating, being black, is noticeably mottled and fainter, and this extends to the whole image: fuzzy, and washed out. There’s also a slight gap in the front panel at the bottom, showing a slightly lower quality construction. Hopefully these details come through, but it was only when inspecting them carefully under bright light compared to other cards that it became obvious.
The conclusion: I had bought a fake. And for some reason, it had a shelf life that had expired; the game played fine earlier, but now would not load at all. I couldn’t sell or trade in a non-working, pirated game. There was only one thing to do.
And that’s my story.
