I was browsing through some old magazines yesterday and I read a lot of reviews of Japanese games which weren't localized. We know now, back then, typical Japanese games such as Snatcher didn't make their way to Europe. This means someone selected the titles which were suitable to import. Is it known who did that back then? Was it mainly one person or more? How was it possible that there were cracked versions of original games available, MUCH sooner than the original titles itself through import channels? Actually, a pretty fucked up situation

Someone bought it, someone else cracked it, we copied it?

in argentinia all the games cracked already were from spain.

I want names

Ton de Winter in The Netherlands

Cheers Bas, did he crack or had a link in Japan through which he got the games? It's just, I noticed the MSX scene in the late 80s/early 90s was just as small as nowadays, actually. They were talking about 'MSX being dead' in those days too, it's reaaaally funny to read This implies though, that there most probably really were only a few people who were responsible. From whom got Martos all them originals and stuff? It interests me

I remember back in those days, a lot of cracked games I saw mentionned "cracked by SMA" or "cracked by martos" (can't remember which) and "Imported by The Boss". Just got to figure out who "The Boss" was.

cracked by PJS or something like that

martos ... i remeber having a lot of games cracked by martos

Martos, SMA, The Boss - indeed, I remember those as well....

There was some guy called GertJan or something I think, he imported Korean carts at a time I think, a little later in the 90's... I remember it was kinda strange (he admitted himself) that the guy who was selling games also wrote reviews in ..it's probably been MCCM.
(Does anyone have/remember the picture of the "Slak" that was once on a cover? I liked that; in fact, I even imitated the drawing in Designer Plus myself, but that one got lost)

Ton de Winter works together with A. de Gooier from Zandvoort.
In Zandvoort was it possible to change your computer to 256 kB and buy games from Ton de Winter for 10 guilders each.
Ton was the person with Parodius at the Fair in Dan Haag and I bought the first original Parodius there (the only one at that moment)

Yeah, big business on pirated games; we also had sources that provided games that costed X guilders per disk.

I still remember that MSX-Engine tried to stop Jan Admiraal (The Boss) cracking copying and selling? games.
IIRC MSX-Engine contacted ASCII (Japan) about this illigal stuff was going on in Holland and ASCII send a letter to Jan Admiraal and iirc MSX-Engine succeded.
If i am right this story was written in an MSX-Engine magazine i must have it around here somewhere.

Quote:

Yeah, big business on pirated games; we also had sources that provided games that costed X guilders per disk.

Yep i still remember a guy from Hoogezand/Sappermeer ( i shall not tell his name here, and no it is not Jorrith Schaap) who made big money by copying games.
When he was at a fair in Zandvoort i was surprised to see how many MSX user knew him

Abi: Yeah, that was Martin Bakker....

about Martos: I met him in Spain at MadriSX 2003 and he then told me that one of his family members worked in a game shop, and he got to play with the latest games every now and then. As he wanted to enjoy the games for longer than he could borrow the games...