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English-translated Secret of Mana 2 cart on eBay



Though Square never brought Seiken Densetsu 3, Secret of Mana's sequel (which itself was a follow-up to Final Fantasy Adventure), to the states, a fan translation project provided gamers with a localization ROM patch in 2000, five years after its release in Japan. Even with just an unofficial translation, the cooperative ARPG is widely acclaimed by those who've played it, some even claiming it as the Mana series' apex.

As fun as Seiken Densetsu 3 is, the Super Nintendo experience just doesn't seem "authentic" unless you're playing the game with the original rounded controllers on hardware yellowed with age. This auction on eBay plays on that sentiment, offering up a "Secret of Mana 2" set which includes the patched game on an SNES cart, a mocked-up box, and an English-translated instruction booklet.

Everything about its production screams "bootleg," and counterfeit releases like these can never be trusted for their quality or reliability, but that hasn't stopped bidders from running its auction price up to $300 with 15 hours still left on the clock!

[Via GameSniped]

Hacked Super Mario Bros. is better than LittleBigPlanet


Feeling that Super Mario Bros. lacked in user-generated content, the folks over at SelectButton decided to start randomly inserting text into the Mario ROM (yarrr) and see what happens. Apparently the game is stable enough to run decently with junk added to it, and the results are ... playable and strangely beautiful. Random invisible blocks, palette changes, bizarre sprites, Mario's freaking head is on upside-down, etc.

It's pretty significant that some minor shot-in-the-dark hacking can end up generating new Mario levels that instantly make a near-perfect game infinitely more fun. They should be doing this at I am 8-Bit. If only we could do this kind of user-generated level design on the Virtual Console,we'd have a compelling answer to Sony's LittleBigPlanet. Go ahead and argue with us on that point. We <3 Hacked Mario.

Wii Fanboy does not endorse the use of copyrighted ROM images. Just go gawk at the screenshots for a while; that should be enough entertainment.

In Defense of the Virtual Console's pricing

We've surveyed your irritation with the Virtual Console's rates and even had you calculate the exact amount of Wii points you've been swindled out of so far, but VGamp's Chris Sinclair argues that the game downloads aren't expensive at all. Chris listed eleven reasons to support his claim, even admitting that he would be willing to pay more for the retro titles. While he might come across as an inflexible apologist, some of his points make sense.

According to Chris, you're getting a deal whenever you make a purchase on the Shopping Channel. For example, let's say that you put out the cash for Soldier Blade, a title that sometimes sells for $50+ on eBay. You're scoring a discount on a relatively rare game that's guaranteed to work decades from now, and you don't even have to pay for the TurboGrafx-16 console or the controllers to play it with. As an added bonus, many of these emulated games look better than they ever did before.

Alright, so we're still not entirely convinced that Altered Beast is worth the 800 Wii points Sega is asking for, but we can see where Chris is going with this. What do you think? Does the pricing seem justified after considering his points, or do you still feel like you're being fleeced?

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