Identifying Fake SNES Cartridges

[Big A2]

So I got my US SNES about a week ago (and have seen been trying to decide how to plug it in, but that's another issue) and I'd like to avoid getting any fake games to keep my collection squeaky clean.

Is there any way of telling whether a cartridge is a fake or not, without opening it up? Similar to how fake GBA games have that little hole near the connectors?

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i1...2/P1010918.jpg

The SNES I got came with some games, and I noticed that some had gold screws while other had shiny silver screws. Is this normal?

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i141/Big_A2/P1010910.jpg

If there isn?t a way to tell from the outside, what should I look for once I open them up? I know that a tiny circuit board is a giveaway, but what else?

[SuperDanX]

Your very unlikely to get a fake snes cart, 99.999999 % are genuine, it's not a problem unlike with the gba.

[MonkeyJuggleDX]

If you got a fake, you'd know straight off.

Mis-coloured cart, funny texture to the plastic, pathetic looking label.

[Skull Commander]

In my experience, every fake cart I have seen has been the jap/pal shape rather than the us ones. They usually feel lighter, the colour is off, and labels may look blurry or have wrong region info on them (i.e. us logo on Jap cart).

[Cauterize]

Your very unlikely to get a fake snes cart, 99.999999 % are genuine, it's not a problem unlike with the gba.

Yeah, if anything you'd be lucky to find one at all. In over 10 years of collecting, this is the only one I have ever come across which had me fooled at first.

[Yakumo]

The manual is a dead giveaway on that one but the actual box and cart look pretty good. Well, except for what look like normal screws in the cart.

[meppi]

One of the easiest ways to check is to see if on the inside of the "lips" of the cart, where the connectors are, you can see a little rectangle pressed in which should have the letter F on the front, followed by a number, and/or a B on the back, again followed by a number.

Depends on the system wether the back is visible or not, but it runs all the way up till the N64 if I remember correctly.

A second check for me always is to see if the label on the cart has a number pressed into it.

[moonwhistle]

I agree that there's no almost no reason to be worried about ending up with a fake snes cart. The only ones I've ever seen are english language hack jobs of japanese only games or just very obvious bootlegs of unreleased games. Luckily the vast, vast majority of snes games aren't valuable enough to attract the attention of bootleggers and they were never mass produced afaik.

[Skull Commander]

They are more common than you guys think. I went through a real unlucky spell on ebay a few years back and ended up with a good few fakes (mostly in bundles) including Sailor Moon, Street Fighter 2, NBA Jam Turbo, Fist of the North Star, True Lies and some others. I still have some as I couldn't be bothered putting back the whole bundles they came in for the sake of a couple of carts.

[Big A2]

It's good to hear that it's not a big issue, but I would've though with used SNES games like Chrono Trigger and EarthBound fetching over $100, some fakes would surely creep into the market. I’ll get one of those special screwdrivers anyway just to be sure! (It’ll come in handy when replacing batteries anyway).