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Assessing MVS cart authenticity

9999 Damage

9999 Damage

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I always heard people could spot MVS fakes from looking at the PCB, but I just learned of mvs-scans.com recently and started checking mine. How exactly should I expect PCBs and ROM chips to match the reference images? Are there ever mismatches due to factory conversions? I want to know what I'm talking about before I go complaining to sellers who sold these as authentic 😁

A couple examples:
  • Shock Troopers: mvs-scans shows CHA256 in all images of board 2, but mine has a CHA512Y. Arcade-collectors shows 6 games that used CHA512Y, and Shock Troopers isn't among them. The ROM chips on the CHA512Y look like a match, but I don't know if they're reprogrammable (i.e. could be conversions).
  • Metal Slug 3: AFAICT, everything about my cart matches mvs-scans' set 3 reference images except that the copyright date on my PROGBK1 is 1994, rather than something closer to the release date in 2000.
 
Best thing to check is the game numbers ie each Neo Geo game has a unique number ending with SS5 Special, if the cart is genuine the chips will have this number printed, SNK used all sorts of spares so you will get older ones in the mix.
 
thegreathopper said:
Best thing to check is the game numbers ie each Neo Geo game has a unique number ending with SS5 Special, if the cart is genuine the chips will have this number printed, SNK used all sorts of spares so you will get older ones in the mix.
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Ah, super helpful. Is that the number that precedes the ROM location (C1, V1, etc.)? For example, on all the Shock Troopers ROMs, I see a consistent ID number followed by the ROM location, e.g. 238-C1 for the C1 ROM and 238-S1 for the S1 ROM in Shock Troopers. Those consistent ID numbers are also consistent with what I see in mvs-scans.
 
that's exactly it. the number relates to the NGH number assigned to the game. there's a master list here: https://www.neo-geo.com/snk/master_list-ngh.htm

every official chip will have the ngh number printed on the chip. SNK also only used Toshiba, possibly Sharp, own branded SNK or, laterally in the NeoGeos life, they were unbranded but all had the NGH and Rom number on the chips. There's the outliers where there were factory mods or reprograms that utilised windowed chips but by and large if you stick to these rules you should get pretty good at spotting repros/pirates. SNK never used MX chips. that's a dead giveaway of a pirate/repro board.

I did see a Pulstar repro get sold on Aliexpress as original a while back. only reason I noticed it was cos it was listed as a repro by 1 seller and then on another page it was listed as original and in the pics it now had the NGH/Rom numbers printed on the chips. by the looks of it, same cart, same table, same background, just they'd printed what they needed to on the chips. this is the only time I've ever seen this and tbh, it's likely an outlier of outliers so I wouldn't worry about seeing things like that too often.


Also having a look at your concerns above for Shock Troopers and MS3 I would say that if the roms match then there's a 99.9% chance they're orig. SNK have a very colourful history of doing factory mods or things that could be deemed cuttting corners to get things out the door so using old versions of boards or slightly different boards seems, to me anyway, typical SNK.
 
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9999 Damage said:
@fraggle200 Thank you so much for the context. Great to have the master list, too.
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not a bother at all. TBH, MVS Scans is always my first port of call when checking authenticity. If the chips match, then I'm happy. have never queried board revisions etc just that all the right chips are in all the right places and match some sort of variant on there.
 
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