> > Apparently 'Ali Baba and 40 Thieves' which claims to be a 1982 Sega game is full of > > code lifted straight from Pacman with various hacks applied. > > > > I haven't verified that myself, but, you know... > > > > there's still a bit of a mystery surrounding the protection on that one too. > > True, but by the same token it's not uncommon for bootlegs / hacks to leave in the > original manufacturer's copyright notices - and there are a couple of cases where > copyright has been deliberately misattributed. > > WRT Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, it wouldn't surprise me to find that it was a > straight-up hack of Pac-Man with misattributed copyright. In the absence of flyers, > etc. to back up its origins and knowing that even PCBs (particularly those from > Nintendo and Namco / Midway) were produced with bootleg copyrights on them, it's at > least a possibility.
I'd say the same if there wern't home ports of it. Home port don't usually happen for random arcade hacks.
but for your other point, yes, there are a lot of bootleg PCBs that really try to look like originals, sometimes the even get sold for silly money as 'prototypes'
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