At least until I opened it up.
The two numbers at the bottom right of the label were there but they almost looked like they were printed on instead of indented like they were supposed to, which was odd. The lettering on the plastic was SO CLOSE to the original, but the font was just slightly off…
At this point I was still questioning it, because the label had the right amount of wear, and because WHY WOULD SOMEONE COUNTERFEIT BARBIE?? XD But then opening it up confirmed to me that it 100% was counterfeit, I’m guessing a pretty old one.
I made a video demonstrating some of the signs here.
At this point, it’s incredibly hard to avoid the counterfeits, especially for any game that has any sort of notoriety. The easiest way I’ve found is to buy games that are either “broken” or “untested” and fix them up; those are more often legitimate.
I’m guessing counterfeits for Barbie games are going around because of the recent movie.
I thought that too! But this counterfeit seems to be from around 2002 maybe? It was $10, and a legit copy is going for about $13. So I think this game is sufficiently crappy to be safe from the Barbie craze. XD
Only counterfeit I have is FFTA, and they refunded me immediately and didn’t require me to send it back, and it still works, so I gave it to my little brother for his GameBoy. Worked out pretty well, and I now have a legit copy. Well, I had one as a kid too, but that one is long gone, so now I have another legit copy.
:D I’m glad it worked out! I was able to get a refund from the nice seller without any issue.
I’ve unintentionally purchased a counterfeit before too, it was so good - I didn’t even consider it was counterfeit at first. It took a lot of scrutinizing once (I was suspicious) to confirm it, some of them are impressively accurate!
Barbie doesn’t seem like a horrible game to counterfeit, it’s pretty short and doesn’t have a battery backed save function. Still an interesting choice in game for someone to reproduce, as I doubt there’s much of a market for that one.
I agree! I loaded the game up randomly in an emulator a few months ago and kinda got hooked on it. It’s like a glitchy version of TMNT but in a shopping mall. :D
This was a game in our house because my little sister had it. (Everyone in our home growing up had their own Game Boy, so games got passed around quite a bit).It’s in my library of games now because she lost interest in all her Game Boy stuff years ago and handed it all over to me.
Growing up, none of us could beat that stupid game - my brother and I always got stuck on the Juke Box boss. It wasn’t until sometime in college that I finally figured out how to get past it. Now it takes me around 30 min or so to blow through the game and have that date with Ken!
It’s an awful game, but I’ve played worse - and I have that personal history with it now so it will forever stay in my game hoard.
That’s awesome! I call those types of games a “guilty pleasure”. :D And I kinda got hooked the first time I played this game!
This fake cart is a rare find. Good catch.
