MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Why is Super Moon Cresta part of the main game romset?

>> I'm curious about something: is this game truly a bootleg?
>
>> The reason that I ask is that it was released by a licensee of the original
>> (Gremlin/Sega). Wouldn't that just make the game an update of sorts, rather than a
>> bootleg? Midway did something similar with Space Invaders 2 cocktail, where it was an
>> in-house project rather than a release of Taito code.

>well the set in MAME is definitely a bootleg, the 'POR' you see in the corner actually
>points at an earlier bootlegger before Gremlin got it.

>specifically, it's originally part of the Spanish bootleg by Sonic where it says 'Por
>Sonic' which translates to 'By Sonic' The rest of the string was blanked out.

>I suspect Gremlin just bootlegged it from another bootleg to be perfectly honest, a lot
>of companies had shady beginnings. You'll find people swearing blind it's original
>because it came from an original PCB or whatever, but it isn't, not even slightly.

Any chance that whoever sent that Gremlin set in and was supported many years ago, may have come from a modified/poorly repaired pcb that had a mixed set of roms on the pcb?

With Gremlin Industries already established in mid 1970s with their wall games they first marketed, I can't picture the company even after being acquired by Sega around 1979 doing something of using a competitors work to make their own version. True that things were not corrected until about 1980 with US laws involving copyrights also including videogames to the copyright protected list besides movies, music and literature.

I can't imagine Gremlin Industries, by the time it was acquired/merged with Sega in 1980 doing any kind of partial bootlegging of some videogame.

If we're talking pong clone type games during mid 1970s where companies (Fun Games cheating off of Atari with Tank example) did copy from each other, then I can see it happening....but not by the time 1980 and following years after where an established Gremlin/Sega would do something like that.