[EDIT] DON’T BUY IT ON AMAZON THROUGH A MAIL FORWARDING SERVICE NOW, THE ORIGINAL LISTINGS ARE SOLD OUT AND POPULATED BY RESELLERS, FOR TWICE THE ORIGINAL PRICE. USE PLAY-ASIA.
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(original post)
If you can’t pay the $500 the original is being asked on ebay, Columbus Circle is reprinting this game, completely officially, with some new artwork. You can find it on Amazon, for a release planned for the 6th June. 2500 will be made.
It doesn’t ship to my country though, and probably doesn’t to yours either. It being a preorder may be a factor, as other items for Columbus Circle’s shop on Amazon ship worldwide. Play-asia will likely have it for sale, and hopefully the shipping on Amazon will open once it’s a real product.
it’s an officially licensed reproduction, same as the other snes games they have put out and the same as piko interactive is doing. credit to colombus circle for targeting a lot of expensive games that are well out of reach for most people who would like a physical copy.
but hooooly shit the new box art is abysmal, so against the tone of the game.
As I have posted on Era and on the Discord, I would be careful with this: Columbus Circle’s previous products haven’t been great and this might well be a cart with 3.3V flash ROM chips, drawing 5V straight from the cartridge pins to them with no level shifters in between and no voltage regulator. This sort of cheap PCB design results in a cartridge that doesn’t last very long before dying. Caveat emptor, this could be junk that’s barely better than an Aliexpress bootleg.
i love this, and want every “holy grail” to be reprinted until they devalue all the grails and all the weirdos who used to read wizard in the 90s for the comic prices are left ass out on the markup prices they paid
I would like nothing more than reprints made by the rights holders to do that but it’s not going to happen here: it’s not licensed by Sega so no Mega Drive logos (it just says MD/MD compatibles in plain Japanese text) and the cart PCB is likely to be of inferior quality to the original.
If anyone want this you could sign up for something like Tenso, who gives you an address in Japan to put in for your Amazon Japan pre-orders. Amazon ships it to them and when they get it they charge you to forward it to you. I’ve heard this might be an Amazon Japan exclusive.