• 19th Aug 2002 •

BEWARE OF COUNTERFEIT COPIES OF SAPPHIRE ON PC ENGINE ARCADE CD!!!!!!

Yes, unfortunately it's true; there are counterfeit copies of the very rare and expensive shooter GINGA FUKEI DENSETSU SAPPHIRE. We received 2pcs of the game today as a part-exchange from a regular customer (who I am sure does not know that they are not original). Upon opening the box, something just didn't look quite right. However, they were fully factory sealed with the little tear off strip, they had the spine card, which even had the little slant on the back as with all PC Engine spines. We haven't opened them but they appear to even have a registration card inside. Luckily, we had a used copy of the game in stock and could make a comparison, and it was only then that we could see that it was obviously a counterfeit game, albeit done extremely professionally! Points to look for include:

The orange colour (see the Arcade CD logos at the front, side and back) is a brighter shade in the counterfeit version. The original is slightly darker and is extremely lightly 'dotted' with with very tiny white dots. They are barely visible to the eye, but they are there. Looks like the counterfeiters were unable to replicate this.

The artwork on the front, of the girl, appears very slightly out of focus.

The most noticeable part is on the back cover, where there are pictures of the 2 Arcade cards. The counterfeit version is much more fuzzy looking, and the picture of the planet is unclear. With the picture of the the Arcade Card Duo, on the original version, you can see a very thin white outline around the part of the card with the artwork on it. On the counterfeit version, there is no white outline.

I would recomment everybody considering buying a new or even used copy of this game, to be extremely careful. Even if you are buying from people or business held in high esteem, they may be unwittingly selling you a counterfeit copy.

UPDATE: Some of these differences are extremely hard to spot unless you physically have the game in front of you. A photo will probably not be good enough and a scan may only show up the differences if it's high resolution. We have since been told there are a number of other differences, and while we can't verify them ourselves right now, here are a couple:

The top part of the 'Sapphire' logo (the largest word in Japanese on the fornt cover) is a pale yellow colour in the original version, but orange in the counterfeit copy.

With a sealed copy of the game, the tear-off strip is at the very bottom with the original copy. With a counterfeit copy, it's much higher up and cuts through the Japanese 'Sapphire' word.