I found a couple of bootlegs on Ruten that take from the Limited versions of Telefang. The box is the size of a regular gameboy color game instead of the larger box used for the real Telefang Limited versions (to accomodate the antenna). The bootlegs don't come with an antenna as you can probably tell. The bootleggers manage to spell 'Gameboy' as 'Gema Yob' as well. The Gameboy letters on the boxart are printed in an iridescent silver material, which looks rather good (although my scans don't show the shinyness). Although I haven't tested the games yet, RacieB has told me that these may be Japanese ports of the game, since she has a copy too. The printing quality of the manuals that come with the bootlegs is poor. They're also smaller than the real Telefang manuals and part of the booklet appears cut off as though someone has cut it with scissors. It's clear that the bootleggers just copied and pasted from the real Telefang manuals. There's also ink smudges on some of the pages too (one of them looks like part of a fingerprint). Interestingly, the Chinese text at the bottom actually reads Telefang Power version and Telefang Speed version, but yet they're placed on the opposite version to the one they're describing.
Comparing the text, I think my Speed version actually is labeled properly... a later version, perhaps?
Oh a strange question, though you probably would have mentioned it if you'd noticed it... are the carts weird in any way, like with foreign objects poking out of them? Mine has uhh, a piece of what appears to be cotton string sticking out of the bottom, and when I tried to open the cart to replace the battery it will not budge (think it may be glued closed or something, I didn't want to apply too much force to it.) So... it can't save and it has a mystery string in it. Seems to play fine though! v0v It is notable however that the plastic is very thin and as a result I can't get it to fit in a GameShark, I wanted to test codes on it...
There's no foreign objects hanging out of them as far as I can see. The cartridges are all clean and in good working order. I think they may either be newer or just well looked after. Oh, and they're both ports of the Japanese Telefang, like you said. I tested them last night ^^
I compared the bootleg and official boxes and I noticed the copyright/company credits for Smilesoft and Natsume are missing on the back of the bootleg box. Seems like they wanted to cover up the fact it was copyrighted, which is not surprising since their port is completely unofficial.
That doesn't surprise me. Given that the title screen never once references Smilesoft or Natsume, and given that the credits only have the Engrish "THANK YOU FOR YOUR PLAYING!" text, it's only natural that Smilesoft and Natsume aren't mentioned on the bootleg box, either.
The funny thing is that this particular bootleg has all the Natsume/Comic Bom Bom/Smilesoft logos present in the game. They didn't bother to remove them from the game itself but just did a straight port of the Japanese version. It makes me wonder why they bothered to remove the copyright from the box in the first place when the credits are obvious in the game when it starts up.
