Spider Kong

So this might be my last batch of generic reskinned Sintax GBA platformers! Let's get these fuckers out the door!

Movie Version - Spider-Man 3

This is a fairly unusual one. I mean, not the game, that's exactly like all the others, obviously. What's unusual here is that Sintax directly recycled a title and artwork from one of their previous Game Boy Color games. Usually they'd at least change the number. Anyway, naturally, the two games are otherwise unrelated, and the Game Boy Color one is much more interesting.

Download: Movie Version - Spider-Man 3 (Unl) (Eng) [YJ restored].zip

Donkey Kong 2

He has no style, he has no grace / This Kong is a fucking disgrace

Download: Donkey Kong 2 (Unl) (Eng) [YJ restored].zip

Harry Potter IV

Finally: the last ethical Harry Potter game! Step into the wizarding world(?) safe in the knowledge that JK Rowling isn't seeing a penny of royalties from this thing.

Download: Harry Potter IV (Unl) (Eng) [YJ restored].zip

Ha Li Bo Te IV (哈利波特IV)

Thanks to yy小龙虾 for this dump!

This is the Chinese version of the above game. Only the title screen seems to be different.

Download: Ha Li Bo Te IV (Unl) (Chi) [YJ restored].zip

It's not ogre yet

after that brief respite, I'm back on the Sintax GBA train with...

Shrek Prezessin!!

(and no, nobody knows what "Prezessin" means, the best anyone can figure out is it's a misspelling of the German "Prinzessin")

This cart actually contains the Russian version of the game, titled "Шрек - мак-самосейка" (Shrek - mak-samoseyka). Lots of clashing graphics ripped from all over the place in this one. The Shrek sprite is from "Shrek: Hassle at the Castle", if you were wondering.

Download: Shrek Prezessin (Shrek - mak-samoseyka) (Unl) (Rus) [YJ restored].zip

Thanks to yy小龙虾, we also have a dump of the Chinese version, called "史瑞克 II - 虞美人" (Shi Rui Ke II - Yu Mei Ren). Despite the "II", nothing seems to be different apart from the title screen.

Download: Shi Rui Ke II - Yu Mei Ren (Unl) (Chn) [YJ restored].zip

Hrrrrnnggh Colonel, I'm trying to infringe copyright but I'm dummy thicc and the clap from my ass cheeks keeps alerting the lawyers

Is everyone bored of Sintax GBA games yet? I know I am!!

Then, instead, let's look back a few years and one console generation... to when Sintax was good. Sort of.

Many thanks to NewRisingSun for providing this cart!

This is Matel Gear II, the English version of Hei Jing Zhuan Bei II, which I dumped a long time ago. And yes, in a practically unprecedented bout of consistency, it's spelled that way on both the label and title screen. It had also been listed by Sintax in some places as "Eraq War II", but I've never seen a cartridge under that title.

Basically, this is Metal Gear recast as a kind of beat 'em up with RPG elements. Absolutely zero stealth here. But it uses the same decent beat 'em up engine from Sintax's Three Kingdoms games, so it remains pretty fun.

As with most games on this engine, it has four playable characters, meaning all of your Metal Gear faves make an appearance:

It's been a while since I've released something for a non-advanced kind of Game Boy, so here's the drill ROM-wise:

• "Raw" is the ROM as dumped from the cart, no modifications. Emulators may run this if they can detect the Sintax mapper somehow. hhugboy does this.
• "GBX" is the raw dump in the GBX format, which adds a footer specifying details about the ROM, meaning emulators do not have to heuristically detect the mapper, because doing that actually sucks. hhugboy supports this.
• "Cracked" is a version with the protection removed so you can play it in Literally Anything

Raw: Matel Gear II (Unl) (Eng) [C] [Raw].zip
GBX: Matel Gear II (Unl) (Eng) [C] [GBX].zip
Cracked: Matel Gear II (Unl) (Eng) [C] [Cracked].zip

Sintax stays home

Once again, today I'm bringing you some Chinese-language versions of GBA Sintax games I previously dumped!

Thanks again to a123_ddd for providing these dumps, and to the individual dumpers credited against each one.

(Small administrative note that probably nobody cares about: as of this release I've switched to romanising Chinese titles spaced per-syllable instead of per-word. The reason for this is it avoids me having to exercise my non-expert judgement on how to space things, which can lead to inconsistencies, and hence the per-syllable approach is better for library-esque usage (at least according to a post I read somewhere))

X Zhan Jing (X战警) / X-man

Chinese version of X-man: Armour of Might. Has a very colourful English title logo in place of the bronzed Russian one, I don't know if the English version is the same.

Dumped by 侵蚀你的私处

Download: X Zhan Jing (X-man) (Unl) (Chn) [YJ restored].zip

Gu Huo Lang 4 (古惑狼4)

Chinese version of Crash Advance 4. This one has unique translated level names.

Dumped by dcillbleed

Download: Gu Huo Lang 4 (Unl) (Chn) [YJ restored].zip

Ren Zhe Shen Gui 2 (忍者神龟2)

Chinese version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. Again, there are unique translated level names.

I've also seen this one under the title 超級忍者龜2 (Super Ninja Turtles 2), which was the name used on old Taiwanese copies of Turtles games for the Famicom.

Dumped by yy小龙虾

Download: Ren Zhe Shen Gui 2 (Unl) (Chn) [YJ restored].zip

Eat your leafy greens

Got another YJencrypted GBA cart here, and it's not a Sintax game!! Yeah!!

Pokémon: Pokemon: Pokémon: Leaf Green!? You guessed it (maybe (or maybe you saw the screenshots I tweeted)) - it's another bootleg translation!

This is a weird one for sure! They seem to have taken things like names, and parts of the system text, from the official games - meaning a lot of things are more correct (albeit abbreviated) than you'd find in other bootleg translations, except for the cases where they inevitably pasted the wrong name in the wrong place. The dialogue was mostly translated from scratch, and the writing would have been okay, by the standards of these things, if not for one very strange flaw: half of the text in the game just... cuts off, mid-sentence, and sometimes even mid-word. It's as if they completed the translated script, realised too late that they didn't have enough space to insert it into the ROM, and then just indiscriminately trimmed the strings down to cram them in. It makes for some interesting dialogue.

The original cart seems to use a 128KB SRAM chip, which nothing emulates; it's similar to Pokemon Sapphire's problem, except doubly so, since it seems to use some custom banking and there aren't any emulators that "accidentally" emulate it, unlike Sapphire's 64KB SRAM. So that means you will not be able to save your game normally under emulation in any current emulators, and will have to use savestates instead. Sorry about that.

Pokemon - Leaf Green (Unl) (Eng) [YJ restored].zip