Rudy Can't Fail

The Sintax games just keep coming! Three of them this time, because that's just the way the chips have fallen. On the ground, with seagulls pecking at them.

X-man - Armour of Might / X-men (X-мен)

First of all, one based on X-men, or maybe just the one X-man. Another reskin of the same game as usual, of course. This is another Russian version, and similar to my previous Russian dump, Rayman 4, the only thing translated is the title screen; the label and box are both still in English. Unlike Rayman, they didn't concoct a separate E12-Rxx ID for the Russian version - it just uses an English ID.

I've also taken a picture of the back of the cartridge here, because it reveals a bit of interesting historical context around the release of this thing.. which is maybe more interesting than the game itself at this point.

The seal covering the screw is marked "AM", which is a SUPER common type of sticker seen on pirate Game Boy Color carts all around the world; I assume this must indicate some large Chinese distributor or wholesaler of such carts. It also bears (🐻) the year 2005, with months between April and September; this doesn't necessarily mean the game was released in mid-2005 (it could have been in print for multiple years, or have been an older cart that was stickered or re-stickered later), but does mean it couldn't have been released after mid-2005.

The other sticker is from "vikart.com", which was a Russian wholesaler of game consoles, accessories and games. Presumably they imported cartridges from "AM" into Russia at some point. This sticker is dated January of 2006, which would probably have been either the date they stocked it or the date they sold it. Here's a roughly contemporary copy of their website. Unfortunately, by 2006 they weren't maintaining a public list of GBA games they offered; they had one around 2003, but it was removed and not updated, and only the first page archived. Same goes for their Game Boy Color list, but that at least has some interesting multicarts listed upfront.

Download: X-Man - Armour of Might (X-men) (Unl) (Rus) [YJ restored].zip

Ultraman - Confrontation Between Justice And Evil / Ul'traman - Konfrontatsiya mezhdu spravedlivost'yu i zlom (УЛЬТраман - Конфронтация между справедливостью и злом)

Next up: Ultraman! Even if the title screen depicts some kind of Power Rangers. I've been, I guess, "generous" in transcribing the main title with the proper Cyrillic characters; what Sintax has apparently done here is attempt to approximate Cyrillic letters using a Latin font, resulting in something more like "YJIbTpamaн".

The stickers on the back here.. actually make no sense. The AM one is from January-March 2006, while the Vikart one is from August 2005?!? Why would the Chinese sticker be newer than the Russian one? I notice there are remnants of an older sticker under the AM one... maybe it got returned as faulty, repaired and restickered and sent back out? Or maybe someone in Russia had a supply of "AM" stickers to reseal carts after opening them. Or one of the parties just used a sticker with the wrong date on it. Many possibilities.

Download: Ultraman - Confrontation Between Justice And Evil (Ul'traman - Konfrontatsiya mezhdu spravedlivost'yu i zlom) (Unl) (Rus) [YJ restored].zip

Digimon - Rudy and Sapphire / Digimon - Ruby and Sapphire

As you'll know if you have been following these posts, all of Sintax's GBA games so far have been derived from their original "Digimon Adventure" game, ported from the SNES. And now, after dozens of reskins covering everything from Mario to Shrek, they've come all the way back around to Digimon again. The circle of life. The cartridge calls it "Rudy and Sapphire", while the title screen has "Ruby and Sapphire" - so I've gone with the latter for the ROM name, since the former was obviously just a typo. Probably. Or maybe that's Rudy on the label, in which case I offer my sincerest apologies to him. he seems like a fine gentleman.

Anyway: instead of starring Agumon as Digimon Adventure did, this game features a Guilmon sprite ripped from Digimon Battle Spirit (or maybe Vast Fame's own Digimon Sapphire, which also ripped its sprites from Battle Spirit? Hmm!)

This cart came to me from the Netherlands, but I don't know if it was originally sold there - I never considered the Netherlands as a particular pirate hotspot. But maybe it did make its way there to some flea market or sketchy game shop... or maybe it was just bought on holiday or from eBay.

On the back: only remnants of the seal remain, but it looks like it once said "EMR" and maybe "2005-2006" - so again that lines up with the carts above, indicating 2005-2006 was probably when these later Sintax carts were on the market around the world. Also "Wouter E" has left his mark. I wonder what he thought of this game.

Download: Digimon - Ruby and Sapphire (Unl) (Eng) [YJ restored].zip