Pirate Dragon Ball Z Famicom Cartridge

Recently I acquired an interesting pirate 2 in 1 Famicom cartridge:

On the title screen, you can select two games:

Title Screen

Choice “B= ACT” starts a hack of the game Dragon Ball Z: Gekitō Tenkaichi Budokai for the Datach Joint ROM System add-on, also known as Dragon Ball Z IV (Unl) [U][!] in the GoodNES set.

Side-by-side comparison of the hack and the original Datach game:

Hack: Datach Logo Original: Datach Logo

Hack: Title Screen Original: Title Screen

In the original game, you have to scan barcode cards to select the fighters. This is of course not possible in the hacked game. Instead, you press “Select” and then a number appears on the screen that can be changed with “Up” and “Down” (the mysterious inscription on the cartridge label “PUSH SELECT PEOPLE TO FIGHT” makes sense now…):

Hack: Scan Screen Original: Scan Screen

Selecting the number 3031 3233343501 020304050607 has the same effect as scanning the Son Goku character card:

Son Goku Character Card Front

The barcode on the back translates to “022248300117”, by the way:

Son Goku Character Card Back

Scan progress of the original game not displayed in the hacked game:
(Edit: of course the progress is shown in the hacked game, but I forgot to capture it too.)

Original: Scan Progress Screen

Scan successful:

Hack: Scan Successful Screen Original: Scan Successful Screen

The other Choice “A= RPG” starts a hack of the game Dragon Ball Z Gaiden: Saiyajin Zetsumetsu Keikaku. As far as I can tell, the only change made was to remove the copyright information from the title screen:

Hack: Title Screen Original: Title Screen

In case you are wondering about the good quality of the original game’s screenshot – that was made with FCEUX. All other screenshots were made with a video capture card.

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