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Reprologue Star Fox 2 Collector's Edition Review |
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The Lead-up: With the release of the SNES Classic from Nintendo, the ROM of the finalized version of Star Fox 2 was quickly extracted from the system. Almost immediately people were making hack-mods of 'doner' SNES games that replaced the game ROM with the one for Star Fox. On Facebook, a user posted his own efforts on this with beautiful pictures of a pristine metallic purple Star Fox 2 cart complete with labels, box, instructions, CD soundtrack, etc. I was interested along with a few others of buying said product if he planned to start producing them for purchase. Turns out he was planning on selling them, and in short order had set up an Etsy web site to take the first orders. I immediately ordered one...
The Product Contents: After a myriad of delays, broken promises, and suspicious shipping label activity, I was finally shipped what I ordered a full 3 weeks past when it was originally supposed to ship out. I had to open a case with etsy in order to get the package actually shipped from Reprologue, but we'll get to the details on the shipping shenanigans later. Right now, lets review what was actually shipped: One folder poster (on poster stock).
The price was $79.99 for the above package, which is reasonable considering the quality shown in the ad... The Posters: The size of the shipping box that arrived indicated he had to have folded the poster, and this already was a bit disappointing. The poster itself is approximately 20 inches by 11 inches. A shipping tube for the poster would have been the better way to go for a collector's edition, but in this case, Reprologue folded the poster down to fit 5 inches by 5 1/2 inches. The result of this utterly ruined the poster. The creases broke the printing ink and left horrid white lines criss-crossed all through it. You might as well toss it in the recycle bin:
As you can see from the pics, nobody is going to want to put that on their wall. Now I understand Nintendo themselves also folded posters to pack them as extra bonus content, but their printing process made it so the creases were less destructive to the ink. You could flatten them out with heavy books and, over time, have a fairly decent poster to put up on the wall. With this poster, the ink is physically broken apart, showing white paper stock underneath. As I said, it's ruined, and really Reprologue shouldn't have even bothered with this part of the package. It would have only worked with a poster shipping tube. The 2nd poster printed on regular paper stock isn't even worth showing a photo of here. Not only is it also ruined with creases breaking the ink (and actually has more creases than the first poster), but the colors and the paper used make it look and feel of poor quality. Add this one to the recycle bin as well. The Box and Insert Carton: The box actually looked promising, but on closer examination, there were some tears and a design mistake that left an ugly white crease on the back bottom. Reprologue forgot to account for the folding tab when printing the box art, so it got left unprinted, and the folding process left the white on it plainly visible. Here's a photo that perfectly illustrates this as well as a folding tear:
The carton insert was completely useless in its design. The retaining tabs that surround the cart in a normally functioning insert are designed to stabilize the cart in prevent it from sliding around all over the place in the box. Reprologue's retaining tabs were left free-floating, and to add insult to injury, the cart itself was not placed in a plastic bag. It was left exposed inside the box, with nothing to retain its position in the insert. The cartidge obviously got slung in various directions during shipping. I found it at the bottom of the insert carton when I opened the box.
The Cartridge Case: Now here Reprologue used a really cool looking metallic purple paint. The problem is he didn't seal the paint job once it was finished. When I pulled the cartridge from the insert, I immediately noticed several spots where the paint was already rubbed off the cart, exposing the original grey plastic doner cart color underneath. This possibly happened during shipment in regards to the lack of plastic bag and properly functioning insert carton. Below are pics showing several spots of missing paint:
The missing paint in these spots is even more obvious in person, and it really detracts from an otherwise pretty cool color scheme. Sealing the paint job would have provided protection against flaking, but then again, so would a plastic bag and a functioning insert carton... The CD Soundtrack: The CD is a typical cheap CD-R with that distinctive green tint we all know about (well those of us that did our fair share of burning CDs back in the day). This part doesn't bother me in the slightest. What does sort of bother my obessive attention to detail are these weird 'streaks' in the label of the CD. I took a photo showing them, but again, they are more visible in person:
The Mod Work: The crafstmanship on the inside of the cart is pretty standard fair for quickly producing a working 'prototype' reproduction cartridge board. As you may know, pre-existing Super FX SNES games must be sacrificed in order for hobbyists to make working Star Fox 2 carts. In this case, "Stunt Race FX" is the best doner cart to use. Reprologue desoldered the original ROM chip, and then used an older standard ROM chip by hot-gluing it to the board after soldering Kynar wire to all the pins.
While this works and I can't really complain too much about it, I will point out that there are much more professional jobs done on this that you can find examples of using Google. One in particular is the job done by 'qwertymodo', where he designed an adapter board to use a more modern ROM chip. Just look at how professional this approach is in comparison:
In fact you can even find people selling these types of adapter boards with the ROM already installed on them. It's a nice solid-state approach that will last far longer and is much more resistant to jarring inertial forces. The Hassle:
Right, so getting back to the shenanigans of trying to get my order actually shipped to me, I have to stress that I don't mind delays and waiting, just so long as I'm not being lied to. I've got a PSIO on order that I've been waiting 4 months for, and I don't mind at all because the engineer working on it posts pics and regular updates showing his progress. What he does NOT do is blow smoke up my ass with various adventure stories, mishaps, strange coincidences, and flat out lies. When I initially ordered the Reprologue set, he claimed they would ship out the following Monday. Well Monday comes and goes, and no updates from him. The entire week goes by and still no updates. I noticed on the Etsy web site he was now selling base cart boxes and giving updates to '2nd batch' orders. Great, what about my first order?
So I decide to ask him on the Etsy site about what happened to my order from the first batch. He informs me there were some delays with printing, but he's got it all ready to go and it will go out the following Monday. I thanked him and waited. Monday comes and this time, I get a shipping notification with tracking number. Yay!
During the course of the week, I would periodically check the tracking to see where the package was on its trip. However, every day I would check, USPS would still show he only initiated the shipping label without actually turning the package over to them. Every day I would check, and every day the same thing from USPS: No drop-off scan.
Finally at the end of the week I'm getting pretty pissed off. I ask on Etsy again what's going on. I'm told "Oh I was just getting ready to ship it out when I noticed a page was misaligned in the instruction booklet. It's all fixed now and I will ship it out Monday". Guess what happens Monday? Nothing. Not a damn thing. But then Tuesday there's news! He sends me a message saying "Sent! :-)". I check the tracking, and USPS still shows no shipment, no drop-off scan, nothing...
So once again I check every day with USPS, and every day they show he never gave them the package. By this point I am furious. This back and forth has gone on 3 weeks now, and I'm tired of being told crap that simply isn't true. When you ship something out, the MOMENT you turn the box over, it is scanned being received by USPS. In this case, a 2nd week was going by with ZERO activity on the tracking. I email him and expressed that I was about fed up and wanted answers. I get no reply for two days. Finally I'm left resorting to calling him out on Facebook. This gets his attention and he sends me a message giving me a flat-out lie about USPS losing my package. He then sends one out... Using the SAME shipping label. Now the thing about lost shipments is USPS will not allow you to use the same shipping label if such is the case. They will lock that tracking number down while it is under investigation. So what really happened here is Reprologue hadn't shipped anything in the 3 weeks I waited, got called out for it, and finally shipped the package I originally ordered. Hey, I get it, delays happen. Life happens. But to tell people a load of BS and have no transparancy about what's really going on is something I don't tolerate with my hard-earned money. That's me, and I was accused of being tool on facebook over this. I'm sorry, but I don't like being lied to. It insults my intelligence, not to mention the fact that it puts severe suspicion on the legitmacy of the seller. In this case, I did finally receive my package, and I give the overall effort a 'C' in execution. It works, and that's good enough that I don't feel entirely ripped off. Handling of the order on the other hand, was a failing grade.
-FBX
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