Can my favorite Game Boy gadget tell fake cartridges from real?

Epilogue’s GB Operator now plugs into your phone to test used games, too.

Is it reliable?

I plugged around 50 cartridges into the app, and… it could use some work.

While most of my English and Japanese library was detected without a hitch, it also called a few counterfeit cartridges “authentic,” a number of authentic cartridges “counterfeit” or “possible counterfeit,” and about a tenth of my cartridges required multiple scans to detect anything at all.

One legit cartridge never managed to scan.

You don’t have to take my word for it, because I took quite a few photos along the way!

Here’s a gallery with captions:
I think Epilogue should have stuck to its previous terminology of “Official,” “Unofficial” and “Unrecognized” instead of “authentic” and “counterfeit,” because a romhack or a new game from Incube8 or ModRetro is still “authentic” even if it wasn’t released by Nintendo.

The “confidence percentages” seem silly too; I never saw a score lower than 95 percent, and the score changes even if you scan the same cartridge again.

For now, it seems the only foolproof way to truly identify a legit Nintendo Game Boy cart is with a screwdriver (GameBit 3.8mm for GB/GBC, tri-wing Y0 for GBA) a sharp eye, and a search for the alphanumeric code on the ROM chip.

But the next best thing is to look for a two-digit number imprinted into the cart’s label.

See examples of both in my gallery.

BTW, I’m looking very forward to trying the SN Operator , the Super Nintendo / Super Famicom reader from the same company, coming out next month.

It will also be compatible with this app.

This is the title for the native ad