u/maakkiaa9898

I recently picked up this group of Neo Geo AES games and I’m still learning the finer points of authenticating them. Before I do anything invasive like opening the carts, I wanted to get opinions from experienced AES collectors.
From the cases, inserts, cart labels, manuals, serials, etc., does anything stand out as questionable, replaced, converted, or otherwise non-original?
Any specific things you see that I should check more closely would be appreciated.

TIL improper cardboard packaging is a federal offense.

Found this sitting on a freshly stocked rack, must have just rolled out from the back. Paid $6 for it… and people still say there are no games left at Goodwill.

Silent Hill 2 for six bucks says otherwise. 😅

I recently came across both Sword of Saros and Survival Island on cassette for the Starpath Supercharger and it sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.

I understand how the Supercharger works in general, but I’m more curious about what was going on behind the scenes with these later releases. From what I’ve been piecing together, these seem to fall into that period where Starpath had shifted away from retail and was distributing games through mail order.

What really caught my attention is that both of mine have the same style labels and are marked “PAL SYSTEM,” which confused me a bit. I’ve seen some mentions that this might not actually mean they’re PAL-only, but more of a labeling quirk from that phase of production. Seeing both titles share it made me even more curious if that was just standard for these late releases.

I’m mostly trying to understand how these were actually produced and sold at the time. Were these duplicated in small batches as orders came in, or was there still a larger production run happening and just sold differently? And where exactly do these two titles fit in the overall timeline of the Supercharger, since they seem to come right at the end of its life.

Not really looking at this from a value standpoint, just trying to get a better sense of the history and how these came to exist in the form they did. It feels like a pretty unique moment in early console gaming and I’d love to hear from anyone who’s dug into this deeper.