I bought this cartridge of Pokémon Emerald in a thrift shop. The seller wasn't sure himself about the cartridge, but I bought it anyway.
Playing it, there doesn't seems to be any difference in-game, so I can't differentiate based on the content.
What make me still think it is fake is that chip at the very left side, the second largest one. Even then it looks like everything is authentic.
It looks like they ran out of a certain chip at the factory and said 'screw it' and used a different type. You can even see the lines are for the authentic one and so they just made the wires longer.
Is this cartridge real or fake?
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Best Answer
This appears to be a legitimate card with a newer (SRAM) chip.
Other sites identify similar Pokemon Ruby chip as legitimate
And another identifies a similar chip as well (Note in the following image, only the upper card is legitimate, but has the same smaller chip style on the right)