OK, let me explain how to properly jack other people's shit.
As someone who has a lot of legit and non-legit stuff in the way of video games, records, model kits, movies, etc I can tell you there are ways of doing this kind of thing, and ways to not do it.
What you want to do is illegal, but hardly immoral. Your goal should be to piss off as few people as possible, and I'm pretty sure you can do this without issue. Copyright law pretty much relies on someone suing you directly. Avoid pushing people's buttons and they won't care about you pirating an ancient game nobody gives a shit about.
First off, don't go to a CD manufacturer and say, "Here is someone else's complete retail product, which is now a valuable collectible. Could you please blatantly pirate hundreds of copies for me? I need you to scan the manual, the CD, everything. Thanks!" You don't even have to actually talk to someone there to know they aren't supposed to do that. Just get a copy of their terms of service. You need to deliver them an ISO and a PDF. That's it. As far as they know, you made it.
Secondly, file all the numbers off it. Remove all the copyright info. This seems counterintuitive to some people at first, but its one thing to steal someone's shit, its another to say they made the thing, to say that this fake thing came from them, when it didn't.
Third, make it IMPOSSIBLE to confuse with the real thing. Don't be "subtle" at all. Put something like "Fan Produced Unofficial Product" on every single page, the CD, everything. Also, don't produce crap like obi or reply cards because, by nature, only legit products have such things. You need to make is painfully obvious that this is NOT the real thing. Everyone who buys it needs to understand it is fake fake fake. It doesn't have to be ugly at all, but it has to be PROMINENT. If you hide it, at all, the eBay re-sellers will hide it completely.
Its absolutely impossible that a few dozen of these things won't end up on eBay for stupid prices. Hell, recently a forum member here bought up all the leftover fake Sapphires, ones that didn't even have cases, and had misprinted CDs, GAVE THEM AWAY FOR FREE and STILL they are showing up on eBay for actual money. This was Sapphire too. Most US collectors are too obsessed with paying $100 for Bomberman 93 to even know that Sapphire exists. A boot of something like Dynastic Hero...these f*ckers will be on eBay, and they will be $100 each. And hey, that's fine, there's nothing you can do about it. What you can assure though is that nobody who can read will think this is a real product. The Sapphire boots were incredibly authentic looking. DON'T DO THIS.
Here is an example of a bootleg album I have:
This is the original LP of New Order BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert:
This concert LP was not released for sale in the US. It did come out in the UK on CD and LP, but it was quite heavily edited. Someone besides the BBC also recorded the concert (the quality sucks) and they made it a 2LP so the entire thing with all the idiotic between-song banter and profanity that results from being pumped full of drugs. In fact, "Pumped full of Drugs" would have been a good name for this, but they used that for the concert video instead.
Here is the bootleg:
Who is going to be pissed off about this product? Nobody. Meanwhile, the fans get what they want from it. This sort of thing is VERY common with bootleg live releases.
Another example: Old school anime fan subs.
Back in the early/mid 90s when the US anime industry was almost non-existent there was a huge tape trading scene in the American fan community. These people were true heroes. If there was a show people were dying to see (ie: Gundam) they would spend the $800 on the import laserdiscs for the entire series, find a translator, and made fansubs of the series. They would usually use a nice LD deck, a TelevEyes/Pro, and an Amiga (later, Sub Station Alpha in Windows 95) to make S-VHS "masters" which would then go to regional distributors who would duplicate to standard VHS and bring the stuff to conventions or accept mail order for only the price of the tapes and shipping.
Ok, so its an anarchical-synidcaist utopia, right? Well, the problem is that once these tapes were out there they could be duplicated forever. Meanwhile at the "normal" scifi and comic conventions the bootleggers who roamed those places, and had some of the largest booths, would duplicate the shit with fake covers and charge as much as $40 per tape. They didn't make the show, they didn't translate the show, they just skipped right to the "profit" stage...f*ck those guys.
However, all was not lost. If someone bought one of these tapes the first thing they say when they played it was a message put there by the actual fansubber, layed right over the opening credits, saying, "Hey, this is a fan sub. Not for resale. If you payed for it you got RIPPED OFF. Contact us@ouremail.fan.com for info.!" So even if a guy got the sub this way, there is no reason he should get his next one the same way. This steers him away from the bootlegger sleaze and towards the real fans.
Another example of blatant piracy done right: Garage Kits.
Fans of games, anime, Alien, whatever, like to have model kits of their favorite robots, monsters, skanky ninja, whatever. These days you can't sell jack shit without a license, but often times the official products lack something. Usually this is bottom line related.
This is where the garage kit industry comes in. If you want a model of something, and an official one was never made, some small fan circle may have made one themselves, usually from resin. How do they avoid being sued? Keep the numbers limited and don't directly compete with any real products that might exist.
The biggest modeling franchise in the world is Gundam. Bandai makes a SHITLOAD of official kits, but they have a pretty mainstream market in mind. What if you want a model of an MS that was never made? What if it was made, but it was shitty, or too small, or long out of production? Well, a company like G System, SMS, Vicious Project, Neograde, etc might make it for you instead, unlicensed of course. How do they avoid pissing off Bandai? Well, many times it will be in a weird scale. Most everything Gundam from Bandai is 1/60, 1/100, or 1/144 scale, with a few 1/220 stuff and even smaller for ships and things. The garage kit companies generally avoid these scales as to not compete directly. When they do make something 1/100 these days its usually a conversion kit that requires you buy another model, an official one from Bandai, to get the inner frame and other bits. This way Bandai still gets a sale and they have no right to complain.
If you want the one on the right, you have to buy the one on the left first:
Because of these efforts of politeness its easy to get hundreds of unlicensed Gundam models, and the end result is that the hardcore scene is entirely dependent on the legit and the bootleg. The most impressive Gundam kits ever, at this point, are mostly garage kits now. The "Real EX-S", for example, is the best f*cking thing ever. Bandai could never make something
LIKE THIS and thats OK in their book. Being 1/35 scale it takes up an entire corner of your house, it requires a huge amount of skill to build, and it costs $2,225. Everyone wins.
The other important thing about garage kits, and I suggest you follow suit, is to make them all in one limited batch, take preorders, and sell them all out at once. Most garage kits sold at shows in Japan are limited to 200 pieces and once they are gone they are gone.
Lastly, I would HIGHLY suggest you don't do Dynastic Hero, Bonk CD, etc. As fun as it would be to erode the value of the originals, these products did see an official release. Space Fantasy Zone was NEVER released, ANYWHERE. US, Japan, anywhere. Therefore, while your bootleg would still be a bootleg, it wouldn't be competing with anyone's real deal. Make garage kits of Gundam that Bandai never made mainstream versions of, to use an analogy. I think the world at large is more badly in need of playing unreleased games, prototypes, and fan translations than it is of playing Airzonk CD...which sucks anyway.
