have your purchasing habits changed due to emulation / flash cards?

[Black Tiger]

Emulation is great if you cannot get access to the real thing. 

This is exactly what I'm doing for the US Magical Chase. Bought a $45 Flash Card that plays in real hardware and saved thousands over the real deal. Best part is, the Flash Card fits in an original HuCard sleeve, and goes in a case with a repro manual without any issues. Looks as though I have the authentic game sitting on my shelf, until you open it and see the chip.

I just refuse to pay what that game is going for (if I could even find a copy), and emulation works perfect for this occasion

Is it just to feel like you have a complete US collection?  The way I look at this, I mean you're already throwing almost $50 around, might as well just put in another $150 and get a Japanese Magical Chase and you can still say you have the real thing.  Though if the Japanese version was $400+ I would probably do the same thing you did. 

I'm not trying to say the collector mentality is wrong though, just wondering.

It's not the real thing and it's not the exact same game. You can't even play it on a TG-16.

[-D-]

Isn't it mostly just the graphics in the first stage look more "cute 'em up" in the JP version, an enemy or two were completely changed, and a few other minor sprite differences?  Or was there something else?

I watched some youtube videos and the TG16 & PCE versions still look to be 95%+ the same game.

[Senshi]

I've thought about that before as a booty project; it'd be sweet as hell to have both versions available from a load screen, and even better if a slide show could be added showing the differences (preferably side by side using high-res mode like in Chris's demo).  If I could program more than my VCR, I'd make it happen. 

Programming VCR's, now there's a flashback