Ah that is I quoted your post from the thread, and copied those forum tags along with your post in it.! ;)
The last time I saw that black game pak that I love-hate was about 5 to 6 years ago, during its final years the game was not able to save. When I saved my progress, there was a clock looking thing in the middle of the screen, while its hands rotating unstoppable like a broken watch, eerily similar to saving games in Gen IV and V. As I said it was unstoppable, so it was just frozen that way. While Professor Birch's bag (the scene where you choose your starter) was shown as back drop for unknown reason during that session.
The Pokemon's battle sprites, they all turned into a plain black block while their cries were still be able to be heard.
When we moved out I just left that game pak, since there was no more further use of it.
'fake 64 cartridges were never a problem for us', I do not have any similar consoles, so I'm afraid I don't know much about them. But I'm curious, do you meant it by the fake cartridge being able to function as a real game, as in no glitches, being able to save the games etc...?
Gen III games are considered as ultra rare like their preceding Generations! ;) 2 to 3 years ago, I was able to find a legit Japanese Ruby and bought it by a very expensive price comparing to the price when it first debut, I bought it by 500 HKD, in other words if you convert 500 HKD to USD today, it's around 64.45 USD! :O Unfortunately three months after purchasing that game, I lost it in a shopping mall.
As you said, that is why any Generations that was before Gen VI of main Pokemon games were not released on eShop, to avoid people of complaining unable to transfer their Pokemon to the current Generations. One may say that they could slightly alter the mechanics of older games to match the current ones, but that would create much ruckus if they did that. Knowing how insane most older generation fans about protecting the Metal and Color Generations.
I know right?{<3} Back in the days during my summer vacation, which was about my second to third year of elementary days, I saw ithe Gen III showcase from Pokemon.com, featuring Volbeat and Duskull, at that time they do not have localize names yet, were known as Barubito and Yomawaru. And much more, ha! Those were the days!
My first official real Game Cart was a Japanese Pearl, which unfortunately ended up having the same fate like the aforementioned Japanese Ruby... :(