Super Street Fighter 2 SNES Prototype Found?

[monkspider]

Hey guys,

I have discovered a very interesting SNES Super Street Fighter 2 specimen. My dad found it for me at a pawn shop or garage sale a long time ago, and I never really thought too much of it. Until tonight when i thought i would go on a retro SNES gaming kick, I decided to fire up the ol Super Street Fighter cart, and I noticed something very curious right off the bat, the fighters have their Japanese names, that is M. Bison is Vega, Balrog is M. Bison, etc. And then after the match was over, the victory messages were in Japanese! I went back to the title screen and the option menu was in Japanese too.

This most definitely is not a Super Famicom cartridge. I actually have another copy of Super Street Fighter II and it looks identical, save for one small thing i have noticed on the inside of the cartridge, the normal one has F(A)-48 and B-36. The one that has the Japanese features has F(A)-32 and B-56. I only follow the proto scene very casually so I'm not sure if this would mean anything.

Could this be some kind of prototype that was created prior to localization?

I am in the process of creating a short little video to show you guys what I mean.

[bazariah]

it's probably a case of case swapping.. where the innards of a jap version were installed into an american version

or possibly a pirate.. post up some piccies

[monkspider]

Is that pretty easy to do, that is putting a Super Famicom game's innards in an American cartridge?

Here is the video I promised.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_CNxpaJTMk

[madman77]

Pirate games are generally in the SFC style cases, but without seeing a close up of the quality of the label it's hard to tell. It's definitely not a prototype, though.

[rbudrick]

Yep, sounds like a pirate. Some folks couldn't wait to get SFII in their hands when it came out and thus an import market of pirated copies was created. Show us some pics of the board and the case and label.

-Rob