NES prototype??

[leonk]

Is this a proto, or just a limited released game that was never made to NTSC??

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1385885855

[gamergary]

thats a homemade nes game i can get a bunch of them for some demo disks i don't need anymore and some donor carts. So the answer is no it isn't a prototype

[portnoyd]

Homemade cart. NES Open cart + 2 eproms + equipment to make cart = EB Zero.

Fun to have, not worth that much.

dave

[Captain Wrong]

found at a garage sale. Riiiiight. Just like the review of EB in this month's Game Informer says something like "we were able to secure a playable of this unrelased game" when you know damn well they just downloaded the ROM like the rest of us. :P

[TheRedEye]

Here is a game I picked up at a yard sale called Eathbound Zero.

Alright, that's fair, but then:

http://ebay2.ipixmedia.com/abc/M28/_EBAY_f79123ef1089afac81403b45188c0a40/i-2_B.JPG

Anyone see the "Zero" in there? Fucking liar, using the common internet name. "Is this rare? Dur?"

[udisi]

anyone wanna make me one of them there Earth bound Zero carts....it'd be pretty sweet to play on my actual nes

[nesman85]

i'd like on too, but i have the feeling nobody will make one for a fair price after seeing those idiots pay so much for it on ebay.

[Li Wang]

Did people actually fall for it this time? I think the last time the guy posted it the thing went up but only because people put in fake bids and then retracted them later to screw the guy the same way he was trying to screw some gullible sap.

[nesman85]

we won't know til the end, but i hope its the same people again and that they will retract their bids. this time i'll be there to buy it for 2 bucks :) if that's the case.

[CrazyImpmon]

I do have a detailed instruction explaining how to convert plain NES cart (with TKROM board) to EPROM based cart for Earthbound game. If I can find the file I'll post it. I could build a few myself except I'm short an EPROM burner.

EDIT: I sent this one before I checked the auction. From the official protos I've seen, it didn't have any front label but it had a generic white label on the back with a print out reading Earthbound. Not the gold label like that auction has.

[nesman85]

From the official protos I've seen, it didn't have any front label but it had a generic white label on the back with a print out reading Earthbound. Not the gold label like that auction has.
uhh, you've never seen an official proto of this game.(here it comes)

[Nespit]

nope ur right. there r no official proto's of this game. only homebrews and nice proto lookalikes..

[Li Wang]

Alright, let's go ahead and start it up again. This time let's try to keep it friendly.

I still have yet to see solid proof that the original "fake" was a fake. There's just too much evidence both for it being fake and against it being fake to say either way for sure. Some of the things that have been cited as proof it's a fake actually support the opposite side too.

If both the code itself and the cart are fake, how is the incorrect 1994 date proof of anything? It would take months for a person to hack all that text, censor the game exact same way Nintendo did back in the day, and even program in that nifty copy protection scheme. You'd think after all that work they'd be willing to bother taking an extra minute to print another label after they got it wrong.

Of course, the concept of the code itself being genuine dosen't exactly add up either. Why would it have been completely translated with only one small mention of the game's existence in Nintendo Power ever being featured? Games back then often just had one Japanese translator making a quick, rough translation to start with, but the translation is way too polished for it to be that.

Regarding the actual (alleged) board it was on, I do find it interesting that on such an enviable item oddities that can and often have been explained ("how did feature X end up on proto Y?") were automatically taken as some kind of undeniable proof it was fake. There's really not much to compare it to since first party Nintendo protos getting smuggled out is something that happens once in a blue moon. I really don't want to start any fights here, but half the people convinced without a doubt it was a fake and who started this all in the first place were running around scraping around for reasons to prove it way before Andy even (allegedly) opened the damn thing.

If that Mariotti character did fake it himself, he's one strange dude. The only completely logical explanation for the cart I can come up with is that he did it as an unbelievably detailed Kaufman-esque prank. Money was obviously not the motive as he sold it privately for rather cheap. Perhaps this is indeed true and he left all the imperfections around as clues for more observant people to notice.

There's so much more to go into and analyse that it would take
pages of text, but there's still just too much ambiguous information to explain without a doubt that the thing is fake or real. I've pretty much thought about every possible situation, so if anyone feels like arguing about something specific go ahead and bring it up.

[TheRedEye]

Well, I'm under the impression that this is NOT an actual, authentic, first party NOA prototype, but I do believe that whatever code contained within is "legit," though probably not a final project planned for release (my reasoning: nothing past 1985 is missing the (c) Nintendo of America, this is).

The head of the project said that the game was never even close to being completed, and I doubt he'd have any reason to cover this up. My guess, and I know how abstract of a concept this is, is that someone kind of took it up as a personal project to fully translate the game, and this cart is merely his work burned onto a Tecmo NBA cartridge. My other guess is that Nintendo secretly decided to revive the project in 1994, perhaps using a different team, but cancelled it due to the NES market being more or less dead. I mean, hell, I don't know about you guys, but the roads here are practically paved in shrinkwrapped copies of Zoda's Revenge. Earthbound would have probably shared a similar fate.

The cart itself, however, seems to be a crafty fake. Whoever made that was doing it for some cash.

I really wish the owner would just come clean, this is getting irritating.

I know I've avoided a lot of issues here, but like Li Wang I'm perfectly ready for anything. Bring it on.

[rbudrick]

Does anybody actually have pics of the board, etc?

This would sure make a better case for either side.

-Rob

[rbudrick]

Also, does anyone know how to get a hold of the original owner? perhaps we can trace back from there.

-Rob

[TheRedEye]

No and no, in that order.

[Nespit]

I won't go over the evidence of the proto being fake or not again, but the fact that shigeru's name pops up on the cartridge says enough...:-)
like he is one of the testers..:-I

Anyway, keep away from those earthbound "proto/pirate" cartridges or whatever u wanna call them. It is a very gray area that I rather avoid....

[DreamTR]

WHat I can add to this discussion about the cart, which many already know besides the fact that the head of product development himself knows about the ROM on the web, and admits that it was nowhere near the end of translation, look at it this way, it's not THAT hard to translate something these days, Final Fantasy II, Sweet Home, I mean, these are all translated, it's not like this is a big deal in that sense. Now, as for the "original" cart sold on ebay, after numerous yelling at the guy in Florida who bought it for $1000, he opened it up, and saw what I told him he would see, basically A Tecmo NBA Basketball board rigged to work for that game, like all or most of the others out there. He sold it immediately, and that is the end of it. Maybe the ROM was snuck out of Nintendo, and is real, maybe it's a hack like I am 99% sure of, but either way, there is no TRUE prototype cartridge of the game, same goes for Hero Quest and some others...

[CPUWIZ]

I don't know jack sh*t about NES games but have you guys ever considered that maybe the guy who programmed the game or maybe the producer has a prototype of it ? It may even be on a board converted from another game, what is the difference ?

I know for a fact that the prototype I just sold for the SNES (Batman ... unreleased) was used mainly by the Road Runner team before that. Does that not make it a proto ?

So I ask you this, just because some collector says so, is it true ?

8)

[nesman85]

@cpu, i'm not sure i understand what you're saying. what would the road runner team using your proto have to do with it being real or not?

[CPUWIZ]

The programmer that did Batman recycled the EPROM cart to do his game, does it make it a fake ?

Maybe that's a little bit more clear. :D

[TheRedEye]

This is a first party Nintendo prototype game on a third party Tecmo commercial board. Yes, it's fake. If this came from Nintendo of America, I think they'd have their own boards to use. I seriously doubt a Nintendo employee would have to run to Wal Mart and pick up a copy of Tecmo NBA Basketball to put his game onto a cart.

[nesman85]

right on the money.

[CPUWIZ]

This is a first party Nintendo prototype game on a third party Tecmo commercial board. Yes, it's fake. If this came from Nintendo of America, I think they'd have their own boards to use. I seriously doubt a Nintendo employee would have to run to Wal Mart and pick up a copy of Tecmo NBA Basketball to put his game onto a cart.

That makes perfect sense, I wasn't paying too much attention as to who made the game.

[TheRedEye]

No offense, incidentally, if I sounded snide. You admitted you didn't know anything about NES, I wasn't bagging on you for that.

[ubersaurus]

Random thought: Does anyone have any information on this "Space War" game for the Famicom? All I know is that it didn't come out. Is it a port of THE space war?

[TheRedEye]

Well, Space War was being developed and published by Nintendo of Japan as an early title, so I doubt it.