Yoshi's Island proto

[van_halen]

I've been talking with a former Nintendo employee for quite some time now, and managed to make a deal about buying his internal copies of Earthbound and Secret of Mana, as well as an evaluation prototype board of Yoshi's Island (NTSC) that he had.

Link (http://groups.msn.com/YoshisIslandproto)

As you can see, the Yoshi ROM board has got three DIP switches up in the right corner. Does anyone have a clue about what functions they control?

[van_halen]

Corrected link:

http://groups.msn.com/YoshisIslandproto/shoebox.msnw

[theshizzle3000]

Congrats on getting your hands onto a earthbound promo that is a really nice pick up. How much did you get it for?

[Predatorxs]

Thats a nice find, i had one of those earthbound proto/preview carts i sold it to another DP'er a few months back.

Congrats again, if your looking to sell the yoshis island, keep me in mind. ;)

[MichaeltheGreat]

The snes proto board I have with a switch determines the size of the eproms. It does look like you have way too many switches for just that. Since I haven't seen a snes proto with that many switches, I would assume that it has something to do with the 3dfx.

Could you open up the mana and show us pictures of the internal boards for my curiosity?

[NESaholic]

Nice score man, congrats on the find it all looks good.
I wonder how many SNES Earthbounds there are now, last week another one popped up.

[van_halen]

Thanks, I've taken some photos of them here. Link (http://groups.msn.com/YoshisIslandproto/shoebox.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=8). They both have production ROMs, and are hand-soldered onto the boards, just like your (pred) EB demo was, right?

Nes-a-holic: The third one you are talking about, is that the one that was found in Sweden, discussed on Nesworld?

[Predatorxs]

Thanks, I've taken some photos of them here. Link (http://groups.msn.com/YoshisIslandproto/shoebox.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=8). They both have production ROMs, and are hand-soldered onto the boards, just like your (pred) EB demo was, right?

Nes-a-holic: The third one you are talking about, is that the one that was found in Sweden, discussed on Nesworld?

Yeah, CoreyCorey has it now, it was hand-soldered in one area, and it was production roms, but some of the rom chips were differently numbered, as well.

And any more info on that Yoshis island proto would be good, have you dumped it yet? to see if there's any difference between the retail ver and yours? ;)

Once again nice find! :-P

[van_halen]

Actually, my european SNES wouldn't play it even with an NTSC to PAL converter, so yesterday I had to borrow my friends Super Famicom to make it work. I have played through the first stages, but haven't manage to find any differences to the NTSC release yet. I'd like to have it dumped, but those Super Wild Cards are so %#¤!@ expensive! I have even heard that they don't even handle Super FX2 games.

[MichaeltheGreat]

They're socketed eproms. Just take them out and dump them an eprom programmer... :)

[NESaholic]

Thanks, I've taken some photos of them here. Link (http://groups.msn.com/YoshisIslandproto/shoebox.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=8). They both have production ROMs, and are hand-soldered onto the boards, just like your (pred) EB demo was, right?

Nes-a-holic: The third one you are talking about, is that the one that was found in Sweden, discussed on Nesworld?

Yeah a guy named Game Genie got a box for free while cleaning up Bergsala distrubution center, if i heard correctly.

[NESaholic]

I hate double posts, sorry you guys.