ODD SNES Game Labels

[Space Fury]

At an auction house in California, I won 162 Super Nintendo cartridges that were described as being blank.
The picture of the box of carts showed several carts, all of which had no labels, so I took a shot something could be in there.

When I received the box of carts, I found samples like this in there in yellowed and dirty plastic cartridge bags.

I don't know what these are. The ones marked as blank, DO work as do all but 15 of the ones I bought.
There are other games in the box that have no labels at all.

I played most of the games pretty far through, so I know they are complete.

Back of each cart is embossed with the care info instead of having a label.

Please let me know if you or anyone else in the community have seen anything like this before.

Some say Must be returned to qc, some say Majesco Sales Inc.

Thanks

[Richter Belmount]

What comes to the top of my head about these labels is , I think I might of seen them at a local rental store around california or funco for games with damaged labels, which is more of a guess. My final guess is a local place around here called game quest if I remember it was one of the 1st hardcore video game stores I ever visited that had games from every system and every import that came out.

[Tupin]

They look like the cartridges that were put in demo kiosks.

[squirrelnut]

This is just speculation but to me, QC would mean Quality Control. Could these be final protos?

[dao2]

they don't look like proto labels :S Especially since they all look the same. Maybe they're all rentals like the guy says, weird that some of them have different stuff on it though.

[fpbrush]

But you would think with the "must be returned to QC" it implys they may be some sort of testers? QC = Quality Control ? Hopefully someone on here knows -- interesting find! What did you do with the other 150 or so blank cartridges ; ?

[Tupin]

I don't remember the rental stores replacing labels entirely for rentals, I just remember them putting super-adhesive stickers on them.

My bet is that they were for in-store demos.

[Vectorman0]

I'm not a big SNES guy, but I think these may all have to do with Majesco's rereleases.

[MrSparkle]

has to be returned makes me think that they may be review copies. Perhaps this lot originated from a mid 90s gaming mag.

[rpepper9]

Grab a shovel and start digging. I have seen these in used game stores and I know there is a thread about them on the DP.

I think I remember (a bit foggy) that these were extra cartridges that were left over after the production run, and that they were labeled in this way because they were sold off to used game stores, not as new. They were left leftovers that were not packaged in the retail boxes and just sold off. Almost like "production seconds".

I may be wrong, but depending on the price, still a nice find.

[Space Fury]

I have all of the cartridges that were in that box. 147 worked and 15 didnt.
44 of them dont have any labels at all and never did as there is no adhesive evident.
The others have labels like what I posted. Some say QC, some just say the game title and others have the title with Majesco on it. None have regular SNES labels. From some info I gathered, they all have embossed care info on the back of the cart just like Majesco re-releases do. I thought these could be In-House Test Carts, but have no way to know this. Others have mentioned they could be In-Store demo releases. That would be good too. They certainly are not rentals. Why would they take the original labels off and replace with something like this?

[MrSparkle]

Anyway you cut it, a cool change from the norm. Dont suppose youve opened one up to compare it side by side to another production cart?

[icarwngs55]

Having done my fair share of research on 'in store demos' I have never seen demos that looked like this, so I highly doubt they are demos. Nintendo is the one who released demos, not the production company, and they had a very solid system on how demos were released. These labels don't appear to be 'in store demos,' but I could see them being sample carts sent to Video Game Magazines or such.

In the end I have no 100% answer.

Mike

[MrSparkle]

I cant imagine nintendo allowing them to go to retail sale in ANY form as they dont have the nintendo seal of quality on them. Plus they look about as appealing as master system carts (to the average consumer, id be all over these things haha). I would love to see the internals as my one other theory is pirate carts.

[JLukas]

Do any of the carts feel a bit heavy? You could open those up (and the non-working ones) to check if there's eprom boards inside. If there are, the game could contain some gameplay differences.

[AB Positive]

Damn... don't know what to think but when I worked at gamestop I saw one of these - Contra III in fact. That's what jogged the memory. Not that I've seen any others or know anything else but... I work in New Hampshire. Don't know how it made the cross country trip to our used bin.

[Blitzwing256]

Frogger is your big clue, as it was only a majescco release. pretty much like a few have said majescco actually released a bunch of the games like that, although the only one i've seen retailwise is pacman2

[Goodwill Hunter]

There are still some of these at a local used record store, Record Head. They had most of the titles you display, and I believe they were in plastic bags. They didn't seem to sell very fast, but I have no idea where they got them from.

Rich

[Space Fury]

What state is Record Head located in?
What titles do they have and how much were they?

I have not opened any of the carts. I dont have the right tool to do so.

Why are some written on as Blank when theyre not?
Why do some have return to qc on them?

Thanks for everyones help so far....

[MrSparkle]

castlevania also has a sticker which says ok on it. which would go inline pretty well with some kind of quality control idea.