Sega Mega Drive Golden Axe II Proto Cart

[Johanmus]

Hi there all. I bought a used Sega Mega Drive System some years ago form ebay the seller was a Salvation Army seller. The acution was for the system and one inculded cart Golden Axe II When I got the Mega Drive and checked everything I've noticed the cart had a made at home label. At first I though well another copy of Golden Axe II to my collection by some kid that scratched the label of the cart and created a new made at home one. But I checked the form of the cart an it was like a PAL Mega Drive Cart and it was a lot heavier. So ok I poped the cart to the Mega Drive for testing and the first thing I noticed is that the SEGA Logo that appears in almost all of the Mega Drive / Genesis games flashed up quickly the only thing you can see is the TM (trade mark) at the end but really fast and then the game begins. So ok lets play I checked up the options and everything is exactly the same as the home version of the game. Finished setting up and got to play the normal game. When I selected my character and pressed start I noticed another strange thing, it has a level select after pressing start a number 1 appears so you can change with button A from 1 to 9 so ok Golden Axe II has only 6 levels max and 7 is last boss so I selected 8 and pressed start and it starts the music of the last level and it hangs so ok I powered off and cleaned up the cart and retry and the same, so then tested with num. 7 and the last stage starts perfectly so I checked with 9 and to my surprise it's a level that is not on the home version and I moved the character arround and it stucks no bosses no enemies no thing only a piece of the level. So ok I started the game to check from level 1 and it plays fine but when I finished up the game I noticed another strange thing. No ending credits only the words AABBCCDDFF where it has to say the names of the programmers, testers and so on. and no "Presented By: SEGA" as the home version. So I opened the cart and noticed 4 EEPROMS labeled from 1 to 4. One other thing the game has no region lock so I can play it on my NOMAD too. I will upload pictures from the cart, board, and gameplay I'm planning on selling this cart. If anyone has more info on Golden Axe II Prototypes that can help please share :-)

[Johanmus]

I uploaded some pics of the game cart I will upload some pics of gameplay soon I need to get my MD out of the box to get some pics of the game hehe I will upload them as soon as I can :-)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...1/DSC02107.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...1/DSC02109.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...1/DSC02109.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...1/DSC02127.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...1/DSC02130.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...1/DSC02128.jpg

[CMA Death Adder]

Looks like a cheap Chinese bootleg to me. Cheesy poor quality label, non-standard PCB. No SEGA logo means the bootleggers hacked it out of the code which they do all the time in attempt to avoid any legal hangups. The level select + etc. that you mentioned could mean they also hacked it to add additional "features".

[Samantha]

I dunno, I've seen that same setup on an official sega proto I once saw. Lemme dig up a pic.....

[Guy Bramsworth]

The copyright info being missing sounds odd, but the chips make it look like a proto. Do pirates typically bother putting labels on the IC Chips(I think that's what you call them?) to designate their order? Those labels are covering up the windows, in other words these are EPROMs. I'm not an expert at that stuff but that's my understanding of it. And NO pirates would ever use EPROMs.

I wouldn't dismiss it being a proto because of the label either. Some protos have had labels before, the Nick Arcade Sonic 2 that drx found for one. Plus tons of NES games And as far as the level select thing goes, that's not uncommon at all in protos. I doubt it was hacked in by pirates.

I think the EPROMs speak for themselves. This isn't any pirate, it's a prototype.

[todesengel]

Not denying if it is a proto or not but, the fact that there's no copyright info on the title screen and the obvious bootleg cart casing makes it look and sound like a bootleg to me. Then again who knows somebody may have thrown the PCB into an old bootleg casing.