New Leaf Entertainment "for" Genesis?

[gamesboro]

I think you got a hell of a deal, that cart has GOT to be rare as hell. Hold onto it.

[RCM]

Can you post a pic of that 32X case?

By the way, that is a good deal (mostly due to Spidy), even if you didn't talk him down much!

Here are pics of Spidey and the 32X case. Unfortunately, I couldn't much info on this case either.

[PapaStu]

I bet that the 32X case is just one of those rental cases that spring up fairly regularly. At one point i'd bet there was foam there to keep the unit in place for rental from BB or the like.

[vintagegamecrazy]

That cart has to be ultra rare! We need that listed in the DB now too

Great find man, hold onto that thing!

[cooky560]

Cool find dude!

[RCM]

I bet that the 32X case is just one of those rental cases that spring up fairly regularly. At one point i'd bet there was foam there to keep the unit in place for rental from BB or the like.

Did Blockbuster actually rent 32X systems? It (the case) seems perfect for Genesis and 32X carts, not hardware.

@vintagegamecrazy

I'm going to take some high res photos of the cart for the collecting community, but likely won't end up holding onto it. I don't really collect, so a "super rare" cart with The Jungle Book ripped in doesn't do it for me.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

Blockbuster rented 32X systems and games at one point, along with the Genesis in the same case I believe. It looks like there are indents for both in the case, and I remember rental cases like that at my local Blockbuster.

[mindlesspunk77]

Rob it is a rental case with the foam ripped out for sure. It looks just like my Virtual Boy case I have and Saturn case I used to have. Still a cool piece for carry on luggage maybe? =)

[Retailgeek]

Hey... I can tell you what New Leaf was.

Back in the early 90's Blockbuster wanted to put databases of music in the stores and make CD's on demand for customers. The music labels didn't really want to sell their music that way (this was many years before iTunes), and so Blockbuster did a proof of concept for Sega video games. The company that developed the solution was called New Leaf Entertainment, and I used to work for them.

The idea was that stores could just carry one cartridge, and we'd burn whatever game you wanted to rent on it for the 3 days, then you returned the cartridge we could burn a different title on it for the next customer. We actually had to reverse engineer the cartridges (Sega didn't agree to work with us until after we developed a proof of concept demo). The cartridge you found was from our test market in Columbia, South Carolina where the system was deployed in 10 stores. (By the way, someone owes some serious late fees for that cartridge, lol).

The in-store burner was expensive in 1992, but it just took a couple mins to burn a title. The problem with the system was that every new big title that came out back then would have some new feature in it (more memory, etc...) that previous titles didn't have. So as soon as you made a standard blank cartridge, it was incompatible with the hottest most in demand titles. Then of course the whole world went to optical media. And Blockbuster gave up trying to get content owners to let is distribute it's content digitally.

Back in the day we made a promotional video with Dennis Miller, which you can see here:

Thanks for reminding me of the good times. It's cool that the cartridge still works!

[portnoyd]

I think the real question is do you have any more of these carts or the in-store burner.

Well, that and is New Leaf = Game Factory?

[sfchakan]

Found this via Google.

Evidently Game Factory is the name of the game cart machine. Music Hall is the name of the music CD machine. New Leaf was the company created by IBM and Blockbuster. According to this Billboard article, at least.

RetailGeek also posted a little more information on his blog in the comments section here.

[TheClash603]

I never heard of these burnable carts before, and I definitely think it sounds pretty damn cool.

Economically, it doesn't seem to make sense. I imagine the machine to write onto the carts was very expensive at the time, and I bet Blockbuster got great rates on rental games.

Regardless, I'd love to get my hands on one!

[sfchakan]

Compiled a bunch of information here, along with new stuff from RetailGeek. Definitely sounds like it a was a cool idea. Too bad it never took off.

[Schiggidyd]

Compiled a bunch of information here, along with new stuff from RetailGeek. Definitely sounds like it a was a cool idea. Too bad it never took off.

Thanks for the mention! I was glad to help spread some information about this exceedingly rare item!
It's still sitting safely in a custom case, in my drawer, with all my other hard-to-find games.

I'm considering asking the National Video Game Museum if they would like to display it on-loan, but I'm nervous about ownership or theft (not from the owners, from people).

[Niku-Sama]

i'd just sit on it like an egg

I wonder if Nintendo stole this idea for the SF memory cassette used in japan

[SparTonberry]

Weren't Famicom pirates doing something similar in the '80s? (a sort of pirate cart that shows up occasionally on ebay, usually mistaken as a prototype, notable for having EEPROM windows and a switch on it)
I think I've even seen an article on the device used to copy the games (though I assume it would only work on NROM games, which is basically just the first generation of FC games)

[dra600n]

I certainly can't, and imagine the hardware to do so is long gone. I'm waiting for my confirmation from Assembler to post some info on their site.

I have a custom programmer for my flash carts, I wonder if this is compatible with it. Do you have the means to open it up and show us the front and back of the PCB?

[Schiggidyd]

I have a custom programmer for my flash carts, I wonder if this is compatible with it. Do you have the means to open it up and show us the front and back of the PCB?

My copies board is right here, the important side of it anyway.
http://segascream.com/newleaf-entertainment/

[Edmond Dantes]

What's so great about Web of Fire? I remember seeing a review in Gamepro that said that game was average at best (reviewer seemed to be a fanboy as he lamented that there's almost no really good Spidey games).

[celerystalker]

What's so great about Web of Fire? I remember seeing a review in Gamepro that said that game was average at best (reviewer seemed to be a fanboy as he lamented that there's almost no really good Spidey games).

It's not that it's good so much as it is the most expensive US 32X release.