I found a rather interesting prototype in my basement this summer.

Tengen Tetris LICENSED BY NINTENDO Prototype




I think it's an great piece of Nintendo history, if not a good conversation starter.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Can you open the cart and take pix of the board? You may have a tengen game in a licensed cartridge.

Someone is going to ask you to post pictures of the cart/insides, so it might as well be me.

That's rad if it's legit!

*edit* FRRIIIICK, too slow.^

Very nice man! Yeah, pics would be awesome, but i don't believe there is a rom floating around anywere,


at any rate, looks like it has some sort of label?

The tengen version would not say licensed on the title screen.

I believe this is the same one that the Nolan's own.  A legit Prototype.

It's the definitely the prototype sent to the magazine I worked for, no doubts there.
I don't have the correct screwdriver to open it and this cart seem to be glued on one end.
I will have to go to friend's to do this. What is the best way to post pics here?
Does it make it worth less if I don't open it for fear of ruining it?

I doubt you would ruin it, but you probably won't have any success selling it.

Personally I would probably buy it anyway if I had the money. And open it myself. I've spent way too much on proto's already recently.

Didnt see that part

To load pics here go to my home>images & albums>new image then choose your pics to load to your gallery and once there uploaded you can click "opt" to the right of the pic and copy and paste the BBML code to your message, or do the same with an online picture host.

If you take the screws out and it doesn't want to come apart, I personally wouldn't risk damaging the cart. Just my opinion.

As you can see the EPROMSs are taped up and the bottom of the cart looks glued together.
Great measures were taken in the early days to make sure prototype games were not pirated.
I really think it would damage the cart to take it apart just for some pictures.
As far as I can tell there were only a handful of these ever made since there
were not that many gaming publications at the time.

This looks legit to me. I can see why you don't want to open it.

are you keeping this thing?

That is clearly a Duck Hunt cart with a bulging Famicom converter. Based on that info I will give you $20.00 shipped.

Seriously, if this is legitimate, it is an awesome find. Tengen Tetris is in my top 5 NES games ever, good luck man!

Not sure, I really want to keep it as it is an important piece of gaming history and I've had it for 23 years now.
I guess if the price and person is right, it may possible I would sell it. (and have terrible seller's remorse).

where did you get it?

if that were mine you would have to murder me to get it out of my hands.

Check out this old thread comparing differet versions of the Tengen Tetris protos
http://nintendoage.com/forum/mess...
I actaully have a Licensed Tengen Tetris that is totally different than any of these. I will post some screen shots when I have a chance

http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=9&...

The biggest question is, why would this be licensed by Nintendo? At this point, Tengen was well established as an unlicensed publisher. Maybe that MirrorSoft company was going to be the publisher, and then led to the infamous lawsuit that made this game rare.

It was a prototype, they very well, could have planned on it being Licensed, but Nintendo had their own plans.

Just because the title screen of a proto says it's licensed, doesn't mean, it is, just means they programmed it in.

Do you have any more games from the magazine you worked for? If you are serious about the magazine you worked for, then there is no doubt you have a legit proto

That thing is beautiful. Very cool story.

This has to be Photoshopped...right?

Very clearly legit, please do yourself a favor and DO NOT open it. There are now three known copies of this floating around, though builds vary:

Yours
Mine (and Matt's)
The copy Dalliest owns

Your copy appears to be the same build as mine, though Dalliest's differs a bit

None have been dumped publicly, so the ROM isn't out there.

If you are going to sell it, think long and hard about how much you'd let it go for. This is a very significant proto as far as history is concerned.

The label definitely looks hand cut/home printed.