You just never know what you will find at a yard sale.  Confirmed Legit by several collectors including myself.  100 percent legit.  

Wow. That's a great find!

I can only imagine what that will go for. So they were going to release the first one here at some point?

yes, has an official English translation and a run button for the devs that they never removed. I believe this is the forth or fifth one found?

I agree that there have been five or six. Cool backstory on this one. It was neat and scary to hold in my hand.

Very cool find!

Man that's awwsome, totally a dream find!

Weird, it has the same outer case as my Megaman 3 prototype. I wonder why.

Weird that they laser cut a Legend of Zelda gold cart! If more of these are around that gives me hope to one day own a copy. Mother/Earthbound is one of my favorite NES games.  

It's typical with the very common carts of that era to be hacked up to hold a pcb but still have quick access to the eprom for adjusting. 

I also have a mm3 like this my twin lol 
 

Wow, at a garage sale! I find it amazing that people are still finding this stuff from 30 ish years ago in attics and garages.

I'm skeptical because it sounds like the people at the garage sale knew that what they had was special and sold it at a yard sale anyway... like they are really just plants, there to confirm the made-up story to someone else. I know some "experts" have vouched for it, but people put way too much trust in proclaimed "experts" and ignore their own professional/expert intuition all the time. I recall an electronics professional who was duped by the "experts" talking about Ahmed Muhammed, the "clock boy."

Just about anyone with an appropriate prototype board could fake it. Heck, I could have faked it myself a couple years ago but was honest enough not to.

IMHO, the only way to verify something as rare and desirable as this is to dump the rom and verify that it's containing a different version than any other known proto-rom or fan translation.

If it's evidently a different compiled version of the game, then it's almost certainly legit. I'd be skeptical too. Still, if I saw a proto cart at a yard sale for a yard sale price, I'd still pick it up. Even if they did monkey with it and dump another game on it, proto PCBs are still nice to have.

earth bound roms had the "zero" added to avoid confusion with the SNES ROMs. I don't think this version is available online

Unfreakingreal!
Have the experts confirmed that this is a version of the game that isn't anywhere online in Rom form? So we know for sure that it's 100% legit? Why do I go to garage sales and find copies of Play Action Football and Top Gun, and other dudes find shit like this! LOL!

It is and has been since literally the 90s.

The reason you've seen that cart shape before is because that is an internal Nintendo of America test cart, used for stuff like evaluation and approval from third parties, playing ROMs for Nintendo Power, QA testing, etc. They're ugly and basic because they're only meant to be utilitarian, they were never meant to be seen by anybody. It's wide open so you can pop ROMs in and out frequently, which you might have to do several times a day depending on what you're doing.

By contrast, if a publisher was sending a cartridge to a magazine to review, if a developer was sending one to a potential publisher to get funding, etc. etc., they'd make it look a little prettier, and the majority of prototypes that have ended up in collector hands have been from these sources.

A handful of these were purchased from an eBay auction that came from a deceased Nintendo employee's estate sale, which might be where that Mega Man 3 came from. Unfortunately I don't believe the reseller who bought the lot ever got that provenance or passed it along to the buyers, which is a shame becuase that's really interesting. I only happen to know because I was talking to the seller before the auction closed (and they stopped replying to me once it was sold).

The rom without zero in the title is available online? Thats interesting. I thought they edited it to bypass the copy protection, and added that in while they were at it
 

The rom without the zero is definitely available online. Awesome find if legit, really curious if the code has differences from the roms currently out there. If it's identical, it may be tough convincing people without any provenance.

*edit*

Finally was able to watch the video, interesting story! Nice to see the battery is still holding saves!  

Out of curiosity, what kind of provenance would people want from this, other than the story in the video? Would provenance require like a signed document from this former employee and proof of her former employment?

the original rom has been around forever. the zero hacks were done early on to work around emulator issues.

I hadn't had a chance to watch the whole video (kept crapping out on me for some reason). Story seems believable, guess it just depends if he decides to sell it. The more info the better I suppose (and maybe not just for legitimacy reasons, history can be interesting too!).

I'm only suspicious because of the story seemingly having a contradiction (sellers who simultaneously know what they have and don't know what they have). Still possible, but gives me pause.

Even if 100% true, chances are low that it would have unique code that's more different than someone poking around with a hex editor could produce... but something like that would definitely lend provenance.

 

but then why bother making a fake just to sell it for cheap at a yard sale?  If the intention was to fool someone, they didn't really gain anything from it

Because they didn't. In that scenario, the yard sale story itself would be a ruse. "Hey, man, let's make a fake. Your job is to pretend that you sold it to me at a yard sale and 'confirm' it when people come asking." If I were trying to fake it I would do something similar. 

Again: I have been in position to fake this exact thing. Though I never considered it, I did consider how I would if I were so dishonest. Thinking of how you would do it is a good mental exercise for spotting other fakes and vetting "confirmation" stories.

What all did you do confirm its authenticity? Do you happen to have high res photos of the PCB?