Hey guys! I lucked out at the flea market today, and I believe I may have found 2 prototypes. I just wanted to share, and see what you guys thought!
The Pitfall one has a switch, and only works with the Pitfall chip if it's in the 32K position. I have tested it, and it is indeed Pitfall and works great. It appears to be the final version of the game, and has a 1982 copyright date in the game. Also the Atari 2600 cart face and end label are made out of metal despite the rest of the cart being standard atari 2600 plastic! There is the standard Atari cart plastic underneath the metal labels. The "16K AND 32K UNIVERSAL PROGRAM CARTRIDGE" Atari cart that the "Pit Fall 32K" chip sits in appears to be something that was used to quickly swap out games, and change the settings to test different games. I tried to find some info online about it, but I haven't come up with anything yet. The end label side of it reads, "16-32 CARTRIDGE". The settings on the switch are "16K U, L, 32K" and then it says, "Close" and has an arrow that points to the side of the left side of the cart, but it appears to be pointing at nothing? There's also a weird circular area carved into it here that leads into the open space of the cart.
The F1 Race game I bought because at first I thought it was a cheap chinese pirate, but after picking it up I noticed a couple oddities. First it has a legitimate looking case that actually reads "Nintendo Gameboy tm" rather than just "GAME BOY", which I see on a lot of pirated gameboy games. The other thing is this was unusually heavy, and the label felt different like it was lacking some of the gloss. Not to mention it's the japanese label. After opening it up though I thought it may be a prototype. It says "F1" on the chip in the picture, and the game does work. I haven't noticed any differences in it yet. Any idea if this is actually a prototype?
Thoughts?