I thought the sellers knew she worked for Nintendo, not that they possessed some rare and valuable proto item.

 

That's exactly what sounds fishy. If they allege that this "Barbara" person worked for Nintendo and they remember enough details about the cartridge to recall then they had to know that it was special before unwittingly selling it for cheap.

Not saying it's made up, but it's so easy to claim/make up that it doesn't help conclude anything unless more of the details can be substantiated. It still sounds plausible even if there is a small reason to doubt. Can we fully ID or talk to this "Barbara" person?

I don't think her team would have been tasked with acquiring the distribution rights to Earthbound since it was already essentially 1st/2nd party, but she probably had multiple roles there and that alone wouldn't cast doubt.

Earthbound protos have been found in that area similarly in the past, which both lends credibility and suspicion, especially since it is so easy to fake with a $200 prototype board.

 

Here is a link to another video featuring this prototype.

Well in literature, redheads were always the bad guys with bad traits... lol.

We got them from the same seller.
 

I hope the above video can put to rest its authenticity in question.  It is real, and was cool to have in may hands to check out!

Neither video went into any detail about what was done to authenticate this prototype. All I got from the videos was some Internet guys looked at it and said it was legit and they dumped it and it is identical to a publicly available ROM. First off, the fact that it is identical to publicly dumped ROM is not evidence that it is legit. The fear, with this type of prototype, is that it started its life as another prototype and was later alerted for fame and profit.

Without a description of what the Internet guys are looking at or for, their testimony means little. They could be looking and seeing a legit prototype longboard and thinking, "they don't have these in reproductions." While that is enough to authenticate something like Mendal Palace, it is not enough here because of the potentialy high reward for subterfuge. If however, they would post high resolution photos of this prototype and another known example and say something like, "It looks like these prototypes were made at the same time. Look, these EPROMs are from the exact same lot!" that would be some golden verifiable evidence.

So again I ask, what did you do to authenticate this prototype?
 

In true form, you never can make everyone happy. In the 25 years of attending major video game expos, talking to prototype collectors and experts who work at Nintendo, as well as seeing countless authentic prototypes in person, I can tell you that this prototype is authentic. Mark my words. Some of the ones who are questioning the authenticity of this prototype will be the very same ones who will be bidding on this when it is sold  .

It is worth noteing that the date code on one of the chips appears to be 920102, which I think (but cannot be absolutely sure without a datasheet specifiying it) means 1992, January the 2nd.

Oh I don't doubt that at all. But I think it's fair to question if it's something they are interested in purchasing. You want to be sure your money is being spent wisely right?

I'm not saying it is or isn't real btw, I am not qualified to make that judgement myself

Again, we can't possibly say that conclusively based on what was shared in either of these two videos or this thread. If you have more reasons, please share. My gut feeling is that it's legit, but there's literally nothing here that I couldn't have faked myself with different prototype boards over the years. I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that it's 100% confirmed legit based on what you've told us so I must caution you for going that far.

Yes, you've talked to experts and prototype collectors before, but you're also talking to them now, and we know just how easily an Earthbound prototype can be faked with another prototype board. It's literally a matter of gutting a Zelda II shell and using an EPROM with believable date codes. It's kinda funny to see a couple repro makers tell us that it's legit... because they didn't use the wrong ROM dump.  

A game can be entirely legit but impossible to prove and, unfortunately, that could be the case here. The yard sale interview doesn't change that. It's exactly the kind of story they would try to sell us on.

What might be convincing? More info from elsewhere on "Barbera" or "GC6" perhaps. One of the other protos being shown to have the exact same board would help. We already know that the ROM isn't different but if it were and the difference were significant enough (not just a hex edit/CRC fix) then it would be pretty convincing.

All that said, I still feel that it is *likely* real and would bid accordingly but I would not assume that based on anyone else telling me that it is "100% legit because... experts." I have to question their expertise if they make such claims based on the same evidence I see. I must, therefore, consider my own conclusion to be more reasoned than theirs. Guess that means I'm an expert too! Who knew?  

 

Can you be specific as to what in your vast experience leads you to say it is authentic?  

Of course the people who are thinking about bidding are the ones most interested in verifying it. They are the ones putting their cash on the line. It matters a lot less if you don't have anything on the line. 

It is an authentic prototype board, it has EPROMs that are appropriately dated, and the data that is on it is believable. Outside of a written testimony from the original owner or whatever I literally don't think there's any other way to verify whether a prototype is "authentic." Yeah, in theory they could have overwritten some other game's EPROMs, but I mean, that's the reality of treating reusable service parts as hot collectibles.

that's a good way to look at it. I mean, the ROM is on there, what's the difference if it was put there by a Nintendo employee years ago, or some random asshole looking to make money? This is a risk you take buying Protos, and if you don't like it.. maybe don't buy Protos?

Maybe it is my screen, but I can't read any of the text on any of the chips. Are you looking at the videos?

 

Oh, haha, I just realized I was mistaking this one with Dragon's Lair in the other thread. I have not personally seen the numbers on these chips, no.

Ha ha,  I was rewatching the videos trying to figure out if I missed a close up.

Well, I think my point still stands. Without actual provenance (which I'd argue this one has), the only expertise when determining a prototype's "authenticity" is:

1. It uses an official development board
2. The manufacturing date of the EPROMs pre-dates the game's release/known evaluation period
3. The label/handwriting/shell/EPROM stickers/etc. match a previously seen prototype believed to be authentic

Feel free to add something I missed here, but I think that's it. You're all prototype experts now.

There are exceptions to all three of these rules!

- An unlicensed game is obviously not going to have purchased development equipment from Nintendo
- But even that can have exceptions, i.e. Tengen still having leftover parts from when it was a licensee, a contractor having leftover parts from a licensed job, etc.
- A licensed developer may have saved money by purchasing a retail game and gutting it (Nintendo dev pats are notoriously expensive)
- An unreleased game may have been re-evaluated for release after its known cancellation (this actually happened with Earth Bound)
- The developer of a game might have burned themselves a copy well after a game's cancellation (is that "authentic"? What if it is the only copy in the world of that game?)
- A damaged cartridge of someone's personal copy of a game might have been repaired with newer EPROMs
- A developer may have continued improving on a cancelled (or shipped!) game as a hobby/side project (I have done this personally!)
- The company used a different label printer/it came from its European office rather than American/it was an internal test cartridge so they didn't use a label

It is incredibly easy to fake a prototype, SIGNIFICANTLY more so than faking a retail game. It just comes down to common sense I think: like, if I were faking an Earth Bound prototype, I would have mimicked one of those jollerancher ones instead of using/copying one of those laser-cut internal cases that few collectors even know exist.

Most "prototypes" really are just some common spare parts glued together, and if you're using the correct parts, there's zero distinction between something burned in 1990 and something burned yesterday. My personal feeling is that treating them as collectibles is kind of silly, but I also recognize that I have my own biases and experiences that aren't necessarily the same as yours. I can see how a Mother fan (and I am one myself! a big one!) might feel some kind of religious awe holding an "authentic" prototype of one of the games, but without provenance, I just look at it and just see like, an intern at Nintendo's lab taking some data from a computer and transferring it to some EPROMs and popping it on a board so that someone else can play it. That's kind of cool I guess, but to me it's no different than like, a DVD mastering studio burning a DVD-R of the film for internal testing. On its own it's just a copy of a DVD, and at best it uses a cool custom label on the front that has the name of the mastering studio on it. But if you can somehow substantiate that, I don't know, this is the actual disc that was mailed to Tarantino for his final approval on the Pulp Fiction DVD, then it actually feels like something kind of special.

Like I said, I'm biased, my only interest in prototypes is recovering unique data so that we can discover new things about our past and celebrate this medium that we love. But I think a lot of new collectors don't understand what a "prototype" actually is, and they could use some education.

I understand your position on prototypes as collectibles, and respectfully disagree. For me, a prototype is like an original work of art, and all the retail copy's are like prints. Someone at the developer hand made these, and to me it feels like a piece of art and a piece of gaming history all rolled into one. I understand if this is a rare sentiment. This hobby isn't for everyone, but that is why I love it. The idea behind your earlier post is not lost on me. When I read It, I grinned and thought, "Well put."

As far as they said in the video they only checked the board and the data. I was hoping that if we asked, they might tell us what else they might have done.

For example just from the information on the EPROMs you could check the dates. You could potentially put the known prototypes in chronological order. You could also check the speeds. Are the EPROM speeds consistent with the other known examples? How consistent are the date spreads? How about brand?

Frank, while I definitely understand where you are coming from, I can't put it past people to generate unique fakes for monetary gain. People are faking $50 games, and if they are motivated enough, as in this case, they could certainly go the extra mile. No offense at all from this (moreso a compliment), but you remind me as the guy they call in on "Pawn Stars" to authenticate historical items. The guy never offers a value for the items they ask him about (since he does not see them that way), only his opinion on whether or not it is legitimate/authentic. I feel here that it could certainly be authentic, but without additional information or some kind of proof in that regard of where it originated from, it's left as "maybe" or "more than likely". While that's fine for some people, when it turns into how much they are going to throw down on it, it becomes a different story. Your opinion is definitely a deciding factor however, since anyone that knows who you are would take your opinion as validation of this particular cart. 

It doesn't matter to me, I just don't want anyone to possibly get duped. People will bid/pay accordingly though, and I suppose if it is left as a "maybe" proto, the ending price will reflect that. Also, as an example, someone tried to fake/duplicate my particular EB proto. They did a pretty convincing job, so much that the crew working on the EB documentary did not realize that it was a fake, until I informed them that I owned the cart that they were trying to duplicate. I guess since the original hadn't been seen in so long they decided it was a perfect opportunity to capitalize on it. I can send you pictures of the fake version of mine if you'd like to see how far they went to replicate it, pretty crazy. They were eventually called out on it though and went silent as far as I know.

At any rate, I hope more information can be brought about for this potential proto. I'm not against anything of that nature and it's intriguing to me as a collector with a passion for EB as well.

I'm sure your cart is on na or that eb site but I think posting the fake and yours on this post would help a lot. 
To me personally I never worked in development on games so a prototype to me(I'm very new to collecting prototype) is used at any stage of development (not counting demos/ sample).

i personally feel the story is just to easy to pick apart. But besides dated labels it has everything else. 

90% of prototypes out there are just near-final samples given out to game magazines. Most were not used for development (at least not in the form we have). 99% prototypes don't have a story that would directly link them back to development either.

Fakes do happen. There was a seller on Yahoo Japan auctions a few years ago who for some reason had a ton of long-board SNES prototypes. The thing that tipped it off is that these "prototypes" had a bunch of Satellaview and rare games on them. Nothing else about them looked suspicious, they had really old labels on them, and the boards were legit. Another seller earlier this year was selling fake Famicom prototypes, he was essentially using scanned labels from legit prototypes. I've saved pretty much every SNES prototype that has been shown on message boards or sold on Ebay for the past 4 years, and even after that, I couldn't tell you with 100% certainty that a prototype is legit.

Just remember that the original Earthbound prototype was found in Canada and dated to something like 1994. If that were found today, it would set off all kinds of red flags. Presumably someone got a copy made for them for their own personal use.

You say "someone at the developer hand made these," which I just don't think is true most of the time. This is what I'm trying to explain.

Most (not all) of the "prototypes" out there were never, ever touched by anyone who actually worked on the game. Most prototypes out there were review copies sent to magazines, which yes, were put together by hand - by PR and marketing people working for the publisher, not anyone on the actual development team. Most development teams were not located in-house and, in fact, literally the only exception that comes to mind in terms of an American NES publisher would be Absolute, and even then, I don't think it was like David Crane and Garry Kitchen burning off all of those EPROMs for the media.

I think that like you, a lot of people have this romantic notion that prototype cartridges were made by the actual authors of the games, and I just want buyers to understand that this is extremely unlikely in most (again, not all!) cases. The actual process was usually:

- Developer (the team that actually created the game) delivers code to publisher, likely on a floppy disk. They use prototype cartridges in-house to test their games, absolutely, but they had to keep those so they could keep working on the game.

- Publisher (the people who do the packaging and marketing and sales) copies that code onto EPROMs and spends many frustrating hours assembling cartridges to mail to magazines.

If that's special to you, awesome! It's still a unique collectible, no doubt. But if you're purchasing something under the assumption that it was like, from the desk of the author of the game, I think you're misinformed.

AGAIN, THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS:

Not everything we call a "prototype" was for media use. In the somewhat rare case that an internal-use (rather than a made-for-media) copy leaks out, yeah, someone who actually worked on the game might have physically put those EPROMs in those sockets. This Earth Bound, for example, assuming it's real - no one on the actual game development team in Japan touched it, but it's possible the people working on the English translation did, which is pretty cool! Some other stuff that comes to mind: Kitty Catch was made by the author as far as I know, Hard Drivin' is the author's personal copy. I'm sure there are others I don't know of, and I'm sure that there are some cases where the developer might have actually put together those review cartridges for that publisher.

But, really, most "prototypes" in circulation are just copies of copies assembled by someone who had absolutely nothing to do with any creative decisions made on the game, and I think people should understand that!

A preproduction vehicle doesn't need to be put together by the main designer to be special.

The peons burning EPROMs are still part of the corporate/artistic machine that earned our respect, either through their artist or through their system of getting results. A Porsche employee tightening those bolts on that preproduction vehicle is still representing the company you may respect as a Porsche fan, whether he was the guy drawing the lines and sculpting the design or not.

If the proto was made for review, a satellite translation team, or to let some marketing firm try it before designing packaging, commercials, or other promotions, it's still a part of the respected process of making the game and that's enough to make it more special than a retail copy.

I thought the word developer might get people worked up. I understand what you are saying, but lacked a word to describe the "Makers" in a broad enough sence.

I also understand that most famicom games were created in Japan, and most NES games are just localized famicom games. So, most NES prototypes are at best localization prototypes.

Like I said, I understand if it is a rare sentiment. I still love them.