A seller in Nagoya, Japan recently discovered a second Parody World: Monster Party prototype cartridge and listed it on eBay today. This should be an interesting auction to follow. Lets see if this one ends up in the hands of someone willing to dump it.

Photos:
http://s1194.photobucket.com/user...

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/richk...

eBay listing:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo-...



Background

Although Monster Party was released by Bandai in the USA in 1989, the original Japanese version that was developed by Shinsei was never that lucky and never saw the light of day. Since a couple of Japanese magazines published screenshots of a Japanese Beta version in 1988, there had been rumours of a Famicom version. Here you can see the original shots from the magazines…


Until today, there was thought to be only one known copy of this Prototype in existence – That copy, which was won at auction in May 2011, fetched a total of ¥483,000 or $6,000 at that time…


The Japanese owner is infamous in the gaming world for promising to never release any ROM/Rips of the game and will take it to his death bed. With that, I suppose, the chance to play it for every retrogamer in the world.

Until this auction…

How I acquired this

I won’t lie - In fact, I was extremely lucky. After buying a lot to satisfy my own small collection and the rest to sell on eBay as a little hobby, I stumbled on this at the bottom of the box which was filled with awful (Kusoge) games with a few nice carts hidden in-between. This lot was purchased in an area of Japan not too far away from Nintendo’s HQ in Kyoto. I don’t know too much more about the story of this little cart, but I think that the box that it was a part of had been in storage for the past 20 odd years, which leads me onto the…

Condition

When I first dug it out of the box, it was pretty dirty, but after a bit of freshening up, it looks like a regular Famicom cart from the late 80’s – a little beaten up, but with a lot of character. In fact, comparing it to some of the other carts in that box, it was in a wonderful condition!

I also opened up the cart to get some shots of the inside – while I was doing this I gave the shell a clean too. You will be pleased to know that I managed to open it up successfully, without damaging any of the clips.

As you can see from the many photos and videos I’ve supplied, it is in an excellent working order.

I had stumbled across this auction a couple of hours ago. Cool back sorry on how it was discovered.

Hey guys, That one is my auction.

I came over here to see if anyone had picked it up - or i'd write a post... looks like someone beat me to it (thanks Dropkickorange!)

If you have any questions, post them here or better still, on here and eBay... that way i can add them to the listing.

I echo the thoughts of the OP - hopefully this one will go to someone who is willing to share it. Hopefully, the videos from the second stage are enough for now.

Wasn't sure if you were a member here but congratulations on this exciting find. Good luck with the sale!

I never thought I would care about a prototype cart until I saw this thread. This is awesome.

Wow. Amazing

That is awesome. I love Monster Party and this is a prototype that I actually would want. Of course, I would never spend that much on it.

Thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated!

Amazing find!
 
I also really hope this gets purchased by someone willing to dump it.

Neat. Based on the discovery of this second cart, the mask roms, and the printed label, I wonder if there are actually more of these out there somewhere than one would first expect.

May I ask how many other differences you've found? Like, are most of the bosses the same with a few changes, are the stages mostly the same, etc?

They aren't mask roms, they're OTP EPROMs.

MY mistake, thanks for the info. Should have looked more closely lol.

If anyone is considering bidding on this for the same/similar reasons I'd be bidding on it, we should maybe coordinate instead of fighting each other. PM me.

Good luck everyone! Would be great to see this go to a good home.

Awesome item!! Good luck to all the bidders and seller!

I'm spreading the word!

Good luck with the auction!

Good man. I noticed that before and retweeted it. Thanks. 

The more the merrier.

Tsunami, have you considered dumping the rom yourself before selling off the proto?

From the auction:

Q: Hi! Nice find on this proto cart! I would like to ask, that will be a ROM release soon? If not, then could you do a full playthrough about this on your YouTube channel? You would help to the gaming community a lot!
A: Hi, i won't be releasing a ROM of this one. Many people have asked about it already. I've posted a video of the second stage, which to my knowledge is more that what the owner of the other cart has done so far.

I did consider it, but i don't have the equipment available and once i listed it, there was no turning back really. I will make sure i explain the situation to the next owner and hopefully they can dump it even if it is just to back up the game in case anything happens to the original in the future.

For the record I/we didn't bid, and I have no idea who the new owner is.

We?

Lost Levels. I just wanted to clarify since some people jumped to the conclusion that we would be.

I believe I discovered who won the auction after a little detective work. I'm
super excited that is was won by a prominent member of NA. It's so amazing that
this little gem finally surfaced! I would be glad to contribute to the release
of it in any way that I can. I won't divulge, just in case he wants to keep it
under wraps for now.

Not me!

I knew I was going to win it all along honestly.