Originally posted by: bunnyboyWithout getting into ROM editing, were these protos actually "Licensed by Nintendo"? Does the license refer to the company or the game? There are no known product codes and no content review, so my guess would be that they are not yet licensed games.
Would help to know what the license actually covers. My understanding is the company writes the game, Nintendo reviews the content, then the company gives Nintendo a license to do the production/distribution and gets a cut. That is why it says licensed BY Nintendo.
It's simple. Publisher pays lots of money to get an official Nintendo license, any games released by that publisher is an officially licensed product.
Arcadia VI and Hoppin' Mad do not have that information because neither proto had a publisher attached, they were both demos being shopped around by their respective developers to publishers, hoping to get the project funded for completion.