I have no doubt the data on the EPROMs is that of early work of the games they're associated with. Prototype data. Same page. I can get past the dates on the EPROMs as they're close enough.

I'm not challenging the authenticity, I'm incredibly curious about the origins of the PCBs and those of the stickers.

I'm not trying to shit on the find. It's an important piece of history. I'm tasking you you with the challenge of getting to the bottom of the full origin of the carts, and that's something you're particularly good at.

30 weeks before CES doesnt sound realistic, would be more like 3 days  

Silly half serious half joking idea: email Iwata (or Nintendo itself) a link to this thread and kindly ask to explain. Designers are always willing to degress on the behind the scenes of their creations (and companies like to underline that they have an history, and get popular with costumers is always appealing for them, if such popularity costs only an email reply). And if it doesn't work, you lose nothing.

***

On a more serious note: fascinating!
 

That's a pretty awesome find, but I really want to find out about that possible Super Mario Bros. proto from the same seller, mentioned in this article. http://www.wired.com/2016/08/jous...

Working on this as best I can. It's also worth noting that you technically can trigger that screen in the final game if the hardware crashes or if you hold the Reset button.
 

Iwata died last year  

Intriguing stuff btw, thanks for sharing!

Gotcha. I'm trying, it's difficult for a variety of reasons, but this is something we're actively doing right now.

I feel ashamed about such stupid post now.
I truly did not know, I must have missed the news. R.I.P.

The most amazing thing to me here is that Yahoo has auctions. I had NO idea.

Regarding Mario with the scrolling "glitch" : A lot of the Super Mario Bros. 2 (J) disk to cartridge bootleg ports contain this glitch in them.

That's because eBay out-competed them in most markets during the emergence of online auctions. Yahoo got a foothold in Japan before eBay even tried and eBay found it insurmountable.
 

Can confirm, mine does the same.


All of this speculation is exactly why I stopped bidding on these. I tapped out at about 3000 yen on the ones I was going for (including Joust) because I didn't have the money to risk it at the time. I remember talking to some friends about the boards, and someone mentioned that they kind of look like boards from those Famicom game copier cartridges. This made sense to all of us because of how the copier carts have those square stickers on the front of them to obscure the rom windows. What didn't make sense however was that these boards were lacking the usual switch on the side used to switch between the games on each rom, so I don't think that's what they are.

Any updates?

On what?

Updates on the origin of the cart and if more info was found about it.

Oh, no, working on that. It's going to be slow.

I found what We believe to be an NES joust proto back in the day and the Nolan brothers dumped it. Would that help with anything?
I'm a noob when it comes to prototypes.