Have had this for months, but only looked closely enough at it today to notice the sticker on the back.  It is a complete-in-box copy of the game from the same source I found the Akira prototypes from.

I'm sure it's more of an internal sample than a proto, but I want to make sure.  Has anyone here seen stickers like these before? 

Looks more like a review copy of the final version. A real prototype would have exposed chips from the development cartridge. Still cool. Was likely used for reviews, as you implied.

I guess you have to compare rom sizes to know for sure.

Hey Scott,

I believe your source for these protos reviewed games for magazines, in which case, Jeckidy is correct. It was always common for publishers to send final product out for review, which still happens to this day, so not every review copy is going to be on EPROMs. Also, I don't know of any true Game Boy prototypes that actually sit in a shell like that, every one that I've seen has an EPROM sticking out, so it's more or less guaranteed to be a production board with production ROMs inside.

Not sure why two of the replies believe I was calling it a proto... I was clearly not.  Perhaps I should post it in a different forum?

Quite aware of how review copies worked and work.  I receive review copies in the mail in the modern day.  My source did not work at a magazine during this point but on this port of this game as a developer.  Perhaps it was a review copy that wasn't sent out.

What I wanted to know is if anyone else has seen stickers like the one on this one.  That was my question in the initial post.  I want to know how many others like it might be out there.

To be fair, you did ask for confirmation about it not being a prototype.

If that's how it was taken, then my wording was bad.  That was not my intent.  Well aware of what a prototype looks like.  My only ? mark was asking if anyone else had seen stickers like it, because I want to make sure it's a sample... as the sentence before it stated.

To re-word... I want to know if anyone else has seen stickers like this one so I might determine if it's an internal sample only, or identical to what went out.

 

Sorry for trying to help.

No, I haven't seen your sticker before.