Hi All - hoping someone can help clarify what exactly this is.

Long story short: this was on eBay a month or so ago and I bid but didn't win. A few weeks later the seller reached out explaining that the original winner wanted to do a return since the game didn't look exactly like the existing ROM and he wasn't able to get past the first screen due to the key missing/glitching, which he thought meant that the game was incomplete. The story was a bit odd, but the seller has good feedback on eBay and I was willing to take a chance on a reduced price so I got the cart. The seller claims he had the cart in his personal collection for ~20 years along with some other prototypes purchased from an old video game store. 

The game loads and plays fine, although the graphics are a bit messy/glitchy (not sure exactly how to describe it). I am able to get the key to proceed to level 2, so the game is not incomplete. Below are some pics of the board and from the game. Just looking at the title screen, you can see that the graphics, especially the letter "E" are not the same as the existing ROM, and the building seems to be missing the top and the character's face looks very different (no mouth, no eyebrows, etc.). 

I believe the cart has ROMs instead of EPROMS, which raises and eyebrow as well. This came in a normal NES cart shell (not a color dreams shell) that had no label and the front and back are from different carts. 

My question is could the graphical differences be the result of damage to the cart (there is rust on the back of the soldered ROM), or could this be a development version where the graphics weren't finalized, OR, is it a poorly made copy of the public ROM passed off as a prototype? 

Any thoughts/insight/feedback would be appreciated!

The dude's face (left is my cart; right is a screenshot from the public ROM)


Intro screen image of the building: left is my version, right is the public ROM: 

The game isn't damaged. If it was damaged, at best, the behavior would be much, much different than that. Think of how the NES works when a cartridge isn't connecting correctly and, as kids, we'd always blow on the carts to fix the errors. That's what it would look like, again, at best. At worst, the cart wouldn't even load.

What you have is likely and early build of the game, complete with different art. Since it seems more crude and you can't get through parts of the game at the beginning, this is almost certainly a very-early build. Nice find and congrats! I'm more of a Game Boy collector but I have a little bit of an electrical background. I'm not sure what this is worth but as a proto collector, the less like the final copy of the game that you have on the cart, the more desirable it is. You're seeing the game in a state that only few people ever did, and will likely never see again, unless you dump the data from the cart.

Thanks for the feedback. I hope you're right! To clarify, you can get through the parts in the beginning. For some reason the original buyer was unable to get to the 2nd level, but I had no problem doing it. The only differences I've seen are visual. Additionally the two vertical scoring bars are illegible in my version: 

 
 

Nice score

thanks!

 

I'll be honest, the soldering job on that one looked so rough in the auction photos, I thought it was fake. I guess I will have to eat my words (thoughts).

What do you think the difference was between when the first buyer had it and you? Did you give it a special cleaning?

That really is some godawful artwork.

I just used brasso - some dirt and grime came up but not that much. The soldering isn't great, but I've seen worse. 

I saw the communication between the first buyer and seller, and he was acknowledging it was a proto but thought it was incomplete -- his main complaint was he thought he was getting the same as the public ROM. Maybe he just didn't try enough to get the key from the giffin. It's hard to see but it's there and I was able to progress to the next level. Or maybe he didn't like the rough-looking graphics. It's interesting because some of the graphics are refined (like the character and tools), but a lot of the back-ground images are rough along with the numbers/letter. Or maybe he just got cold feet and wanted his money back.

Either way - I'm hoping it's an early build version where the music and gameplay were complete but the graphics didn't get the final round of clean-up yet. I guess I'd have to dump it to know for sure?   

 

ha - he needed to escape from Atlantis so he was in a rush  

 

It seems to me that the graphics get finalized before the programming. Dumping can definitely help you document all of the graphics differences in one go. I use tile layer pro to view the CHR. 

I know there are some ROMs out there for that game, but I have no idea how many there are, or if any of them are complete. The one you have seems to have gone in a different direction with the text. It looks more detailed, but essentially illegible.  
 

From my research I believe there are 2 different versions out there - but neither have the different artwork that I'm seeing. I'd like to try reaching out to the original developers to ask them about the cart, but I haven't seen any names attached to this game yet. 

What at have you used for dumping? I have a Kazzo but haven't tried it yet. 
 

I use a CopyNES. I haven't had an NES  prototype yet that it didn't dump. Let me know if the Kazzo doesn't work for you. 

As far as getting ahold of someone, you may want to try Brenda Huff. Wisdomtree still exists and she works there. She may be willing to give you their contact information.
 

Oh man! This is not a prototype! In fact that's my handwriting. This was a personal rough test copy I made for myself when a buddy and I released Escape from Atlantis CIB back in 2012. I did NOT mean to auction this off.

I sold a scrap board on eBay a couple months ago for $7 thinking someone could use the EPROMs or board. I should have loaded it up first. As for the differences, me and my buddy were trying to clean the ROM up a bit on this, but obviously this test copy was having issues. Man it must have gotten into the wrong hands. You said the guy who originally purchased this board said he had it for 20 years? Full of shit.

This is not a prototype or anything special, just a rough personal test board I used when working on an Escape from Altantis CIB release. Sorry for the confusion, this was not meant to get out there.

I wondered if it was something like this. At least you know during the return period OP.

 

Good on NESMASTER14 for clarifying, but damn.

Thanks for helping to clarify. That makes a lot of sense. 

So did you sell the board with the labeled ROMs exactly like you see in the picture? Can you provide the name of the buyer (over PM is fine if you'd prefer).