http://nintendoage.com/forum/ -Sqooner http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-18T22:55:53 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17 Originally posted by: Guggles

Congrat's!  Were you able to confirm the different physics?

No he said he didn't see any differences at the very end of the post with pics added after purchase. Hopefully it does have it somehow and he hasn't enabled out   ]]> http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-18T22:42:04 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17 http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-18T20:52:52 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17
Would love to dump it and get it out there. If anyone is willing to help me do it shoot me a pm. ]]> http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-18T19:08:23 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17 Originally posted by: ghostbear1986

First off I wanted to say thanks for all the wonderful insight/info. 

So I ended up picking up the game. Between seeing the cart in person and meeting the seller I believe this is indeed authentic.

The seller was top notch. Had some pretty high end items including an authentic stadium events, panic restaurant and bubble bobble 2 prototypes just to name a few...

The cart itself is pretty unique. The label is aged and while handwritten looks like its been on there for 20+ years. It is a 5 bolt and has never been screw together. You can actually see that the screw holes were never fully drilled out so you could not put a screw through it if you had to. There is some glue on the inside of the shell leading me to believe that is what they used to keep the shell together. The shell also had some of the inner tabs broken off to fit the oversized board. As far as differences in the game itself, I played through the first level and did not notice anything unusual.








you can see that the cart itself was never finished and could not house a screw.





you can see the broken tab to fit the larger board



if you look on the right side of the board you can see some residual glue which i believe was used to keep the shell together since the cart could not hold screws




Very cool. I am glad we could help. Thanks for the pictures. If you need help dumping it, let us know. There are quite a few of us with the means to do it.

Just out of curiosity, did he have an SE or an SE prototype?
  ]]> http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-18T18:25:35 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17
So I ended up picking up the game. Between seeing the cart in person and meeting the seller I believe this is indeed authentic.

The seller was top notch. Had some pretty high end items including an authentic stadium events, panic restaurant and bubble bobble 2 prototypes just to name a few...

The cart itself is pretty unique. The label is aged and while handwritten looks like its been on there for 20+ years. It is a 5 bolt and has never been screw together. You can actually see that the screw holes were never fully drilled out so you could not put a screw through it if you had to. There is some glue on the inside of the shell leading me to believe that is what they used to keep the shell together. The shell also had some of the inner tabs broken off to fit the oversized board. As far as differences in the game itself, I played through the first level and did not notice anything unusual.








you can see that the cart itself was never finished and could not house a screw.





you can see the broken tab to fit the larger board



if you look on the right side of the board you can see some residual glue which i believe was used to keep the shell together since the cart could not hold screws



]]> http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-18T09:38:58 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17 Originally posted by: Guggles

Is the "Eprom" soldered into the board? If so, I'd have to ask why? It'd take effort to de-solder it just to write to it again (soldering implies a greater sense of permanence - like what you'd find in a sample cart or a finished version)? Also if it was a proto, why not version/notate it (on the label) so the user knew what they had?

All the above can be easily explained away so I'm not claiming it isn't a proto. I'm just raising questions based on a  casual observation and to try and interject a different perspective.
Yes the EPROM is soldered in. Socketed EPROMS stick out so far that it can get hung up in an unmodified NES.

Typicaly there where two main reasons to produce an NES prototype. The first is debugging; the programmers needed to make sure what they were writing did what they thought it would. So they would write a bit, then test it; write a bit more, and then test it again. These frequently have socketed EPROMS and holes cut into the case for easy access and the frequency of rewriting.

The second reason is marketing; because of the long lead times involved, magazines needed preproduction prototypes in order to publish reviews of video games before they were released. These tend to have the EPROMS soldered in. They also tend to final or near final. 

As for why no version numbers, all I can say is that version numbers on NES prototypes make no sense from the outside. I have two prototypes with version numbers.  One is labeled 0.02, which in my mind should be early since there is such a big gap between 0.02 and 1.0, but it is final. The second actually has a version number greater than the final one, but is clearly an earlier build. Another possibility, and I am just guessing here, is version numbers were  not ubiquitous because they were not critical. A magazine reviewer isn't going to have access to multiple builds, so she wouldn't need version numbers to tell them apart.


  ]]> http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-18T04:26:39 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17
All the above can be easily explained away so I'm not claiming it isn't a proto. I'm just raising questions based on a casual observation and to try and interject a different perspective. ]]> http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-17T18:43:56 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17 Originally posted by: Lincoln

that is a legit proto pcb, NES-UNEPROM. it's almost certainly a legit prototype.

I trust what he ^^^^ says, Looks like a cool find OP I hope you end up with it. ]]> http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-17T13:24:19 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17 http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=35&threadid=174714 2017-06-17T04:09:23 -05.00 ghostbear1986 17