Contra prototypes from over the years

[prototector | 23]

Contra/Probotector (NES/FC):

 

 

 

 

 

Super Contra/Super C/Probotector II (NES/FC):

(I have this one below)

 

 

Contra/Operation C/Probotector (GB) :

(I have the one below)

 

Contra Spirits/Contra III/Super Probotector (SNES/SFC) :

(The one above does not actually have the same version as the one below)

 

Contra Spirits/Contra: The Alien Wars/Probotector 2 (GB) :

 

Contra: Hard Spirits/Contra Advance (GBA) :

 

Contra Force (NES) :

 

Contra 4/Contra: Dual Spirits (DS):

 

Contra: The Hard Corps/Contra: Hard Corps/Probotector (Genesis/MD) :

(I have the one below)

 

Contra: Legacy of War (PS1) :

Contra: Legacy of War (Saturn):

(I have the one below)

 

C : The Contra Adventure (PS1) :

Contra: Shattered Soldier/Shin Contra (PS2) :

(I have the one below)

Neo Contra (PS2) :

(I have the one below)

(I have the one below)

(bottom right in the below pic)

(I have this one below)

 

FAKES AND QUESTIONABLES (VARIOUS SYSTEMS):
And now, for the fake or highly suspicious prototypes that surfaced over the years. Fake prototypes in general have been a really prominent issue in recent years. So due to that, in addition to completeness, I figured to include them as well. Beware of these.

Contra III and Contra Spirits (SNES & SFC). Most likely fakes:

Contra III (SNES). Highly suspicious:

Contra Advance (GBA). Highly suspicious:

 

Ok

Edited December 8, 2023 by prototector
Forgot a SNES prototype

[prototector | 23]

Added a couple more photos.

[prototector | 23]

Another 2 more, the latest in my collection. A Contra: Shattered Soldier preview and a Neo Contra preview. If anyone has any photos of others, please post them.

[Armageddon Potato | 124]

On 8/13/2022 at 9:23 AM, prototector said:

Another 2 more, the latest in my collection. A Contra: Shattered Soldier preview and a Neo Contra preview. If anyone has any photos of others, please post them.

Wow, that is an awesome Contra collection! Has any of it been dumped, or backed up? I'd love to check out some of it!

[CMR | 519]

Awesome.  Has anyone ever seen a Contra III proto where  the player's characters had their colors changed to green?  VG&CE did a review of the game back in the 90's that had this color difference.

 

https://archive.org/details/vgce_92-03/page/n35/mode/2up

[prototector | 23]

On 3/9/2023 at 11:53 PM, Armageddon Potato said:

Wow, that is an awesome Contra collection! Has any of it been dumped, or backed up? I'd love to check out some of it!

Thanks. I don't have most of the cartridge prototypes shown there (I actually used to have many of those, in the past), but I do have quite a few of the disc protos currently.

For dumps, most of them are, yeah. And if I ever acquired any, backing up the data is a huge priority (so I always do that for the ones I have). Also, most of the dumped and released ones, I either did it myself or was at least involved in their release. I would have loved to acquire and preserve more, but that has proven to be as unpleasant of an experience as ever.

You can see the dumped prototypes that are different from final here:
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra_(Sample_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Probotector_2_(Sample_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Super_Probotector:_The_Alien_Rebels_(Sample_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra_III:_The_Alien_Wars_(Review_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra_IV:_The_Alien_Wars_(Regional_Intermediate_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra_Spirits_(Sample_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra_Advance_(Review_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra:_Legacy_of_War_(Aug_23,_1996_prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra:_Legacy_of_War_(Oct_3,_1996_prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra:_Legacy_of_War_(January_28,_1997_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/C:_The_Contra_Adventure_(Apr_22,_1998_prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/C:_The_Contra_Adventure_(Jun_12,_1998_prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra:_Shattered_Soldier_(May_8,_2002_prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra:_Shattered_Soldier_(Jul_1,_2002_prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Neo_Contra_(Apr_23,_2004_prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Neo_Contra_(Aug_11,_2004_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Neo_Contra_(Aug_17,_2004_prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Contra_4_(June_27,_2007_Prototype)
https://hiddenpalace.org/Hard_Corps:_Uprising_(E3_2010_Preview_Prototype)

On 3/10/2023 at 12:17 AM, CMR said:

Awesome.  Has anyone ever seen a Contra III proto where  the player's characters had their colors changed to green?  VG&CE did a review of the game back in the 90's that had this color difference.

 

https://archive.org/details/vgce_92-03/page/n35/mode/2up

I've seen those screenshots. AFAIK, no prototype with those differences ever surfaced to date. A copy of it might be in private hands, but it seems that's far as it'll go. Either that, or they were taken by Konami in Japan and just the screenshots were sent out to various print publications.

Edited January 20 by prototector

[Tyree_Cooper | 745]

man i love superp robotector

[prototector | 23]

I love when a graded copy of that superp robotector was listed for sale, with that misspelling used repeatedly in the listing title and description. The included authenticity doc even mentions the label being a typo, and what the correct spelling of the title is. Shows how many times the seller read the document.

Edited October 19, 2023 by prototector

[AirVillain | 485]

Holy shit.

This is incredible.

You should make it a bit more clear in the OP that these are all your pictures, though. I wasn't sure if you had just collected pictures of all the different ones over the years.... but a good humble brag of "Hey, check out my awesome collection!" never hurts. You're just TOO humble, right? 

Also, having one picture of the collection together would be crazy impressive. 

....errrrr.... wait... I just re-read the thread a bit closer.... SOME of the prototypes are yours? 

Okay... well, in that case thanks for compiling all the pictures! 

In that case... Having a picture of all YOURS together would be impressive, haha. 

Really neat stuff, either way. Thanks for sharing.

[prototector | 23]

Yeah I thought of arranging them based on game title, in the order of releases for the most part. I could have put the ones I currently own into their own separate sequential list, but just decided to add the text that indicates when I have that particular item.

I used to have quite a few more protos, and those are in the pictures above, too. Those are cartridge-based; now I have more of the discs.

Also I kind of suspect the DS ones aren't "legitimate". The cartridges are authentic dev carts, and the data they contain is authentic, too. But the dev carts are flash, rewritable; meaning anyone with the tech can write data to them (ROMs, in this case). Those 2 DS prototypes photographed above didn't come from developers or other industry members in the form of those physical items. The prototype build of Contra 4 leaked via a scene release around the US retail release date. So it first appeared publicly as a downloadable ROM. Years later, that exact Contra 4 prototype build surfaced on ebay listings and collectors/sellers on forums, on those rewritable/flash carts.

Edited July 24, 2023 by prototector

[AirVillain | 485]

16 hours ago, prototector said:

Yeah I thought of arranging them based on game title, in the order of releases for the most part. I could have put the ones I currently own into their own separate sequential list, but just decided to add the text that indicates when I have that particular item.

I used to have quite a few more protos, and those are in the pictures above, too. Those are cartridge-based; now I have more of the discs.

Also I kind of suspect the DS ones aren't "legitimate". The cartridges are authentic dev carts, and the data they contain is authentic, too. But the dev carts are flash, rewritable. Also, those 2 prototypes photographed above didn't come from developers or other industry members in the form of those physical items. The prototype build of Contra 4 leaked via a scene release around the US release date. So it first appeared publicly as a downloadable ROM. Years later, that exact Contra 4 prototype build surfaced on ebay listings and collectors/sellers on forums, on those rewritable blank carts.

Gotcha.

Still really cool.

Thanks for the info. 

[prototector | 23]

Updated, as I recently got a copy of the Probotector sample for Mega Drive.

Also added a section at the end of the OP for suspicious and fake Contra protos that surfaced over the years.

[Kid Fenris | 2]

Thanks for posting these! "Superp Robotector" is cracking me up.

[JamesRobot | 5,786]

How are those DVD-Rs holding up?  I assume yours were all imaged but I can't imagine they'll last much longer.  My CD-Rs that are that old have started falling to bit rot recently.

[Tyree_Cooper | 745]

Why is the last GBA dev cart highly suspicious?

[prototector | 23]

On 12/3/2023 at 8:38 PM, JamesRobot said:

How are those DVD-Rs holding up?  I assume yours were all imaged but I can't imagine they'll last much longer.  My CD-Rs that are that old have started falling to bit rot recently.

They're holding up really well. DVD-Rs tend to last quite long, in my experience at least. They definitely last much longer than CD-Rs, of which I've seen many more go bad myself as well. The CD-R Contra prototypes have mostly been fine, though. The only exception so far is the one that was sent to wata and put up for auction on heritage recently. It didn't matter how scratched, worn and defective the disc was, it was still encased. VGHF could not even successfully create a backup image of its data. I guess the point for wata is the authenticity. Still, they didn't reasonably describe just how bad its condition is in the heritage auction listing. Didn't mention the scratches, the bad appearance of the surface; in fact, they falsely described it as being in good condition. Not an error, either, they seem to have just copy-pasted that selling point across many listings.

And yep, I imaged all the ones I have.

On 12/4/2023 at 2:36 AM, Tyree_Cooper said:

Why is the last GBA dev cart highly suspicious?

No one specific thing, but rather, the things below when combined.

The dev cart it's on can be flashed and re-written, so it can be flashed with ROMs downloaded from the internet. That type of cart has also been used in tons of forgeries found on auction sites over the years, especially Yahoo Japan. That, after mass quantities of empty copies were sold on there.

The prototype build matches exactly with the one I dumped and released about a decade ago. All game differences shown in the photos and description match exactly.

The one I dumped included labels reading Konami, Contra, and an employee or outlet contact information. This is just that generic dev flash cart, only the stock label.

Not absolute proof, but they're red flags and enough for me to not even bother.

Edited January 20 by prototector

[Tyree_Cooper | 745]

I see, thanks. I have a similar cart for GBA but it looks lika a long GBC cart with a PCB sticking out. It contains Harmony of Dissonance. Supposedly the final code, but it was cheap and barely advertised so I trusted the seller it was real.

I understand they can flashed which makes them an easy target, like you say.

I think it's more suspicious when a seller tries to ask large amounts of money, for obvious reasons. Was that one sold?

[prototector | 23]

Not sure, it might still be up. That contra gba's price is really steep for what it is (much higher than what I paid for the one I had). But I don't think it's the seller that would have been behind it, assuming it is indeed a forgery. They're just a reseller, so it goes back beyond them. Plus, prototype prices in general are ludicrous all around in recent years.

[Tyree_Cooper | 745]

Yeah they're hard to find for decent prices nowadays. I paid 80 usd for mine, I said to myself, even if it's empty or flashed at home, it's still worth the price of the dev cart itself, since it looks super clean and new.

have you seen ps1/ps2 contra discs with "confidential / embargo until xx / xx date" ? I have one for another konami game, and it seems to have the final code inside. probably given to third parties very close to release date for promo purposes

[prototector | 23]

Not for Contra, but plenty of other discs. I'm part of a release project on Hidden Palace that involves thousands of disc prototypes and I've definitely seen many in those lots. One includes a Castlevania lament of innocence ps2; it's not final, but basically a localization intermediate without any immediately noticeable differences. It's a review disc, so not surprising; that message is fairly common on discs like it sent for coverage purposes. A separate copy of that prototype disc was sent to wata and auctioned on heritage.

 

Edited December 8, 2023 by prototector

[Tyree_Cooper | 745]

That's exactly the one I have. I have seen several, so it's not extremely rare, but cool.

Are you sure it's not the final code? I haven't compared it to the final NTSC-J or NTSC-U/C code, but I recall it being 100% same as final, that's also what a bunch of guys said back then when I purchased it.

I'd love to know what the differences are, if there really are any!

[prototector | 23]

Yeah, it was checked with some pretty accurate and elaborate data comparison tools and methods, and apparently is not identical to any retail release. (file comparison was done, not game-specific analysis to find exact locations of differences in-game, ie what those differences would correspond to when playing). The prototype is available for download on Hidden Palace.

The WATA report also indicates it's 2 weeks before the US retail. So it could either be that it was mistaken to be identical to final, or it's an example of one of the more interesting scenarios:

Your copy could actually be identical to final, but that doesn't apply to all copies of that review disc. It's possible they burned different builds on discs and used the same labelling, for whatever reason. I've seen that, and the inverse, tons of times by now.

Edited December 8, 2023 by prototector