Should I put custom labels on my NES prototypes?

[Skorp | 383]

I personally would not ever do that to any of mine, but that is just me. However, getting a donor cart and doing it while keep the original would be a great solution! As when you plan on selling them, you could just put it back in the original.

[RH | 4,935]

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

1 hour ago, Armageddon Potato said:

That would have to have the Famicom board inside it with a converter, which I believe it is not. Mark(I think I got the right Nolan, haha) said he'd keep that Mega Man 2 Clashman proto, and didn't want to sell it so I don't think that one would be it. We'd have to get a picture of the board to verify, but my memory tells me that isn't it. He never dumped the Clashman rom as of yet, so hopefully one day we'll get that dump!

He told me the same thing until I offered enough to convince him. I flew out to pick it up from him last July.

[GPX | 1,371]

2 points that crosses my mind here:

- if you adjust the label, making it look more modern, then it would look just like a homebrew variant. This causes doubt to other prototype collectors. 

- to check for authenticity, often you compare all the contents as a whole. Do the rom board and the cart shell match with their respective in age? Also, if everything matches and in their original state, then it’d be likely easier to track down the original source and to prove authenticity. 

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

36 minutes ago, RH said:

RIP

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,014]

It would be easy enough to throw it in a clear shell that you buff to make it like glass and then throw a label on that, keeping the "original" shell in storage.

[ndiddy | 8]

Just so you know, that Mario Bros. prototype is fake. From the footage you posted on youtube, it's just the PAL ROM with the title screen edited to say "1991" instead of 1993. I was able to replicate the change in about 5 minutes (I can provide the ROM file if anyone's interested):

In the last year or so, I have noticed a pattern of someone selling fake prototypes of NROM games with the title screens modified to look like unreleased region variants (see here for more examples). They all have no changes compared to the actual retail versions they're based on besides the licensing text and dates being modified (i.e. a PAL "prototype" will have the licensing text and dates changed but will still run at NTSC speed and vice versa). They're always NROM games because the retail NROM boards take standard EPROMs without needing rewiring, so it's easier to fake a prototype compared to mapper-based games that used special EPROM specific boards just for prototypes.

I would appreciate it if you could say where you got the Mario Bros. prototype from. Hopefully bringing more attention onto this will spook the seller and make him stop ripping people off. I hope that you can get your money back.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

On 2/5/2023 at 2:46 PM, ndiddy said:

Just so you know, that Mario Bros. prototype is fake. From the footage you posted on youtube, it's just the PAL ROM with the title screen edited to say "1991" instead of 1993. I was able to replicate the change in about 5 minutes (I can provide the ROM file if anyone's interested):

In the last year or so, I have noticed a pattern of someone selling fake prototypes of NROM games with the title screens modified to look like unreleased region variants (see here for more examples). They all have no changes compared to the actual retail versions they're based on besides the licensing text and dates being modified (i.e. a PAL "prototype" will have the licensing text and dates changed but will still run at NTSC speed and vice versa). They're always NROM games because the retail NROM boards take standard EPROMs without needing rewiring, so it's easier to fake a prototype compared to mapper-based games that used special EPROM specific boards just for prototypes.

I would appreciate it if you could say where you got the Mario Bros. prototype from. Hopefully bringing more attention onto this will spook the seller and make him stop ripping people off. I hope that you can get your money back.

I missed this post until now when someone (you?) brought it to my attention from my YouTube video. For the last 2 hours I've been digging and organising all of the information I still have on the seller. I currently have their email address, name, phone number and their business' website. I'll release everything but I want to contact them first and get a feel for whether they scammed me or they got scammed when they got it from someone else. Either way it's a felony to purchase stolen goods, sell stolen goods and to transfer stolen goods across the border.

The most interesting sign is I can't find any mention of their Instagram account from which I purchased this, it's like they never existed. Our conversation is gone from my message inbox and I can't find their account in a search.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

Whoops

[a3quit4s | 4,116]

Man that is a total bummer. I hope you get your money back @Code Monkey

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

New developments, the seller wrote me back a multi-chapter book of a message about the scammer and all the other victims. Still following the leads.

[a3quit4s | 4,116]

18 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

New developments, the seller wrote me back a multi-chapter book of a message about the scammer and all the other victims. Still following the leads.

Are they on the hook to reimburse you?

[ndiddy | 8]

1 hour ago, Code Monkey said:

New developments, the seller wrote me back a multi-chapter book of a message about the scammer and all the other victims. Still following the leads.

I'm glad he's cooperating, it's a shame he knew all about it before you contacted him and didn't take the initiative to reach out.

11 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

I missed this post until now when someone (you?) brought it to my attention from my YouTube video.

It wasn't me, I left a comment on the video a while ago but it didn't show up, maybe it got flagged as spam or something.

 

I had some people message me asking for more information, so here's a summary of everything I've seen. I can't figure out how to get this site to let me use bbcode instead of the visual editor, so it'll show up as a giant wall since I'm unable to put images inside spoiler tags. Sorry about that.

In June 2022, someone posted on Discord about a listing on ebay for a PAL localization prototype of Lode Runner, from a seller called "eternax" based out of Germany. Here's the images from the listing:

I thought the game was suspicious because as far as I'm aware no PAL NES games say "Licensed by Nintendo of Europe", they all just say "Licensed by Nintendo". Additionally, Nintendo of Europe wasn't even founded until 1990. One of the users in the server speaks German, so he messaged the seller to get more information. He said that he got the game from an American collector that sells him PAL prototypes every once in a while, and that the collector told him that he works with the Video Game History Foundation (who I later found out have no idea who this guy is).

 

In November 2022, I stumbled upon Code Monkey's social media posts about his Mario Bros prototype, and realized that it was a PAL game with the title screen changed, running at NTSC speed.

 

In December 2022, a German collector called Commander Dennis donated a few PAL NES localization prototypes to the site hiddenpalace.org. This would normally be a very nice thing to do, but unfortunately some users quickly noticed that the games were suspicious:

- I found that there were no code changes, only the text strings were changed, along with some minor CHR ROM edits. When a string was made shorter or longer, the data around it was overwritten or padded out, which pointed to the ROMs being binary patched rather than assembled from source code.

- Some other users (mainly togemet2) were more familiar with how NES prototypes are physically. He noted that the ST 32KB EPROMs that most of the prototypes used were very common on eBay, but rarely seen in NES prototypes. He also pointed out that most developers wouldn't be using ROMs with 1981 date codes in 1995, and that the Othello prototype cartridge was yellowed except for where the warning label would have been.

- I noticed that despite the games originating from different developers, there were some big similarities between them. For example, the handwriting on the Ms. Pacman prototype's label matched the chips on the Othello prototype.

 

The Hidden Palace admins emailed the collector with the news and flagged the game pages on the site. I'm not sure if he's gotten his money back from whoever sold him the games.

 

At this point, I remembered the Lode Runner and Mario Bros. prototypes. Sure enough, the Lode Runner EPROM labels have the same handwriting as Ms. Pacman and Othello, and Code Monkey's Mario Bros. prototype uses the same EPROM types as the Ms. Pacman and Dig Dug prototypes.

 

Some takeaways:

1. Use the stuff I found suspicious as guidelines, rather than strict "bootleg/not bootleg" rules. It's the combination of all of this that led me to calling them out as fake.

2. Nintendo never made a prototype board for NES NROM games, so developers would modify retail games to make prototypes. Because of this, when you see a prototype for an NROM game you have to be more suspicious (definitely ask about provenance). If I've come across 5 of these things by chance, all made by the same person, there's got to be more out there.

3. It always helps to familiarize yourself with how NES games work on a technical level, what prototype cartridges look like, etc. You definitely want to dump your games and inspect the ROM data (and compare it to any available retail builds) as well. With how fast prototype prices have grown in the past few years, I bet we'll see more bootlegs as people continue to realize that they can buy a $5 copy of Golf, solder in new ROMs, and sell it for at least a few hundred bucks.

[Tulpa | 3,526]

3 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

the seller wrote me back a multi-chapter book of a message

You bought from Tanooki?

 

Hope you get your money back, anyway.

[Gloves | 11,807]

56 minutes ago, ndiddy said:

I'm glad he's cooperating, it's a shame he knew all about it before you contacted him and didn't take the initiative to reach out.

It wasn't me, I left a comment on the video a while ago but it didn't show up, maybe it got flagged as spam or something.

 

I had some people message me asking for more information, so here's a summary of everything I've seen. I can't figure out how to get this site to let me use bbcode instead of the visual editor, so it'll show up as a giant wall since I'm unable to put images inside spoiler tags. Sorry about that.

In June 2022, someone posted on Discord about a listing on ebay for a PAL localization prototype of Lode Runner, from a seller called "eternax" based out of Germany. Here's the images from the listing:

I thought the game was suspicious because as far as I'm aware no PAL NES games say "Licensed by Nintendo of Europe", they all just say "Licensed by Nintendo". Additionally, Nintendo of Europe wasn't even founded until 1990. One of the users in the server speaks German, so he messaged the seller to get more information. He said that he got the game from an American collector that sells him PAL prototypes every once in a while, and that the collector told him that he works with the Video Game History Foundation (who I later found out have no idea who this guy is).

 

In November 2022, I stumbled upon Code Monkey's social media posts about his Mario Bros prototype, and realized that it was a PAL game with the title screen changed, running at NTSC speed.

 

In December 2022, a German collector called Commander Dennis donated a few PAL NES localization prototypes to the site hiddenpalace.org. This would normally be a very nice thing to do, but unfortunately some users quickly noticed that the games were suspicious:

- I found that there were no code changes, only the text strings were changed, along with some minor CHR ROM edits. When a string was made shorter or longer, the data around it was overwritten or padded out, which pointed to the ROMs being binary patched rather than assembled from source code.

- Some other users (mainly togemet2) were more familiar with how NES prototypes are physically. He noted that the ST 32KB EPROMs that most of the prototypes used were very common on eBay, but rarely seen in NES prototypes. He also pointed out that most developers wouldn't be using ROMs with 1981 date codes in 1995, and that the Othello prototype cartridge was yellowed except for where the warning label would have been.

- I noticed that despite the games originating from different developers, there were some big similarities between them. For example, the handwriting on the Ms. Pacman prototype's label matched the chips on the Othello prototype.

 

The Hidden Palace admins emailed the collector with the news and flagged the game pages on the site. I'm not sure if he's gotten his money back from whoever sold him the games.

 

At this point, I remembered the Lode Runner and Mario Bros. prototypes. Sure enough, the Lode Runner EPROM labels have the same handwriting as Ms. Pacman and Othello, and Code Monkey's Mario Bros. prototype uses the same EPROM types as the Ms. Pacman and Dig Dug prototypes.

 

Some takeaways:

1. Use the stuff I found suspicious as guidelines, rather than strict "bootleg/not bootleg" rules. It's the combination of all of this that led me to calling them out as fake.

2. Nintendo never made a prototype board for NES NROM games, so developers would modify retail games to make prototypes. Because of this, when you see a prototype for an NROM game you have to be more suspicious (definitely ask about provenance). If I've come across 5 of these things by chance, all made by the same person, there's got to be more out there.

3. It always helps to familiarize yourself with how NES games work on a technical level, what prototype cartridges look like, etc. You definitely want to dump your games and inspect the ROM data (and compare it to any available retail builds) as well. With how fast prototype prices have grown in the past few years, I bet we'll see more bootlegs as people continue to realize that they can buy a $5 copy of Golf, solder in new ROMs, and sell it for at least a few hundred bucks.

FYI if you select text, or click an image, and then click the eyeball, it'll put whatever you've selected in a spoiler tag. 

We don't do BBCODE here cuz it's not the 90s anymore, much as I miss the 90s.

 

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

The story continues, I was offered the Lode Runner PAL prototype as well. I offered him $400 and he turned it down so it ended there.

I'll post my whole writeup after work.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

All further discussion of the scam can be done in a new topic here: