Armageddon Potato's Prototype Preservation Corner!

[Armageddon Potato | 124]

Heya guys! First off a big thanks to Gloves for adding this subsection to the forums for me!

I've been on a long time quest for prototype preservation back in the NintendoAge days. One of my main goals was to cover as many NES prototypes as possible(the whole library if possible.) I was going to post up all my documentation(and ask for help with some of it), but at that time NintendoAge decidedly went down in flames. I didn't feel safe posting it there since I didn't know who would have access to the information long term, or if it would all just be wiped so I continued my research on the side. I landed up down so many weird rabbit holes since then that I've literally went to the Moon in Bart vs the Space Mutants, kicked motorcyclists off the road as Beetlejuice for power ups, and fought 20 ft tall Simon Belmont in the purple land of cheese as Hawk from G.I. Joe. I now have a ton of examination and documentation tools and know-how at my disposal. Right after NintendoAge went down someone then decided to hit the disaster button in Sim City IRL and the pandemic happened. I got sick from some rare stomach virus and I had to take a back seat recovering. Then I got Covid, which was 3 days of pushing all the water in my body through my skin like I was stuck with some evil device straight out of Tank Girl. Once all that calmed down, I managed to make a mostly full recovery despite my stomach still being pretty messed up. Despite all this I was moving to working more from home(gotta pay dem bills and all that), and continuing to preserve prototypes. Now that VideoGameSage has settled in well I should finally have enough time to stay active here everyday and continue my work. I can finally post up all my finds and documentation!

I would ideally like to have each game represented here with full documentation. People who are interested could chip in work to document each game. We can then also post all of the information to TCRF.net as well and they would have no issue hosting the roms(VideoGameSage does not want roms posted here.)

I also want to note that every game that is preserved should be available to the public. There are roms that are "preserved" but not available to the public, which in my book is a big fat L. If they aren't available to everyone, they are still behind a gatekeeper(and can't be documented.) No gatekeepers. (I do understand if copyright issues come up with some games, and they can't be released right away.)

With this first post I'd like to ask if anyone wants to help document these with me and maybe use the VideoGameSage Discord to do so?

Should each game prototype have it's own thread to keep things more organized? One thread with every game edited into one post would get MASSIVE, so I assume each game should have it's own thread? What I was thinking is one thread could contain all "same-as-final" prototypes with pictures of the cartridges and boards, and then a thread can be created for each prototype with confirmed differences. We can also post about how many known copies of each prototype may exist or are known to exist, etc.

Are you guys ready? Who's with me?! It's gunna get weird!!!

 

 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Armageddon Potato

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

I like the idea of separate threads per game with this one being a master list with links to each thread.

I'll post up some of mine later, I believe I have for NES:

• Ultimate Stuntman
• Sky Kid
• Spy Hunter
• Mega Man 2
• Mega Man 3
• Crackout (likely fake)
• Banana (likely fake)
• Kitty's Catch
• Championship Bowling
• Iron Tank
• Skull 'N Crossbones
• Rolling Thunder
• Road Runner
• Ms. Pac-Man
• Pac-Man
• Alien Syndrome
• Afterburner
• Gauntlet
• RBI Baseball
• RBI Baseball 2
• RBI Baseball 3
• Fantasy Zone

And for Game Boy:

• Mouse Trap
• Paperboy
• Jordan Vs. Bird

And for Atari 2600:

• Jr. Pac-Man
• Dukes Of Hazzard (sort of)

I'll have to check to confirm. I probably have more. You mean hard copies and not just ROM files right?

Edited February 14, 2023 by Code Monkey

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

7 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

I'll have to check to confirm. I probably have more. You mean hard copies and not just ROM files right?

I'm pretty certain he means hard copies, as if he includes ROM files, then anybody with the knowledge to find and download them could be considered "prototype owners."

[Armageddon Potato | 124]

16 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

I like the idea of separate threads per game with this one being a master list with links to each thread.

I'll post up some of mine later, I believe I have for NES:

• Ultimate Stuntman
• Sky Kid
• Spy Hunter
• Mega Man 2
• Mega Man 3
• Crackout (likely fake)
• Banana (likely fake)
• Kitty's Catch
• Championship Bowling
• Iron Tank
• Skull 'N Crossbones
• Rolling Thunder
• Road Runner
• Ms. Pac-Man
• Pac-Man
• Alien Syndrome
• Afterburner
• Gauntlet
• RBI Baseball
• RBI Baseball 2
• RBI Baseball 3
• Fantasy Zone

And for Game Boy:

• Mouse Trap
• Paperboy
• Jordan Vs. Bird

And for Atari 2600:

• Jr. Pac-Man
• Dukes Of Hazzard (sort of)

I'll have to check to confirm. I probably have more. You mean hard copies and not just ROM files right?

That is a sizable list! Everything I have is physical/hard copy. I have a small handful of roms that friends have allowed me to have to examine or release. One of them for example was a 5-screw Snow Bros. found at a local convention that was posted to a local Facebook game group I am in. Upon seeing his post I immediately told him that a 5-screw Snow Bros. doesn't exist and told him to open it - boom prototype. I swung by the hotel the convention was at that day and used a back up laptop to dump it! I should still have the rom file, but a game like that is very hard to examine for differences since it's filled with so much RNG(It did appear to have differences according to a quick code comparison to the released version.)

Is there any particular game on your list or one that is out there on the NES that you'd like to start with as the first one we make a thread for and examine?

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

Oh man, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Ultimate Stuntman appears to just be a review copy of the final build though I've never compared the checksum.

Mega Man 2 is dumped but unreleased, nobody has a copy but me.

Mega Man 3 is released and the differences are outlined on The Cutting Room Floor.

Kitt's Catch was used to create a small print run a decade ago.

I briefly played all the Tengen ROM and some of the sprites and music is different but beyond that I don't know.

[Armageddon Potato | 124]

On 2/15/2023 at 7:04 AM, Code Monkey said:

Oh man, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Ultimate Stuntman appears to just be a review copy of the final build though I've never compared the checksum.

Mega Man 2 is dumped but unreleased, nobody has a copy but me.

Mega Man 3 is released and the differences are outlined on The Cutting Room Floor.

Kitt's Catch was used to create a small print run a decade ago.

I briefly played all the Tengen ROM and some of the sprites and music is different but beyond that I don't know.

From what I know based on all my notes I can tell you:

• Ultimate Stuntman - Unknown, but unlicensed games tend to heavily lean final version.
• Sky Kid - Unknown, those labels tend to lean final build but it's still up in the air.
• Spy Hunter - Same.
• Mega Man 2 - All known prototypes are final build, except for Mark Nolan's "Clash Man" converter copy.
• Mega Man 3 - Already dumped and examined, which is how more of these should be!
• Crackout (likely fake) - I heard about these. =(
• Banana (likely fake) - I have a proto of this one on the Famicom. Many have been dumped on Hidden Palace, and tcrf.net
• Kitty's Catch - Is this a proto of Kitty's Catch? I have the LE version and a prototype big box(It was box only.)
• Championship Bowling - Unknown, no related info on this.
• Iron Tank - Unknown, would have to see the label/board but could have changes.
• Skull 'N Crossbones - I have this one, and I've confirmed some differences. I managed to either activate a code for 99 weapons, or bug it out somehow. Never figured out how I did it. I'm actually very familiar with this game.
• Rolling Thunder - Tengen prototypes have a very high chance to be final version(Almost 95% chance or one in twenty I'd say.) I'll refer to this as the "Tengen rule."
• Road Runner - Tengen rule.
• Ms. Pac-Man - Likely final based on notes, most NES Pac-Man related prototypes are final versions unless they are PAL, still however unknown.
• Pac-Man - Same.
• Alien Syndrome - Tengen rule.
• Afterburner - Tengen rule.
• Gauntlet - Is it a Tengen cart or a licensed cart? A licensed cart would be very interesting!
• RBI Baseball - Tengen rule, unless it's the licensed cart.
• RBI Baseball 2 - Tengen rule.
• RBI Baseball 3 - Tengen rule.
• Fantasy Zone - Tengen rule.
  
  In my opinion for any cartridge prototype no matter how bizarre looking or how early a version sticker on it says the max chance of differences is 50/50. It only tends to go down from there. The good news is sometimes something that looks totally standard lands up being super crazy different(G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor prototype for example.) If I had to take a shot at what would be a good candidate looking for differences first it would be Championship Bowling, Iron Tank, Sky Kid, and Spy Hunter. If Gauntlet/RBI Baseball are the licensed versions those would also be very good candidates. We could take a look at whatever you'd like though! I also have a huge list I need to curate and post. We could go over one of yours first, or one of mine. Who shall toss the first prototype into the FIRE?! The fire of... examination and documentation? ATOP MOUNT VGS! lol
  
  As a side note I'm going to make a list of every NES game and whether a prototype of it exists/allegedly exists/never been found along with how many copies are floating around out there of each. What list is going to take a while though, haha!

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

11 hours ago, Armageddon Potato said:

From what I know based on all my notes I can tell you:

• Ultimate Stuntman - Unknown, but unlicensed games tend to heavily lean final version.
• Sky Kid - Unknown, those labels tend to lean final build but it's still up in the air.
• Spy Hunter - Same.
• Mega Man 2 - All known prototypes are final build, except for Mark Nolan's "Clash Man" converter copy.
• Mega Man 3 - Already dumped and examined, which is how more of these should be!
• Crackout (likely fake) - I heard about these. =(
• Banana (likely fake) - I have a proto of this one on the Famicom. Many have been dumped on Hidden Palace, and tcrf.net
• Kitty's Catch - Is this a proto of Kitty's Catch? I have the LE version and a prototype big box(It was box only.)
• Championship Bowling - Unknown, no related info on this.
• Iron Tank - Unknown, would have to see the label/board but could have changes.
• Skull 'N Crossbones - I have this one, and I've confirmed some differences. I managed to either activate a code for 99 weapons, or bug it out somehow. Never figured out how I did it. I'm actually very familiar with this game.
• Rolling Thunder - Tengen prototypes have a very high chance to be final version(Almost 95% chance or one in twenty I'd say.) I'll refer to this as the "Tengen rule."
• Road Runner - Tengen rule.
• Ms. Pac-Man - Likely final based on notes, most NES Pac-Man related prototypes are final versions unless they are PAL, still however unknown.
• Pac-Man - Same.
• Alien Syndrome - Tengen rule.
• Afterburner - Tengen rule.
• Gauntlet - Is it a Tengen cart or a licensed cart? A licensed cart would be very interesting!
• RBI Baseball - Tengen rule, unless it's the licensed cart.
• RBI Baseball 2 - Tengen rule.
• RBI Baseball 3 - Tengen rule.
• Fantasy Zone - Tengen rule.
  
  In my opinion for any cartridge prototype no matter how bizarre looking or how early a version sticker on it says the max chance of differences is 50/50. It only tends to go down from there. The good news is sometimes something that looks totally standard lands up being super crazy different(G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor prototype for example.) If I had to take a shot at what would be a good candidate looking for differences first it would be Championship Bowling, Iron Tank, Sky Kid, and Spy Hunter. If Gauntlet/RBI Baseball are the licensed versions those would also be very good candidates. We could take a look at whatever you'd like though! I also have a huge list I need to curate and post. We could go over one of yours first, or one of mine. Who shall toss the first prototype into the FIRE?! The fire of... examination and documentation? ATOP MOUNT VGS! lol
  
  As a side note I'm going to make a list of every NES game and whether a prototype of it exists/allegedly exists/never been found along with how many copies are floating around out there of each. What list is going to take a while though, haha!

I'm the one that dumped the Tengen roms and compiled them for @Code Monkey, and I can certainly say that the Tengen rule is broken by a few of them.  I won't go into any more detail than that, but rest assured they are not all near release versions.  Some are early dev.

[Armageddon Potato | 124]

51 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

I'm the one that dumped the Tengen roms and compiled them for @Code Monkey, and I can certainly say that the Tengen rule is broken by a few of them.  I won't go into any more detail than that, but rest assured they are not all near release versions.  Some are early dev.

That's definitely good news! The "Tengen rule" is based on all currently known copies of all known Tengen protos which there is a good established number of. The ratio for differences being present according to my documentation is very close to about 1 out of 20 land up being different and when they are it's often later in development. Early Tengen protos are quite rare! I actually don't have a definitive ratio for early Tengen protos because so few exist among them all.

The reason I call it the Tengen Rule is that Tengen protos are about 1 in 20 where as licensed protos for example are about 1 in 3 for there to be a chance of differences. Licensed protos have about a somewhat equal chance of being mid/late development across the board as well. Any early proto is quite rare regardless of being licensed or unlicensed. The earlier the rarer actually. Technically there is more early licensed protos than unlicensed, but it's super slim and not enough even exist to say for certain(it could easily flip the other way if a few suddenly show up.) In general unlicensed protos tend to be close to final or final version very often comparatively and honestly I have no idea why. You'd think they would of been more loosey-goosey with them rather than say Capcom, or Nintendo or something!

As more Tengen protos with differences show up, I can add that to my excel which will increase or decrease the ratio(which also sits alongside unlicensed stuff since all Tengen protos effect those numbers too.)

I'll post up a personal proto-info type guide at some point explaining all this. I originally left this info off of NintendoAge because of what happened to it. At the time I was also worried once my documentation got to be what I felt was "accurate enough" I didn't want it to effect the cartridge prototype market in any adverse way. It'd be weird if all licensed protos were suddenly inside slabs because of the higher difference chance, etc. As it sits right now though they are already quite pricey, and I think it's better to get that information out there. Protos don't really seem to garner much of a premium in a slab(at least that I've seen anyways.)

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

I opened the Discord you sent me, I was able to post and now I have to read the Declaration Of Independence terms document before I can access it. It'll take me a while to get through all of the individual links required to agree. Then I can post them unless you'd rather them here.

[Armageddon Potato | 124]

On 2/18/2023 at 5:16 PM, Code Monkey said:

I opened the Discord you sent me, I was able to post and now I have to read the Declaration Of Independence terms document before I can access it. It'll take me a while to get through all of the individual links required to agree. Then I can post them unless you'd rather them here.

I had originally posted many of them in my Discord, but eventually they will all be here. I just need to find some free time to get to work here! Let me know if there's anything you wanted to go through first!

[SteelGeneral | 3]

I'm relatively new to the prototype collecting game, but I'm eager to participate. I've already publicly released a few of the undumped protos I've found through the Forest of Illusion but have a few others that I haven't passed along just yet, as well as a few that are already dumped and out there.

Famicom:

• Captain Silver (undumped, but my copy has issues. Need to try to dump the eproms directly, but that is out of my wheelhouse)
• Daisenryaku (undumped, hexdump does differ from release)
• Dengeki Big Bang! (aka Clash at Demonhead) (already out there)
• Fighting Golf (undumped, hexdump does differ from release)
• Hottāman no Chitei Tanken (already out there)
• Okkotoshi Puzzle - Tonjan! (dumped! https://forestillusion.com/2022/okkotoshi-puzzle-tonjan-japan-prototype)
• Twinbee (already out there)

Game Boy:

• Altered Space - A 3-D Alien Adventure (dumped! https://forestillusion.com/2022/altered-space-a-3-d-alien-adventure-usa-prototype)

Super Famicom:

• Devil's Course (already out there)

Super Nintendo:

• NCAA Basketball (already out there)

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

I still haven't gotten through all of the terms and conditions of the Discord website and now I just got an email that they're updating their terms so I'll have to start over again. I don't know why they make them so long if they want people to use their product.

[Gloves | 11,771]

2 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

I still haven't gotten through all of the terms and conditions of the Discord website and now I just got an email that they're updating their terms so I'll have to start over again. I don't know why they make them so long if they want people to use their product.

You know full well that nobody reads those terms. You're the outlier. 

[Tyree_Cooper | 750]

what you don't know is that he reads the terms in all the available languages

[T3rra | 18]

I read the post wrong, lol. Sorry! I don't have any NES prototypes yet

Edited March 26, 2023 by T3rra

[Armageddon Potato | 124]

Ok, so I managed to get a little time to myself now that taxes and all that fun stuff are out of the way. I managed to dump that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith GBA prototype. It oddly has a Fever8 sticker on it in Japanese I was told. The data in HxD shows it's different. I'll be adding this to TCRF/HiddenPalace. I also have The Lone Ranger(NES) and Jungle Strike(SNES) that are about to be shipped to be hopefully repaired/dumped. The next game I'd like to comb over would be The Addam's Family on NES. The data appears to be slightly different, but how different I'm unsure. I'll see if I can add the Star Wars game, and if anyone wants to take a crack at documenting it, let me know!

Also I found this which has the same kind of stickers that the Star Wars GBA prototype had, but it doesn't seem to be a prototype?

[Rudybegga | 48]

I can't access my discord to let you know, but eBay has a seller with 17 NES prototypes.  I didn't know if it was okay to post a link or username, or list of games.  But some of them might be undumped?