Something Special or Garbage? (Famicom game)

[fcgamer | 4,722]

I've had this for about two or three years, generally I've put this on the garbage side of things, trying to half-heartedly sell it here and there. What is it, well a labeless version of Spelunker on Famicom, lol. Check out the pics please:

 

The stickers on the back were added by me, and the black thing is covering a shop label, no need to give away my sources, sorry

Tonight I was about ready to chuck this into a set of stuff that I'm trying to move, and something dawned on me, Spelunker was only a led game, right? And this one has no led.

Later I decided to look it up on bootgod, totally different PCB/chips being shown for Spelunker.

http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=2258

As can be seen from my pics though, it definitely seems to be a legit irem PCB ...

Thoughts on what exactly this is? Something special, or just garbage?

Let's discuss.

Edited January 17, 2021 by fcgamer

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

Most of the LED Irem games had very limited late releases without the LED, Spelunker being one of them.  So this is a rare variant, but not really worth anything in the condition it's in, IMHO...

[fcgamer | 4,722]

Duh, somehow I had forgotten that this was one of the games with a no-LED variant. It was a late night last night, haha.

Thanks for the information

[phart010 | 1,707]

What’s a led game?

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

42 minutes ago, phart010 said:

What’s a led game?

Type "famicom spelunker" into eBay or google and look at the cartridge.  Since the original Famicom didn't have an LED light to indicate when it was turned on/off, Irem thought they would be forward-thinking and put an LED on the front of the cartridge itself.  Lo and behold, it turns out money is more important than anything else in the business world, so they soon canned the idea after only six games (out of the 28 they released for the system).