Documenting And Preserving Over 100 NES Prototypes

[Code Monkey | 2,014]

Last week I received a package I had purchased from a well known prototype collector that contained more than 100 NES prototype chips. Many are Tengen, many are just random development builds and many are currently unknown. I created this thread to document my journey through discovering what's on the chips, as well as preserving them for the future.

Here is the load of various chips from various NES development companies:

Yes, there are a lot to go through. I spoke with the seller and he told me he got many of them from an ex-developer at Tengen and as I looked through the markings on some of the chips, I started to notice some indication of which games might be on there from the markings. Like this batch, you can see these markings on some of them:

TB = Toobin'

FZ = Fantasy Zone

KX = Klax

RT = Rolling Thunder

KC = Kitty's Catch

AB = After Burner

RBI2 = R.B.I. Baseball 2

RB3 = R.B.I. Baseball 3

PM = Pac-Man

CH = unknown

GF = unknown

SX = Skull & Crossbones

This is all just assumption based on the fact they're from Tengen and the abbreviations seem to match up. I spoke with Frank Cifaldi and the thought now is that these were probably either development ROM of each game at various stages prior to release or this may be a complete internal Tengen library of their final ROM files they used for release. This could be their actual internal master chip set.

Last weekend I got a Facebook message from a local guy asking if I needed help dumping the data from these chips and it turned out to be Mike, the same guy that started the NES sealed contents list years ago by opening all of the more uncommon games. I finally made it over to his house tonight and we were able to dump a few chips before he had to attend to other plans but I'm hoping to finish dumping the rest over the weekend. So far this is what we have from tonight's session:

This one isn't Tengen but it's one of the smaller cases we started with. This one is unique because it's the only one labelled with the game name on it and even has the date and version number. Doesn't get any more convenient than that. The chips are also labelled CHR and PRG which most of them aren't.

The next one was simply labelled "Tengen" so we didn't know what was on it. After dumping the data and compiling the ROM, we found out they are Pac-Mania and the chips are dated 10/4 without a year.

Then we moved on to a larger batch once we were rolling. These were all Tengen and contained the following:

Ms. Pac-Man dated 3-13-90

Ms. Pac-Man dated 9-17-91 (a year after its release)

R.B.I. Baseball dated 11-30-89 (a year after its release)

R.B.I. Baseball 2 dated 4-2-90

The odd ones are the late builds. R.B.I. Baseball sort of makes sense because it may have been from when they modified the ROM to move from their licensed version to an unlicensed version but what about Ms. Pac-Man? That was only released as an unlicensed version so did it get a ROM revision a year into release?

That's all I have so far, I'll try and update this thread as we figure out what we have here. I also have a lot more items like this in my collection and I've been thinking about posting to Instagram so if you like this kind of stuff, give me a follow there and convince me to post more on that platform also. Otherwise if nobody is that into my Instagram, I'll just stick to posting here (which I will do regardless).

Instagram link in signature, I've posted one picture so far.

[Nes Freak | 584]

Interesting find.   Just curious, will the roms file be released publicly?  Or kept private.

[Jfreakofkorn | 282]

Thats a nice set chip(s) . 

What are the plan(s) for them once you what they are ? 

[drxandy | 3,236]

Noiceeee, what a fun hunt. Can't wait to see what else is in there.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,092]

That's funny, Mike was telling me about this, and I asked him if the chips were from Code Monkey, and he said, "I don't know; it was just some random guy on facebook..."

[fcgamer | 4,754]

That's really awesome, can't wait to see what you uncover!

[Code Monkey | 2,014]

1 hour ago, Dr. Morbis said:

That's funny, Mike was telling me about this, and I asked him if the chips were from Code Monkey, and he said, "I don't know; it was just some random guy on facebook..."

Ah, the famous Basil? He said you were trying to get the test market NES set I bought late last year.

Over the weekend we got:

• Kitty's Catch (I think the one used for the small release a while back)
• Go Fish (very early build of Kitty's Catch)
• a chip labelled "Original T-1" which appears to be an early prototype version of their RAMBO-1 mapper, Tengen's version of MMC3

[Dr. Morbis | 2,092]

2 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Ah, the famous Basil? He said you were trying to get the test market NES set I bought late last year.

Over the weekend we got:

• Kitty's Catch (I think the one used for the small release a while back)
• Go Fish (very early build of Kitty's Catch)
• a chip labelled "Original T-1" which appears to be an early prototype version of their RAMBO-1 mapper, Tengen's version of MMC3

Yeah, that's me, and I was bummed that I didn't get that pre-Deluxe from the Fire & Ice guy since I only need a couple more NES sets to have them all, but at least now I know where it went.

And Mike already told me about the stuff he's dumped; I think he said he's still got like dozens of chips to go or something?  I can't remember exactly...

Edited April 19, 2021 by Dr. Morbis

[Code Monkey | 2,014]

22 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Yeah, that's me, and I was bummed that I didn't get that pre-Deluxe from the Fire & Ice guy since I only need a couple more NES sets to have them all, but at least now I know where it went.

And Mike already told me about the stuff he's dumped; I think he said he's still got like dozens of chips to go or something?  I can't remember exactly...

He's telling you more than me! I'm just really excited to get the final list back. I plan on dumping everything onto my PowerPak and playing them to find differences.

[SilverspoonGaming | 334]

Holy crap!

[Code Monkey | 2,014]

A few more arrived today. Looks like a Bowling USA prototype (what's that?) and some Sega game. Are they Sega NES chips? Weird.

Now I need to get these dumped as well.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

Guess I have even more work when you pick these up then

I only have three cases left to go through.  Got a few in the troubleshooting pile, but I'll worry about those later.  I'll re-dump Time Lord as well due to my accidental duplication of the same chip, making it impossible to compile, and see if there's any other gems here.

I will say I believe I've deciphered Tengen's chip codes. The games have a 3 digit code set after 335 (so 335###) that corresponds to a game.  Then the number after is either 1011 or 1012.  The first is for the PRG, the second is the CHR.  So 335003-1011 is the PRG chip for Pac-Man.  Interestingly, there are four blank spots in the list; 014, 018, 022, and 023.  I'm guessing those are unreleased games.  Kitty's Catch doesn't have a code because it was never really made for production.  It seems like it was an independent developer submitting the game, trying to get someone to publish it.  And given how similar it is to Activision's Atari game "Fishing Derby," my guess is they decided not to risk a copyright lawsuit on top of everything else   But yeah, if you are hunting for unreleased Tengen games, those four codes are the ones to keep an eye out for, as is anything from 025 and up (the last release, RBI Baseball 3, is 024).

Also, thanks for bringing these by.  I'm really learning a lot about how the games are put together just by trying to figure things out.  There's a couple really confusing ones in there, mainly games that may be missing a chip or two, but there's a few that I can't determine what game they're for that they might match with.  Just gotta finish dumping everything to figure it out.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

On 4/21/2021 at 4:34 PM, Code Monkey said:

A few more arrived today. Looks like a Bowling USA prototype (what's that?) and some Sega game. Are they Sega NES chips? Weird.

It's not that weird.  Sega made a few NES/Famicom games.

http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/search.php?developer=Sega

And that's assuming they're NES chips.  They appear to be 1mb EPROMs, which is more than any NES game uses.  Metal Slader Glory used a total of 1 MB, but that was split into the PRG and CHR - to my knowledge, no NES/Famicom game used 1 MB for either side on it's own.

[Koopa64 | 51]

49 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

It's not that weird.  Sega made a few NES/Famicom games.

http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/search.php?developer=Sega

And that's assuming they're NES chips.  They appear to be 1mb EPROMs, which is more than any NES game uses.  Metal Slader Glory used a total of 1 MB, but that was split into the PRG and CHR - to my knowledge, no NES/Famicom game used 1 MB for either side on it's own.

The one clearly labeled Sega chip is on a Fujitsu MBM27C1024. EPROMs are always measured in bits, not bytes. That chip is 1 Megabit or 128KB. Tons of NES games are 1Mbit.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Koopa64

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

You're right, my bad on that.  I saw 1 MB and misinterpreted it as megabytes, not megabits.  That makes it more likely to be an NES game.  The two Sega chips probably go together, the question is whether the middle chip goes with them or not.  If it does, it's probably After Burner, as it uses 3 128KB chips.  If not, it opens up most of the other Sega developed titles.  I'd lean against it, because After Burner was ported by Sunsoft.  If I had to venture a guess, I'd say the two Sega chips are Shinobi and the outlier is Space Harrier, but that's entirely speculation.  I'd have to compile them to know for sure.