New, rare NES 6-in-1 variant

[DefaultGen | 5,436]

Am I nuts, was this not posted here yet? I guess some cool people knew about it but I sure didn't. There's a rarest 6-in-1 variant on NES. Everyone's Myriad 6-in-1s are all silver medals. This was bought by @Speedy_NES on Ebay in February from a store in Washington, apparently up on Ebay for a while but we're all dummies who didn't buy it.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTdLTZhICaA/

Edited September 6, 2021 by DefaultGen

[DarkTone | 988]

Had no idea. Thanks for sharing. 

[Code Monkey | 2,014]

It's a PAL copy. Nothing special.

[croagunk | 798]

Looks awesome!

[operationivy | 24]

I will have to dig around, I have one of these as well and I do believe the back sticker is PAL.

 

[fcgamer | 4,754]

I know I've seen that one before. 

Just as a question, is the cartridge itself in PAL or NTSC format? If it's not actually optimised for PAL machines, "distributed in Europe" would be a much better description than "PAL version".

[fcgamer | 4,754]

Very neat find though, I love this stuff!

[operationivy | 24]

I cant find mine at the moment, in a box somewhere lol. Reminded me of this, sort of neat. What is it? Who knows. Zack has a sealed one. Probably some weird pirate?

[operationivy | 24]

Back photo, sorry to go off topic

[Speedy_NES | 102]

9 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

Am I nuts, was this not posted here yet? I guess some cool people knew about it but I sure didn't. There's a rarest 6-in-1 variant on NES. Everyone's Myriad 6-in-1s are all silver medals. This was bought by @Speedy_NES on Ebay in February from a store in Washington, apparently up on Ebay for a while but we're all dummies who didn't buy it.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTdLTZhICaA/

Thanks for the tag @DefaultGen Yeah, I would like to post more here, but been struck for time due to a big move. 

6 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

It's a PAL copy. Nothing special.

It's important to not take sellers' assumptions of obscure items at face value. The copy you show is the one I bought. The seller had it listed as "PAL", yet this is what he had to say about it when I asked for more details: "As the other copies of Caltron on Ebay that have this same box all say PAL that's what I assumed was up with this. It's the same exact one that several other sellers have." Yet there were no others on eBay and I track this kind of stuff extensively. As to where the seller got it from: "We are a physical store. Someone brought it in and sold it to us." The seller did say that he thinks whoever brought it in maybe ordered it mail-order from Europe, but that's an assumption he makes. 

The whole PAL vs. NTSC ordeal with Caltron is an interesting discussion, as there are many more variants than most collectors probably know about. There are at least 3 "US" Caltron variants excluding Myriad and this one. Of those, one of the box variants has been found outside the US, too, with 60-pin cart inside rather than 72-pin. That signals that a box that would be presumed to be specific to US distribution made its way outside the US, too. Then there are at least 3 different 72-pin Caltron cart variants found outside the US, too, in addition to the variants found in the US. In other words, Caltron is a bit like Sachen, except for their documented presence in Los Angeles. But I don't think that there is any true PAL vs. NTSC distinction to be made (certainly not in terms of format -- all Caltrons are in NTSC format AFAIK, I have yet to find one in PAL format), but more different batches of products making their way from Taiwan to different regions on demand. Any differences are likely to be indicative of print revision changes rather than regional design changes. 

A few other fun facts / observations re: Caltron:

*The Caltron logo on this box matches the design of the US promo materials found to date. I imagine that puts the flyers from around the same time period as this version as opposed to the more common Caltron 6in1 versions with different logo. 
*There has been at least one other original Caltron game with full label found in the US, which was neither a multicart nor a game released (or at least found) anywhere else in 72-pin format. 
*The 9in1 found to date was presumed to be a prototype, I believe because of the Eproms inside; the 6in1 above has Eproms, too, so it's even possible, given the rarity of Caltron titles, that the 9in1 is not a prototype and was simply missing the labels due to wear. 
*The PCB from the new 6in1 found is N725013, whereas the Bootgod database shows the Caltron PCB with switch to be N725012. The back-label change may simply be due to Caltron bypassing the need for a switch, but someone with more technical knowledge would have to confirm this. There are also two different cart variants with switch; would be interesting to see chip dates and PCB version comparison between those. 
*The PCBs I've checked from the "regular" US release cart have early 1992 (1st/2nd week) chips, whereas the one found here has week 12-15 chips, and a PCB I've seen of the cart with the same artwork as the box here has week 33-38 chips. 

@operationivy that's awesome that you have one of these, too -- I'd love to see your copy, if you can find it. The box is identical to this one? Where did you acquire yours? Does it come with a manual? Did you ever scan the box and upload it? I found the box uploaded online (seems to be a different copy, given lack of damage that mine has), where it's listed as "North American" version, so it's possible the person who scanned it found theirs in North America, too:

https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/images/1600

[Speedy_NES | 102]

Maybe someone can tag or pull Frank Cifaldi into this discussion, as I imagine he has some insights on Caltron, too. 

[Speedy_NES | 102]

2 hours ago, operationivy said:

I cant find mine at the moment, in a box somewhere lol. Reminded me of this, sort of neat. What is it? Who knows. Zack has a sealed one. Probably some weird pirate?

Nice one -- do you have a picture of the cart? Does it contain original software or just a bootleg multicart? 

[DarkTone | 988]

Can someone explain the history of why this game is important? Its not an official release, so why is more sought after than other unlicensed NES games? 

[Speedy_NES | 102]

10 minutes ago, DarkTone said:

Can someone explain the history of why this game is important? Its not an official release, so why is more sought after than other unlicensed NES games? 

Rarity. The only reason so many sealed copies of one of the 6in1 variants are floating around now is because a batch of sealed new old stock was found around 10 years ago. Before that, any 6in1 variant was tough to find. 

[DarkTone | 988]

Ah ok. Thank you. 

Crazy that even though Nintendo wanted nothing to do with it, because its uncommon, it goes for wild prices. Then again, this is the game collecting world were talking about. 

[fcgamer | 4,754]

1 hour ago, DarkTone said:

Crazy that even though Nintendo wanted nothing to do with it, because its uncommon, it goes for wild prices.

This is sort of the wrong way of looking at things. It's highly unlikely that the company ever tried to get a license from Nintendo. 

[fcgamer | 4,754]

2 hours ago, Speedy_NES said:

Maybe someone can tag or pull Frank Cifaldi into this discussion, as I imagine he has some insights on Caltron, too. 

Caltron is just a shell, created perhaps for tax purposes, etc.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

1 hour ago, DarkTone said:

Can someone explain the history of why this game is important? Its not an official release, so why is more sought after than other unlicensed NES games? 

Can someone explain to me why some people seem to not care about the history of unlicensed games because Nintendo didn't put their seal of craptacularness on it?

[fcgamer | 4,754]

50 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Can someone explain to me why some people seem to not care about the history of unlicensed games because Nintendo didn't put their seal of craptacularness on it?

The seal of quality argument always falls to pieces when we have these discussions, since Videomation was unlicensed on Famicom yet licensed on NES.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

8 hours ago, fcgamer said:

The seal of quality argument always falls to pieces when we have these discussions, since Videomation was unlicensed on Famicom yet licensed on NES.

Wow...gotta say, I didn't know that.  I do know there were a bunch of unlicensed games that were licensed there, mostly Tengen titles, but I didn't know it worked the other way   I just figure looking at crap that got the seal, like Wayne's World or The Last Starfighter, and comparing them to games like Bee 52 or Rolling Thunder, which did not, would show how asinine the argument is in the first place.  There's a ton of licensed fare that make the Color Dreams games look like Super Mario, so yeah, that argument never held weight with anyone who actually knows the library.  It definitely seems to be the way younger folk think.  I'd love to see what they would've done in a rental store when they were choosing between Wayne Gretzky Hockey or Rolling Thunder, which was a choice I distinctly remember making because I was gonna go with Gretzky (I'm Canadian, of course I'd pick hockey ), but my friends were like "no, you don't want that garbage."  The seal was never a consideration, but if it was, I would've likely had a disappointing weekend.

[fcgamer | 4,754]

Yeah it was all just about money and politics, nothing to do with quality.

The parent company of Ave might have been the only ones that wanted to get involved properly (as chip developers), but were denied due to Nintendo's xenophobic attitude.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

40 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Yeah it was all just about money and politics, nothing to do with quality.

The parent company of Ave might have been the only ones that wanted to get involved properly (as chip developers), but were denied due to Nintendo's xenophobic attitude.

I have a couple licensed Camerica accessories, so they were clearly licensees at some point, but then the Game Genie hit and tanked that.  Makes me wonder if they would've released their games with a license if they hadn't made the Game Genie. 

 

[fcgamer | 4,754]

4 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

I have a couple licensed Camerica accessories, so they were clearly licensees at some point, but then the Game Genie hit and tanked that.  Makes me wonder if they would've released their games with a license if they hadn't made the Game Genie. 

 

Camerica was just a publisher though. Similarly, it's up for debate who actually developed the Game Genie.

[DarkTone | 988]

14 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Camerica was just a publisher though. Similarly, it's up for debate who actually developed the Game Genie.

It is? Wasn't there a court case involving it? Surely that would have come to light. 

[fcgamer | 4,754]

3 hours ago, DarkTone said:

It is? Wasn't there a court case involving it? Surely that would have come to light. 

No, there's no court case that I'm aware of.

That said, both the Darling brothers of Codemasters and a Taiwanense guy (of a different company) were allegedly the developers of the device. The claims about the latter guy generally stem from Brazil, which also received the Game Genie.

It's a bit of a moot point as the Taiwanense company / guy that also allegedly developed the Game Genie, his company did all the Famicom Codemasters releases, made the PCBs for the NES versions, etc. So these companies has been working closely with one another.

However, it's uncertain who / which company actually developed the Game Genie, with claims on both sides.