ndiddy

Thanks for posting this, it's a shame what happened to you, especially that it's too late to get a refund. I haven't dealt with any of these people, but in my opinion the nes_tunes_music guy seems pretty suspicious. He changed his story on where he got the Mario Bros prototype from, and he knew he'd sold you a fake game and didn't say anything until you contacted him. I don't know what the standard protocol for this stuff is, but if I ever realized that I'd accidentally sold someone a fake game, I would immediately reach out and offer a refund, even if it was after the buyer protection period.

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.

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.

It was obtained in a data breach so I don't know what the policy is of linking it here. The filename you want to look for is "HNPdata_List.xlsx". Note that whoever did the data entry used two spaces for all the game titles, so for example if you want to search for Spy Hunter, you need to type "spy hunter".

Hi, According to Nintendo's NES release spreadsheet, Spy Hunter was submitted for final approval on July 14, 1987 and Sky Kid was submitted for final approval on July 3, 1987. I would guess that these are likely final builds. They're still nice collectables for anyone interested in that sort of stuff, though.