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NES Modem and Minnesota State Lottery Cart


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18 minutes ago, Ferris Bueller said:

So I just sent them a message this morning offering to do a professional transfer. I have the equipment, I've done it before, and if they don't trust me, I have a veritable who's who network in the preservation world if Ferris ain't quite big enough to be trusted.

Just show him your Dragon Warriors... Don't get anymore legit than that, lol! 😄

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4 hours ago, RH said:

@BlackbirdZero13 I also want to mention that if this video was never ripped and posted to the internet, I think there's more than a few of us that would pass the hat to raise funds to get that VHS tape sent to a company like Legacy Box.

Of course, I'm sure someone around here probably already has a really nice VCR and a setup to rip it, so if you are willing to trust us, someone could rip it for you.  I just mention paying for a service because you know they are legit, will return your tape and you won't have to worry about trusting some random Joe on the internet.

Given that he was trying to sell the tape on NintendoAge, I'm not 100% sure he wants to post it on the net unless someone like Lost Levels buys the tape from him outright. 🙂

Now ripping and preserving it otherwise is a good idea.

Edited by Tulpa
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1 hour ago, Tulpa said:

Now ripping and preserving it otherwise is a good idea.

More my concern here.

I mean, I did the capture and preservation on the SMB Rough Cut, just not sure what they're planning on doing with it. I know the one guy is doing what I call the Ultimate Water World cut, but I was more interested in just having the tape in the best quality possible, as it was, no alterations. We didn't do a color grade, but we did bring out as much of the detail as possible. I think I've been sitting on that for two years, now.

Edited by Ferris Bueller
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11 hours ago, BlackbirdZero13 said:

I'll pull out my old VCR from storage, clean it, test it, then see if the lottery tape still plays. It's been in storage and unplayed likely since the pics were taken

Fast forward the tape all the way to the end [and rewind] to correct the tape tension before you play it.

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Honestly, I don't know what I want to do with it. It's sitting right now, and I know it would make a cool piece in someone's collection, and probably net a decent profit, but it would also be something that should probably be preserved as gaming history. 

Nothing is likely to happen until my move is complete, but after that, I'd like for SOMETHING to happen with it!

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As odd as it may sound, I recommend auctioning it off here.  Sure, eBay may get a lot more visibility, but this community is packed with the people that would be most interested in an item like this.

If it's just a VHS tape, and that's all there is to this collection, 95% of it's "importance" is the contents.  I'm not saying the VHS isn't a cool item, but it doesn't have much use as a museum display piece.  Regardless, there are gaming museums and I don't know which one is the top-of-the-line in the US, but someone could tell you.  I'm sure they'd love the donation.  

Regardless, I'd love to see it ripped and posted to YouTube, first.  A museum may rip it, but I can't travel to TX (or wherever) to check it out.  It'd be nice if this was preserved and shared with the global gaming community.

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If not here, maybe Cifaldi would be interested for that video game museum and preservation he does?  Dude truly went the extra mile with that Sim City drop for the NES among others.  He would have the equipment already, or people with it, who could do as high a quality clean up and digital preservation of the footage and make it open to the public to experience as a digital exhibit.

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Just now, Tanooki said:

If not here, maybe Cifaldi would be interested for that video game museum and preservation he does?  Dude truly went the extra mile with that Sim City drop for the NES among others.  He would have the equipment already, or people with it, who could do as high a quality clean up and digital preservation of the footage and make it open to the public to experience as a digital exhibit.

Guess who helped with that? I'm friends with Frank, and again, have offered to help with the tape. I would be one of those people.   🙂

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2 minutes ago, Ferris Bueller said:

Guess who helped with that? I'm friends with Frank, and again, have offered to help with the tape. I would be one of those people.   🙂

Well then one...thank you from the present and two my I guess what... 14 year old self?  I think that was in NP with Earthbound in 1991.  I'm glad it works as well as it does, I have this sliver of hope some day, someone hacks that thing and fixes the little bugs.  I'd love to have it on a legit donor (or otherwise new parts) cart to play I like it that much.  I've got an everdrive, but still...this goes into that level of care.

 

 

Trust Ferris if he had a hand in those parts of Sim City, you won't do better on preserving that.

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5 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Well then one...thank you from the present and two my I guess what... 14 year old self?  I think that was in NP with Earthbound in 1991.  I'm glad it works as well as it does, I have this sliver of hope some day, someone hacks that thing and fixes the little bugs.  I'd love to have it on a legit donor (or otherwise new parts) cart to play I like it that much.  I've got an everdrive, but still...this goes into that level of care.

Trust Ferris if he had a hand in those parts of Sim City, you won't do better on preserving that.

I own the cart and asked for the one that was featured in the 2005 Nintendo Power, the open face gold proto. I wrote the FAQ guide to help find all the differences between the SNES for NES, that was the majority of my contribution to his article, the guide, don't want to take any credit for Frank's research or writing. The goal was for that project to shine a giant light on the VGHF, so I kept my mouth shut for the most part. People still think Frank or Steve Lin own the cart, which I'm fine with, as long as they're talking about the foundation. 

I need to get a picture of the SMB rough cut when the owner captured it with whatever VHS he had and do a side by side of my capture and then the "grade" we did on it. Again, did not actually do a color grade, just tinkered with the levels to bring out as much detail without messing up images. I think we did a really damn good job and I'm hoping it sees the light of day sometime. Again, not my tape, so I can't release the footage until I'm give the green light. I believe the hope is there is a Special Edition BluRay release and this cut is on it. We'll see.

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On 2/14/2021 at 5:41 PM, BlackbirdZero13 said:

Honestly, I don't know what I want to do with it. It's sitting right now, and I know it would make a cool piece in someone's collection, and probably net a decent profit, but it would also be something that should probably be preserved as gaming history. 

Nothing is likely to happen until my move is complete, but after that, I'd like for SOMETHING to happen with it!

Edit: Nevermind, looks like Frank Cifaldi was already recommended. 

Edited by Inzoreno
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On 2/12/2021 at 10:26 AM, RH said:

@BlackbirdZero13 I also want to mention that if this video was never ripped and posted to the internet, I think there's more than a few of us that would pass the hat to raise funds to get that VHS tape sent to a company like Legacy Box.

Of course, I'm sure someone around here probably already has a really nice VCR and a setup to rip it, so if you are willing to trust us, someone could rip it for you.  I just mention paying for a service because you know they are legit, will return your tape and you won't have to worry about trusting some random Joe on the internet.

The guys from the My Life In Gaming YouTube channel have another channel Video Game B-Roll and this is 100% the kinda thing they would rip. I assume they have a great VHS ripping setup as they are into high quality video.

Edit: I also second the idea of @Ferris Bueller doing the transfer. I hadn’t read his comment when I wrote this

Edited by mideast
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@Ferris Bueller Thanks for being that clear and open in this space at least.  Nice to see what layers of what went into that because it's kind of faceless other than Frank when it came to the article and it had to be a team effort no doubt.  I don't know how you did find that cart but nothing short of amazing that one crept out of hiding after so long.  I was there when the project happened and knew the people including the leader of demiforce that pulled off Earthbound and that was monumental how that snuck out of the vault so to speak.  Quite a lot of backroom work went into that, much collaboration, steps and stages, wrangling of the funds of many many people to make that one happen as well.  It wasn't just some hi I have a proto, it's for sale, or can you please dump and share...it was a cash grab and a sizable one at that.

 

You, him the VGHF do damn good work, and it's nice to see the open ended candidness of it all.  I never was a fan of people (even if it is their right, and I begrudgingly respect it a little) who buy up these games and hoard them, such as that one known Japanese famicom guy who buys and seals stuff away.  To me it's selfish, much like if someone found a missing DaVinci, had it verified, but never let it be on display nor images of it either, so it got reduced to word of mouth and mystery.  People do as they will, and at least this organization keep it on the nice higher road of a museum of digital art so it can be preserved, respected and shared.

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  • 9 months later...
1 hour ago, DarkTone said:

I read that it got cancelled because kids might gamble. Does that mean that a modem would have worked? 

Crazy how the future of gaming would be if this thing took off. 

Well, yeah, any hardware that actually made it to release would have worked.  Modems were actually pretty common at the point that this was supposed to come out (plenty of businesses using them besides tons and tons of folks using their PCs to get on BBSs and various pre-mainstream-internet online services of the day), so there wouldn't really have been any work to do there beyond building the software interface for it for the NES.  6502 based computers of the day had had modem support for more than a decade by that point, so there was plenty of hardware and software to choose from, they really just needed to skin it and write up an interface to use the controller and an on-screen keyboard.

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  • 1 year later...
On 8/3/2020 at 7:37 PM, JamesRobot said:

I gotta million dollar Mario to trade for a copy of Minnesota State Lottery Cart.

5X3jcfy.jpg

I never knew he appeared on Pawn Stars. I worked for an auction house that dealt with him. Wasn’t my department, but I was a contact for the local branch they trusted with high value, so I was on the email chains. Dude was high maintenance, to say the least. 

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  • 3 months later...

Sorry to bump and old thread, but I just wanted to give an update on this topic. I am the individual who luckly unearthed the cart and was able to purchase it from the owner. I'm a member of the High End Game Room on Facebook and posted about it there. First, when I found out about this cart, I was unsure about what it was until I dug more into it. 

Thanks to the promotional VHS tape of the project in this thread I was able to confirm what this cart was the Minnesota State Lottery Cart. The parental security lock out screen matches 100% to the picture on the VHS. Thus, being a really cool historical item, I contacted Frank and we are in the works of dumping the cart. I reallly want to know what is beyond the sercurity lock screen (most likely the whole program that Nintendo pitched to the state loterries). I'm documenting the whole process. 

I have reached out to the individual who owns the promotional VHS tape, so we can see once dumped how similar they are. I feel that this cart (most likely the whole program) was the last stage of development before the program was scraped by Nintendo, and never reached the at home test stage. Either way, my goal is to preserve it and share it with the community as it is a very important piece of gambeling/nintendo/video game history. 

If acceptable, I can keep everyone here at VGS uptodate through this thread or create a new one on the process.  

20240127_081500.jpg

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14 minutes ago, Collectorwanabe said:

Thanks to the promotional VHS tape of the project in this thread I was able to confirm what this cart was the Minnesota State Lottery Cart. The parental security lock out screen matches 100% to the picture on the VHS.

I'm still curious as to what happened to the cart that actually had the Minnesota State Lottery seal.

My opinion is that this cart was what it says on the label, the demonstration version for the lottery people to evaluate, and they got as far as making a cart that would be the actual release. I'm starting to think that the one with the seal was also a working version, and might still be out there.

I'm really interested to see if the programming on this cart beyond the lockout matches up with the screenshots from the VHS (the fishing game, etc.) Or if there's something different on it that we've never seen before.

Edited by Tulpa
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4 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

I'm still curious as to what happened to the cart that actually had the Minnesota State Lottery seal.

My opinion is that this cart was what it says on the label, the demonstration version for the lottery people to evaluate, and they got as far as making a cart that would be the actual release. I'm starting to think that the one with the seal was also a working version, and might still be out there.

I'm really interested to see if the programming on this cart beyond the lockout matches up with the screenshots from the VHS (the fishing game, etc.) Or if there's something different on it that we've never seen before.

There could by a specific cart for Minnesota, buy my gut is saying that the one pictured in the vhs is a mockup. Not able to tell without seeing the VHS. If it was not a mockup, I would assume the video would show the whole process of it being used in the NES to demonstrate the process. 

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