I've been a huge Gamate collector for a long time, and I just acquired 4 very strange game cards. The Demo video sequence and music mixing is quite apparently different on at least one title. The cards are a very light grey color, have no instruction warning at all on the back, have no indentation for the sticker label, and have a larger area for the actual PCB. Looking at the reverse side in the light, you can clearly see that the marks in the mold reveal that the 2 chips in the games are significantly larger than normal. The stickers appear to be printed on the same stock used for other cards, however the top side of the stickers look to have been hand trimmed to fit on the card. Another surprise, the edge-seem on the little clear protective sleeve has a ribbed style that I have never seen on any other cards. The pictures are a little dark, but you get the general idea. I do not believe these are pirate cards because of the official sticker stock with the fine fibers being highlighted in the proper areas. Maybe pre-production testing samples? A cool thing I spotted is that the stickers on all the cards have sharper fine details than the normal cards. We're talking details you'd only notice with a magnifying glass or a high-dpi scan, and these same details appear either blurry or just plain missing on the regular card. I have tested Monster Pitfall side-by-side with a regular retail Monster Pitfall card and the demo video sequences end at VERY different times and the music has a slightly different bass tune! This means that the coding is not the same. I sure wish there was a way to dump these. I believe Monster Pitfall's full stereo tune can be heard through the console's mono speaker without the need of headphones on this light grey card, that's probably the difference I heard that stood out! I have tested on many different consoles and these results stand firm. Besides the fact that these are very odd aesthetically in physical form, can anybody come up with a reason why the demo sequence would be different from the retail release? I don't understand why these would have any difference from the retail release unless they were not for production.
Very cool find. I know the Game Mate is a bit crap but it's one of those systems that has a charm of it's very own.
If I had to guess I'd say they're probably not prototypes, just cards from an earlier/later/weird production run or something.. they may have ended up with different ROM revisions on them for some reason or another. There are a lot of odd inexplicable Gamate things out there.
