Several Earthbound samples for the SNES have popped up recently, so I have made a page on SNES Central documenting them. I also made a page on a legit prototype of Earthbound, but I have less information on it.
Why click on the thread if you have no interest in Earthbound prototypes or retail samples? To OP, thanks for the pictures, very interesting. I wouldn't have been observant enough to look at the back and see the manual soldering.
As far as I can tell, the thing that is special about them is that people are willing to pay four figures for them.
You really do have a great website there! I had no idea about the long board proto version. A very good read indeed! :smile-new:
I do feel bad for people buying five figures for a "proto" which is nothing more than a retail board, with retail ROMs and a different label. If it's a Nintendo "proto" it's using EPROMs. No one used mask ROMs for prototypes. It would be stupidly expensive for just a few chips.
hey tiny dick, look at my avatar before you comment. I wasnt being sarcastic i just wanted to know what was different about this cart. <----
Always very interesting to read you badinsults. I also can't believe that some people want to pay that much for nothing more than a final version, the board doesn't even have EPROMs.
The second of the Earthbound samples from Nighty's lot is now up on Ebay in an auction format. 5 days left, and it is already over $1000.
My biggest problem with the whole thing it that it would be absolutely trivial to manufacture a cart like that - just desolder the ROM from a retail copy of the game, then find some other game with the same PCB but an earlier release date (so the date codes on the chips don't match up with the retail) and install the ROM into that. Print out the label on an old dot-matrix printer.
I'd rather not divulge the final price, as I want to see what this one goes for without any outside influences.
