http://imgur.com/a/Fn25L My dad used to work with Virgin back in the day and must've picked this up from a friend that worked with Virgin Games/Interactive. The M.C. Kids game was a popular McDonalds themed NES game, and I believe was in the process of becoming a Gameboy game, but never game up. This is clearly a prototype of what was to become of the game, given the fat chip hanging out the front and the really shoddy gameplay of the game. It works really well, but you can tell the game was very unfinished. Very odd find.
Some pictures from a Super Gamboy or Gameboy Player would be interesting to see. Or a video capture. I liked MC Kids on NES. It was an interesting platformer that I never knew of until over a decade after its release. It makes sense that they might make a Gameboy version.
I'd like to for sure, just gonna figure out the best way to get some HQ gameplay. I don't have advanced screenshot devices for the gameboy so I'll just try and shoot it from my phone in good lighting. Give me until tonight haha.
If you have a super gameboy it makes it easier. Or one of the AGS-101 GBA SP's I suppose would give you a good filmable picture. If all you got is regular gameboys I'm sure you can figure something out too, I've filmed the screens before, just need to line everything up so you got a good light source.
It took some teamwork, but I got a few pics and a quick video of it turning on and playthrough. Will post shortly.
http://imgur.com/a/zi2MN Here are some photos and a quick youtube video showing intro screen, character selection (you can be Mick or Mack I think) and then a bit of gameplay. You'll notice that the game doesn't allow you to die or lose hearts, but you can gain them throughout the game. Points are working and all visuals seem to work properly, but the game is pretty wonky and not polished by any means haha. There is also music and sound effects but my dumbass forgot to turn the sound on.
I hope you get this dumped or get some super gameboy footage. Thanks for posting the video anyway tho.
Sorry for the pretty amateur response, but does getting it dumped mean like backing up anything valuable from it? Im not a big game/prototype collector so Im not familiar with the terminology.
Dumping it basically backs up the game file. That way it can stay preserved in case something were to happen to that cartridge. It is a good idea, we generally like having all this sort of stuff backed up, and to document the things that never saw release. Thanks for the vid, that does looks more completed than I thought it would. Good find!
Dumping means copying the ROM data to a computer file. The cartridge you have could be dumped by certain devices or the EPROM could be removed and dumped by an EPROM programmer device. One reason you should do so is because EPROMs unlike MaskROMs are programmable and over time bits of data can "rot" away. By making a copy you will always have the data and could always reprogram the EPROM chip if the data on that particular chip changes due to aging. This would also mean you could make a capture from an emulator playing the game which would allow for optimal audio and visual quality.
Awesome, I wouldn't know how to quite go about that but I appreciate all the info and everything and I'll probably look into dumping it then before I part ways with it for someone that wants it more than I do haha. But yeah, the game is essentially completed, all the levels can be played I believe. I dont think you can die so that he could have seen it through without having to restart.Thanks fellas!
Sometimes games like this during testing will have failure conditions bypassed to make it easier to test the game. Basically like having Game Genie codes applied. With some time it's possible to remove that and make it more like it would be if it were released commercially. The "Retrode" is one device you could consider for dumping it via the cartridge connector. There are a million ways you could dump the EPROM but that is more vulnerable to accidentally damaging it if you don't have a clue what you are doing. But with some research there are plenty of EPROM programmers that could dump it and are quite cheap. Unfortunately the cheaper ones are Parallel Port devices that modern PCs and Windows OS don't play nice with. I have an older Laptop (Windows 95 on it) which I have used for Parallel Port devices including an EPROM programmer. The programmer couldn't have cost me more than $40.
You should talk to the guy at http://www.nintendoplayer.com/ if you haven't already. He has the equipment to properly dump games for various consoles.
Also, I have made a similar thread so I can get a price check on it hopefully. Head over to that forum if you have advice on that and don't just want to discuss it
