I have this cart for quite long time. I know the 1993 prototype was dumped but is there another one? Don't know whether mine's the same 1993 prototype but from the look of it this is development cart so I'm curious whether anyone knows more about the history behind the Panorama Cotton development? TIA
That's definitely an earlier prototype if it is Panorama Cotton. The prototype that was released a few years a go was from November of 1993 and was only 16Mbit/2MBytes (the final was 20Mbit/2.5MBytes). Your prototype uses two 4Mbit EPROMs, making your prototype 8Mbit/1MByte in size. The date on the one that was released is November 27, 1993. The one you have is May 25, 1993. Much earlier. A picture of the November PCB can be found here: http://hiddenpalace.org/Panorama_Cotton_(Nov_27,_1993_prototype) Nice find!
Cool discovery. There's not too much to say about Panorama Cotton's development as far as I know. I've seen magazine previews of it when it first was previewed in Japan and it seems to line up with Nov. 1993 proto. Anything that can be learned would be from that. Could you give it a quick play just to get pics of the titlescreen and first level? I'd imagine if it's really earlier than the November one then any differences would be noticeable right away.
This can be cleared up whether it's from 93 or 94 by looking at the title screen. The Nov 93 proto says 1993 on the title, so this one would too if it's from that year.
So wait, that huge PCB isn't the game after all? Still hard to guess anything about it since that number could mean anything. Tell us what year is on the titlescreen and that will give more answers.
