Super Mario Bros. Prototype found on NES Player!

Edit: http://www.nintendoplayer.com/site-updates/mario-is-missing-nes-prototype-is-found/
So, on the 1st of April the "prototype" has been revealed: a Mario is Missing proto, which is the same as the final...


http://www.nintendoplayer.com/site-updates/first-look-at-historic-mario-nes-prototype-find/

Nintendo Player has just obtained an historic Mario prototype for the NES. While we’re still checking the game for changes, we can say for sure that in its current state the game is nearly unplayable.
Nintendo has a strict policy when it comes to their prototypes. For that reason, few true betas from the Mario series exist outside of Nintendo’s headquarters.
This cartridge is, to our knowledge, the only copy in private hands and has never been seen by the general public before. Again, and we cannot stress this enough, our Mario NES prototype is nothing if not historical.
Please try to stay patient with us while we continue to search through the game code and prep the article. Check back early next month, when all will be revealed.

This can be over 9000!

 

is there gonna be a general release? atleast screenshots? etc?

 

"Check back early next month, when all will be revealed."
I call early april fools

 

I was thinking the same thing.

 

Anyone can socket a NES cart and pop in EPROMs.

"Nearly unplayable".

 

x

 

Too close to April fools

 

If there isn't a Mario prototype from the NES era in private hands right now, is it safe to say that there never will be?

 

All he says is "Mario". What Mario game? Why does the cartridge look like it has scotch tape on it? And it certainly isn't SMB1 with that cartridge layout. If its anything Mario its something else. And chances are it's nothing at all, how many actual Nintendo made betas are out there? I think Legend of Zelda found on a FDS disk was almost the only one.

 

Why is it on an NES cart and not a Famicom cart anyway?

 

April Fools has just become too predictable these days.

 

This. why would a nearly unplayable prototype of this be on an NES board

 

I think the Zelda game was a store/shop sample (but was not said) like the others (Kid Icarus, Metroid).

 

Early Mario prototype on NES cartridge?

EPIC FAIL for an April fool joke.

That kind of proto would be on a famicom cart...

 

If only it was true. Definitely april fools.

-adrianc

 

Around the EPROMs it looks like a really poor photoshop job. The EPROMs look reasonably readable if they weren't so low rez. Probably a photoshop of a cut NES cart.

 

IceKnight pointed it out elsewhere, and now I'm starting to think he really does have a proto, but it's actually of Mario's Time Machine. Especially with how he stresses it's "historic." It's alluded even more by the fact he puts Mario in italics, and never explicitly calls it Super Mario Bros.

So it's a historic Mario proto. Probably Mario's Time Machine.

 

There's no way in hell it's a SMB/2J/3 proto, all of those would be on FC sample carts. Since the two ROMs are 32-pin, each ROM must be 1M or 2M. The board layout also indicates a MMC3 prototype on a NES-TKEPROM board. This must be SMB2 or Time Machine... It could also be SMB3, but there wouldn't be any differences apart from the translation. I'd also be wary because there were a number of unpopulated TKEPROM boards sold a few years ago and there's been talk of making reproductions of them.

 

rg

 

anyone notice how the chips and the cart look like they came form different source material?