Zelda: The Hyrule Fantasy BETA?

Regarding the "FDS cable" you mentioned, Trenton_net, don't suppose you could point me towards a place to buy one could you?

 

I don't see why someone couldn't have just written it to a white disk for kicks. IIRC there were units out and about in Japan that could write out FDS disks for you for a fee. Be like if Sega allowed GD-RWs out and placed kiosks around for you to burn new games onto them as they became available.

Wouldn't be surprised if the dev equivalent wasn't available for someone as well. Doubtful Nintendo would have done this internally but you never know. Finalized bug testing?

 

Yes, that had also crossed my mind, APE. I remember the Super Famicom machines that would write data to blank cartridges, so I presume this could've been done on a Famicom-equivalent system. Of course, I'd prefer to think this was some sort of development version, even if it did turn out to be the final, post-testing ROM, but I think it's to early for me to draw any conclusions.

 

Check this:
http://tcrf.net/Proto:The_Legend_of_Zelda

 

Hi ML™. I've just spent a couple of hours roaming around the game and have come across more evidence to suggest that this is nothing more than the final version on a white disk. The most compelling example to back this up is the scene under the header "It's a Bribe to Everybody" on the page you linked me too. My version also seems to contain the following:



Another casual observation is that the game crashes quite a lot. Maybe it's the system, but it froze approximately every 20 minutes or so.

 

I guess (the crashing) is caused by the cartridge slot in the Famico.m or the RAM adpatator being bad. Does it happen in game or when a specific action is done ?
Maybe the disk has some hard to read part. Make sure it is not exposed to any magnet or near electrical (high power) components.

 

"It's a Bribe to Everybody"

Damn what horrible translators they had for that game!

 

I've been playing a few random games (Twin Bee, Akumajyou and Mario Bros., to name but a few) and this is the only one that crashed. The first time was about 10 minutes into level one, and the next was while walking around the overworld. In both cases, the screen simply distorted for a split second, then froze. For what it's worth, I took this pic of one instance just for the sake of it:

 

I know what you mean, Bramsworth! I've been translating from Japanese for a little over 10 years now and sometimes the localisation quality of games, even AAA titles, leaves a lot to be desired.

 

They also had to fit the translation within the same number of bytes as the original Japanese sentence, I believe, so that may contribute to some strange translations as well.

Does your card feature the standard title screen music, or Ravel's Bolero?

Very strange about it crashing every once in a while. I don't think it'd be a read issue, since all the data for the overworld is read in all at once. You can actually eject the disk after the load process completes; the game doesn't need to read from the disk again until you go into the underworld. Maybe the Famicom is overheating?

 

Or maybe the game is truely a proto, maybe near a final version and still has some bugs, which would explain why exactly this game is crashing and all others he tried aren´t...

 

Hi Kao, G0dlike. The music appears to be the bog-standard title screen tune from the final version I'm afraid, making this feel less and less like any sort of prototype I've ever seen. I'd like to believe it's genuine though, and maybe the crashes are representative of the final, or near-final, wave of bug fixes.

I'm currently planning to go through the entire game over the next few days and check as many of the points documented for the other prototype that got released recently. If anything interesting/odd pops up, I'll report back here.

 

That's gonna waste lots of your time, isn't it faster and safer to dump it and check for differences in the ROM directly? I mean you could play through the whole thing, both quests, and just miss some differences while playing, not paying attention or not realising something's different.

If there are differences, since it looks like a final release, they are going to be extremely minor.

 

Well ideally I'd like to have it dumped, but don't have the necessary expertise or hardware with me here in Japan, and I'm kind of reluctant to send the disk off somewhere. Whether it be here or back in Europe, I'd be more willing to take it to someone who can do it for me though.

 

Yeah I understand, I'd be reluctant to part with it too (unless I know the guy), if I were in your situation. You'll feel better when you'll have the ROM dumped (I don't mean publicly of course) and made sure nothing/something is different, lol.

It's much easier now with discs, everyone can dump it with a basic pc...

 

I've done a bit of poking around and managed to ascertain the cable I need along with a oldish PC, now I need to do a bit of investigating into the software side of things. The biggest problem I'm facing at the moment is that the Famicom and Disk System is unlikely to accompany me back to Europe as my case is already looking decidedly full. What this means is I only have another couple of weeks to use it before I go back...

I'm considering having this and a number of other things shipped, but I'm willing to bet I get smacked with a customs charge even though it's all my own stuff.

 

Sorry it's been so long since I updated this thread, but things have been busy and, well, you know how it is...

Anyway, in the end I decided not to bring my Famicom Disk System back to Europe, meaning that I'm now totally unable to use and/or dump this disk. Not only that, recent changes in my situation have required me to start getting rid of a number of collectibles, and this may well become one of them...

As far as I'm aware though, putting something like this up for sale on Ebay will likely get the auction pulled, right? In light of this, I've decided that if I do decide to get rid of it, a trade might be better. The question is: How do I ascertain it's actual value?

If anyone has any advice they can offer, drop me a PM and let's discuss things further.

 

Price checks are supposed to be done through a moderator (they post your request in the price check thread). The idea being to stop people asking questions like "how much is this worth?" in the hope that someone will PM them an offer, thus getting around the marketplace rule that states all sales need to be priced.

You might have some luck selling it on ebay - it may get pulled but probably not. Avoid obvious flag words like "modchip" or "modded" and you should be ok.

 

Hi Alchy,

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I'll send the details to a moderator shortly.

 

Found this thread via the referrals I was getting on tcrf.

I'd be more than happy to set up some shipping stuff to get this dumped, if you want. I'd even pay to have it shipped back to you afterwards.

I don't believe I'd be able to make an offer on the game itself (I don't have that much money), but something like this I'd be able to do.

Feel free to drop me an email at xkeeper@gmail.com, not sure if I'll get emails on PMs from this board or not.