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Legend of Zelda NES Nintendo Prototype On Sale For $150K
YokimaSun writes "Following on from Last months Mega auction of rare games that went for a staggering 1.2 Million dollars, comes another auction. This time its of the only Legend of Zelda Nes Prototype cartridge in the world, bundled with it is a sealed copy of the retail version of the game, those of you excited by this news will have to dig deep because the price is set at a mouthwatering US $150,000.00."
"Game Special Features Horseback riding is a new and key element in the game play. A great deal of combat takes place on horseback enabling Link to bump his adversaries off their war-horses. Shifting camera system that allows for views behind the back and from above. Camera can be locked during battles. All new characters."
so.. does this proto have that or did they just copypaste that from somewhere?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I hate to be that guy, but is this marketing spam? I mean, it's not like it's some lost version of the game or some unreleased sequel. Its a late prototype of a widely released game that may or may not have the exact same ROM on it as the one that shipped. Rare? Yes. Interesting to anyone other than an high level (read:obsessive) collector? I doubt it.
Wow, what a deal!
"... Sean Hannity, whose surgery to remove those bolts from his neck was apparently successful,
Steak with blue cheese is mouthwatering. $150,000.000 for an old NES game is jaw-dropping, staggering, and possibly outrageous. Consult with your local thesaurus to learn more.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
It would be really neat if whoever bought it was to upload the ROM data to the internet for everyone to see and experience. Unfortunately, it's more likely going to sit in someone's collection in a pretty little glass case.
"Mouthwatering" may not be the best description for this... how about "bowel loosening"?
As someone who likes to play games, a prototype cartridge only really has value to me if it's a beta or otherwise different version from the released game or for an obscure game that never actually got released (i.e. the English version of Mother 1 (colloquially: Earthbound Zero), which was translated and localized, but had the plug pulled at the last second before NOA released it). Apart from tossing it in a display case and inviting people to come stare at it for a few seconds, what would be the purpose of a prototype cart of one of the most popular games of the NES era? To me, it sounds like it has the same amount of novelty as the gold cases: "Yes, it's the same program as the game everyone else has... but this one's in a funny-looking prototype case!"
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
The Zelda Test cartridge comes in that sort of orangeish yellow color. I used to have one myself.
Just do a google search for "NES Zelda test cart", and you'll find plenty of other examples. This particular test cart just happens to have a hand written label.
It's a nice find, but worth no more than $150
I've been collecting computer games since the 70s (yes, 70s). I love this kind of stuff! What I really want to see is the prototype cartridge for the Atari 2600 version of Treasures of Tarmin. I would love to have to the ROM from that!
Anonymous Cowards suck.
"This time its of the only Legend of Zelda Nes Prototype cartridge in the world, bundled with it is a sealed copy of the retail version of the game, those of you excited by this news will have to dig deep because the price is set at a mouthwatering US $150,000.00."
Those are at least three different sentences in one -- horrible comma abuse -- and it's "it's". Fucking retarded editor. I want to murder you for this.
I have some early versions of a dice rolling game I made in the late 80's. Never been seen before.
The game crashes in certain circumstances, but it isn't documented exactly why.
The bidding starts at $1000.
I have an unfinished slot machine game that I programmed somewhere around 2001. I'll beet your $1000 and offer it for $999. Any takers?
"Game Special Features Horseback riding is a new and key element in the game play. A great deal of combat takes place on horseback enabling Link to bump his adversaries off their war-horses. Shifting camera system that allows for views behind the back and from above. Camera can be locked during battles. All new characters."
What the hell is up with this?!
His ebay description says its still in the shrink wrap yet he posts a link to a video of him playing the game with the cart shoved in to an NES console.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I am sure I'm overlooking something, but to me, it seems that all you need to do to "create" this prototype, is burn the ROM file (available around the web) onto the EPROMs, place them into a garden variety copy of Legend of Zelda, and that's it. One could even easily make a funky-colored case for the cart, with a 3D printer. A $50-100 expense for a 3 orders of magnitude higher profit.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I have an unfinished slot machine game that I programmed somewhere around 2001. I'll beet your $1000 and offer it for $999. Any takers?
In 1998, I wrote a tic-tac-toe game that you and a friend could play together, using two separate computers, via... dare I say it!? Why via TCP socket wizardry! ...and the like, all done in what little of C++ I knew! I promise you it is still in its completed beta form! Even still, it has been very well tested, in the tens of times, or more... works like a charm! I'm practically giving it away for the low low price of $998.42!! ACT NOW!!!
Several posters pointed out that the description seems to be for a newer Zelda game, not the original Legend of Zelda. This isn't because the seller put in incorrect info, but because there's a problem with the stock eBay description. Whenever you sell a video game on eBay, the selling tool will beg you to select the game from eBay's internal database and hassle you if you don't. This database information contains stuff like name, release date, and a short description (the part which was botched here). It also sometimes contains stock photos, which can be (and usually are) deleted and overridden by whoever is posting the listing.
eBay does the same thing with books and other media as well. You can see this by going to "Sell an item" and entering the media name in the box labeled "Enter a UPC, ISBN, VIN VIN help or keywords that describe your item." There are about 500 entries containing the phrase "Legend of Zelda", so it's not surprising that there might be some corrupted entries and/or duplicates in there.
And based on this speculation he asks for 150,000?
It'd be nice to at least get Nintendo's opinion on this.
I'm out. I'll just wait for another one to come up for sale.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I can only speculate that the 2-23-87 refers to the date they completed this prototype and being so close to launch is why there are no differences from the released version. Again I'm speculating.
which means that he has no idea if it's really the prototype or not. He's just trying to make a quick buck of anyone who will read the headlines and not the fine print.
This is a Mac, what you have there is an embarrassment to your fellow computer users.
I do know S-series boards tend to be used with MMC1 mapper. Retail LOZ was released on an NES-SNROM board.
This is a US localization prototype... with no differences which means that it most likely was a release candidate. The fact that they are advertising this as the only one is just marketing. Just because they haven't seen another one doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If it sells for 150k... I would expect to start seeing some real prototypes to start being found by Nintendo Employees from the 80s.
"Game Special Features Horseback riding is a new and key element in the game play. A great deal of combat takes place on horseback enabling Link to bump his adversaries off their war-horses. Shifting camera system that allows for views behind the back and from above. Camera can be locked during battles. All new characters."
What the hell is up with this?!
Based on the video footage the eBayer posted, there's nothing even remotely "prototype" about this cartridge.
People who don't work in the game industry just loveto throw around the word "prototype" or "beta" for any kind of pre-release game disc or cartridge that wasn't actually released 100% in its pre-release form. The reality is that a "prototype", in game industry nomenclature, is typically reserved for an extremely early build of the game, well before the game has even gone into production let alone a testing cycle. "Alpha" versions of games are content- and feature-complete, and are playable, but typically lack polished art, have performance issues, are significantly buggy, and may still undergo major revisions. "Beta" versions of games, excluding the ones that typically undergo public beta-testing due to the enormity of doing a full sweep, are typically nearly identical to the released version of the game save for crash bugs.
Based on the cartridge ID "NES-SRP-TEST-02", it's obviously a cartridge that was used in the QA (testing) department for doing sweeps of bugs, well into the final development cycle. I'd even bet dollars to donuts, based on the complete lack of anything different in the video versus the released version of the game, that it was one of the last builds of the game made before it went to manufacturing.
That being the case, is the game even remotely worth $150,000? Hardly. Maybe if there were significant differences between it and the final version of the game, maybe if it was actually different in some way, but it's not. This guy is just trying to make a buck off of collectors with more money than technical sense.
For $150,000, I would take the time to make a "prototype" cartridge. Built with 80s technology, this would not be hard to make at home. The kind of price tag that is being asked for it is something that is reserved for items with verified provenance. And when I said verified, I mean something more than the seller saying "go google 'NES ZELDA PROTO'". Which, interestingly enough turns up a couple of forum threads debating whether or not it's genuine.
Seriously, making this thing would be an afternoon project. I hope someone insists on some serious background checks.
You're quite right. I should've noticed it wasn't a Famicom cartridge earlier, but only saw the picture and read the description more thoroughly after my post. Ita erat quando hic adveni. English Online computer childrens health Now that you mention it, I completely failed to notice that it wasn't a Famicon cart either. That would've been the obvious thing to point out, had I realized it. *facepalm. Even so, your post was quite interesting, since while I had heard about that ROM, I hadn't seen much info on it prior to this The dumped Zelda proto wasn't a Famicom cart, either.