Only English Final Fantasy 2 NES Cartridge On Sale for $50K

Croakyvoice writes "In what seems to be the 'in thing' at the moment comes another auction to add to last month's Zelda NES auction and that crazy million dollar collection. This time, for RPG fans, this could be classed as the Holy Grail of NES games. The game in question is Final Fantasy 2, which was never released outside of Japan, but luckily for the person who at this time is selling this on eBay for 50K, there was one made for the 1991 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by SquareSoft. Sadly, the U.S. version never had a release because they decided to work on the Super NES instead."

Comments

Is it worth it?

[joeflies]

I never really understood why these development cartridges fetch such high prices. Well, on a superficial level, I understand since it's a matter of supply and demand. But at a deeper level, it's a one off because it's an unfinished product. To me, I don't see any difference between a free fan-based english conversion vs an official "never sold to the public" version.

Would you pay millions of dollars for a test version of Windows 98 developed for esperanto? The answer is no, because nobody cares. However, the same logic doesn't apply when it comes to toys and games

Re:Is it worth it?

[Githaron]

It gains the owner prestige in his/her social circle.

Re:Is it worth it?

[_Shad0w_]

I would and you wouldn't, because you don't care and I don't care, but I bet someone would and does. People like to collect all sorts of things and some of them have a lot of money to spare. Collecting game cartridges is no more stupid than numismatics, philately, or even cartophily - some cigarette cards have sold for millions.

Re:Is it worth it?

[veganboyjosh]

Altho i'm loathe to use the word/admit it, i collect vinyl records. i tend to focus on a specific sub-genre of one that's not uber popular, so the records i'm really after and willing to spend more than list price on usually don't go for too much. Many of my peers are into collecting every variation of a record that's pressed on multiple colors of vinyl. (ie, a label will press 1000 of a particular band's album. 500 of these will be on black vinyl, 250 on red, 200 on green, and 50 on clear vinyl.) My collector nerd friends would then seek out all 4 versions. Indeed, a lot of labels even offer a pre-sale package featuring all 4 variants, particular for these guys.

In addition to a completist mentality behind wanting to own every variant of a record, there is also a demand (ranging from "mildly interested" to "i will mortgage the house to get this") for "test pressings" of records. These are just like what they sound. There are usually fewer than 20 of these made per release. Often less than 10 or even 5. Plain white labels or possibly a boilerplate label with "artist, song title, label" info handwritten onto the labels. No printed cover. A few go to the label, some to the band, for listening to and final proofing before the "go ahead and make us 1000 copies" order is put in. It's very rare that there is a change to an album once the test pressings have been created and they are almost NEVER available for sale to the general public. I've mostly only seen them for sale after the album comes out, strictly as collector items.

The $50k asking price may be ridonkulous, but the demand for this one-off game makes perfect sense to me in light of what i've seen people get stupid over in the vinyl world.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Chemisor]

People also pay a lot of money for an original Van Gogh painting, even though a good modern painter can make you a copy that only an expert would be able to distinguish from the original. If appearance were the only thing that mattered, the price difference wouldn't have been as great.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Man On Pink Corner]

I don't think anyone will give you shit for collecting vinyl records, as long as you're not one of those nutters who claims they are better at reproducing sound than a properly mastered CD. "Vinyl collector" does not necessarily equal "Vaccine-shunning, astrology-believing, $5,000-power-cable-buying, moon-landing-denying audiophile."

Re:FF1 just ported to Android...

[jeffasselin]

FF2 has been available on iOS for a couple years now.

Re:Does anyone know if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. The person auctioning the cart dumped it himself. (It's Frank Cifaldi, who's a pretty well-known video game historian and journalist.) While doing so kills the market value, Frank Cifaldi believes more highly in the preservation of prototypes and betas than in maintaining the value by letting a cartridge languish in a box and degrade.

I believe his site, Lost Levels (lostlevels.org) in fact offers the ROM for download for preservation purposes.

The translation is kind of rough, but I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.

50k is not the selling price

[Spy Handler]

50k is his asking price. As anyone who's watched Pawn Stars knows, there's usually a big difference between what people ask for and what they end up getting.

Re:50k is not the selling price

[Darkness404]

Because Pawn Stars is a TV show, they run a real Pawn Shop but many episodes are filmed with actors "recreating" moments that might have happened. Just look at http://centraltendencies.com/2011/03/pawn-stars-is-fake/

That doesn't mean that its any less entertaining, but its a staged show bringing in far more interesting things than what the average pawn shop owner would ever see in their lifetime.

I also want $50k

[cvtan]

I have this copyrighted chocolate chip cookie recipe. It's the only copy written in English. Because you know it's not possible to make another copy of it.

Re:I also want $50k

[Darkness404]

The value of this is not the data, it is the cart itself. Just because everyone knows what the Mona Lisa looks like and you can buy a nice replica for $5 at a decoration store and a nice hand painted copy for $50 doesn't mean the original painting is only worth $50 or $100.

Re:Definitely Unfinished

[Dwedit]

"Guy" is the character's name.

Re:He should have sold earlier

[Burning1]

Huh? Lots and lots of us in the US played Final Fantasy 1, Final Fantasy 4, and Final Fantasy 6. A bunch of us also played fan translations of Final Fantasy 5. I also played 7, but I haven't tried anything more recent... I just don't have the time or energy to play Final Fantasy games anymore.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bit of a generational gap between those of us who played FF1-6, and those that play FF7+

My bet is that the guys who played FF1-6 are the same group who miss reading Nintendo Power. :)

Re:Old NES translations

[LocalH]

Those were fan-created translations. This one was official.

Re:It's just the translation patch, it's a fake

[Myria]

10 dollars says it's the US fan-made translation patch that some idiot programmed onto EPROMs and is passing it off as a "rare prototype".

While that's possible, in general, there exist ways to determine whether a game has been translated by force. Because of the lack of the original source code, many of the changes to the existing code will be done as branches to other areas of ROM.

If you change the size of a block of assembly code, you have to adjust pointers throughout that segment and beyond. This is the task of an assembler and linker, working on your source code. For ROM hacking, you don't have the source. It's infeasible--and provably uncomputable in the general case--to know where all these pointers are, so that you can adjust them when you rebuild with hacks in place.

Thus, patched ROMs are made by placing branches in one part of the code pointing at some previously unused area, then jumping back after finishing whatever needed to happen there. These jumps can be detected in a thorough analysis of a given ROM image in comparison to its Japanese original. If it is clear that the code adjustments made for the English version were made by reassembling from source, the probability that it is a translation from the original author is very high.