News/NESMas - Day 1

Merry (S)NESMas! 🎄

For the first day of NESMas, Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation brought us a lot of video game prototypes purchased from an estate sale of Steven McKay, who had once been the General Manager of Nintendo’s Mexico division.

The vast majority of the Nintendo prototypes were acquired by Josh Hamblin, who runs SideQuest Games and is one of the organizers for the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. Josh goes more into the back story in a Metal Jesus YouTube video:

Josh has graciously agreed to release the prototypes he acquired after having them graded. He submitted his prototypes to WATA, which provides a service to authenticate, grade, and encapsulate video games in a tamper-proof case. Grading services have been popular in other collecting hobbies, such as coins and cards. With video game collecting becoming more and more popular, grading has arrived to the video games.

Typically, collectors opt to grade rare retail video games, but WATA also offers this service for prototypes, and although it authenticates whether they are legitimate or not, they do not receive a specific grade out of 10. Prototypes, however, are pretty tough to authenticate, thus WATA has turned to Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation, who is one of the foremost experts on prototype media, having been in the game for decades, and having handled untold numbers of prototypes himself.

A little known fact is that Frank stipulated that all of his prototype authentication research is eventually made public, which accomplishes a win-win between collectors and prototype enthusiasts. We’re happy to announce that in addition to today’s prototype release, we are also starting to document WATA metadata for their prototype submissions on the wiki.

WATA graded prototypes

This includes prototypes that have not had their ROMs releases! WATA does not release ROMs unless they receive explicit permission from the submitter. However, the metadata and authentication text will now be publicly available.

Here are the prototypes from the Josh Hamblin collection. Thanks again to Josh and the Frank Cifaldi for providing these for release!

• 1943: The Battle of Midway (Prototype B)
• 1943: The Battle of Midway (Prototype C)
• Addams Family (Prototype)
• Adventures of Rad Gravity (Prototype)
• Bases Loaded (Prototype C)
• Bionic Commando (Prototype)
• Bubsy II (Jul 12, 1994 prototype)
• D-Force (Prototype)
• Defenders of Dynatron City (Prototype)
• F-117A Stealth Fighter (Prototype)
• Fester's Quest (Prototype)
• Flight of the Intruder (Prototype)
• Galaxy 5000: Racing in the 51st Century (Prototype B)
• Gun.Smoke (Prototype)
• High Speed (Prototype)
• Hit the Ice (Game Boy prototype)
• Irem Skins Game (Prototype)
• King Arthur's World (Oct 21, 1992 prototype)
• Little Nemo (Prototype)
• Mickey's Ultimate Challenge (Aug 25, 1993 prototype)
• Shadowrun (Jan 5, 1993 prototype)
• Solomon's Key (Prototype)
• Super Bases Loaded (Prototype)
• Super Earth Defense Force (Prototype)
• Sword Master (prototype)
• Terra Cresta (Prototype)
• The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt (SNES Prototype B)
• Ultimate Air Combat (Prototype B)
• Utopia: The Creation of a Nation (Prototype B)
• Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego (Prototype)
• Whomp 'Em (Prototype)

Josh Hamblin has also agreed to release two Sega Genesis prototypes in his collection that were not in the auction – Beyond Zero Tolerance and Dominus.

• Beyond Zero Tolerance (Jul 14, 1995 prototype)
• Dominus (Prototype)

But that’s not all! Some of the prototypes were bought by Josh Byerly, who also gratiously offered to have his released!

• Legendary Wings (Prototype)
• Rygar (Prototype)
• The Jetsons: Cogswell's Caper (Prototype)

But wait, there’s more gifts!

Finally, Frank himself bought a few of the auctioned prototypes and he is also releasing those today! This includes a US localization of Chester Field which has not been released until now, a more completed version of the unreleased game Titan Warriors (which is really fun and has an awesome sountrack by the way!), as well as a previously unreleased NTSC version of Trolls in Crazyland.

• Chester Field: Ankoku Shin heno Chousen (US prototype)
• Titan Warriors (Prototype B)
• Trolls in Crazyland (Prototype)
• Hatris (Prototype B)

Huge thanks to Josh Hamblin, Josh Byerly, 🎅 Frank Cifaldi for today’s presents!

(psst the VGHF takes donations!)

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s release for more NES goodies!