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- Joined: 01 Aug 2010
- Posts: 4
- Location: Boston
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Unreleased Game Gear Proto: Off the Wall
Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 7:46 pm
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Hi folks!
First post here, so I should probably introduce myself. My name is Mark and I've been collecting NES games for some time but I am probably best known for my prototype collection.
I purchased this one a while back, but I didn't have a working Game Gear to test it on. I finally got one so I thought you guys may like some screen shots:
Taking pictures of a Game Gear screen is not the easiest thing in the world as you can imagine. After messing with the MAME ROM it appears to be an arcade port. Unlike many shitastic unreleased games, this one also received fantastic reviews in Gamepro:
The Proto has a small pen mark that says "vidpro", not sure if that sheds light on where it came from.
I actually have a few questions to ask and you all are probably the best to help:
1. Anyone know the value of an undumped, unreleased Game Gear proto? The only sale I've managed to find is one of the Frogger carts for a bit over $500. Now there are a few of those floating around, they're on small retail-like boards, and I can't confirm that the particular sale I found was pre or post-dump and release of the ROM. Couple that with the fact that it was years ago and I'm clueless about the value.
2. Anyone know the best way to dump this? I've dumped both EPROMs individually, though I haven't attempted to combine them into a working game file. I'd much rather purchase a copier than build one, though I'm open to ideas.
Hope you guys enjoy the pics!
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- Joined: 23 Feb 2010
- Posts: 311
- Location: USA
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Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 10:04 pm
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Hey Mark,
We've already been talking about your purchase. ALthough I kept your name private. :)
~E~
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- Site Admin
- Joined: 19 Oct 1999
- Posts: 14745
- Location: London
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Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 7:57 am
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mrmark0673 wrote 2. Anyone know the best way to dump this? I've dumped both EPROMs individually, though I haven't attempted to combine them into a working game file. I'd much rather purchase a copier than build one, though I'm open to ideas.
The contents of the EPROMs is almost certainly all you need. Look for one that has "TMR SEGA" in it; that's probably the first one. Concatenate the second and rename it to have a .gg extension and it ought to work in an emulator.
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- Joined: 19 Mar 2010
- Posts: 272
- Location: UK
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Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:58 am
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Hi mrmark0673!
I was watching that auction a couple of months ago, then it suddenly vanished! :oD
I managed to get the Super Space Invaders proto. It works fine. I think it is the full game as I can't tell any differences between that and retail. Mine says "Return Cart to Tengen Inc" on the reverse.
My best bet is that it was originally sent to a reviewer at GamePro.
The same seller also had some Xbox degbug/review units, early playable Halo code and similar stuff.
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- Site Admin
- Joined: 08 Jul 2001
- Posts: 8652
- Location: Paris, France
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Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 11:58 am Last edited by Bock on Wed Aug 11, 2010 3:34 am; edited 1 time in total
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Hello Mark,
Thanks for your post and the pictures.
mrmark0673 wrote 1. Anyone know the value of an undumped, unreleased Game Gear proto? The only sale I've managed to find is one of the Frogger carts for a bit over $500. Now there are a few of those floating around, they're on small retail-like boards, and I can't confirm that the particular sale I found was pre or post-dump and release of the ROM. Couple that with the fact that it was years ago and I'm clueless about the value.
It is really difficult to give you a proper answer to this question. One reason is that Game Gear is a generally unpopular system. The pool of people actively looking for GG games and eg prototypes is quite small and with the fact that people are not always aware of auctions and based on the timing it can fluctuate very much (compared to Atari or NES scenes which have a large amount of people following those things). I've personnally purchased unreleased game for peanut when time/luck was on my side because of this.
I can recall two occurences of a Frogger sale in the past decade and both were after the ROM was released (the dump was released in April 2003) if thats an indicator.
Now if you look on SMS Power releases for the GG or SMS;
- Spirou
- Barbie Super Model
- Nazo Puyo level editor
- Pac-In-Time
- Yogi Bear
- Dinobasher
- SMS Prototype BIOS
- Pat Riley Basketball
..
Or even Car License for that matter, all those dumps were released here without involving a public sale. Most were donated by developpers (who are happy to get their game released) or bought privately, but the whole SMS/GG community - and I like to think because of SMS Power - is sitting in a rather generous position where dumps are just donated and released. Generally no huge fuss is made of their monetary value which IHMO is a very instable emotional indicator anyway. Because of this we have very few references of actual auctionned unreleased proto sales. SMS stuff tends to go higher than GG because it has a larger fan base.
( I would have bid on Off the Wall but I didnt know about those auctions at the time )
Quote 2. Anyone know the best way to dump this? I've dumped both EPROMs individually, though I haven't attempted to combine them into a working game file. I'd much rather purchase a copier than build one, though I'm open to ideas.
The EPROM being standards if you've dumped them you've got proper emulatable data already since there's no funky mapper on the cartridge you have. Under a DOS command-prompt:
copy /b file1+file2 output.gg
Will append the files together in a new format.
You want to dump it at least twice and compare the files to ensure no error is made in the process.
Is there something we could do it to convince you to release that dump to the community? (giving you access to immortality and unlimited happyness)
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- Joined: 01 Aug 2010
- Posts: 4
- Location: Boston
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Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:09 pm
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Interesting stuff, thanks for the info guys! As to a public ROM release, I've done that on many occasions for NES protos, both for released and unreleased games, and it's something I'd definitely consider if I didn't receive an offer to sell it that I liked.
I have a $250 offer on AtariAge but am very reluctant to sell at that price. I was really hoping there would be $500+ offers, though I just don't know the market. In that price range this thing would be gone in a second!
Anyway, I'll be holding onto it for the moment and continue to field offers. Thanks again!
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- Joined: 29 Mar 2010
- Posts: 222
- Location: France
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Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 10:08 pm
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Frogger : )
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