Bock
Site Admin
Joined: 08 Jul 2001
Posts: 5102
Location: Kyoto, Japan
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| Choplifter Japanese prototype |
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Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 12:32 am |
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What I got this week:
Choplifter for Japanese SMS/MarkIII. Unreleased in Japan.
More pictures:
http://www.smspower.org/misc/sms_choplifter_jp-04.jpg
http://www.smspower.org/misc/sms_choplifter_jp-05.jpg
This was an early sample sent by Sega in 1985!
Notice how Choplifter says 1985 on the title screen. This always puzzled me before.
Sega Mark III was released in Japan in 1985 and for about one year, only card games were released. The first ever MarkIII/SMS cartridge to be released was Fantasy Zone (June 15th, 1986).
What does that tell us?
Although never released in Japan, Choplifter is probably the first ever cartridge game to have been developped for the Master System!
Additional trivia fact:
If you open the ROM image and look at address 0x7FE0, it shows:
"COPYRIGHT SEGA"
Right before the "final" header at address 0x7FF0.
This string is the first kind of header that Sega developped for the Master System. The prototype machine I have rely on this string to boot. Retail unit ignore that part of the header and look at the retail header.The two only games I know of that have this string are Choplifter and the Japanese version of Fantasy Zone, again the 2 first cartridges to have been developped. |
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PrOfUnD Darkness
Joined: 29 Jun 1999
Posts: 295
Location: Brazil
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 2:50 pm |
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Amazing find! I wonder how did you get your hands on this little baby?
PD |
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anagrama
Joined: 11 Dec 2004
Posts: 354
Location: Newcastle, UK
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 3:30 pm |
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If I'm not mistaken, they came from a US-based eBay seller - I had bought a couple of standard SG1000 games from him, but missed these ones shortly afterwards.
C'mon Bock, make everyone even greener with envy by telling them how little you paid... :) |
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Bock
Site Admin
Joined: 08 Jul 2001
Posts: 5102
Location: Kyoto, Japan
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 6:38 pm |
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| anagrama wrote:
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If I'm not mistaken, they came from a US-based eBay seller - I had bought a couple of standard SG1000 games from him, but missed these ones shortly afterwards.
C'mon Bock, make everyone even greener with envy by telling them how little you paid... :)
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What you don't know if how high my max bid was... (don't know wether to put a :) or :( smiley here).
True, I got several of these for very cheap. Those items have no set price anyway. Between $1 prototypes and $100+ ones (thanks Stephanic) it kinda average the price of all stuff I buy. I'm glad there's still nice and helpful sellers to help. There's no way I would survive doing this on my pocket if every cart was $100. |
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