by Christopher Grady
Let me preface this by explaining how much I absolutely abhorred visiting the Play N’ Trade closest to my parents. Play N’ Trade, for those who don’t know, is a (mostly) retro national video game chain (with a few locations on Long Island) that is more akin to a modern day version of Funcoland (if by modern day I mean as modern as 1996). You would think that having one a few towns from my parents house would have provided me a place to find some pretty kick-ass stuff, or at least to hang out and talk shop, but I absolutely hated going there.
Now, before I bash this store any further let me elaborate. I have absolutely no problems with Play N’ Trade as a company; my issues merely lie with this one store that used to be open (that’s right, used to be! Who would have thought?) in Plainview, Long Island. The selection was limited, the prices were high, and the help was nonexistent. In fact, the owner and his employees seemed disinterested in dealing with anyone else besides the friends they invited to hang out in the store and play video games. The place reeked of sweat and sugar-free Red Bull and there was smoke that seemed to permeate from the stereo speakers hanging from the ceiling (which, of course, seemed to always be blasting 30 Seconds to Mars).
It was January of 2012 (I believe it was the first or second week) when Chris Reid, the other half of TEAM CHRIS!, dragged me to this very location. I can’t remember what it was he was shopping for (but who cares) and I figured we’d only be there for a short while and maybe I could find some donor carts for repros, so I tagged along. I was looking at some loose SNES (they only had loose games!) when I came across something interesting. On a shelf with some of the cheaper NES games was a copy of Little League Championship Series.
The game itself is nothing really to write home about, but what made this cart different from a normal cart was that it was missing its front label. In its place was a vertical sticker with the name typed in plain font.
I had seen several prototype cartridges online and they all bore similar style stickers, so I picked it up to give it a closer inspection. Prototype cartridges, at least for the NES, had several distinguishes features (from what I understood at the time). The most glaring would be the type of board the game was on (but I would need to open it up to figure that one out – which isn’t exactly something Play N’ Trade would be too happy about).
Luckily, I have been trained in the arts and sciences of detecting the authenticity of video games and their inherent features through simply lifting and examining the outside of the cartridge. Immediately I could feel that the specific gravity (a term I know thanks to my many years as a student of science at SUNY Stony Brook) was off. Months of searching for Famicom to NES adapters (usually found inside copies of early Black Box games, like Gyromite) had taught me to weigh an NES cart just by holding it.
Internals of a cartridge with the adapter and without. credit to CRTGAMER, Ziggy587, and Racketboy.com
Although the cart felt heavier than normal I did not think this was a Famicom game with an NES 72-pin adapter inside but maybe a prototype (heavier game = larger board, perhaps?).
I flipped the cart over and noticed that the back was secured using regular screws instead of gamebits. Gamebits are the little sad-shaped screws that Nintendo used to close their games and consoles in the hopes that the shape of the bit would be too obscure/confusing for you to find (use a Bic pen and a lighter you fools).
I decided that it would be worth it for me to take the cart home for an in-depth analysis, it was only $12.00 anyway, and if I really didn’t want it I could return it for a full refund. What did I have to lose?
When I arrived at home I immediately opened the cart and was pleased with the results:
Like many prototype carts, this one had handwritten notes on the two ROMs, both indicating that this is “Version 0.0″ of the game. Although I still (after two years) have yet to play around with this prototype I still wonder if there are any differences from the final release of the game.
This is a fairly common board used for creating prototypes for the NES. After some investigating I found that this is a fairly common prototype (meaning there are like… 6 or 7 floating around). I started receiving offers pretty quick and the prices kept increasing, but in the end I decided on keeping the game for myself. Eventually I will get around to dumping the rom and sharing it.
So for $12.00 I got my first prototype, in the wild no less, from a store that I really hated. Thank you for pricing this game incorrectly.
– Grady
Dagoblah 
“I can’t remember what it was he [Chris Reid] was shopping for (but who cares)…”
Yeah! Who cares what Chris Reid wants. Fuck that guy!
Is the last picture taken by the interior light of a refrigerator?