MVS Proto carts - Part II

rcantor77

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So... I was going to update my previous thread with this but that seemed to get a little out of hand. Hopefully we can keep this one more on track... :)

Anyway, I have spent this evening opening up a load more carts to reveal alot of 'pre-release' proto carts. I still need to do a CRC check on them all to confirm exactly what they are but here is my Dining Room table atm...





The carts I have are all old carts from the 1990's and all have dates earlier than the offical release dates...

Baseball Stars..90/02/20
Cyberlip........90/06/07
Cyberlip........90/06/07
Cyberlip........90/06/07
League Bowling..90/10/11
Magician Lord...90/02/19
Ninja Combat....90/06/07
Ninja Combat....90/06/07
Ninja Combat....90/06/07
Puzzled.........90/09/28
Riding Hero.....?
Riding Hero.....90/06/06
Riding Hero.....90/06/06
Riding Hero.....90/06/06
Super Spy.......90/08/23



Strangely enough a couple of the chips have version numbers written on them, not sure what this means just yet...

League Bowling.....v0.16
Magician Lord.....v2.4



Also, all of the Riding Hero carts have been installed with a custom chip and alot of additional wiring, not sure what that is for just yer either...

 

trenog

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Cool! It's interesting that your contact ended up with so many of these kinds of carts. I guess that's what happens when you'rea big time Neo arcade guy in the heyday.

So...Just wanna put out there that I don't have a league bowling yet and you seem blessed by carts so... ;)
 

NeoTurfMasta

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Congrats man. Checked my Riding Hero MVS proto cart, same wires and piggybacked IC. My date codes is June 18, 19, & 20th of 1990. Mine has a Jpn label and I got it from someone in Japan.
 

SuperGun

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An Amazing Pick

You literally scored the motherload my friend. An absolutely unbelievable cache there. I knew immediately when I saw your pics of the carts and their labels that you had many more carts in the lot that were protos.

However, what is far more important and significant then what you see, is what you don't see. Meaning the NUMBER ONE thing that you really need to do at this time, is to contact whomever the source was that these came from, and ask about any "other" carts they may have and/or may have had in their possession. Remember that just because all of the ones you received from him were of released games, by NO means does that imply that others were not. In fact, logic and common sense would dictate the exact opposite.

In the simplest terms, start following the trail backwards. Anything he ever had, any other operator he ever dealt with, and/or knows, any other buyers he sold carts to over the years, etc. Trust me. Trace it all. This is an excellent lead, and one that needs to be investigated fully because it has excellent potential to yield results.

Thanks for the pics. Good luck. Please keep us updated.
 

smkdan

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Very nice find. Keep us posted on those CRCs. You have proto COM boards and CHA boards too so it's not just the EPROMs making it unique.

@NTM: About those piggyback EPROMs...have you dumped one of those? It's the program ROM for the network MCU and you'd have to otherwise decap one from a production game to get at it. I still see it as no_dump in MAME so I figured it's worth asking.
 

NeoTurfMasta

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@NTM: About those piggyback EPROMs...have you dumped one of those? It's the program ROM for the network MCU and you'd have to otherwise decap one from a production game to get at it. I still see it as no_dump in MAME so I figured it's worth asking.

Yep, I dumped mine, but no telling where I put it. I can re-dump this weekend.
 

Geddon_jt

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rcantor, what a score buddy, you have a lot of work and research to do! :) Can't wait to hear more about these games.
 

neo-geo-mvs

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Nice one Rog! :D

Let's hope an Iron Clad or other proto turns up shortly :buttrock:
 

rcantor77

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Ok, I have fired all the carts again and done a CRC check on them all...

(The first value is the cart, the second is from Mame)

Baseball Stars Professional..........F5DC2670..........C100B5F5
Cyberlip..........5888C24D..........69A6B42D
Cyberlip..........5888C24D..........69A6B42D
Cyberlip..........5888C24D..........69A6B42D
League Bowling..........44F9FE94..........A2DE8445
Magician Lord..........E5B2F5EC..........599043C5
Ninja Combat..........25846B3A..........B45FCFBF
Ninja Combat..........25846B3A..........B45FCFBF
Ninja Combat..........25846B3A..........B45FCFBF
Puzzled..........39C3478F..........39C3478F
Riding Hero..........D4AAF597..........D4AAF597
Riding Hero..........8EF788AA..........D4AAF597
Riding Hero..........8EF788AA..........D4AAF597
Riding Hero..........8EF788AA..........D4AAF597
Super Spy..........DD351E30..........C7F944B5

So apart from the Puzzled and one of the Riding Hero carts, it looks like they are all different.

I have most of the games already on MVS so I will start running them in parallel and see what I can find different.

Watch this space...
 

Xian Xi

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Hey Rog, does this guy have more MVS games for sale or did you buy them all?
 

RabbitTroop

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I'm both excited and let down by this thread. Excited, because who knows what Roger stumbled onto here, let down because I really wanted that Magician Lord and had been waiting for Roger to get it for weeks. Was bummed all last night that another ML slipped through my fingers. Still, very cool find Roger, and I'm with the gallery here: See if he has anything more to sell, and especially ask him if he has any weird SNK games that never did get released. His arcade was definitely a test location and who knows what he had at one time or another.
 

rcantor77

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However, what is far more important and significant then what you see, is what you don't see. Meaning the NUMBER ONE thing that you really need to do at this time, is to contact whomever the source was that these came from, and ask about any "other" carts they may have and/or may have had in their possession. Remember that just because all of the ones you received from him were of released games, by NO means does that imply that others were not. In fact, logic and common sense would dictate the exact opposite.

In the simplest terms, start following the trail backwards. Anything he ever had, any other operator he ever dealt with, and/or knows, any other buyers he sold carts to over the years, etc. Trust me. Trace it all. This is an excellent lead, and one that needs to be investigated fully because it has excellent potential to yield results.

Hey Billy, I had already begun thinking about that and I have started the balls rolling.

The guy I got them from, originally got them from a large Arcade Distribution company here in the UK. Anyway, I am meeting up with them both in London in 2 weeks time. So I am sure that this discussion will be at the centre of my discussions with him.

I will be update with my findings...
 

rcantor77

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Hey Rog, does this guy have more MVS games for sale or did you buy them all?

The discussions have already started and I am in the process of finding out... as far as I know this is all that was there... but you never know.
 

rcantor77

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I'm both excited and let down by this thread. Excited, because who knows what Roger stumbled onto here, let down because I really wanted that Magician Lord and had been waiting for Roger to get it for weeks. Was bummed all last night that another ML slipped through my fingers. Still, very cool find Roger, and I'm with the gallery here: See if he has anything more to sell, and especially ask him if he has any weird SNK games that never did get released. His arcade was definitely a test location and who knows what he had at one time or another.


Nick, you already know how sorry I am... but thank you for be for being so understanding and thanks to Ben as well... :)
 

Geddon_jt

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Not to get everyone worked up over nothing... but we are talking protos here from February 1990... that's crazy early stuff.
Forget Last Odyssey and Iron Clad... those are much newer games.

Can anyone say... Mystic Wand? Sun Shine? Or maybe one of the mystery missing NGH numbers from the early days!

I'll keep my fantasy in check though, really excited to see what if any differences there are in the other released titles Roger got a hold of. I remember something about their being a default credit variation in some early games, such as Magician Lord and Ghost Pilots which would default to 10 credits in home mode instead of the usual 4. Maybe that might be something to look for.
 

neo-geo-mvs

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I'm both excited and let down by this thread. Excited, because who knows what Roger stumbled onto here, let down because I really wanted that Magician Lord and had been waiting for Roger to get it for weeks. Was bummed all last night that another ML slipped through my fingers

If I come across a Magican Lord cart, you'll be the first to know unless Rog/Ben has sorted you out with another already?
 

irvsmoot

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This is a pretty exciting find, nice work! It'll be cool to see what, if anything, comes out of this.
 

massimiliano

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Last edited:

BBH

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Get these dumped and on the internet and I'll take on the task of trying to figure out if anything's different in The Super Spy (since nobody else will want to do that)!
 

Comrade Porn King Mikhail

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I love Cyberlip, and if one of these pre-release games happens to have an extra level or something else that's nifty, I'd love to see someone make and sell some revised copies to play.
 

BBH

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I love Cyberlip, and if one of these pre-release games happens to have an extra level or something else that's nifty, I'd love to see someone make and sell some revised copies to play.

We may be setting ourselves up for a little disappointment. I don't think it's likely that there'd be something like Cyberlip having an additional level or something. Looking back at the Burning Fight and Alpha Mission II protos that were dumped around a year ago... both games were true prototypes, in that they did not have everything programmed into the game yet. Both games ended after 2 or 3 levels in, Burning Fight was missing enemies and bosses that weren't implemented yet. There were some odd gameplay differences in Burning Fight that were interesting to see (the kick button actually drained your life! stupid), but perhaps the most interesting thing about that prototype was that the character of Duke actually looked and animated differently, and had the name "Bully". So it's possible we might get a look at what the games were like before they were fully refined, but it's possible there may not be much in the way of new stuff about the game. Or hell, these prototypes could very well end up being from just before the games were released, with very minute differences, if any. If there's a change in the program roms there's got to be SOMETHING different, but...
 

RabbitTroop

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We may be setting ourselves up for a little disappointment. I don't think it's likely that there'd be something like Cyberlip having an additional level or something. Looking back at the Burning Fight and Alpha Mission II protos that were dumped around a year ago... both games were true prototypes, in that they did not have everything programmed into the game yet. Both games ended after 2 or 3 levels in, Burning Fight was missing enemies and bosses that weren't implemented yet. There were some odd gameplay differences in Burning Fight that were interesting to see (the kick button actually drained your life! stupid), but perhaps the most interesting thing about that prototype was that the character of Duke actually looked and animated differently, and had the name "Bully". So it's possible we might get a look at what the games were like before they were fully refined, but it's possible there may not be much in the way of new stuff about the game. Or hell, these prototypes could very well end up being from just before the games were released, with very minute differences, if any. If there's a change in the program roms there's got to be SOMETHING different, but...

Changing an internal version from 1.0 to 1.0.1 would change the CRCs. Changing anything would. It's very difficult to know what, if anything changed. There could be minor bugs in these builds that were fixed later, but since these were sent out on location test, I have a feeling the differences will be very minor. When SNK shipped things to locations to test they were basically sanity checking and making sure the game didn't break horribly when a bunch of people started playing it. The main goal was balancing and making sure it worked as an arcade game. I think you're right, BBH, these are probably very close to the final products but they could have some very cool minute differences, and they're definitely interesting to see how the game evolved from it's final public test to the end product.
 

Geddon_jt

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There may well be substantial differences between the prerelease and final versions of these early games. Let's use 3 Count Bout as an example. There was a playable character in early screenshots of the game that was removed from the released version. If anyone ever came across a proto version of 3 Count Bout with that character in it, that's gold baby! So these games need to be scrutinized pretty closely...
 
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