This is a prototype of Super Nova by Taito. The differences within this build are currently unknown. If you happen to know the game well and know the differences between the retail release and this prototype, please let us know!
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: SuperNova.sfc
BitSize: 8 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 1048576
CRC32: 87AEB5B9
MD5: AB2513C8D1388D2FD9FE07496ED24D3A
SHA1: 9819B3D97993EA562E5AD0A5377B1BD86F42555E
SHA256: 9A0477B1F34293CED5160A3B061C23F105068ECE12956A67A3C5BE9889BAAEE5
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: HiROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: N/A
Serial: N/A
SFX SRAM Size: 0xFF
Title: SUPER NOVA
Map Type: 0x31 (FastROM-120ns; HiROM-64KB Banks)
ROM Type: 0x00 (ROM)
ROM Size: 0x0A (8 Mbit; Ok)
SRAM Size: 0x00 (None)
Country: 0x01 (USA)
Old Maker Code: 0xC0 (Taito)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Inverse Checksum: 0xCBEA (Ok)
Checksum: 0x3415 (Ok)
This is a prototype of Arcana by HAL Laboratory. The differences within this build are currently unknown. If you happen to know the game well and know the differences between the retail release and this prototype, please let us know!
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: Arcana.2F0D.sfc
BitSize: 8 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 1048576
CRC32: 9ED6F34D
MD5: 549F0E50BAF3F80C374C805CFEA313AE
SHA1: 6080A6339F212B8BF9CC63435A85F730C060AF7C
SHA256: 965F16BB86E5737DD7CB0F896FFC5743EC614445EBC7ABB5B8FED391149D08E9
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: LoROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: N/A
Serial: N/A
SFX SRAM Size: 0xFF
Title: ARCANA
Map Type: 0x20 (SlowROM-200ns; LoROM-32KB Banks)
ROM Type: 0x02 (ROM + Save RAM)
ROM Size: 0x0A (8 Mbit; Ok)
SRAM Size: 0x03 (64 Kbit)
Country: 0x01 (USA)
Old Maker Code: 0xB6 (HAL Laboratory)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Inverse Checksum: 0x2F0D (Ok)
Checksum: 0xD0F2 (Ok)
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
Yet another prototype has been dumped and released to you all! This time we will be taking a look at the unreleased game developed by Eurocom, Spider-Man 4 on the Nintendo Wii. This build was found on an RVT-H Wii development kit. These development kits are very similar to your normal Wii, however they use an internal hard drive as opposed to an optical drive. Due to there being a lack of an optical drive, there are also buttons on the front to mimic the functions of the optical drive. Said development kit was teased on twitter a few months ago, and thanks to the generous GamingLegend64, we now have a copy to release and preserve.
Gameplay
There isn’t all that much in terms of the main story to play, it all seems very spaced out and incomplete. Judging from the title, there were only two parts that you can play through. Both of them lead to untextured and very unfinished stages as seen in the screenshot below. Selecting the first part will bring the player to a building top, where there are various places for Spider-Man to swing on from building to building, there are a few enemies in your way, too. Luckily for us there are many, many debug features to take a look at, including other stages that actually contain textures.
Debug Features!
Strap yourselves in and get ready for a whole heap of debug content! On the main menu is an option which will allow the player to access all sorts of debug options and tests. The first option available to us is the “Gameplay Prototypes”. This option brings Spider-Man to a colorful hub of sorts, where the player can choose what moves they want to test out. Walking into each gate will transport Spider-Man to that specific test. As you can see in this screenshot, there are quite a few options. Let’s get started shall we?
I guess we’ll start off with the test right in front of us, the web moves test.
There are many different areas we can do this test, here I chose the one which resembles a city. If you look closely, you can see neon green poles on the sides of each building. This is where Spider-Man will swing from his webs. You do this by getting close enough to them and holding the B button. It’s actually quite fun!
The next test room we’ll take a look at is the Photography Test.
This one is quite empty, with only a few boxes holding shapes. Whenever the player gets close to the box, a camera icon will appear in the top left. As far as I can tell, the camera function is incomplete. Meaning there isn’t much to do nor see in this room.
Now let’s move to the more interesting rooms! Camera Test.
This one features various different statues and environments to see how the camera would react to those sudden changes. Here you’ll find large drops, small drops, and various tunnels going in either directions. There are quite a bit of areas in this one. Here’s me…er- Spider-Man running down the tunnel test.
The other test rooms within this game consist of wall-running, jumping, climbing and other self explanatory tests. Even after all that, we’re still not done discussing the debug features. I wasn’t kidding when I said there was heaps!
Here’s a Combat Test which can be accessed from the main menu once again.
Spider-Man is trapped in a small room with various goons. He is able to jump on their shoulders and shoot webs at them. The combat system takes a little time to get used to, but you’ll eventually get the hang of it.
Another one from the main menu is the World Sim test. This is a pretty nice one. It’s more of a cutscene test. The player can’t move, instead, they have to watch whilst Spider-Man looks onward at the busy city below. It starts off right near Spider-Man and slowly zooms up the road, giving a nice and clear view. Voices of the citizens and cars below can also be heard.
Clicking the “Art Satellite Areas” test brings up a whole menu of areas that would’ve likely appeared in the final game. These are quite nicely textured, detailed, and all seem to be mostly complete, minus some parts behind the player as well as the whole emptiness of these areas. The photo in the area below represents China Town.
It’s easy to tell that there was quite a lot of effort put into making these areas look appealing to the player. Shame that this game never got a release until now.
The next option right below Art Satellite Areas are the FX tests. These are even more impressive than the area tests. There are various stages (similar to the ones for the previous test) which take use of various effects. Quite a few actually, as seen in the screenshot below. Police lights, explosions, etc.
Once again, very nicely detailed and it’s clear a lot of effort was put in.
The final debug option we’ll take a look at here is the Asset Viewer. As the name implies, we can use this to get a nice and clear view of each character within the game. You can also choose from various different options to change the background, camera angle, and more. There are not that many character models present, just Spider-Man, the goons we saw earlier in the combat test, and a large man which doesn’t seem to have had any animations done on it.
Oddities!
As you would expect from an unreleased game, there are quite a few odd occurrences which happen during gameplay. You might have noticed that a mouse cursor is visible in most of the screenshots, this actually isn’t from my emulator. This can be triggered by plugging a GameCube controller into the first port and moving the C-Stick. This will cause the mouse pointer to appear in game. Clicking with it also brings up a small text box saying “Spider-Man 4”. So far I’ve found no use for this whatsoever.
Another odd occurrence is what the game displays as when using the Dolphin Emulator. It shows the game is “Dead Space: Extraction”, another game that was developed by Eurocom. This seems to imply that this unreleased Spider-Man 4 game was running on the same engine as Dead Space.
Information
Note: This game will not run on the latest version of Dolphin. Instead, use Dolphin 5.0-8582.
Special Thanks
Hard4Games for their incredible video coverage of the game.
GamingLegend64 for generously providing this game for us to release.
ROM Information
Name: Spiderman (Disc 1, Revision 0)
Game ID: RZJE69 (0001000030303030)
Country: USA
Maker: Electronic Arts (69)
Apploader Date: 2009/06/18
This is a prototype of Samurai Shodown by Takara. The differences within this build are currently unknown. If you happen to know the game well and know the differences between the retail release and this prototype, please let us know!
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: SamuraiShodown.sfc
BitSize: 32 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 4194304
CRC32: 71E5E555
MD5: 54D054B5A08C80E8E1192729A8F3A4C8
SHA1: 7DACA0851AD9CBE1D47C155B7B9E5AA7F30470E7
SHA256: B470A9F98183198791AFC86F80E8E839B7FE43DF912B195BD3B69B2D60BF05A9
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: HiROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: N/A
Serial: N/A
SFX SRAM Size: 0x57
Title: SAMURAI SHODOWN
Map Type: 0x31 (FastROM-120ns; HiROM-64KB Banks)
ROM Type: 0x00 (ROM)
ROM Size: 0x0C (32 Mbit; Ok)
SRAM Size: 0x00 (None)
Country: 0x01 (USA)
Old Maker Code: 0xA7 (Takara)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Inverse Checksum: 0x08F2 (Ok)
Checksum: 0xF70D (Ok)
This is a prototype of Speed Racer by Radical Entertainment. Some differences that could be noted are as follows: Upon boot “Beta 15 Mon 7 3 20” can be seen under the Accolade publisher logo, each race length is described with the amount of miles instead of the number of laps, and some minor color and graphical differences.
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: SpeedRacer.sfc
BitSize: 16 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 2097152
CRC32: 6FA3FCA1
MD5: 828E9E00C3E9EB43E6E57EF98AFAFE4F
SHA1: 953A6986E4C081ADCDFA17A754F2F28C76959F44
SHA256: 1D3DD03EBBB6E58263D51AA78FB219F5B2D69ED62F4902004B9BB6EB2E0CC230
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: LoROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: N/A
Serial: N/A
SFX SRAM Size: 0xFF
Title: ・{
Map Type: 0xFE (Unknown; Unknown)
ROM Type: 0xFF (Unknown)
ROM Size: 0xFF (4 Kbit; Bad)
SRAM Size: 0xFF (4 Kbit)
Country: 0xFF (Unknown)
Old Maker Code: 0xFF (Unknown)
Version: 0xFF (v1.255)
Inverse Checksum: 0xFFFF (Bad; 0xA541)
Checksum: 0xFFFF (Bad; 0x5ABE)
This is a dump of an SGI Indy HDD which was used for the development of Nintendo 64 games. It contains various tools, documents, and is all setup and ready to be used.
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
After years of various fakes and speculation, a genuine demo build of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was discovered to be silently residing on a forgotten GameCube demo disc titled “Gekkan Nintendo Tentou Demo 2002.12.1”. Said disc was sold on eBay just a few months earlier, and thanks to the generous owner of the disc, the data has been preserved and can now be experienced by all.
Screenshots
What is this demo disc for, where did it come from? These particular demo discs were distributed to Japanese game stores, being publicly displayed starting on December 1, 2002. This allowed customers to experience a demo of the game thirteen days prior to the title’s release in Japan. Because of this, there are large amounts of small differences and bugs littered throughout the game. After use, the discs were intended to be returned to Nintendo, however this disc and another copy are the only two which are publicly known to have survived as of October 2019.
The materials on the disc are as follows: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Mario Party 4, Sonic Mega Collection, and many promotional videos.
Wind Waker Differences
The title screen of the demo appears with a night setting for the background instead of the final’s sunny background.
Earth Temple boss, Jalhalla, has an different trophy in the Trophy Gallery at Forest Haven. In the demo it shows us that he indeed used to have a face. In the final versions, he is only shown wearing a mask. Whilst fighting him in the demo, he wears the mask for a just like the final build of the game. This seems to suggest that the game’s developers revised Jalhalla but hadn’t yet changed the trophy until a later revision.
Forsaken Fortress contains early exterior whilst inside the the fortress. It is possible to peek back into the interior through a window.
There is a visual bug with Link’s magic meter in the demo. It appears fuller by one pixel, although it doesn’t actually have more magic.
The camera while Link grabs the Master Sword is slightly different.
The camera angles present in Din’s Pearl cutscenes differ from the final.
The King of Red Lions gets sent to the center of the great sea when playing the Sun’s Song.
Other differences include:
During the cutscene in which the player meets Fido and Laruto for the first time, there is a noticeable lack of sound effects. Fido completely lacks music, which suggests his track was completed far later in development. They’re also solid instead of ghostly transparent.
On slot 2 in the demo disc, the save with Forsaken Fortress, there’s a glitch when Link get’s to the tower and retrieves his sword. In the final game he holds it up in the air with the animation paused. In the demo, he holds it up in the air, and the monster slashes at him continually with the sword until the dialogue box closes.
All pearls are required to grab the Master Sword.
Beedle’s ship plays a horn sound when close. This sound is audible at any time.
King Lion talks to Link immediately after entering the Master Sword chamber, and not when near the sword.
Debug Features!
Plugging a controller into slot 3 at any time and pressing the Z button will bring up a debug console. The console’s output list grows as Link visits different areas or when bugs occur. Holding L+R whilst in the debug console state will allow you to scroll up and down the console to view all of it’s outputs.
Plugging a controller into slot 4 and messing around with various different buttons at any point causes random text boxes to appear on the screen, which appears to be intended as a dialogue test.
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Nintendo GameCube
File: D44J01.iso
BitSize: 10 Gbit
Size (Bytes): 1459978240
CRC32: 1B5A2934
MD5: 0176E215BA8D790E1F170442350930C9
SHA1: 4CE687B48F40870C907DE4210D877E34AAB8593F
SHA256: F175ACC09F663B8EAE1C87BD2773A8D1F4705A842A66751228551D2B282294D6
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
Game Title: Disk 2002 For Japan December 2002 For Japan
Game Serial: D44J (Japan)
Maker Code: 01 (Nintendo)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Disc Id: 1
This is a prototype of Mr. Nutz by Ocean. This build appears to be quite early. It contains no sound at all and has been watermarked by the developer. The build date along with the following message can be found in the ROM: “MR NUTZ OCEAN’s version 10 june 1993- This version includes a anti-thieves tag ! -MR NUTZ produced by Pierre ADANE & Philippe DESSOLY”.
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: MrNutz.sfc
BitSize: 8 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 1048576
CRC32: 65690811
MD5: 2DB1BB70228DD386E771567988F440C0
SHA1: 1BAB248F44BF6B44FBF2AAC5B7081AD4F79C04A9
SHA256: 95043F027A88C68B96633EE22231616B5A335EA80E0D28E1A595C2918E4BA802
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: LoROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: N/A
Serial: N/A
SFX SRAM Size: 0x00
Title: Mr.NUTZ
Map Type: 0x30 (FastROM-120ns; LoROM-32KB Banks)
ROM Type: 0x00 (ROM)
ROM Size: 0x0A (8 Mbit; Ok)
SRAM Size: 0x00 (None)
Country: 0x01 (USA)
Old Maker Code: 0x67 (Ocean)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Inverse Checksum: 0x0000 (Bad; 0x497C)
Checksum: 0x0000 (Bad; 0xB683)
This is a prototype of Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics by Data East. The differences within this build are currently unknown. If you happen to know the game well and know the differences between the retail release and this prototype, please let us know!
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: JoeAndMac2.sfc
BitSize: 8 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 1048576
CRC32: 89B22484
MD5: 28A61B29E526C1FE12C253BD5BC17148
SHA1: 8756BD04739CDF37A0C117DD24593FC4A7A8359F
SHA256: 8F31DB59A5E328D1E70E551B60146DEC0D2D8DCF4AF69382E07B8526AF8EC84E
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: LoROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: N/A
Serial: N/A
SFX SRAM Size: 0xFF
Title: JOE & MAC 2
Map Type: 0x30 (FastROM-120ns; LoROM-32KB Banks)
ROM Type: 0x00 (ROM)
ROM Size: 0x0A (8 Mbit; Ok)
SRAM Size: 0x00 (None)
Country: 0x01 (USA)
Old Maker Code: 0xC5 (Data East)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Inverse Checksum: 0x1E60 (Ok)
Checksum: 0xE19F (Ok)
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… A prototype simply called “Spike” was created by John Brandstetter at Sega of America for the upcoming Sega Neptune. It would at some point be pitched as Star Wars – Rebel Strike for the Sega Saturn. Ultimately the idea was canned and never progressed past the one level prototype, but luckily an anonymous person came into possession of the discs and design documents to allow us to release the prototype and scans of the pitch documents.
There are little concrete details on the prototype and its background, but we can make some educated guesses about it. John Brandstetter was the producer of the Sega 32X port of Star Wars Arcade and is the author of the pitch materials. Having prior experience with the license, the team must have assumed that they could wrangle a Star Wars game in 3D. One can see that the pitch as a whole seems quite rushed as there are various typos and misspellings throughout the pitch document in addition to only four fleshed out level concepts, indicating a very tight timeframe.
Unfortunately by that time it was pitched it may have been impossible for Sega to obtain the license for the concept. This is possibly due to LucasArts’ relationship with Nintendo as around this time a Star Wars game was mentioned as an upcoming title for the N64 (what would eventually become Shadows of the Empire). Possibly the dismantling of Sega’s American development divisions in the Saturn era was more to blame. Interestingly the game was discussed in a small snippet in the 1995 Computer and Video Games Issue 161 as you can see below, so it was at least somewhat known about at the time.
Was the Spike prototype an original game idea that was going to be its own potential release or was it spun up to pitch Star Wars – Rebel Strike? There’s no confirmation one way or the other, but there were quite a few assets created for this prototype as you can see in the scanned documents. It is interesting to note that the actual game itself seems to have few definitively Star Wars elements, taking on a generic futuristic look (the landspeeder doesn’t even look right). Why Sega did not continue to develop this pitch in a new direction is also unknown. From the pitch material, the game was broadly pitched as a game of vehicular combat based on the SGL demos which came with the Saturn SDK called biplane and driving2 which you can download them here and here. The mechanics of the landspeeder were also likely inspired if not directly lifted from these demos as they look and control very similarly. More reasons to think this demo was spun up in a rush.
You can download high quality scans for the packaging here.
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
Yakyuu-kyou (AKA Play Ball), is a top down rendition of the sport similar to the Nintendo version of Baseball. There are wide and close-in views of the bases and a fully selectable team with different stats, positions, and the ability to change their names as well. For a fairly standard sports game, it was far ahead of it’s time in terms of simulation. At large each of these games are easy to play because they have a good deal of English, though one may miss out on the nuances.
You can download high quality scans for the packaging here.
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
Fans of the Hudson games from the Famicom will immediately see some stark differences. Nuts & Milk is an entirely different game, having no vertical platforming elements whatsoever and instead being a maze game, similar in some ways to Boulder Dash. Players control Milk and avoid the blue characters known as Nuts while navigating a maze collecting all the fruit in order to advance to the next level. Some walls can be dug out but reappear after a time and can be used to to avoid and trap Nuts.
You can download high quality scans for the packaging here.
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
Mario Bros. Special on the Hitachi S1 – which is the seventh port of the game thus far preserved – the game is comparable to the Sharp X1 port which features the same graphics as the less powerful PC-8801 version of the game. While it has no known additional features from the other ports, there remains only one remaining version of this game to be found on the Sony SMC-777 (Although unconfirmed reports claim that a version for the IBM JX was released).
You can download high quality scans for the packaging here.
