Hello all, I was sent here from Seattle Retro Gamers on Facebook. Where there was some previous discusion.

I have in my possession an authentic, functional, 1995 prototype cartridge of Bound High for the Virtual Boy.

It is as of yet unclear to me what version of the game I have? If it is the same or different than the buggy->patched ROM used to make the repros? What is the easiest way for me to determine the version?

I have included pics of the cartridge and PCB. (I apologise my phone camera sucks.)

Any further information, or insight would be appreciated.

Attachments:

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   img_20180521_085041877-scaled.jpg
   

Hmm, I wonder if this cartridge is the one that this article in Nintendo Power 10/2005 talks about:

https://www.planetvb.com/modules/articles/?s004147001

KR155E wrote:
Hmm, I wonder if this cartridge is the one that this article in Nintendo Power 10/2005 talks about:

https://www.planetvb.com/modules/articles/?s004147001

Correct.

I have discussed it with my associate and we are prepared to dump and release this ROM.

We are more interested in preserving and sharing this piece of history than profiting from it’s obscure and potential high value.

The only way this can happen, though, is if the aforementioned custom dumper was shared and sent to me.

Please PM any details to assist.

Omg! Thank you Cpt. F. and his associate for deciding to give the rom for preservation. I look forward to trying at it out on my Pockulus Chip.

Thank you so much Cpt. F (and your associate)! People like you both are so important to gaming history and preservation. I hope the cart dumper can get to you ASAP.

Awesome news! Minestorm said either bigmac or BenjaminStevens probably has the dumper right now. I’ll send them a PM

I have the cart dumper. I can pack it up and send it out, but not until next Saturday if that’s ok.

If you have questions on how it works, please direct them to Mindstorm 🙂

PM me the details of where it’s going and i’ll make sure it gets there.

-Eric

I have discussed it with my associate and we are prepared to dump and release this ROM.

We are more interested in preserving and sharing this piece of history than profiting from it’s obscure and potential high value.

Thankyou !

BTW do you have an FB+ cart ?

BTW do you have an FB+ cart ?

I do not have a FlashBoy

This is interesting news. I can not wait to see if this ROM holds any secrets! Thank you and your associate for the willingness to do this.

This gets me super excited!
I can’t wait to hear what this ROM holds! 😀

This is fantastic news!

I do not have a FlashBoy

You do now 🙂

I have played the dumped rom of Bound High and its pretty awesome. I have never ran into any buggyness but it seems there are a grip of posts with people saying that the dumped version is buggy.

This is a pretty sweet find dude and will be awesome if this includes anything extra beyond the current dumped version

Before a complete copy of Bound high was compiled without errors, the broken ROM was somewhat available. *Someone got a copy of the buggy rom and tried to sell it as a prototype to a bunch of people on this site.

The buggy version they are talking about is this version. It was compiled with errors. That’s why it was buggy after a certain point in the game.

That copy (the one you played), was based off the actual code for the game. It took a long time for the people on this site to work together compiled it correctly. You’ve been playing the final copy that was compiled without errors. It’s easy to tell, the buggy version was unplayable after a few levels.

This person actually has the only known prototype of the game. The interest is in if the code of this prototype is different in anyway then the compiled code that was used to make the ROM copy everyone has had the good fortune to be playing 🙂

-Eric

That is a nice find and creates hope for other still unreleased games. So far all games which got presented on a trade show back then ended up on one of this cardrige sized flash boards.
Nintendo always tried to use final looking hardware on tradeshows.
So if for example Dragon Hopper or Zero Racers was playble on a Tradeshow at one point, chances are high that more of this stuff has survived.
Also it is more unlikely that such stuff leaks from Nintendo directly. Stuff from Tradshows or game journalists are more likely.
Chances however to see that surfaced are slim or it takes some time. The last VB prototype game before this BH Board was quite some time back.
A lot of VB related Material located in japan and I heard several times that they have some very obscure collectors who would never part with stuff. They do not even want that somebody knows what they have. Makes no sense to me.
Some do not even consider preservation which is highly stupid when it comes to games on Disk, flash from that time or Eproms.

Regarding Bound High itself. Will be interesting to see how the roms will compare. Gamewise it will propably the same but maybe the rom contains some unused materials or so.

This is an awesome find, hopefully a successful dump is in the future.

I had never read this write-up before regarding the existence of this prototype cart (there is just so much content on this site!), but this got me wondering…

So I guess my question is to @KR155E and all the other “historians” on PVB… are there any other prototypes/demos whose existence has been referenced in “official” publications (as opposed to forums or secondhand accounts)? What prototypes/demos do we think we know existed, or at least were confirmed to have existed at some point?

KR155E wrote:
Hmm, I wonder if this cartridge is the one that this article in Nintendo Power 10/2005 talks about:

https://www.planetvb.com/modules/articles/?s004147001

Dragon Hopper

A game that we’d all like to see but is likely not ever going to be discovered. I honestly believe it’s likely in a Nintendo archived storage, doomed to never see the light of day.