| Star Wars Nintendo Game Prototype Cartridge | |
| While many collectors might be familiar with the production process of Kenner’s line of action figures, those weren’t the only things which went through various pre-production stages. What you see here is a prototype Star Wars cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System released in 1991.
The video game design process at the time called for the programmer to work on the code for the game using a computer, and once the design of the game was complete, he’d transfer the code onto a generic blank Nintendo cartridge like the one you see here. These cartridges are different from the ones which were commercially available however, both due to the cutouts which allow access to the chips inside and because Nintendo used a different kind of chip on these pre-release development copies of the game. While the finished games contained chips which were unmodifiable (you can't swap in Mr. T in place of Luke as your playable character on the copy of the game you bought in a store, for example) the chips in this prototype version are called “Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory” (“EPROM”), and allow the programmer to alter the information stored on them and make changes to the code (so, switching out Luke for Mr. T is a simple matter of writing the code and sticking it in there.) This meant that the programmer could play the prototype game exactly like any other Nintendo cartridge, and if he spotted a mistake, he could alter that section of code directly on the cartridge. Once he was satisfied that the debug and testing process was complete, the altered code would be retrieved from the cartridge and then sent to the manufacturer to begin producing the game on the final unmodifiable chips. In that respect, I suppose we can think of these pre-release prototype cartridges as analogous to an action figure’s hardcopy, in that it’s a more usable copy of the original computer code (sculpt), which is then used to produce the final cartridges (first shots and production figures.) While not a perfect analogy, it can at least give collectors a general idea of where it fits into the production process. These Nintendo prototype cartridges don’t show up very frequently and are very desirable to video game collectors, so as always, collectors should be cautious when buying them. Given the subtle differences between this and a modified production version of the game, you should always be sure of what you’re buying. |
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| Description by: | Thomas Garvey |
| Photo: | Brian Jaye |
| From the collection of: | Brian Jaye |
| Country: | United States |
| Film: | A New Hope |
| Licensee: | Nintendo |
| Year: | 1991 |
| Category: | Prototypes / Miscellaneous Toys |