Data Age cart, prototype or lab loaner?

[shadow460]

I was at a friend's house to day when he pulled out his daughter's "old video games". She'd asked him to not get rid of them, so he kept a small stack of NES and 2600 games. My eyes bugged out when I saw this Data Age cart. The serial number is 0301.

There's a good chance I'll be able to dump this cart soon. I'm half expecting it to be a pre release version of Frankenstein's Monster.

What say the experts? Prototype or lab loaner?

[CPUWIZ]

Final version review copy IMO, cool either way. Weight it and compare.

[+swlovinist]

Sweet find, please check what game it is.

[shadow460]

I didn't think of weighing it. It's Frankenstein's Monster. I dumped the ROM a couple of hours ago and got it loaded into Stella 2.75. It will take me a few minutes to get the ROM transferred off the old PC I used and uploaded. From there, perhaps someone can compare the code to the release version (or explain how and I'll do it) to see if it's the same ROM. I don't think it is. That cartridge has a 1982 copyright date on it, but the release of FM has a 1983 copyright.

Hang on... the ROM is on its way.

[shadow460]

Here's the ROM from the lab loaner along with the ROM from the release cartridge in my personal collection. They're 4K roms and should work in a modded Supercharger with wplaybin. Most of you probably have Harmony or cuttle carts, etc., but I'm old fashioned. Thus the Supercharger.
FYI, DevOS identifies the bankswitching as 264K with the -tTEST command.
I wish I could help you get it going on the newer multicarts. Hopefully it will fire right up without any hassle.

 

A little background on it... the person I got this from worked for AT&T as a programmer. We were chatting about this today and he told me that they were always passing stuff like this around and trading it off. Sometimes he would buy lunch in exchange for some games he could take home to his family. It's possible there could be more like this... he seems to remember having more with red or orange labels but they're stored right now. The games actually belong to his daughter who lives out of state.

Frankly, I'm hoping he does, but I'll wait until he's ready to unearth the stuff one day when the Oklahoma weather cools down. On the other hand, I'm very grateful they've allowed me to release something like this back to the community.

 

Perhaps we will all find out together what the differences are between this and the released game. Enjoy!

Frankenstien's Monster ver301 1982 lab loaner.bin

Frankenstein's Monster.bin

[Crimefighter]

Running this command on a DOS prompt -

 

C:\Users\RAPSHEET\Downloads>comp "Frankenstein's Monster.bin" "Frankenstien's Monster ver301 1982 lab loaner.bin" /d
Comparing Frankenstein's Monster.bin and Frankenstien's Monster ver301 1982 lab loaner.bin...
Files compare OK

Compare more files (Y/N) ? n

C:\Users\RAPSHEET\Downloads>

 

 

There are no differences. It's the final probably.

[shadow460]

Agreed. It's still an awesome piece to have, though, and I don't think one could find a more noble reason than taking it home to the kids for obtaining it.

[Shawn]

It's not a lab loaner either.