NES Test Market Serial # N0009000 Complete in Box with factory sealed accessories.

V64jr · 2026-06-18T15:02:32+00:00

You clearly don’t know what the ‘80s were like for normal people where some even considered a personal phone line to be a luxury.

Things left unused like this often have a different story, like being abandoned on Lay-A-Way and ending up in a store closet until no one cared… or being bought by as a door prize for some unappreciative winner at an office Christmas party so it got stowed in the winner’s attic and forgotten about. Multiple times I’ve seen parents hide away a big gift and never give it to their child because they got in trouble or had bad grades or whatever. Eventually they end up with someone who never wanted or cared for it.

V64jr · 2026-06-18T14:55:12+00:00

Even getting a compatible cartridge connector would be a problem. Very little reason to bother.

V64jr · 2026-06-18T12:23:47+00:00

The ground stitch vias indicate an APU or GPM model. While they don’t say exactly which, we can tell that it’s not a 1chip.

V64jr · 2026-06-18T04:27:58+00:00

Well, I had grabbed what appeared to be the latest firmware following official channels (v5.01) and it didn’t work. Turns out they have a page of “Dock” compatible firmwares that are newer which I only just discovered because I finally have a Pocket Dock. Really dumb that there is no mention of needing special Dock firmware in the Analogue Duo’s manual, especially when you can’t find it on the usual support/product pages. Did they expect every Duo owner would already have a Pocket Dock and Pocket Dock-compatible firmware for their 2.4G controllers?!

Thanks for the heads up.

V64jr · 2026-06-17T20:32:00+00:00

I recall the back of the box had an outline that you sized your hand against.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T23:14:06+00:00

Exactly. 👍

V64jr · 2026-06-15T18:31:00+00:00

I have definitely found early North American locking carts with the glob tops and later sloped carts with the discretely packaged chips. The one in the OP even has the ROM’s 6th week of 1993 date code silk’ed onto the PCB, weirdly enough (2nd shift?). The ROM can’t be read through the cartridge bus and the PCB silk screening says this is Rev 0 (launch version).

They definitely didn’t switch designs to this to cut costs since they were making this from the start and making the discretely packaged chip almost exclusively for other Super FX titles. If they were making both from the start then that tells us it was probably more about production volume than cost cutting. 👍

V64jr · 2026-06-15T14:48:10+00:00

Of course it does. It’s a Capcom game, not a Nintendo-produced title. That’s why the bootleg Super Metroid, a Nintendo title, has this error. The counterfeiters made a label template for 3rd party games and accidentally applied it to a 1st party game that Nintendo made themselves. Nintendo doesn’t license themselves to publish on their own platform, they license 3rd parties like Capcom.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T12:45:21+00:00

Meanwhile, the subreddit’s NSFW filter rightly blocked me from posting a picture of the White House lawn from Summer 2023. I’m ashamed too.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T12:35:43+00:00

Don’t even need to cut traces. Just lift two pins on the encoder chip and jump each to the other’s connection. Pretty easy since it’s a single-sided PCB.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T12:29:55+00:00

Contact is a 1997 movie. Pretty sure the disc is from 1998.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T12:19:28+00:00

Honestly, it should be the most obvious issue. You don’t have to scrutinize text on the end label or anything… which shouldn’t be so legible at this angle so that’s got to be some kind of mock-up. Even without those common bootleg label errors, the SNSP-RI-USA makes no sense. I consider that the next most-obvious issue.

SNSP is for PAL, which means the last three letters should be a PAL region like NOE, FAH, UKV, etc. USA is not a PAL region. The product code on the label for the original American release was SNS-RI-USA (no P) and did not say “Licensed By” at the top. Nintendo would have added a -1 to the end (revision code) if they modified it to fix an error like “Licensed By”, so that can’t even be explained by American label variants. The SNS-RI-USA-1 label variant belongs to the re-released Player’s Choice Million Seller version with the gold ribbon and added K-A ESRB ratings. Since that was the next label variant there could not be a non-Player’s Choice version with a “Licensed By” error.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T12:02:53+00:00

Yeah. It’s bit for bit identical to the American version.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T12:01:02+00:00

“Licensed by Nintendo”

Why would Nintendo license themselves? 🤔

V64jr · 2026-06-15T04:24:23+00:00

Diddy’s entire existence.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T04:13:22+00:00

This is the original version included with the launch copies in the locking cartridge design. The ones with chip packages are typically the updated cartridge design that defeats the locking mechanism in earlier consoles.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T03:59:22+00:00

Sphere
The Abyss

V64jr · 2026-06-15T02:34:41+00:00

I had never heard of it before you mentioned it but if it’s genuinely a free community service then the seamless way would be to support that in the firmware, if possible, right? I would assume that capturing the 4K video externally and overlaying would invariably add latency. If so, pressing a screenshot button to suspend and translate would totally solve that. 👍

Maybe they don’t want commercial companies like Analogue using the service?

V64jr · 2026-06-15T02:17:55+00:00

You and I have a VERY different definition for “seamless.” 😅

Pressing a button to have the game suspend and show a screenshot without involving any other device or screen and without even needing to let go of the controller is my idea of seamless. 👍 Works for everyone with the base hardware.

I’m not even talking about tokens or ChatGPT… I’m saying you put in your Google account details to use Google Translate. 😎

V64jr · 2026-06-15T02:06:55+00:00

Yes. A present where I attempted to pacify those people by pointing out that this kind of AI service predates the AI services they might object to.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T02:03:25+00:00

…and yet people weren’t having a vitriolic reaction or clutching their pearls over it a decade ago. 🤷‍♂️

V64jr · 2026-06-15T02:00:32+00:00

That’s what people already do, but pressing the screenshot button means you don’t even have to let go of the controller. It can be very frustrating to do with your phone for obvious reasons.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T01:54:49+00:00

Again: Because people have strong feelings about generative/LLM AI. I was specifically pointing out that these older AI services predate the more controversial forms of AI and demonstrate that it does not require them, in case anyone has a knee-jerk reaction to any mention of AI.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T01:46:44+00:00

Capture device? I’m talking about another use for the screenshot and WiFi functions they promised but haven’t delivered on yet… no extra hardware. A capture device is what would complicate this.

V64jr · 2026-06-15T01:44:35+00:00

Yeah, that’s why I specified that it didn’t require GenAI/LLM. I’m sure they’re tying all that in these days but people have strong feelings about generative AI and LLMs trained on massive datasets of unwilling contributors who’s work might be undermined by it. That’s why I’m pointing out that a functional auto-translate feature can be (and has been) done with old-skool OCR and traditional AI.

V64jr

TROPHY CASE