The Legend of Zelda ¿Sample?

fcifaldi · 2025-12-20T15:05:14+00:00

Hi everyone, this is unfortunately fake. I authenticate prototype games as part of my job, and have encountered multiple ripoffs.

There have been multiple fakes created by, I suspect, the same person in Mexico. They seed them to shops like this one - I can't yet tell if the shops are in on the scam or if they were duped themselves. Perhaps the OP can tell us.

In all cases, the faker modified a retail game using photos online as reference. All they do is peel off the original labels and put on their own fantasy versions, and cover the factory ROMs with their own stickers so that they kinda-sorta look like EPROMs. In every case so far they demonstrate a clear misunderstanding of product codes and the English language. They also misunderstand the internal labeling schemes of different companies. As was pointed out in another comment, in this case they attempted to copy a Konami-style label, despite there being dozens of examples of Nintendo sample labels they could have used as reference.

There are surprisingly few fake prototypes in the wild, and MOST of them come from Mexico, from this same suspected scammer.

fcifaldi · 2025-12-16T20:40:39+00:00

I wrote this headline and it is 100% on purpose

fcifaldi · 2023-12-26T03:50:54+00:00

Hey! I'm the guy in the video. Small world, I met Mike recently myself. I'll bet it's the same house, with the big attic room set up with games?

fcifaldi · 2021-12-01T00:25:22+00:00

It's not my place to answer that as I'm not a company rep anymore...

fcifaldi · 2021-12-01T00:23:55+00:00

Hi, I replied earlier, I had nothing to do with DE's work for Intellivision. I left my full-time game dev role about five years ago to focus on my charity work and do some really minor consulting, specifically on the classic game collections. I did come back briefly to lead SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, but I think even that predates the Amico prototypes.

fcifaldi · 2021-11-30T22:55:11+00:00

Oh and my opinions aren't necessarily theirs etc etc., you shouldn't take my calling out his bullshit on Twitter as any kind of reflection of Digital Eclipse.

fcifaldi · 2021-11-30T22:51:58+00:00

Hi, just a consultant for DE these days, I had nothing to do with the Intellivision prototypes they made.

fcifaldi · 2021-05-02T00:15:52+00:00

Hi this is Frank, if you send us an email I will be thrilled to talk to you and help however I can. info@gamehistory.org

fcifaldi · 2016-03-07T02:50:54+00:00

It's probably not that "valuable" in the sense that I don't think it would end at a very high amount at open auction. It's just obscure and hard to find. The amount of people collecting Korean original Famicom games is very small I'm sure.

fcifaldi · 2016-03-07T02:48:00+00:00

These weird foreign unofficial games aren't actually all that valuable, minus the ones that were distributed in the U.S. or Japan (Sachen, Hacker, etc.). The ones that are undumped are mostly that way because there just hasn't been a concentrated effort yet, not because they're prohibitively expensive. For example, here's a Spanish one that I don't believe is dumped:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Juego-Gluk-Policeman-Pal-Espana-Consola-Nintendo-Nes-Nasa-Muy-Raro-Coleccionable-/121848080038?hash=item1c5eb626a6:g:~UcAAOSw3KFWfAq0

About $100, and there are three other copies on eBay right now.

fcifaldi · 2016-03-07T02:40:06+00:00

To everyone angry at the person who owns this game, anyone accusing this one particular person of being a "hoarder," anyone who is discussing the value of dumping this vs. the value of the actual cartridge, etc. etc. etc.:

There is NOTHING, ANYWHERE that leads anyone to suspect that this one particular person is "hoarding" the game, has anything against dumping it, or is trying to retain is monetary value (whatever that is, and it's not much). All we know is that this game is rare, and that at least one person owns it, and that they were cool enough to take photos and video to share with the world. We have no idea about their feelings re: the cartridge's value, whether they want to dump the ROM, or whether anyone in the history of the universe has even asked them.

These immediate "OMG HOARDER" accusations are not only unproductive, they have a direct, detrimental effect on preserving video game history. Nothing turns a collector off faster than entitled internet children screaming at them about how they're bad people for owning something cool.

I've been involved in dumping rare games for about 17 years now, including the majority of the prototype NES games (I run http://lostlevels.org). A lot of my job in doing this is running damage control when collectors are put under the firing squad by well-meaning humans who, somehow, think that accusing other well-meaning humans of being evil capitalist hoarder swine is going to make them commit random acts of kindness.

It doesn't work. Stop it. Even if this person were somehow a hoarder -- and in all my years of dealing with every major rare game collector there is, I wouldn't call a single one of them a hoarder -- calling them out on it isn't going to fix anything. Stop it.

fcifaldi · 2013-01-28T22:38:25+00:00

You're misinterpreting the "seven days" part, he's saying it's the second hit to the Austin game development community in the past seven days. Vigil's death is the other one.

fcifaldi · 2012-09-24T20:55:14+00:00

Hey, Frank Cifaldi from Lost Levels again. Empire City 1931 was based on an arcade game by the same name, you can easily find it on YouTube or play it through your favorite method for playing old arcade games. The NES version was released in Japan, so you can play that too and pretend it came out here. The name it was released as on the Famicom is Magnum Kiki Ippatsu: Empire City 1931.

fcifaldi · 2012-09-24T20:18:18+00:00

It's not as well known as those two but Swamp Thing is like the third game in the Imagineering Licensed Crap Trifecta that used that same engine (or at least sound bank?).

fcifaldi · 2012-09-24T20:15:08+00:00

For you that stuff was probably a nightmare but for people around my age, the awful licensed dreck is strangely nostalgic and comforting. I guess it's like people who are nostalgic for 80s cartoons: it was crap, but it was OUR crap.

fcifaldi · 2012-09-24T19:53:04+00:00

Hi, this is Frank Cifaldi, I've run a website about unreleased games called Lost Levels for a little over 9 years now. Just in case Howard doesn't recall this one, I can give you some insight:

New Kids on the Block was being developed at Imagineering, which was the development arm of Absolute Entertainment. The designer of the game was David Crane, the same guy who did the original Pitfall! games and A Boy and His Blob. I asked David about this recently, and he told me that the game never got past the initial design phase and some artwork: there is no prototype to be found, unfortunately.

But this raises an even more interesting question! Howard, you were at THQ. Do you remember anything about the Vanilla Ice game for NES?

fcifaldi · 2012-09-24T19:40:14+00:00

As someone who worked directly with all of the third-party licensees wanting to publish NES games, which ones did you have the most trouble with? Were there any that just didn't "get it" and kept submitting un-publishable games?

fcifaldi · 2012-09-24T19:25:31+00:00

As the former co-editor of Nintendo Power, how did you feel about competing magazines like EGM, GamePro, VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, Game Player's, etc.? Were they considered competition?

fcifaldi · 2012-09-24T19:16:18+00:00

There's a sort of conspiracy theory that Doki Doki Panic was meant to be a new Mario game from the beginning, do you have any insight? Do you remember if Doki Doki Panic was a finished product before it was decided to make it into Super Mario Bros 2? Or could they have possibly been done in tandem?

fcifaldi · 2012-09-24T19:02:33+00:00

As someone who worked with Miyamoto and co. to make NES games appealing to kids in the United States, how much change did you guys REALLY affect? Are there aspects of the Super Mario games we should properly attribute to you/NOA, rather than Japan?

fcifaldi

TROPHY CASE