Friday, November 19, 2010

Daze Before Christmas - The Prototype

  Here's something new: a prototype cart for the obscure (and ungodly expensive) Daze Before Christmas game for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.  I've never played this game before, so I'm not sure what's different about it gameplay-wise (refer to video at the end) and I know almost nothing about programming and technical stuff, but I might as well share what I did manage to document.  I was originally going to do a deep investigation to see what's different about it, but I couldn't get the energy or interest to do it.  So here's some useful stuff:




  Ignore the DBZ cart; that was just sent for a new case.  Anyway, the one on the left is Daze Before Christmas and the one on the right is apparently a Karaoke prototype.  It doesn't have any screw holes in the board, so I can't get it into a cartridge.  Even if I removed the screw pegs in an empty cart, it likely wouldn't hold the board in place for insertion (I know this from my Shenzhen Nanjing carts).  Here's a little blurb from my text file scoping up the protos and getting them into a sturdier case:

Daze Before Christmas' board is [2 7/16 inches] (6 4/5 MM) tall and [3 7/8 inches]

(9 7/10 MM) wide. Original Cart is {U.S. Genesis} style and is held with two (2) phillips head screws (+). Board was put into

Sonic 1 cart and fits perfectly. Back of cart has the usual warning on right side

of space, while left side has patent info:



Patents: U.S. Nos. 3,332,466/

4,454,594/4,462,076; Europe No.

80244; Canada No. 1,183,276;

Hong Kong No. 68-4302;

Singapore No. 88-155; Japan

No. 82-205605 (Pending)

 
Karaoke's board is [4 inches] (10 3/10 MM) wide and [2 inches] (5 3/10 MM) tall.

It doesn't have screw holes on it, making it impossible to put into a regular cart.

Jap MD Carts & US Carts won't fit with it because of the screw notches that go into

the screw holes on the board. Filing the notches would have the board loose, so

this isn't recommended, but was considered.
 
Lastly, images and scans of the two protos:
 
Daze Before Christmas





 
Karaoke Prototype









Video of Daze Before Christmas


That's all for now!  I plan on sending these back to their original owner sometime after the weekend, so if you have any questions, ask me now while I still have them.  EDIT: And they're gone!  I couldn't get the Karaoke game to work at all, even on my MD2 console.  Plus I had these games for like a month or two, which is much longer than I planned and I'm surprised that the guy was so patient, considering that he sent me two prototype games...  BUT!  I do have an image from the original auction, for whatever it's worth:


Exciting.  But hey, at least it wasn't a Sonic 1 Prototype or something.

3 comments:

  1. Wouldn't the Karaoke game work if you just inserted the bare board into the cartridge slot? I'm looking at my PAL Mega Drive and there doesnt seem to be any reason you couldnt do that (unlike, say, the Game Boy, where there are only contacts on one side so you need the cart case to hold the board in place)

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  2. I was kinda iffy about trying to stuff a bare board into a Genesis/Nomad, mainly because I did the same with my Naruto RPG game (Shenzhen's carts are cheap as all hell) and that gets kinda stuck because the board's lightly thicker (thankfully the Power Joy has its cart slot sticking straight out of the back.) I was afraid I would get the thing stuck in my Nomad or something and end up breaking it trying to get it out.

    I Just tried it out now, and the game won't boot on my GenMobile or my Nomad, so I'll have to pull out my Mega Drive system out from under a pile of junk...Crap. If I get anything out of it, I'll post it here or on Youtube.

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  3. Did you sell one of your daze proto?

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