marsilies

I'd imagine David Braben/Frontier Developments, considering they made Elite: Dangerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Braben I doubt Crazy Climber lives in Uraguay. I was just pointing out it'd be illegal, if you want to take the risk and do it anyway that's up to you. But trying to profit by making and selling copies of someone else's work is the one way that's most likely to spur legal action.

This second step would be just outright illegal as copyright infringement, and of the type that would likely get someone looking to sue you. The first sale doctrine likely means you have the right to buy and sell the physical prototype, and copyright law allows for making a personal backup copy of software, provided you still own the original, but producing and distributing new copies is straight up copyright infringement. In the case of posting ROMs online for free, the risk of getting sued is fairly minimal, but trying to profit via the sale of copies is a big no-no. Also, unless it's a prototype of a previously unseen, unreleased game, I don't think there'd be much appeal to collectors for a repro cart. Even something like the NTSC Elite probably isn't too appealing to collectors as a repro, since the PAL ROM exists. The main appeal in physically owning a prototype is the fact that they're so unique and rare, a repro won't be that. Furthermore, selling a limited edition repro, and then later releasing the ROM online for free, would likely piss off anyone that actually bought a repro, since they could've gotten the same by just waiting for the ROM and using an Everdrive. I just don't see your plan actually working out. I would think part of the appeal of owning a prototype would be bragging rights.

Well, if you want to get into the weeds.... The distribution of physical prototypes isn't going to be copyright infringement, since that's about the production of new copies, not about an existing copy transferring hands. It's maybe stolen property, but that depends on whether the source wasn't just disposing of it, let an employee take it home, etc. Even then, it may be more considered civil conversion instead of theft, and importantly, most companies aren't really seeking out and trying to get these prototypes back. Bankruptcies and clearance sales can make previously proprietary items available to the public. For example, there's the Nintendo Playstation, which was acquired at a bankruptcy auction. Where the Elite EPROMs came from is an interesting thought experiment. The fact that they're loose EPROMs suggests that maybe the NTSC ROM was sent as a download to a potential US publisher, that flashed it to EPROM for testing, then shelved the EPROMs when they opted to pass on the game, and then possibly even earmarked them for disposal. Maybe an employee took them home instead, maybe someone fished them out of the garbage. But since, in terms of property law, possession is like nine tenths of it, whomever is in physical possession of it is as good an owner as anyone else at this stage. And US copyright law does allow the creation of backup copies of software, as long as you never transferred the original copy to someone else. So there's a certain logic to the idea that whomever owns the physical EPROMs also has some level of rights to the ROM backup file. And there's just standing by the promises of whatever conditions of sale. If MrMark0673 promised they weren't going to publicly release the ROM to whomever they sold the EPROMs to, there's a certain honor to abiding to that agreement. In terms of copyright infringement, and distributing the ROM, it's technically copyright infringement, but that's civil and needs the alleged victim to actually act on it. Considering one of the co-authors of Elite has had what he thought was a functional NTSC ROM of the game up on his personal website for well over a decade, I don't think even the creators of the game would object to another prototype ROM being distributed. One could maybe formally ask Ian Bell before distributing, or even offer it to him to replace his other ROM on his website. Note that the Sim City NES ROM was only distributed because they paid an owner of a cart for the ROM. https://gamehistory.org/simcity/

Well, I don't want to get into the weeds with legality and ethics, since one doesn't necessarily mean the other, and one's view of right and wrong can vary between person and situation. I didn't mean "right" in a legal sense though in my previous post, just what was agreed upon for the purchase, as may be typical in the prototype trading market. However, MrMark0673 has dumped and released at least 9 other ROMs, it looks like from carts/chips they presently own: https://hiddenpalace.org/MrMark0673 The ROM will probably eventually get publicly posted, if not via this copy, then maybe some other prototype copy roaming around. However, even if the ROM doesn't get posted, it'd be good to get other info about this version, such as playback pics, vids, etc.

That's at least partly up to MrMark0673 and whomever they sold the EPROMs to. I don't know much about the physical prototype collectors market, but apparently whomever owns the physical item reserves the right to release a ROM file publicly, presumably because doing so significantly devalues the physical item. It's possible there's another functional prototype out there, but nobody's mentioned it online. Another possibility would be the original developers releasing a copy, but considering the original co-author Ian Bell has had the same broken NTSC ROM for download on his site since 2004, he may not have any better copy himself. https://web.archive.org/web/20040705234536/http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/nes/ Alternatively, someone could ROM hack Ian Bell's ROM to work properly on actual hardware, although there's probably not a lot of incentive when we know there's already a functional version that could, in theory, be released at any moment, negating all the work on such a hack.

It was released in PAL because the developers were in the UK and targeted for that market first. However, developing for PAL NES did offer some advantages in terms of compute time due to a longer Vblank period. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3wkECM9hVE&lc=UgxB127RONOjSzfdw214AaABAg Dwedit Elite would take a lot of forced blanking time to get it running on NTSC. With no additional forced blanking, the draw time is limited to around 192 bytes. Meanwhile, the PAL NES can draw at least a whopping 800 bytes during vblank time alone without any tricks. With the scanlines that Elite doesn't draw on being used as Forced Blanking Time, PAL Elite could draw over 1024 bytes of graphics updates in a single frame. So in order to transfer 3/4 as much graphics data, NTSC would need to hide about 28 additional scanlines vs the PAL version. So that would take away the very top of combat, and require a different layout for the status bar. There's some evidence that the NTSC version of Elite actually shows less scanlines. If you watch the video MrMark0673 posted, the top border isn't at the top of the screen, but a bit low, suggesting some lines are missing. It may not be 28 lines though, as maybe Elite doesn't fully use all the extra VBlank lines in the PAL console. Also, each line the NTSC version doesn't draw is less Vblank time needed to compute the smaller image, so it could be something like removing one draw line reduced the amount of Vblank time needed by half a line or so. This is a good video explaining HBlank and VBlank timing and how it impacts computing and lag. It's about the SNES, but I believe the basic principles apply to the NES as well: To get "extra Vblank" lines on NTSC NES, a programmer can turn on screen drawing "late", causing black lines at the top of the screen that aren't drawn. This was done for some sections of the NTSC port of Battletoads: http://bugs.cpprograms.net/f10/t6065.xhtml You can see it in playthroughs of Battletoads, like the snake battle, at the 18:00 mark in this video, where the status bar drops down, leaving more black lines on the top of the screen. This is in contrast to the PAL version, where the status bar stays firmly at the top throughout the entire game, like in this video: For Battletoads, it looks like Rare was able to optimize/port their code so that some sections played fine without needing the longer VBlank time, but used a longer VBlank period where needed. For Elite, I'm guessing the game consistently needs a longer Vblank, so the screen is consistently shorter on the NTSC version.

Except MrMark0673 claims to have a ROM dumped from some EPROMs they owned a while ago that runs correctly on real hardware: They've declined to share the ROM publicly, since they promised the people they sold the EPROMs to that they wouldn't, but sharing additional footage should be possible.

It's because the only ROM publicly available, which OldSchoolRetroGamer linked to on the first page of this thread, doesn't run right on an actual NTSC console. Even in an emulator, you need to tweak the settings to add more VBlank lines. http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/nes/ Attached is what I get in RetroArch FCEU running that ROM.

The dates on the chip indicate the earliest the cart could've been manufactured, but not the latest. A lot would depend on what the normal delay is between a particular chip being manufactured, and it being placed into a cart, and even then there could be outliers where a particular box of chips was misplaced and used in a later run of carts. I found this site, which has an entry for a Zelda US NES cart that has a MMC1 chip dated 8719. The oldest date of a chip on that cart is 8723, which may be why the site lists the Mfg Range for US Zelda as 8723 - 9229. The estimated first run is June 1987. http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=1332 Week 17 in 1987 was April 20, 1987 - April 26, 1987. This lines up with NESdev, which says the earliest MMC1 chips were April of 1987. https://wiki.nesdev.org/w/index.php/MMC1 So the earliest Zelda US NES carts were assembled with chips that were made weeks to months ahead of its release date. Is there more info on where the various chips and carts were manufactured/assembled? I assume the chips were made in Japan back then, but it's not clear where the carts were made. This 1988 20/20 special shows footage of western Super Mario 2 and Zelda carts being packed up, while the voiceover says (6:47 mark) they videotaped this in Japan. This video tour of NoA in Redmond, Washington in 1990 shows the NES console being assembled, but no games:

A recent Youtube video briefly touched on Elite NTSC version, at around the 10 minute mark. From the transcript: The video creator, Sharopolis, says they're going to return to the game in an upcoming video about NES enhancement chips, so it'd be interesting if they could incorporate more info about the NTSC version, confirm its existence, etc. Maybe some further footage of the NTSC version running, either in an emulator or on real hardware, as B-roll?