1994 snes powerfest cart "only known copy found"!

[jollerancher]

i recently picked up from a former nintendo employee the only known copies of the 1994 super nintendo powerfest competiton cart with the games super mario bros "the lost levels", super mario kart, and ken griffey jr major league baseball. according to my source 12 copies of this were made, he kept 1 and returned the other 11 which were taken apart and reused which make this the only copy in existence.

 

i also picked up a 1992 super famicom champion challenge cart with the game super mario bros, f-zero, and pilotwings. this cart was used for a 1 time competition between 2 u.s. and 2 japanese players. this was the only copy made for this competition.

 

you can view pics of both games along with some other goodies i got at this link: jollerancher's Gallery

 

[Lemmi]

nice find there, i never heard of it untill right now

 

also i got a laugh on page 3 of your gallery when i saw the CAT pic

[jollerancher]

[JB]

Mario Kart on one, and PilotWings on the other... So both boards have a DSP-1 on them. Interesting.

You'd think they'd avoid selecting coprocessor titles for their contests, since the games would be one-shot productions and coprocs just up the parts price and add more traces to the board.

...

But then, they DID do the StarFox tournament carts, and a SuperFX is more expensive than a DSP-1.

 

 

What do the DIP switches control, anyways? And is that a connector sticking out the backside? Do you have any sort of documentation, or is it just the game boards?

[jollerancher]

Mario Kart on one, and PilotWings on the other... So both boards have a DSP-1 on them. Interesting.

You'd think they'd avoid selecting coprocessor titles for their contests, since the games would be one-shot productions and coprocs just up the parts price and add more traces to the board.

...

But then, they DID do the StarFox tournament carts, and a SuperFX is more expensive than a DSP-1.

 

 

What do the DIP switches control, anyways? And is that a connector sticking out the backside? Do you have any sort of documentation, or is it just the game boards?

the dipswitches control the amount of time the players in the competition get. the phone jack on both boards were used to keep track of scores and i believe allow all players to start at the same time. the reason that these 2 carts are probably the only ones of there kind around is because from what i was told the carts were taken apart after the competition and the expensive motherboards were re-used.

[sega saturn x]

Ahh, I was hoping this was some lost snes fighter

[JB]

the dipswitches control the amount of time the players in the competition get.

Same concept as the old NES World Championship cart, then.

 

the phone jack on both boards were used to keep track of scores and i believe allow all players to start at the same time.

Ooooh, fancy!

SNES MODEM!111

 

the reason that these 2 carts are probably the only ones of there kind around is because from what i was told the carts were taken apart after the competition and the expensive motherboards were re-used.

For another contest, likely.

They MIGHT could be repurposed as DSP-x dev boards(the specialized comm and timer hardware makes that a bit iffy), but other than that, they're one-trick ponies(it looks like the Challenge board is even tagged SNES EVENT 1). But since they used socketed EPROMs, it's easy to replace the code for new contests.

 

Cost would've gone down if they'd needed more than a handful.

As I understand it, most of the cost of that sort of thing is the initial setup, which was more or less the same on those as on the 8 jillion copies of Mario Kart they sold. But since it was only distributed across a dozen or so... (I HOPE the cart mold was recycled from a standard devkit).

 

 

 

Also, since I tend to be a bit of a nitpicker... they'd be daughterboards, not motherboards.

[Bruce Tomlin]

I hope someone has dumped the chips already.

 

Anyhow, the cost to make a dozen or so of just the board would be a couple hundred at most, not counting the time of the in-house board designer. If they already had the shells, then all the better. You can see that while they are from different production runs (different silkscreen text), the basic layout is the same.

 

And the cat kicks ass, with both a hanging tooth AND a torn ear.

Edited August 25, 2006 by Bruce Tomlin

[jollerancher]

I hope someone has dumped the chips already.

 

Anyhow, the cost to make a dozen or so of just the board would be a couple hundred at most, not counting the time of the in-house board designer. If they already had the shells, then all the better. You can see that while they are from different production runs (different silkscreen text), the basic layout is the same.

 

And the cat kicks ass, with both a hanging tooth AND a torn ear.

the chips havent been dumped as these are the first copies to show up. there is a cart from the 1992 snes campus challenge out there with the same games as the super famicom cart but ive been in touch which its owner and he hasnt done anything with it yet. the cat used to kick ass before i took her from my sister's backyard. the torn ear is a result of a fight with a dog that she got the best of. now she's just a fat lazy ass.