This is a pre-production cart. These are normally used for evaluation or marketing purposes before the production carts are available.
This one was discovered at a yard sale in Idaho in 2011 by Atariboy from the Digital Press forums along with a NBA 2 All Star Challenge proto.
It is unknown whether it has been dumped and whether it is complete or not but the date on the label is four months before the release of the game, so there may be differences from the final version.
In the early 80’s, piracy on Atari home computers (and most other brands) was rampant. It was popular for pirates to add as many cracked (or dumped if it was a cart like Miner 2049er) and “trained” games on a disk as would fit along with a tiny, crude menu to launch them. Training a game meant adding cheats, usually activated by a simple menu shown upon launching the game. Miner 2049er got the same treatment as every other game. No exception!
Pictured here is a pirate disk full of games, the menu to launch them and the cheat screen. Last level!
This rare Tigervision prototype of the Atari 2600 release is the only one known to exist. This is a pre-production cart. These are normally used for evaluation or marketing purposes before the production carts are available.
The ROM has been dumped and only differs from the the original in that there is a level select.
Thanks to Matt Reichert at AtariProtos.com for the pics and info!
This rare Tigervision prototype of the Atari 2600 release is the only one known to exist. This is a pre-production cart. These are normally used for evaluation or marketing purposes before the production carts are available.
The ROM has been dumped and only differs from the the original in that there is a level select.
Thanks to Matt Reichert at AtariProtos.com for the pics and info!