eBay seller: Zelda III NES cart is real

its easy to have a hacked zelda (1,2or both ) converted rom put back to cart. looks like a remake to me of some discribtion. a crappy one at that i should add. its like one guy trying to sell his copy of pussy city pimps( really river city ransom) as legit. just admit its a rework you got people talking about it now.

Definitely, rip the ROM.

You guys should go google earthbound zero, it was a nes game and there was a lot of rumors of it's authenticity when it was being sold, but it was real.

Got a reply to my email.

Message(#6851-000468-64914686491)

Hello and thank you for contacting Nintendo,

It's hard to determine whether or not the game pak is authentic. However, based on my opinion, it doesn't sound authentic since all we see is just one screen shot of the intro and nothing else.

Sincerely,

Nintendo of America Inc.
Dervin Camden

sounds like they were made then, looking at Nintendo's reply.

It's odd how all of you are like "OMG, FAKE FAKE FAKE! THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO PROVE IT'S REAL!". Yet, none of you have evidence to prove it isn't. You have possibilities, but not stone cold evidence. I for one think this is real, as Nintendo has plenty of beta games that never made it, so it's not surprise that one of them could be Zelda.

Kind of sad that Joystiq fell for something like this.

Ridiculously fake.
The resolution on a NES is 256x224. (256x239 if PAL)
The resolution on a traditional GameBoy is 240 x160.

It looks like a ROM hack with a screenshot of a hacked title screen, rotated 23 degrees, then brightened, then slapped with a soften filter.

The resolution of the "screenshot," when tilted 23 degrees to the left is 243x163 -- the 3 pixels having been added by a blur effect.

Furthermore, it looks pasted on to a real photo with a conveniently completely black environment with no flash. Here is the photo I'm speaking of: http://www.ratedo.com/articles/z3proto.html

A noble effort, but obviously fake.

The game is a FAKE!! Look at the title screen that is displayed and compare is to Zelda 1 and 2. It looks tooooo much like the screen for "Links Awakening"

What's that in the bottom right hand corner? 4.0?

This is another totally bogus article on Joystiq (what's with all the fake stuff lately?), but fun to research.

Apparently someone has offered a princely sum for this cartridge, so it is to be assumed that they at the very least believe this is real.

Even if it is fake doesn't mean he did it himself; he got it from a flea market, the sort of place where you can often find bootlegs of famous game brands for unusual systems and/or with suspicious packaging, look at the Pokemon platformers for the SEGA Genesis(!) for example.

Zack Elle, you're a genius!!! So now tell me which photoshop plugin he used to simulate the reflection of the image in the linoleum floor?

@Carson G.:
The burden of proof is on the guy with the cart. He's making a claim that he has the leaked beta of Zelda III for NES. If I were to make the claim that I'd seen a flying pink elephant would you accept my claim at face value or ask me to provide proof?

@Namco:
Considering some of the crazy shit I've seen people do with Photoshop, somehow I think that a reflection on the floor is a pretty minor trick.

ROM IT!!

It could be real, it could be fake. The resolution of an NES matters not, when it's being displayed on the TV. The colors DO look NES-ish, as they are quite basic. So far, 2-ups for authenticity. Then on the other hand. Why would the game be on a cartridge when it's not even complete? Nevertheless, why would they make it ENGLISH? Ther'es something to think about.

There was a lost Zelda game (The Triforce Saga) but Nintendo ditched it for the development of "A Link to the Past" But one thing is to think about is why this lost game is in a cartridge format? If it isn’t complete, then it should not be on a cartridge.

proof that the cartridge on .ratedo.com/articles/z3proto.html is fake: the text is *EXACTLY* 22pt Courier New Font. Overlay 22pt courier new text over "ZELDA" and it matches EXACTLY. I wish these people would stop wasting our time for attention.

God dammit, this is definatlly fake. Like said before, if it was trully a incomplete, beta version of a long lost Zelda game then there wouldn't be any English text in the logo at all. Whoever sold this cartridge must be pretty retarded because that is a total give-away for it being fake.

And there is no proof that this is a beta cartridge of a long lost Zelda game. I will not believe it until I get a confirmed message from Nintendo that it's real, which it has been proven that it's fake by other post before me.

This discussion is pretty retarded in my opinion since it's a known fact that this beta cartridge is 100% bullshit, so there is no sense in discussing it.

-LG-

That's a pretty blurry reflection on the floor, so it isn't necessarily the reflection of the game being played.

Also, as others have pointed out, it looks like the title for Link's Awakening without the windfish' egg. This makes little sense merely from a graphic standpoint. What is the point of having a mountain like that, ending in such a way when the thing we are supposed to be concentrating on is the triforce symbol? It seems like he ought to have removed the mountain completely and then put on the triforce logo.

While I think it might be possible for such a thing to happen, his many excuses on why he could not play the game, and then why he couldn't get more screencaps as well as his lack of providing sources and the reaction of the Nintendo representative lead me to doubt that it is real.

I think the game is a fake. I asked Nintendo, and they said that they never made a Zelda 3 promo or ever thought of making a Zelda 3 on the NES. I think that some dude made the cart and sold it on ebay, or he is using Mario Paint, or he's a fraud. I'll believe it when I see more pics.