There are two seperate and unrelated auction is going on right now on the platform eBay for Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games which were never released and was never digitized to be played on emulator. They are unknown and for the most of the part it’s unplayed. However they have grabbed the attention of a video game preservationist, historian, and developer Frank Cifaldi , who is seeking help in preserving the two games at auction:
Cifaldi wrote in a tweet on October 11, “There are currently TWO unreleased, one-of-a-kind, never-digitized games for the original NES on eBay right now. This has literally never happened before. Our resources are stretched thin, and we could use help.”
Cifaldi is organizing donations to raise the funds to win the auctions and dump the games as emulatable ROMs in order to preserve them. Battlefields of Napoleon, which is being sold along with the original packaging art destined for production, is known to collectors.
Whether you’re old enough to remember the NES or not, most of us can’t deny that it played a big part in the history of gaming. NES, being Nintendo’s first home video console that made it outside of Japan, contributed to the lasting success of legendary titles such as “Super Mario Bros” and “The Legend of Zelda.” It’s not just these behemoth-like games that were released for the NES, though; there have been countless smaller titles that someone may hold dear. Some of the games never even made it to retail stores, while others are prototypes that never got picked up by any studio, and some may have been released in such small quantities that they were completely lost over time.
About the games :
The first of these is Battlegrounds of Napoleon, a strategy game that was all set to be released, but for various reasons, never saw the light of day when it did. According to the ad, the files that were supposed to be sent to Nintendo for printing are also included, making it very likely that it will be possible to recreate it digitally.
Game number two is developed by Rare, which needs no further introduction, and it doesn’t appear to be a full version, however, but a demo that was compatible with the peripheral Power Glove controller. The Power Glove was a big flop and only one game was developed for it and it is speculated that Rare’s demo that was compatible with the controller was a prototype that Rare would show off to attract interest in developing a full game with the device.