Here’s a crazy looking game that I haven’t seen before. On the surface, it looks like a prototype copy of what we now commonly know as Dr. Mario. The game in this listing seems to be date 1989, which is a year before its release in 1990. Digital Press seems to be working on this mystery as we speak.
In the meantime, this gem is up for sale on eBay here. Here’s what the eBay seller Member idpeanutt42 says about the game in his listing:
I got this cart at the Mission Flea Market here in San Antonio. It was listed as Dr Mario but when I got home it says Virus. It plays just like Dr Mario except there is a weird dog thing on the left side. It is dirty but could be clean. I lost one of the 5 screws in the back but there are still 4 more.
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I JUST SAW THAT THIS ITEM SOLD FOR OVER $2,200. SINCE I AM NEW AT THIS, SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHY THIS GAME WAS WORTH SO MUCH
TTHANKS
A few reasons:
1) Dr. Mario is a household favorite, so a Dr. Mario prototype gets more attention than a prototype for a less popular cart.
2) Nintendo (aka 1st Party) prototypes are much more rare than 3rd party produced games. Nintendo is super serious about its intellectual property, so its prototypes rarely see the light of day.
3) Game play (or at least in-game graphics) are clearly different than the common production version of the game. Nintendo-loving geeks, hackers, homebrewers, etc., love to be able to dump the game’s info into a computer and to take a closer look at how the game was made differently than the final version.
4) Quite simply, this is possibly the only copy in known existence. Collectors are nuts and will pay outrageous sums for one-of-a-kind items.