Rare co-founder Tim Stamper has been in the industry for a long time, and predictably has a treasure trove of items relating to his time at the company he founded alongside his brother, Chris.
Prior to its sale to Microsoft, Rare was a second-party Nintendo studio, and the Stamper siblings enjoyed an incredibly close relationship with the Japanese giant – so it's hardly shocking that Tim has several rare development and pre-production cartridges in his possession.
He's been showing them off on social media, but his posts haven't been finding favour with all sectors of the retro gaming community.
His latest post relates to the 1997 Spaceworld Zelda: Ocarina Of Time cartridge (oh, and a Mario 64 cart and several sealed copies of OoT, all worth plenty of cash these days) and has garnered some rather negative reactions:
The reason for the backlash? Well, as some Twitter posters have quite rightly pointed out, these cartridges won't last forever, and if they fail, they're going to take potentially significant game history with them.
'Dumping' the carts – digitising their contents for research and archival purposes – is the right thing to do, but those blindly assuming that Stamper will release the files online are perhaps a little bit naive.
For starters, given Rare's intense focus on hardware development and innovation during the Stamper's tenure, it's highly likely that these carts have already been dumped by one of the brothers. Secondly, dumping these carts and distributing their contents on the internet will almost certainly land Tim Stamper in a lot of hot water with Nintendo, the company that will have given the carts to Rare in the first place.
Comments 14
Guy shares his unique game collection online… pretty standard, right?
I assume he’s gearing up to promote something his son is working on like last time. I guess we shall see!
If he has that, does that also mean that he could have the holy Trinity? Advance Wars 64, Kirby's Air Ride 64, and, most importantly, EARTHBOUND 64? If they got sent a feedback cart for Zelda, who's to say that they didn't get feedback carts for others? Heck, there's even a chance that he might have some of the REALLY big stuff. I'd assume that Rare would have gotten a 64DD dev kit at some point or another, so could he potentially have games for that as well? GOD, THERE ARE SO MANY POSSIBILITIES!
Ha he wanted attentions and he got it. I still don't get why that prototype or beta of games can't be dump and archive online. Not like anyone hadn't play Ocarina of Time countless times already and it's a prototype version of a game that wasn't complete or had spoiler contents, all are just work in process contents and those works are long overdue and finish already. Just dump the rom and move on.
"Backlash" is a bit strong for the tweets shown. And anyone who does get really upset about these tweets needs to touch some grass.
@Serpenterror That still wouldn't make it legal, strictly speaking...
And Nintendo would still see this stuff as a threat, somehow. Like people aren't going to pay for an NSO sub to play Zelda, if they have access to the Spaceworld build? Or maybe it's that seeing WIP builds will undermine people's perception of Nintendo quality (not as if anything they made in the Wii era could already do that)!
While I expect that Stamper has already dumped these carts privately, I do wish he'd release them- though he's kind of blocked that option off by revealing that he has all of these.
I really hope that he is not the only person out there with these prototypes. Otherwise, this is kind of annoying to show fans of certain games a highly sought-after piece of history and then never bring it up or acknowledge it again.
The quote retweets that i've seen are frankly vile and malicious behavior. Threatening Tim with robbing his house just for a video game. "His safety be damned, i want to play the game", that must be the mentality some of the people quote tweeting him have.
Personally, I feel like it would be the best if he did allow someone to archive the games, just to be on the safe side. Maybe not publicly, but to like the Video Game History Foundation for safe keeping.
I understand the desire for preservation, but good grief, are people unaware that Nintendo's lawyers have gone after folks for far less than dumping a 30-year-old ROM?
You can't please anybody, especially when it comes to the gaming community at large.
The amount of entitlement in the preservation ‘scene’ really puts me off of it. Most of the people involved come across as being less interested in preservation and more interested in bragging rights.
The entitlement is hilariously insane, as is the romanticism of the content. OoT was a landmark game and an influential title, and it is readily available in its complete form. Whatever iterative demos that came about during the game's development are at best a novelty. There's scores of content for every big game that has never and probably will never see the light of day just as every movie production has stuff that never left the cutting floor, even after supposed "complete" editions were released.
@alexybubble Interestingly several Western dev companies got 64DD dev kits. I was speaking with a guy from Acclaim who said they got them in, and he converted one of their sports games to it to see how it worked - had it running in a few days. He stated there was, initially, every intention for an international release. So there's no doubt in my mind Rare had them too.
As for Earthbound 64... One can only dream.
I do think he should either dump anonymously or keep quiet. He must know that people would be desperate to see these unfinished versions in action.
I believe we will never see the Dump of this. Acceptance is the first step.
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