A rare, "untested" prototype of Ghostbusters II for the NES has just sold at auction for over $1000, as spotted by Ghostbustersnews.com.
The cartridge, which came from the collection of a former Nintendo employee, was put on auction as part of Heritage Auctions' recent Nintendo 8 to 64-Bit Video Games Showcase, which took place on Thursday, August 24th. It fetched a total of $1,020 (when you take into account the 20% buyer's premium), with the source of the winning bid simply listed on the website as a "HA.com/live bidder".
The cartridge in the description is dated as being from 1989 but frustratingly has no further information presented about its exact month or the contents within. The page simply says "The label is obviously not the final retail version" and that the cart hasn't been tested so there is "no guarantee" it will work.
In case you're unaware, Ghostbusters II: The Video Game was developed in the late '80s by the New Jersey company Imagineering and published by Activision. As you may expect, it was based on the 1989 film of the same name that saw the four Ghostbusters — Ray, Egon, Peter, and Winston — coming out of retirement to face off against a painting of the evil tyrant Vigo the Carpathian.
As Ghostbustersnews.com notes, it wasn't the only game that was made of the film, with Hal Laboratory — the company best known for its work on titles like Mother and Kirby's Dream Land — also releasing another Ghostbusters game, which was published in both Japan and PAL territories. This was called New Ghostbusters II and featured chibi-fied versions of the game's cast busting ghosts and battling bosses.
Besides the Ghostbusters II prototype, other items sold at the auction include a Solomon's Key 2 prototype ($2,160.00), Wordtris Game Boy & SNES prototypes ($1,440), and a Freedom Force prototype, in addition to a bunch of graded versions of popular games.