If you have read our content for some time, you'll know that I am a big fan of the original Pokémon games, it introduced me to handheld gaming and ended up leading me to create the very website you are reading today, so seeing this news of a prototype Pokémon cartridge coming to fruition does intrigue the inner child in me.
Recently popular collectable bidding marketplace Goldin listed an incredibly rare prototype cartridge of Pokémon Red. A development cartridge made in 1998 with 32KB of ROM data featuring the original game. According to PSA, who have authenticated this piece, "during our examination, equipment data prevented a complete data read. However, PSA was able to capture the first 32KB of data, which is technically unique. Two changes appear in the header data, but not in the game data. The difference is at offset 0x014C, which denotes the Mask ROM version and is incorrectly set to 55 when it should be 00. This has the effect of changing offset 0x014D, which is a calculated header checksum, to CB instead of 20. Per the PSA notes, the game data present is completely identical to the final US release of the game, with PSA expressing confidence that the rest of the data, if captured, would follow suit.
If you look closely, you can even see a sticker on the front of the cartridge that reads "DMB-MBC-16M-FLASH." I've pumped up the brightness on the above image slightly so you can get a better look at the internals. The cartridge itself is longer than a normal GAME BOY cartridge, with a part number of DMG-(F)KGDB-01, which is an undocumented development board.
At this moment in time, the listing has one bid of $25,000, and the auction will end on 26th October 2026 at 2:00 AM GMT+1. It'll be interesting to see how much this goes for because it's still unclear how early this cartridge was made, and because it doesn't feature a working game, will collectors classify it as an early version of the game, or a first print? Probably not, but that said, there are some collectors out there that love prototype units, as they shouldn't have made their way into the public's hands.
