Evan G, who runs SNES Central, had saved “every single SNES prototype” on eBay for a decade. The same seller also tried selling another prototype Evan was suspicious about.“All of these facts really goes to show that Wata has not done their homework on these ‘prototypes,’” said Evan, “and should not have authenticated them. Generally speaking, when people are authenticating something, they should have in depth knowledge of what they are authenticating. This, and several other Wata graded prototypes that I have seen are clearly not prototypes.”Soon after, Wata contacted Evan and acknowledged the mistake, and told Evan “they will be reaching out to experts such as myself to try to create a better system,” even as Evan acknowledged the entire notion of authenticating prototypes was itself a fraught endeavor.The eBay page was also taken down, noting there was “an error with the listing.”It’s at this point that Cifaldi and the Video Game History Foundation stepped into the picture.“My career in video game prototype preservation started as an anonymous rando on the internet screaming at collectors about how they're hoarding history,” said Cifaldi. “I was a complete turd, but I was also in high school. After a while I came to realize that these hobbyists are by and large the source for these prototype games, they're the bloodhounds actually doing the work and finding these things. So if I wanted them online, maybe peeing in the pool wasn't a good strategy.”“I'm really not interested in how people with wealth choose to hoard it, and I don't think collecting out-of-print antiques is some kind of noble pursuit. My job is preserving video game history, so I go wherever that's needed.”
“Given the authentic disc used and the unique data,” reads the report, “we have no reason to doubt the authenticity of this item.”The rise of companies like Wata— they’re not alone—the argument goes, contributed to the ever-rising price of old games, prototypes or not. Working in collaboration with Wata, especially with someone of Cifaldi’s respect in the preservation community, grants Wata itself another layer of legitimacy—or illegitimacy. “I don't begrudge Frank for making use of the WATA process to back up and catalogue archaeological rarities,” said Parish. “The people who collect prototypes and unreleased games have a reputation for being extremely churlish with access to these one-of-a-kind items, and I think it's great that he's managed to insinuate himself into the system in order to document material that very likely would never otherwise see the light of day. I don't really know that there's a better way to make that happen, so taking advantage of a questionable system in order to do good deeds still counts as a good deed, in my book. It's not like WATA scandals are doing real harm, after all... it's still just video games.”Madden 96 for the Sony PlayStation is an unreleased game. Object is an Electronic Arts-branded CD-R, identical in appearance to several discs of this era from the Video Game History Foundation archives which we can substantiate are authentic. The game’s title (Madden 96 PSX) and a date (11/23/95) are present. This game shows its compilation date as an in-game screen, meaning we can easily see where it fits in its development timeline. The latest version currently available online was compiled on November 2nd, 1995. The data on this disc was compiled November 23rd, 1995, meaning it is the latest version we know to exist. This also means the data here is, currently, unique.
It’s likely many of the prototypes that pass through Cifaldi’s hands and hard drives will never be seen by the public, and there are open questions about whether all of that information should be centralized in a single place. But it’s a complex situation without easy answers, because the video game industry itself has ignored the problem. They made this mess. Just look at how people flipped for the massive trove of leaks—which may or may not have been hacked—that came out of Nintendo in 2020, which provided a glimpse at so much of Nintendo history the company has shown no interest in sharing, like alternate designs for Yoshi, emails between Nintendo and Star Fox developer Argonaut Software, and more. But it’s also the case that when you hear the word “prototype,” your mind starts buzzing about an unreleased gem that’s never seen the light of day when, as Cifaldi points out, most of his time with video game prototypes is much more banal and boring. Most prototypes are nearly the same or exactly the same as the games that eventually shipped. Maybe the biggest difference is a few bugs that were fixed before the game was done.And yet, even those differences, though, are history. Every detail matters.“I'm at a point now where when something important comes up for sale, the collectors call me instead of buying it, because they know sometimes a game is bigger than them,” said Cifaldi. “That's something that only happens with positivity, empathy, trust, and some damn patience. Sometimes to preserve history you have to play the long game.”“One of the results of higher prices is that it incentivizes folks to unearth more of these treasures from their attics and potentially save them from dumpsters where they could have ended up.”