The brief story of the Zelda 3 NES Hoax.

[mrkonasoni]

|Start》》》|

Nowadays the sole concept of making up stories about false videogames and such is completely pointless, of course because we have the tools and information for quickly verify if something is fake or not, but 20 years ago it wasn't that easy, so stuff like someone finding "the mysterious prototype from this classic game" was more believable, so let's remember this time the brief story of the fake Zelda 3 prototype.

If you are wondering why I said brief is because the story and what actually happened is not as clear as it used to be because at least 3 of the most important pages that talked about the subject are now extinct, possibly because the owners either deleted or stopped paying the domains but searching for information in other places...

Note: Wayback machine was used but I didn't found what I was looking for.

The story started when a gaming website named "Joystiq" posted an article about the recent auction of a mysterious cartridge labeled as "Zelda 3 The Triforce Saga" on Ebay.

While there were some doubts about if this was legitimate, the seller identified as "Richard Vialoux" tried to push the idea it was real posting photos for the labels of the prototype showing information like the year of production and version, of course this was easy to fake but the detail that started some expectations was a photoshopped pic of a NES playing the cartridge and a screen showing the title screen with the name of "The Legend of Zelda The Triforce Saga".

Against all odds, the auction for the game ended with a generous amount of almost 3000$ and supposedly ended in hands of an user under the name of "Knight7".

This story could have ended in this point, but the seller "Richard Vialoux" for some reason bothered to inform the "Joystiq" website that he strongly believed that the buyer would be part of the long defunct game developer "Sillicon Knights", this information while vague was included as a part of the article talking about the outcome.

While most gaming companies could've just ignored a random mention in a subject like this, Sillicon Knights actually contacted Joysticq clarifying that "Knight7" was not part of the company and asked politely to correct the article talking about their involvement with the subject.

This is where this story ends.

I believe is important mentioning that while searching information and reading old comments is clear the skepticism was high and most people never bought the story.

What happened with Richard Vialoux, this fake cartridge and Knight7 is still a mystery to this day.

-

I hope you enjoyed reading this story, personally I have always been fascinated by stories about videogames and from the 90s and 2000s.

I also want to take this moment for say that I am always thankful for the people that always brother to comment and I apologize if I don't always reply.

Thank you for reading.

[mastodon]

How cool would it be if Nintendo released Zelda 3 playable on NES or Switch??? 

[mrkonasoni]

- Answering to @mastodon.

There some stuff I omitted because I didn't want to extend it more or I assume some people already know it, but Zelda 3 or what eventually became ALttP never existed at all for NES.

Curiously there was also a hoax for a SNES prototype and that one actually had some fake gameplay but that one also was quickly debunked.

Since I want to add something extra to the subject with the NES one.

I found this fake pic for someone else that tried... and I like it but because it looks really eerie.

[pzeke]

Zelda III Cartridge Hoax

[ede]

|Start》》》|

Nowadays the sole concept of making up stories about false videogames and such is completely pointless, of course because we have the tools and information for quickly verify if something is fake or not, but 20 years ago it wasn't that easy, so stuff like someone finding "the mysterious prototype from this classic game" was more believable, so let's remember this time the brief story of the fake Zelda 3 prototype.

If you are wondering why I said brief is because the story and what actually happened is not as clear as it used to be because at least 3 of the most important pages that talked about the subject are now extinct, possibly because the owners either deleted or stopped paying the domains but searching for information in other places...

Note: Wayback machine was used but I didn't found what I was looking for.

The story started when a gaming website named "Joystiq" posted an article about the recent auction of a mysterious cartridge labeled as "Zelda 3 The Triforce Saga" on Ebay.

While there were some doubts about if this was legitimate, the seller identified as "Richard Vialoux" tried to push the idea it was real posting photos for the labels of the prototype showing information like the year of production and version, of course this was easy to fake but the detail that started some expectations was a photoshopped pic of a NES playing the cartridge and a screen showing the title screen with the name of "The Legend of Zelda The Triforce Saga".

Against all odds, the auction for the game ended with a generous amount of almost 3000$ and supposedly ended in hands of an user inshot apk
the name of "Knight7".

This story could have ended in this point, but the seller "Richard Vialoux" for some reason bothered to inform the "Joystiq" website that he strongly believed that the buyer would be part of the long defunct game developer "Sillicon Knights", this information while vague was included as a part of the article talking about the outcome.

While most gaming companies could've just ignored a random mention in a subject like this, Sillicon Knights actually contacted Joysticq clarifying that "Knight7" was not part of the company and asked politely to correct the article talking about their involvement with the subject.

This is where this story ends.

I believe is important mentioning that while searching information and reading old comments is clear the skepticism was high and most people never bought the story.

What happened with Richard Vialoux, this fake cartridge and Knight7 is still a mystery to this day.

-

I hope you enjoyed reading this story, personally I have always been fascinated by stories about videogames and from the 90s and 2000s.

I also want to take this moment for say that I am always thankful for the people that always brother to comment and I apologize if I don't always reply.

Thank you for reading.

Hi

I love The Legend of Zelda, allways play with Super Nintendo. I've beaten the game 10 or 12 times and I never get tired )