Carrot Girl

Man, I wish we had noticed this jam sooner instead of after a whole day and change had passed. Regardless of the game's very extensive shortcomings, we still had a blast. The NESness of the game is pretty okay. We may have a color or two more than the NES palette system could handle. Maybe it would need the later chipsets that could palette swap mid batch. I think our sprite draw calls would have been the standard  8x8 groups of 4. Didn't get around to putting in any flickers.

Background of the Cartridge

I want to know if anyone else has seen a copy of this cartridge before. Fair warning, my knowledge of this cartridge is second hand, not very reliable when told to me, and I probably don't even remember all I was told. 

But still I intend to bore you with how I came to have it, anyway. 

One summer when I was eleven, my family drove up to Prince Edward's island for a vacation. They wanted to go whale watching, or atleast that's all I was told about beforehand. I barely remember any of it anymore, frankly. What little I do remember of whale watching mostly consists of salt water splashing directly into my eyes and my teeth chattering uncontrollably. 

At the risk of sounding like, well, the nerd I am, what I remember most was that there was a bunch of souvenirs sold in the shops of the island with a particular anime on it.  An anime I didn't recognize, at all, which turned out to be based on Anne of Green Gables. Anne of Gables is a famous novel which was written by a native of the island, L. M. Montgomery, and takes upon the island as well. Apparently the novel was incredibly popular in Japan and many of the knicknacks sported the resulting anime. I didn't see any Japanese people actually there, but perhaps Japanese tourism there is seasonal. Anyway, I bought a Anne of Green Gables double-shot glass, to my parent's consternation, all in Japanese, which I imagine can only be marketed to a very special kind of salaryman. But that was all I really expected out of it. 

As luck would have it, though, I was also spending every free moment at the campground's arcade. It was a pretty big campground, with some cabins to rent as well, so the rec building was pretty well decked out. There were 5-6 standing cabinets, one enclosed rail shooter. Anyway, the lady who ran the campground was always there and we sorta became friends. She was very nice but chatty, and frankly I always felt more comfortable talking to adults at that weird age. Regardless, it paid off in an unexpected way; this Carrot Girl cartridge. 

After a few days of talking with her, I brought up how much I liked Japanese games, anime, etc., (there's only so much conversation I have in me that doesn't revolve around that). And ofcourse I mentioned the Anne of Green Gables anime paraphernalia I had seen the day before. At which point she told me that she wanted to give me something and left. She returned with this cartridge. She said that back in the early 90's, a group of Japanese men had rented a cabin. There was one American from Seattle with them, a chaperone of sorts. She didn't remember the company's name, but the American told her they were doing research for a game based on Anne of Green Gables. He was from the American office, and the other 3 Japanese men were game developers from Nagano(Nagoya? I forget what she said now, but definitely not Tokyo or Kyoto). 

Basically the Montgomery estate was only going to let them make the game after seeing if it had "real value" to the book. The American said the trip was more about telling the estate they were taking the book seriously, rather than really changing any of the gameplay. They had already pretty much just reskinned a platformer already in development. He seemed very skeptical they would get the okay.

The woman said the men brought a suitcase of electronics with them, and they were up everynight playing video games, though the American later told her they were actually working nonstop, "play testing" various projects. Their stay ended after 5 days, and while she was cleaning the room, she saw this cartridge peaking out from under the television cabinet. It must have been missed while they were packing. She tried returning it but the American (he booked the cabin) didn't return her calls for several months. When he did answer he informed her the Montgomery estate had completely rejected the game, and the project was cancelled. Since no one noticed the missing cartridge, she could keep it. He had already left the company apparently. But she didn't want it, either. Her kids couldn't even figure out what console it was. 

At the time, all I knew the Japanese Nintendo was very different from the American, so while I had never even seen a famicom cartridge, I said it was probably that. She said it seems like I should have it, then. 

I've had it for more than twenty years now. In fact,  I sorta always assumed it wouldn't work.  But having finally bought both a nice crt tv and a famicom for my den, I am surprised to confirm it does load. The cartridge condition is not just poor, it's strange. It's missing a bunch of screws on the back. I haven't opened it up. No idea on the chipset, etc. The label looks nice in the picture but it's not glossy like a production label would be. There's a lot of Japanese script written in permanent marker on the other side. No idea why they called it "You can do it, Carrot Girl." That's the translate google gives me. I've never read the Green Gable books so I can't speak to anything like that. Will keep folks posted.