Recently my buddy has been on a kick for learning about classic video games. Scouring eBay for rare sealed games and the like. Knowing my love of Metroid he presented me with this little gem today, it was sealed when I got it.
It's the original Metroid, identical to the NES version but released earlier in Japan for the Famicon Disk System. It comes with a massive booklet that I assume tells all about the game seeing it's all in Japanese. A major plus for the Famicom was the ability to save your game at any time, much like an emulator.
Showing the case, booklet, sleeve and disk itself.
Closeup of the disk.
Inner cover of the booklet complete with stickers. In fact, the two label stickers were meant to be put on the backup copy you could make of your games, pretty cool. Also, there appears to be some sort of Alien Council sticker in the bottom left, we'll investigate further.
What I can only presume is the backstory for Metroid, complete with sinister Alien Council and on the right...uhh...something.
Enemy descriptions go on for pages, this has to be one of the largest booklets for a game I've ever seen, weighing in at over 50 pages! There's bosses, maps, items, powerups. Jesus christ would that have been useful on the NES version.
The disk system was actually an add-on component of the Famicom game system, and is apparently both rare and poorly designed so it seems this copy of Metroid will stay un-played, but I think it's pretty damn cool.