Prototype Pokémon Red Cartridge Appears at Auction With $25,000 Opening Bid
A previously undocumented 1998 Game Boy development cartridge of Pokémon Red, authenticated by PSA, has drawn a single $25,000 bid with several days of bidding remaining.
By News Media House Staff ·
A rare prototype of Pokémon Red for the Nintendo Game Boy, dating to the game's 1998 release, has appeared at auction. As of 2026-10-23, the listing has drawn one bid of $25,000. The cartridge was first spotted by Retro Dodo, which described it as "incredibly rare."
According to the Goldin auction page, specialists at PSA authenticated the cartridge. They were unable to perform a complete data read, but they could read the first 32KB of its contents, a result PSA called "technically unique." Apart from that, PSA says the game data is "completely identical" to the U.S. retail version, and it expressed confidence that the unreadable remainder would match as well.
The PSA report does point to two differences in the ROM's header data, neither of which affects the game itself. In PSA's words, "the difference is at offset 0x014C, which denotes the Mask ROM version and is incorrectly set to 55 when it should be 00." That change in turn alters offset 0x014D, a calculated header checksum, which reads CB rather than 20.
Physically, the cartridge carries a sticker reading DMB-MBC-16M-FLASH and the part number DMG-(F)KGDB-01. The report's reading of the label is that DMB probably refers to Dot Matrix Game, the Game Boy's original internal codename, and that MBC likely stands for Memory Bank Controller. That custom chip let games exceed the Game Boy's 32KB ROM limit. The 16M probably indicates 16 megabits of flash-writable memory. Retro Dodo also noted that the cartridge is longer than a standard Game Boy cartridge.
The auction describes the board as a "previously undocumented" development board, though the DMG-(F)KGDB-01 part number has appeared before. The Rare Gaming Dump wiki lists the same number for a development cartridge from 2000, which also used a 16-megabit Sharp flash chip labeled U1 FLASH MEMORY. Close-up images in the Goldin listing show an almost identical design, though the wiki entry shows a slightly different sticker reading DMG-MBC3-16M-FLASH.
Pokémon Red, released alongside Green and Blue, helped launch the global Pokémon franchise in the 1990s. Red and Blue combined are reported to have sold more than 31 million copies.
Several days remain before the auction closes. The current $25,000 bidder may end up winning the piece, but the final price could climb higher before bidding ends.
A commenter on the original report offered some context on how such cartridges reach collectors. They said a Nintendo Age user, Pal rocks, sold a batch of demo cartridges in 2015 that had come from a Nintendo employee who kept them rather than destroying them. The commenter also said this copy appears to be a master copy that can be powered on and played normally. Those claims come from a reader comment and have not been verified.
Originally published by News Media House · Source: Tom's Hardware
