A few weeks back this prototype appeared on ebay at the "low" price of $260. While N64 proto prices indeed have been on the rise lately I still thought the price was a bit steep and didn't feel like catching this one at first.

But with more money than sense, I suppose, I decided in the 11th hour to make a bit and I turned out to be the only bidder, probably because the price was a bit more than the $100 an N64 prototype usually go for.

Well a few days ago the prototype arrived at my doorstep and at first glance it didn't seem like much, but a binary comparison showed lots of differences so it was time to do a visual comparison to the final game, and here's what I've discovered.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

The first screen after booting up the game is slightly different. Not too surprising the prototype features a version reference, but it's missing some legal yadda yadda which of course is present in the final build. But judgeing from the size of the N64 logo in the prototype build, the legal reference was probably not planned to be shown on this screen.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

Next screen during startup is the publisher THQ's logo. Again here's missing some legal info but other than the the two screens are identical.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

Now at the titlescreen is where the fun stuff happens. I didn't really notice it at first though hah, but it turns out that after this prototype build was made, someone decided that the game needed a new and crappier looking logo, why?!

Also it seems like Looking Glass planned to throw the legal information in the titlescreen, but as you can see - that didn't happen.

Another thing is the color of the titlescreen car which changed from green to red and white. But wait that's not all, the running race on the titlescreen sort of crashes in the prototype and restarts while the final build of course doesn't have that feature.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

What's funny though is that the scrapped titlescreen font is used thoughout the final build.

When taking a look at the different tracks under the time trial option I also noticed that some tracks were shown in a different order in the prototype, Midnyte Rumble and Alpine Ridge being the last two while they're track 5 and 7 in the final. Nothing major but still a difference between the two. In arcade mode the tracks aren't in the same order either.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

The screen displaying the car selection also has a small difference in the text at the bottom of the screen, but also some of the cars are slightly different as seen in the screenshots below. This is the only two cars that are different though.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

When the end of the car list is reached, the final build will start over from car "0" while the prototype stops at the last car, meaning you'd have view every car again to reach car "0".

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

After a car has been selected a "please insert rumble pak" screen appears, again the prototype and final build have minor differences, notice how Rumble Pak is written completely in lower case in the prototype while the final build has R and P in upper case, wow what a difference. The "press a or start" has also been altered slightly though.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

When having selected a stage in the game you're presented with a small welcome screen displaying some game rules as well as what's required to advance. Here the prototype also displays the highscore, but for some reason this part was removed in the final build.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

During play the start button of course can be pressed to pause the game. Here a records option is available, and again here's a few graphical differences. The last entry in the row of records is called "ctr records" and while the final build has exclusive artwork for this screen, the prototype borrowed artwork from a race track called Aztec Ruins.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

Once a championship has been won, the game is of course saved and also here there's a small graphic (color) difference as well as a small change of the text.

FINAL	PROTOTYPE

When the game has been saved, the final build returns to the titlescreen, while the prototype returns to the game select screen.

Okay that's pretty much all the differences I have found in this prototype, I would've lowed to show images of the two different cars, but I fear it would take me forever to get them unlocked, so that won't happen.

Also I would like to confirm that the car handling in the final build is a little better than what the prototype offers, but I'm not totally sure.