Yesterday I found a 1st run cartridge of "Revenge of Shinobi" for the Sega Genesis. This is the version with unlicensed characters such as Spider-Man, Batman, Godzilla, & Terminator. These characters were replaced or altered in later updates of the game, so the originals are very sought after, and easily command $50+. Only cartridges released right at launch are unaltered - as you can imagine legal action was probably taken pretty quickly.
The best part is where I found it. It was in my own collection, and I didn't even know I had it. I bought a boxed copy a while back, but the box was a "Sega Classics" box which indicated a late revision of the game. However, it seems that somewhere along the line a first-run cartridge got put in the late-run box.
I was reading a forum on Sega-16.com about ROS, so I decided to check mine out. There's no way to tell simply by looking at the outside of the cartridge, so I popped it in, checked out the levels where the characters are, and received the good news. I had never gotten around to playing it before, and because I always assumed it was the super common version (based on the box it was in), I never went out of my way to verify it.
Luckily, there's a nice original cover here that I used to replace the one it came with (since that one is no longer accurate).
