Capcom lost all the source for the Rockman/Megaman NES games, so although it might be hard to believe - it does happen.
Jordan Mechner also recently found the source code for Prince of Persia kicking about at his Dad's place - so it can get lost.
http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2012/03 ... persia-source-code-found/Back then even in Japan in the 90s these places didn't hold a 'back up everything' like they do now.
On top of that, if these are first-party developed they're probably in storage but if they're 3rd party by BPS for example made on a first-party publishing relationship with Nintendo, who knows shat happened to them. I don't hold out much faith myself, because there just wasn't tthe priority on backing everything up.
I think someone owning one copy and not telling anyone is unlikely, surely the thrill from the debated mentality comes from telling everyone that you have something they can never have? I don't know, I don't hold that mentality so I can't realluy do anything other than guess.
I'm not that fussed about Dragon Hopper, it looked like a generic red and black Link's Awakening clone (sorry!), but Zero Racers looked great. Maybe it was too slow and didn't really work but I play Vector Racing a lot and love that
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQGTS_J8TQU, so I'd love to see this (Zero Racers) one day on VB for real.
I actually think a home-coded version would actually be better than what is out there as well, as I imagine the documented game being as slow as Red Alarm to be honest. For a racing game that's not fulfilling, but a talented coder could write new VB code that ran a lot smoother and faster (I assume).
Nintendo have a funny history of cancelling finished games - look at Starfox 2. Making a whole bunch of carts has a high cost risk if you can't shift them late in a console's life, or on a 'doomed' console, but I'm still surprised at the quality of some of the games that never made it to light.
On a similar note, I found out recenly that there was once a Micro Machines VB started, but I know with certainty that the code for that is long, long gone and was never much to begin with. Just a first playable test environment basically.
Edited by L___E___T on 2013/1/30 19:18
Edited by L___E___T on 2013/1/30 19:19