Fundraiser started to rescue and preserve hundreds of Sega 3DS and DS game prototypes before August 2025

Video game preservation organizations Obscure Gamers and Video Game Preservation Museum are in the midst of a public fundraiser to help them bring in £61K to rescue some 300 prototypes and showroom demos of classic Sega games on Nintendo DS and 3DS from becoming e-waste. This includes never-before-seen early builds of memorable DS/3DS Sega classics such as Sonic Colors DS, Sonic Generations 3DS, some Mario & Sonic Olympics games, and even a DS build of Project R, better known as Rhythm Thief & The Emperor’s Treasure, which would release on Nintendo 3DS instead of DS in 2012.

Sadly, even with multiple fundraisers set up to pool money, they have not made it far reaching their goal by now, and they must raise the necessary funds before the start of August 2025. Otherwise, they may not have another chance to rescue all this precious Sega history before it returns to the e-waste bins they were pulled from. There’s still plenty of time as of this writing, so it’s too soon to give up now. We encourage you to give whatever money you can spare to help with this noble preservation effort. Obscure Gamers have promised that your money can be refunded in August at your request if the fundraiser fails, so you at least have nothing to lose if they lose, other than tons of important information on the development of these games that could be documented online for all to see, as well as the digital rom files themselves for you to try out.

Links to the various fundraisers, as well as a list of every game prototype hanging in the balance, will be below the break here.

The full list of game prototypes Obscure Gamers and Video Game Preservation Museum are raising money to save are:

• Rhythm Thief & The Emperor’s Treasure (10 3DS carts and 1 DS cart)
• Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (6 Carts)
• Sonic Colors DS (8 Carts)
• Sonic Generations 3DS (48 Carts)
• Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing DS (9 Carts)
• Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice (7 Carts)
• Sonic Classic Collection (7 Carts)
• Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games DS (21 Carts)
• Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games 3DS (32 Carts)
• Mario & Sonic at the Ryo 2016 Olympic Games 3DS (5 Carts)
• Phantasy Star 0 (3 Carts)
• Shinobi 3DS (6 Carts)
• Aliens: Infestation (8 Carts)
• Bleach The Blade of Fate (4 Carts)
• Captain America Super Soldier (4 Carts)
• Crush 3D (30 Carts)
• Dinosaur King (1 Cart)
• DS Demo (1 Cart)
• DSi Demo (1 Cart)
• Infinite Space (6 Carts)
• Iron Man 2 DS (3 Carts)
• Jambo! Safari: Animal Rescue (7 Carts)
• 60 unlabeled DS and 3DS carts
• 1 unlabeled Game Boy Advance cart

Remember when Sega had the licenses for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Bleach anime and manga series? Good times.

Here are the three fundraisers you can support to rescue all these prototypes. Whichever one you donate to doesn’t matter, as they all come together to support the same effort.

Ko-fi (Through PayPal)

GoFundMe

GoodHub (This one is highly recommended if you are a UK taxpayer, so that you can leverage GiftAid for some tax relief)

Game prototypes and showroom demos may not always be the most exciting thing ever, but they come with invaluable information about what went into the development of these games and how they ended up the way they were at launch. Many times, that includes content that was either removed before launch or greatly changed during the course of development. Game developers and fans of any particular game have much to learn from info left behind in these work-in-progress builds of games and having that disappear would be a crying shame. Even more so if it ends up in landfills, as any e-waste dirtying up our already over-polluted natural ecosystem gets more and more devastating by the day.

And for some extra incentive to the high rollers among you, those who donate at least £200 will be given a random DS or 3DS cart for your own personal collection after its been preserved already. Anyone who donates at least £1000 will get to personally choose whichever cart they want sent to them. Either way, you’ll also have to pay shipping costs.

Which of these prototypes are you most looking forward to seeing? Is there a game in that list above that you have a particular liking to? What game do you think might be among the 61 unlabeled carts? Let us know in the comments below. And with that, on behalf of Sega fans everywhere, we at SegaBits wish Obscure Gamers and Video Game Preservation Museum the best of luck with saving all these carts.

Special thanks also goes to our friends at The Sonic Stadium for bringing this fundraiser to our attention amongst a busy news period.

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