Oh, sliding puzzles. You belong at the bottom of a young child’s party favor bag, there simply to add weight with the rest of your dollar store kind like the Chinese finger trap. You serve no other purpose.

And yet, here I am, with a prototype of a Nintendo Entertainment System sliding puzzle game lazily named Puzzle. This is not a new acquisition of mine; the prototype has been sitting on the shelf untouched for years. Previously lost and forgotten, the pitiful thing reached out to me when I was walking by recently, and I blew off the accumulation of dust.

This cartridge was obtained from Jason Wilson, a former senior editor of Tips &  Tricks magazine.

The prototype uses a 60-pin Family Computer board that is inserted into a 72-pin adapter for play on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Officially called the NINA, this adapter is one of AVE’s own patented devices that the company used to circumvent Nintendo’s lockout chip.

Puzzle was developed by Idea-Tek, a Hong Kong company, which probably explains the inclusion of the Family Computer hardware.

I am no Puzzle expert, but the following pictures show my valiant attempt to look for differences in the prototype.

Level 1 : 1

Level 1 : 2

Level 1 : 3

Level 1 : 4

Level 1 : 5

Level 2 : 1

Level 2 : 2

Level 2 : 3

Level 2 : 4

I stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge puzzle because I was at risk of going comatose, and I still have a long life ahead of me.