Square Enix Gave Sweet, Fake SNES Carts To King’s Tale Staff

Square Enix gave a pretty nifty thank-you gift to the developers of A King’s Tale: Final Fantasy XV — a replica Super Nintendo cartridge with the game’s art and logo. It even includes the box.

It’s a thematically appropriate gift, since A King’s Tale is a (free) game for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 that’s styled after a Super Nintendo game. It’s a side-scrolling beat-em-up with pixel art and a chiptune-esque soundtrack that tells an early story of King Regis’ adventures.

No, the cartridge doesn’t actually do anything. A King’s Tale may be a retro-styled game, but it wouldn’t play on an SNES. This is purely for decoration, and for staring at while dreaming of a past that never happened.

While only a few of these were produced and only shared with the game’s development team at San Diego-based Empty Clip Studios, the copy pictured was obtained by game publisher Limited Run Games’ CEO Josh Fairhurst, and shared on Reddit. “I was gifted this by the guy who owns the studio,” he wrote.

Fairhurst, who confirmed the cart’s veracity to Kotaku on Saturday, added on Reddit that attempts to buy the cartridge from him would fall on deaf ears. “This isn’t for sale by me nor will it ever be,” he wrote. Can’t imagine any of the game’s developers would give theirs up, either.