Topic: Help! Original Nintendo Super Mario/Duck Hunt plays Kid Icarus? Error? Rare?

I need some help. I recently got out my old Nintendo and games, including several a friend gave me years ago. While going through them I noticed 2 Super Mario/Duck Hunt cartridges. Oddly, one of them plays Kid Icarus. I guess I never knew because I already had Super Mario/Duck Hunt. At first I wondered if the label had been switched but everything about the cartridge appears legit and original. Does anyone know anything about this? What could explain this? Could he have somehow switched out the game, or could this be a factory error?

I consulted Google, and it seems it wasn't entirely unheard of for people to swap game innards. It might've been because the case was broken. Others apparently rented popular titles, and would swap the innards with a not-so-great game, and then "return" the "original" game. And I'm seeing a few mentions of people buying a game, doing the bad game swap, and then getting a refund for the "good" game.

The things we do to save a few bucks... anyway, enjoy your Not-Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt!

I had a similar thing happened years ago when I was a kid. Back towards the end of the NES era Kmart sold used games not sure where they got them cause they didn't have a trade in program, maybe they were games that they got returned for whatever reason. Anyway I bought TMNT II on NES from them but when I got home and put the game into my NES, it was a Sesame Street game. Needless to say someone had switched the guts at some point.

This is probably because both games are "5 screw" games, which allowed people to switch boards because you could get out the screws with any ordinary screwdriver. They stopped this around 1987/1988, and replaced them with screws that required a special screwdriver to remove them with, which most people didn't have.

My dad used to tell me stories how all the kids in his town would swap the boards with each other as they were easy to hide from their parents.

My guess is that this was the case, as both of the games involved were 5 screw games as @Fiyaball suggested.

@Tasuki Odd though as TMNT2 and the Sesame Street games were both definitely later-era (with the "gamebit" screws). They made the switch in 1988 and the mentioned games are I believe are from at least 1990.
(I remember 1988 because someone once made a list of games in both 3- and 5-screw variants and that was about the latest games on the list. The ones listed "rarer" in 5-screw were generally games made closer to that date (like Mega Man) while games rarer in 3-screw were generally older games (like Kung Fu) that presumably were nearing the end of their production run)

@KingMike The only thing I can think of is obviously that TMNT 2 had a higher trade in value and someone wanted the money or whatever but didn't want to get rid of TMNT 2 so they swapped it with Sesame Street.

@Tasuki hahaha...dude! What a letdown. Sesame Street?! hahahahaha

It's a 3-screw cartridge

I wouldn't be surprised if ironically Sesame Street was worth more (particularly CIB) to collectors these days.
I've heard of the Fisher-Price games having a bit of collector value.

My local Goodwill had a Sesame Street cart, so I checked for the value online. It isn't even worth $5

@KingMike Could be but this was years ago at the end of the NES lifespan.

<------ 5 screw sqoon ftw!

I could've said SCREW your 3 or 5 or whatever screw business and bought it on the Famicom with NO SCREWS (to my knowledge).
But I didn't and knowing the scene, it's probably not a $4 game anymore.
(I do have Zippy Race though, loose in both LED and no-LED versions. I'm thinking the no-LED version is probably better.)

yeah fami games have no screws (just like my head)
and sqoon on fami is awesome because of the red led light on it.
i got a japanese sqoon irem strategy guide, needed to throw that in since were talking about japanese sqoon here.
didnt know there were 2 versions of this however:

I know that was the same case with Zippy Race and Spelunker, at least.
The non-LED I believe are later prints. The difference being that latter prints should definitely have the game stored on MaskROM while the earlier ones could be EEPROM.
Spelunker seems to be particularly valuable for the non-LED version (apparently it's one of Japan's favorite crappy games).