You might never have heard of this unreleased Master System title, but a supposedly ‘bona fide’ copy of Sonic’s Edusoft is on sale for $40 on auction website eBay.

An edutainment game that was originally meant to capitalise on Sonic the Hedgehog’s Mega Drive release in 1991, Sonic’s Edusoft ended up not being released officially at all, according to information collected by fellow Wiki Sonic Retro. The developer, Tiertex, appeared on the SMS Power forums in 2007 to discuss the existence of the title. A ROM of the game is readily available from Retro.

Which leads us to ponder whether this item from eBay is in fact genuine. It could be relatively easy to grab a ROM and dump it onto a Master System cartridge, given the know how. It could just as easily be a promotional copy, handed out internally before its release was cancelled.

Either way, whoever decides to bid on this should probably air on the side of caution. We doubt that SEGA will confirm whether this is the real deal or not. Because it was an unofficially licensed game – and an unreleased one at that – we can only assume that the publisher will want to deny all existence of it, evidenced in mentions of Edusoft being removed from Wikipedia.

Sega Master System Game EDUSOFT With SONIC THE HEDGEHOG – eBay (via TSSZ)