Really specific question, but can anybody explain what looks like a bodge resistor on the Star Fox cart (on the missing 74HCT04 chip in the bottom right)? Everything else is SMD, so it looks to me like they realized some mistake after production and had to manually fix every cart. Or maybe this is just a scan of a hacked/prototype cart.
I just opened my Japanese Starfox cart. It must be a later revision because it's a half height board with the 4 chips covered in black epoxy. It still has that resistor, although I'm not sure if it's connecting the same traces because the board is completely different.
This Reddit thread seems to suggest that it's from an early production run of the game. (though that seems strange to me as normally the glob top chips come as a cost-cutting measure on later revisions of a chip.)
