And that's IF they even use Kickstarter. If they really don't have a working prototype, they may use some other site to raise money.
They've mentioned Kickstarter too many times, including that they negotiated a "special" deal, for me to think that they'd go somewhere else.
I guess that there's also a question of what a "working" prototype is. They've got a shiny case, a working controller, at least one "prototype" game with Tiny Knight, and a piece of cardboard with output connectors positioned on it.
They're not proposing to do anything radically new here, they're just matching an ARM chip with an Altera FPGA. You can look at the MiST, or any recent Terasic development board to see that that can be done. It's just a case of having the funds.
Heck, you can even buy the basic hardware on eBay ...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Altera-DE1-SoC-Cyclone-V-Development-and-Education-Board-P0159-with-Extra-/262032197804?hash=item3d025608acI'd be somewhat surprised if the Kickstarter management would actually force them to have a board running inside their JagWire case.
And even if they did want to see running "hardware", all that the RETRO VGS guys need to do is to buy a cheap Chinese Android media-box system and take it out of it's box, and the Kickstarter guys wouldn't know the difference.
What they're selling isn't a piece of hardware ... that bit is easy. They're selling the dream of a whole eco-system of game developers making new cartridge-based games.
How does the Kickstarter management police that particular fantasy?