$ 99,000 NES Cartridge on eBay

The other day, the collector of Nintendo video games with 25 years of experience, who decided to part with his “beauty”, attracted general attention. If the cartridge he exhibited on eBay is real (although the seller promises to confirm the authenticity, the flayed label on which someone carelessly wrote a Mario pen makes it doubtful without thinking that someone would ever sell it after a couple of decades), we are dealing with one of the rarest copies of video games ever produced for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES, well known to all as Dendy). After all, the price soared to heaven for a reason; the fact is that this game has never been on the shelves of stores.

In 1990, the company held competitions for the players of the Nintendo World Championships : then in 29 cities in the United States held tournaments in Super Mario, Rad Racer and Tetris. Who managed to score the most points in these three games in 6 minutes 21 seconds, he became the winner. The winning city competition received $ 250 and a trip for two to the final competition at Universal Studios in Hollywood, for the second place gave Nintendo Power Pad and Game Boy. The winner of the final competition took home a much more substantial prize - a $ 10,000 reward, the brand new 1990 Geo Metro Convertible, a 40 "TV and a golden statuette with Mario.

The idea of ​​holding the championship itself was given a green light in the walls of Nintendo after the movie “The Wizard” was released , which became a real advertisement for the company's games. Cinema naturally fell through at the box office, but gained cult status among the young players of that time. The championship itself also became legendary over time.
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For the competition all the games were modified - in two of them the player should not have seen the screen with “game over”. Therefore, in Super Mario Bros. each one got as many as 99 lives, and in Rad Racer the remaining time timer stopped at around 99 seconds. However, in the case of Tetris everything was more insidious - when the player reached the top of the screen, the game ended, and he could only wait for the end of the allotted time.

Therefore, 116 cartridges were specially made for the competition - 90 of them were gray and were presented to the finalists at the end of the tournament. Another 26 were golden in color - they were handed out at a Nintendo Power magazine competition. Each gray cartridge has a serial number; In addition, they had a switch that allowed them to limit game time (there is one on the specimen under discussion).

The auction will end in 9 hours, and the amount has yet to grow - considering that yesterday the game was worth $ 5,000 . It is surprising that, according to the BBC , a similar cartridge, and even in the best condition, was sold in 2011 at a charity auction for only $ 11,000.

I wonder if there is something among modern games that could acquire similar value in the future? After all, to get $ 100,000 for, for example, the first working build of Angry Birds after 20 years, its owner will probably be difficult - despite the significance for the industry, it’s still not a material object that collectors are so fond of ...