Video games are the most popular entertainment product nowadays. It is therefore normal that the nostalgia factor has already made its way into the second-hand video game market. There are special cartridges or consoles from yesteryear that are currently worth a small fortune. Catawikian auction portal, has published a list with the 5 Nintendo games which have been overvalued in recent times. Do you have them stored in a closet or storage room?
1. Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Have a copy of Conker’s Bad Fur Day It is always a guarantee of having a small fortune. This action-adventure game developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64 It is very rare and sought after for various reasons.
On the one hand, Conker It came out in 2001. By that time, PS2 was already half a year old, the launch of GameCube was planned for the end of the year… So all eyes were on the next-generation consoles and games. Conker It went unnoticed despite being a great game because it came out at the wrong time.
The second reason behind its value is the great controversy behind the game. Initially, the adventure was going to be aimed at the youngest members of the family. But development stalled and Rare made a radical change: it created Bad Fur Dayan adventure for adults with insults, scatological jokes (sometimes you have to urinate to solve puzzles) and a huge turd who suddenly dedicated a musical number to you.
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Nintendo, the game’s publisher, feared that its adult content would tarnish its reputation as a family-friendly company, so distribution was sparse. (In the United States the official guide was sold wrapped in a black bag with warnings about the contents.) Nintendo did not release the game in Europe, but rather another publisher, the now defunct THQ, handled the distribution. In short: very few copies distributed.
On his blog, Catawiki explains that they have arrived to sell copies of Conker’s Bad Fur Day for 180 euros, almost triple its original price. In eBayThe minimum is usually 60-70 euros just for the cartridge, but the price goes up to 300-500 euros if you have the instruction manual and the box in good condition.
2. The Zelda game for Game & Watch
According to legends, the legendary developer Gunpei Yokoi (creator of Game Boy) He was traveling by train when he noticed what a seemingly bored executive was doingHe had taken his calculator and was pressing the buttons without much order or harmony.
Based on that vision, Yokoi came up with the idea of creating a portable video game: Game & Watch. Each one has a single game (sometimes with variations) that is super easy to learn, but addictive (2-4 buttons and little else).
Its affordable price and variety made the invention a huge success. The Game Boy, which came out later, was inspired by the Game & Watch. and even years later the Nintendo DS would be the spiritual successor to the models with dual folding screens.
Although over the years Nintendo has released compilations of its best Game & Watch games with updated graphics, and even released a special model for Mario’s 35th anniversary, the original versions are still highly sought after and therefore valued.
A Zelda Game & Watch with its original box and manual has been sold for 330 euros on Catawiki. Meanwhile, on eBayGame & Watch with dual screens are usually the best sellers: 160-220 euros. Mickey’s, which is highly sought after in general, can sell for more than 300 euros if the box and manual are included. And the big exception is the Mario game: 1,250 euros with all its material intact.
3. Earthbound
If you follow viral topics closely, you may have been surprised The famous tweet by actor Terry Crews where he asks, in capital letters, that Nintendo translate Mother 3.
The tweet, the actor, and the saga Mother were trending topic that day. First of all, let’s put it into context that Crews, one of the stars of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is a serious geek who has even done streamings of very niche Japanese games. So don’t worry if you don’t know what it is. Mother 3 nor why it was trending.
Earthbound It is a series of role-playing games created by Nintendo that in Japan is known as MotherThe first installment debuted for the original NES in 1989… and it was a very strange game, especially coming from Nintendo. It was like a parody of the American way of life, where a kid had to save the world from aliens. Instead of castles, caves and dragons, you explore warehouses, laboratories and may confront inanimate objects like pizza boxes.
The game failed to catch on with the general public because it was too weird for the time. Even so, it was tried again with Mother 2for the Super Nintendo. It arrived in the West in 1995, just when role-playing games were not so popular. So it didn’t sell as expected either.. As a result, Mother 3, which was released for Game Boy Advance in 2006, has not left Japan. It has not been officially translated into English. And that’s a shame because it’s a great game, with a surprisingly melancholic and mature plot.
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The problem is that the Internet brings back many things from the past. Earthbound / Mother has enjoyed a renaissance thanks to emulators and thanks to Nintendo itself, which has included some of its characters in its fighting saga. Super Smash Bros. Also, the popular indie game Undertale is the spiritual successor of the saga. Total: having an original copy of Earthbound Nowadays it is to have a treasure.
In Catawiki, Earthbound It has been sold for 650-700 euros with box and manual intact. That last thing is important: the cartridge itself can probably cost 30-60 Euros. But if you have the whole pack, you will find many interested buyers. At the time of writing this article, a Earthbound complete and intact is sold in eBay for 1,024 euros, with around 80 followers monitoring the progress of the bidding.
4. Game Boy Advance SP Zelda edition
At the end of 2004, Nintendo released the video game for Game Boy Advance The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. It’s a fun portable adventure where Link can use a special hat to shrink his size. Furthermore, it is one of the few official Zelda games that were not developed by Nintendo, but rather by Capcom.
But the highlight for video game collectors was the special edition Game Boy Advance SP console that came out alongside the game. It is a very limited edition Game Boy Advance adorned with Zelda motifs that was only released in Europe. Only 25,000 units of this special console were distributed.
Even more difficult. Nintendo made a special edition of this special edition. It created only seven Game Boy Advance SP consoles. covered with 24 carat gold. 6 of them were given away to players who found a golden ticket inside their Zelda edition SP, and the remaining console was raffled off in a magazine.
So, owning a Zelda edition Gameboy Advance SP is already a small treasure. But owning one of the literally golden consoles is already a fortune.
Catawiki explains that only the Zelda SP without any gold has been sold for 1,600 euros. eBayprices do not fall below 500 euros. As for what the gold version might be worth… it’s a mystery due to its scarcity.
If you don’t have any of these versions, search around your home to see if you have other limited edition consoles. There are some highly sought after ones. The SP NES edition with the original packaging sells for €200-250, the surf model costs almost €500, and the one decorated with seashell motifs costs €100. Kingdom Hearts It is usually bid for €300-400.
Don’t just stick with the Gameboy Advance SP. Look in your or your family’s storage room for limited versions of other consoles. They are easy to identify: they have elements of sagas like Resident Evil,Pokémon, Halo…
5. The legendary Nintendo World Championship cartridge
This cartridge is like the final boss for Nintendo game collectors: It is the most expensive and sought after in the NES games catalogue. To understand its importance, we must go back to 1990.
That year, Nintendo decided to hold a World Championship that began on March 8 and ended on December 9. During those months, different players from the United States competed to get the highest scores of classic Nintendo games.
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The surprise came in the December finals, when the finalists in each category discovered that they had to use a cartridge that Nintendo had created especially for the event. They were no longer up against games they knew: They had to overcome three tuned versions of Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer and Tetris. Whoever achieved the best cumulative score in less than 6 minutes 21 seconds would win.
Although in 1990 the awards It was $10,000 in savings bonds, a car, a 40-inch television and a golden Mario trophy, Nowadays, the most coveted prize is precisely that special cartridge.
It is not known how many cartridges Nintendo created for the event. As of September 2020, 353 had been located, but there could be more. 90 copies were given to the finalists, another 36 were covered in gold and offered as prizes in the official Nintendo magazine. All versions have something very special: little buttons to be able to tune the time limit.
In Catawiki cartridges have been auctioned for 15,000 euros, but the gold version, in perfect condition, can sell for much more. There are cases for 33,000 dollars (27,200 euros), other cases for 130,000 dollars (107,000 euros) and in eBay Someone has been offering theirs for some time, in a gold version, for one million dollars (824,500 euros), although it remains to be seen whether anyone will buy it.
As a final anecdote, there were no more championships in the coming years until 2015, where the games were Splatoon, The Legend of Zelda for NES, Mario Kart 8… There was a third and for now last edition in 2017 with games like Smash Bros. Wii U, Breath of the Wild either Balloon Fight.Unfortunately, there were no special cartridges in these two more modern editions.
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Tags: Trending, Nintendo, Video Games, Lists