Rare and retro video games have turned out to be almost as big a business as the latest ones available, according to research conducted for an online gambling platform. And at £233,338, the 1990 version of Nintendo World Championships is the most valuable vintage video game currently available.
But even that falls thousands and thousands of pounds behind a still-sealed games cartridge produced in 1987. One of the original games of The Legend of Zelda, no longer available, fetched £700,000 at an auction in the US last year.
However, Nintendo World Championships, which was created as part of a Nintendo competition promoted in the US, has become a prized and highly desirable collectible. The 1990 package came in the form of a cartridge and included the games Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer, and Tetris. Its current value is double that of ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut, which ranked second in the league table of valuable games.
The extremely rare gaming cartridge has become one of the most coveted in the world and was made especially for the 1990 Nintendo Championships.
In second place was ClayFighter: Sculptor's Cut (1998), valued at £127,275. With only 20,000 copies ever made for the former video rental giant Blockbuster, this update of ClayFighter 63⅓ was difficult to source even in the 1990s. Even so, the video game was 172 times more common than the Nintendo World Championship, of which only 116 cartridges are known to exist worldwide.
Super Mario Bros 3 comes third, valued at £126,427. Having planted the seed for over 200 spinoff games, the famous plumber brothers Mario and Luigi have graced video gaming screens for almost 40 years and show no signs of stopping. Super Mario Bros 3 (1993) is a fan favourite, with rare, unsealed copies for the NES console fetching high prices online.
And, it appears that age is second only to quality, with Super Mario Bros 3 worth over £125k more than the only other 1993 game in the ranking, the Disney-themed DuckTales 2, which comes in 54th place at £523.
Now technically a third party of Nintendo, the games publisher Atari makes a feature in fourth place with Paperboy (1985), valued at £118,790. An arcade classic in which players take on the role of a paperboy dropping off newspapers in a stylised suburbia, this NES version allowed fans to play from the comfort of their own home.
The games giant Nintendo is responsible for around two-thirds of the world's most valuable video games. Despite honourable mentions from Atari, Interplay Entertainment and Rare, Japan’s multinational gaming company dominates the top 10. With ultra-rare and popular games such as Nintendo World Championships and Super Mario Bros in its stable, it is little surprise that Nintendo is also responsible for some of the priciest resells.
The last Tomb Raider game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018) fetches up to £144.55 online, in contrast with those owners of the 1996 original edition of Tomb Raider, who could make up to £5,000, according to the data. Zelda fans could also benefit from searching through their collection, with Zelda games A Link To The Past (1992), Ocarina of Time (1998) and Majora’s Mask (2000) fetching thousands of pounds each.
However, the all-time record for a video game cartridge belongs to the Nintendo classic The Legend of Zelda, which attracted a record £700,000 when it went under the hammer at the US auction house Heritage Auctions jut over a year ago.
The sealed gaming cartridge dates from 1987 and was still in its original packaging. It was produced for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) gaming console, the first console released by the company outside Japan.
The cartridge was among the earliest production runs of the game, variations of which have become wildly popular. The £700,000 game was part of a short production run in 1987 before being replaced with another variant.
The top 10 list was compiled on behalf of the gaming website TouchCasino.com, using an established UK ecommerce site to identify the highest prices old video games could fetch.
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