A copy of Nintendo World Championships 1990 owned by none other than "Gamemaster" Howard Phillips has recently sold on eBay for an incredible US $17,367.
The game was listed as part of a unique package being offered by Howard, including an all-access badge he wore during the original competition in 1990 and a full press kit. It comes with a certificate of authenticity signed by the man himself. The copy is version NWC #0126 and personally belonged to the legendary Nintendo employee.
The game is considered to be one of the rarest NES games in existence and has fetched similarly high prices in previous auctions. Only 116 copies of the game were ever manufactured, 90 of which feature the standard grey casing. The other 26 cartridges are gold like The Legend of Zelda NES cartridge. Each cartridge contains a manual electric switch, which determines the time limit of the game.
The eBay product description provides more background on the origins of the cartridge:
A cartridge originally produced as a balanced, multi-discipline competition test for the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, this incredibly rare game cart featured scoring challenge stage samplers of Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer and Tetris. Given a time limit of six minutes and 21 seconds, players were challenged to collect 50 coins in Mario, race a custom track in Rad Racer, and score as high as possible in Tetris.
Howard openly expressed in his listing's information that he really hopes that the lucky winner is an enthusiastic collector and not just a reseller.
We were lucky enough to interview Howard a little while ago and get a great insight into his time with the Japanese games giant; it's astonishing how much of an impact he really had on Nintendo's fortunes in North America.
Do you think $17,000 is too much for a copy of a rare video game, even one as rare as Nintendo World Championships 1990? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
[source nintendoage.com]
Comments 21
Haha, that's way too much! I don't care how rare the cart is, you could get a car for that!
I guess if you have the money to spare why not.
Good God!
I missed it.
@EvisceratorX Games are art, and to many, collecting this piece of awesome history is an amazing moment. For some reason I expected a higher number :/ I guess my logic switch hasn't turned on today. Besides, why get a car when you already owned one?
If money wasn't an object, then by all means buy a game for seventeen grand.
@HeatBombastic That's if you have a car but I do see your point of view, it being a piece of art and history. Personally, I am too cheap to get a game that costs that much, even if I had that much lying around.
If you can afford it and not suffer any real loss from it then by all means pay 17k for it.
Actually a little cheaper than I thought. I remember being absolutely SHOCKED when I saw Pat Conti (Pat the NES Punk, whose game carts showed up in the AVGN James Roolf Nintendo Cart video) showed up on History Channel's Pawn Stars to sell his (although as I understand it was never a serious sell anyway). I figured with Howard's history this would have been over 20K.
'Where's the new car?'
pulls out gold Nintendo cartridge
'OMG... OMG!... We're doomed!'
Unless they're rich, they could have bought something way more useful.
What do you buy for the person that already has everything?
Daaaaaaaaaaaaang.
This is no different from the $10,000s paid for one-of-a-kind pieces of art elsewhere, especially portraits and historical artifacts. We put a price on them, but it's a bit of a fallacy, because they are priceless at this point- there is no longer any way to produce them in their original form.
Personally, I hope Mr. Phillips is able to use the money to fund his flopped educational game Kickstarter project, Know-It-All. I have communicated with him briefly in the comments section of his Kickstarter page, since I backed it. The amount he needed was about $50,000, though, so hopefully this will bring him closer to that goal. He's mentioned that he would revive the project in the future, if he can.
if i had the cash i would buy it but im a sucker for old nintendo stuff. I paid 400 for earthbound in the box with guide. my ex wife flipped haha guess thats why she is the ex lol.
@hendie001 Equivalent to 400 American dollars? It would have definitely been worth up to $150, since many SNES high-quality RPG's were rare boutique items back then, but $400 is a hawker price...
I still have the Earthbound cartridge, but I gave away the strategy guide long ago... it was definitely one of the most interesting strategy guides of all gaming time.
For a collector, it's worth it if you have the spare cash, as it will go up in value over time as well.
@hendie001 Life lesson of the day - Don't start an expensive collection. You may have to pay expensive alimony.
Shoulda spent it on hookers and booze....
I've watched the nerd episode, i'm not surprised.
@Araknie Was thinking of AVGN when I read this.
most I would pay for a game is $50
@MeowGravy That's your mentality? You're gonna die of some nasty disease.
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