And now the other side of the Nintendo story…

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Encapsulated in this game – Nintendo World Championships on the NES – is the other side of the Nintendo story. People won’t pay a few hundred for a Wii U, but they will pay thousands for a bashed up copy of a game that’s over 20 years old – which says to me that Nintendo’s history is more valuable than its present…

According to the BBC, this trashy cart is selling on eBay for over £3,000 – I couldn’t find it myself so they could be making it up just like the whole “people actually like Eastenders” line they’ve been peddling for the last few decades. The little punk was released for a competition in 1990 and has mini versions of Tetris, Mario and Rad Racer on it (so it’s actually not bad value… Ahem…)

It does sound like the sort of thing collectors go crazy for of course – anything rare is gold dust and only 116 of these were released – but it still stands out that you can’t imagine new Nintendo titles coming close. I’ll probably be proved wrong – especially as the Wii U itself is already rare enough (haha) – but that’s the feel you get right now, eh?

Sadly for us, it also probably shows that, as this generation of gamers gets older and starts to earn proper money, all this retro stuff will only get more expensive. People buy up their childhood, and no one who actually played these back in the 90s would have had the money to hoarde em til the last decade. Now they’re all adults, they’re snapping em up. So basically the chances of me ever getting my own copy of Snatcher are getting thinner by the minute. Sniff.

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8 Responses to And now the other side of the Nintendo story…

  1. Dibbs says:

    Ah, I remember hearing about this cart. Shame it looks a right state with the label all ripped off. It’s even getting quite common to see Megadrive games devoid of their plastic boxes and all ripped to shreds these days, so I’m guessing NES games aren’t going to have much hope!

    The bad thing about retro games, especially over the last few years, are that even normal folk are starting to cotton on to their worth, what with all the sellers trying to get in on the action slapping big prices on stuff. Plus the obligatory ‘rare’ description tag they stick on EVERYTHING on ebay, whether it is or not. It’s definitely starting to make it harder for people who actually care about old school stuff to get hold of it.

    Speaking of Snatcher, there’s one incident that still haunts me to this day. I was at a bootfair around 2001 and I saw a copy cast among a bunch of junk in a red bucket as I passed. I paused momentarily to have a look at it. The unknowing seller probably would have been all too willing to accept a 50p offer or suchlike, but alas, as I owned a copy already, I just walked off leaving it there. What a mug I am! Pain, i tell thee. Pain.

    • bedgell says:

      don’t tease me with that chat! extra snatcher we could have had! i’d rather have snatcher than snatch i tell thee! and i’d pay 50p for that in a heartbeat!

      (that’s snatch, the guy ritchie film of course. you muckrakers)

      i also look back with pain at the many cartridges i turned my nose up at. and while part of me remains kinda proud at our crazy aloofness, i’d gladly swap a pizza for a snes these days. i had some damn fine games too!

      • Dibbs says:

        ’twas a darn fine pizza though. Probably. I actually remember that day Wayne trying to chat up the moody looking waitress by asking ‘what happened to service with a smile?’. He had some lines!

        Ok, here’s a random memory for you to confirm or denounce: I have a recollection of you having a japanese import megadrive at one point with a copy of sonic 1 where the clouds in green hill zone scrolled in the background, whereas the pal version didn’t. This real? I’m guessing you borrowed it off a school friend if so.

        • bedgell says:

          hmmm nah i don’t think so. i had a japanese import of the game gear sonic – the first one. only thing i remember was different was that it ran faster. that was the game that bastard geoffrey lawrence stole off me when i’d only had it a day or so. went through every lawrence in the phone book trying to track him down and shout at him. didn’t find him. little punk.

          • Dibbs says:

            Yeah I remember your Game Gear version. We did a race once where you played the GG and I was on the Master System crappy hampered PAL version so we decided I’d have Green Hill zone as a head start.

            Dunno where I got that Megadrive memory from. It’s quite specific with the clouds thing, I wonder if the moving clouds is even a real thing? I’m gonna try and find out!

          • Dibbs says:

            Ah, just found this:
            “The first version, released in North America and Europe, lacked some graphical enhancements that were added to the Japanese release a month later. The Japanese version included clouds that moved independently of the scrolling background (even when the main character stands still) in the Green Hill Zone and two water graphical effects in the Labyrinth Zone, which consisted of a rippling effect on the foreground and a swirling effect on the background. This effect was only applied to the areas that were under the water line. Also in the Japanese version, all levels of the game had many more layers of parallax scrolling in their backgrounds.”

            I remember noticing it rather than reading about it which made me feel aggrieved that my version didnt. Must’ve had a darn fine eye for Sonic back then!

  2. bedgell says:

    haha yeh though you’ve always noticed stuff like that. i found out today (sort of unrelated) that the pc engine could’t do parallax scrolling.

    i tell ya, though i never really have a toss about having a pc engine, i ALWAYS wanted a pc engine gt. or pocket turbo or whatever the hell it was called. there was just something awesome looking about it…

    though if it couldn’t have even done sonic’s double backgrounds then booyah… lame.

    • Dibbs says:

      I fully intend to get a PC Engine one day. It’s the only console that had a dedicated version of SF2 Champion Edition. And a good conversion at that considering its limitations.

      Of course, all this Sonic talk and this new unearthing means only one thing: I’m going to have to get a Japanese copy. I can tell its gonna eat at me before its even manifested as a real hunger to get it yet. It’s like how I now want to reget the PS1 and PS2 Final Fantasy games as my PAL versions are the bordered 50hz versions. It started out as a thought deep in the back of my mind, but now, it’s near obsession and I HAVE to get them.

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