The NES Holy Grail
Does anybody know what this is? Believe it or not, this is the rarest and most sought-after NES game of all:
The Nintendo World Championships '90 GOLD CARTRIDGE
Quick history: in 1990, Nintendo organized a competition called "The Nintendo World Championships" where tons of nerds gamers were competing for the title of the Nintendo World Champion. The competition was held all across the United States, divided in 29 cities (2 competitions were held in Los Angeles) with 3 different age groups (11 and under, 12-17, 18 and older). In total, 90 finalists we're given a bunch of prizes (1st, 2nd and 3rd in each city). After that, the main competition was to determine who was the best in each age group. Although not official, a competition took place between each of the 3 winners of each group, with Thor Aackerlund, from the age group 12-17, taking 1st place (he didn't win anything though).
The competition itself was a time trial: players were playing on a special cartridge, the Nintendo World Championships Gray Cartridge, which had three games. First, they had to pick up 50 coins as fast as possible in Super Mario Bros. (1). Then, they had to complete the first race in Rad Racer also as fast as possible. Finally, players had to play Tetris until they reached the overall time limit of 6 min 21 seconds. Once finished, a score was calculated based on this equation:
(time of SMB) + (time of Rad Racer X 10) + (Tetris X 25) = final score
Obviously, the player who had the best score after 6 min 21 sec won. After the NWC '90, Nintendo held a couple more of game competition, but they were never as popular as NWC '90.
21 years later, people are still talking about it. Why? Because of the cartridges. Yes, the Gray and the Gold cartridges, the rarest of all games ever made (except some weird Japanese original versions of American games). In total, 116 cartridges were made, 90 gray ones and 26 gold ones. The gray ones were given to the 90 finalists mentioned earlier after the NWC ended, but the gold ones were given out in a contest in the Nintendo Power magazine. The gray cartridges are easier to trace because each of them has a unique serial number, but the gold ones don't have that feature, making it hard to trace and find.
For NES collectors, these cartridges are the toughest to find, hell, to buy. While the gray ones can be found on some auction sites for about $1000 to $5000, the gold ones cost around $15000!!! Remember, the gold ones were not played cartridges in the NWC, making it as valuable as a sealed original GI Joe action figure for example. Thus more, there's only 26 of them! They're so special the triangle logo was cut BY HAND and glued BY HAND onto the cartridge! Plus, they're GOLD! Only one other NES game as a gold cartridge, and that's The Legend of Zelda. As the title suggests, this game is considered the NES Holy Grail.
In conclusion, this whole story made me cogitate: you know those second-hand clothes shops like Value Village or Renaissance stores? They usually also sell books, CDs, VHS movies and... OLD VIDEO GAMES. Next time you go at one of these stores, go take a look in that section: you may find an old NES game or Atari 2600 game that costs between $2 to $5 and may be valuable as hell on eBay. For example, I went at Value Village yesterday and found NBA Jam, College USA Footbal '97 and NHLPA Hockey '93 for the Sega Genesis, Star Raiders for the Atari 2600 and Lock 'N Chase for the Intellivision (yeah, that). Unfortunately, they were only worth around $15 on eBay, so I let it go. Imagine the possibilities though! Maybe one day I'll find my own NWC '90 Gray Cartridge (forget about the Gold one, too rare hahaha)
This is the video that inspired me this post, taken from the 104th episode of the Angry Video Game Nerd on GameTrailers.com. Enjoy :)