Gaming World Forums
General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: UPRC on July 07, 2009, 12:44:53 am
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http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/the-17-500-video-game/1332488
Think $60 video games are too expensive? You won't hear any argument from us, but you might from JJ Hendricks, a collector who just paid a clinically insane $17,500 for an obscure NES game from 1990.
The game in question is an ultra-rare, gold-colored version of Nintendo World Championships, a cartridge specially produced for use in a Nintendo-sponsored gaming contest. According to Wikipedia only 26 were created, and Hendricks calls it the "Holy Grail" of video game collectors.
The game itself has a time limit of just 6 minutes and 21 seconds and consists of three short segments from other NES games: Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and Rad Racer. Players are scored according to their performance in each game, and their scores are totaled once the time limit expires. Doesn't sound too riveting to us, but then somehow we doubt Hendricks is in it for the gameplay.
And while $17,500 might seem a bit much for a collection of ones and zeroes, Hendricks actually got a bargain: the game was originally listed on eBay for a cool $25,000.
It is a fucking NINTENDO CARTRIDGE!! Even if there are only 26, why was such a thing even worth such a price? If it was an interesting collectible or rare item, then sure.. But a Nintendo game? This guy is seriously off his rocker. I would never get any fulfillment from doing something so ludicrous.
Anyway, anyone ever see any other gaming accessories go for such wild prices as this?
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I don't get how things like this become this valuable. I mean it's not like it is a particularly worthwhile game to have considering that it is just a short snippet of a few games. There may have been only 26 of these made, but if it is just some terrible gaming-contest game that nobody would play outside of when it was originally made, why would it become valuable?
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JJ Hendricks is just Walter Day's pseudonym
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Aphex Twin bought this obscure Yamaha synthesizer that costs $60,000 and supposedly there's only 100 of them in existence and only 13 outside of Japan, but at least he probably makes use of it and it has some reason to become a collector's item (ABBA and Stevie Wonder used it, and some other people I dunno go on the Wikipedia page)
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that's different though, as that is something that you can use for a practical purpose. Same thing with like buying antique furniture or something. The difference with these items is that they are valuable and are usable for an actual purpose. This,however is just LOL GAMES
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Didn't someone else do this (with the same game) just a couple years ago, for a similar price?
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that's different though, as that is something that you can use for a practical purpose. Same thing with like buying antique furniture or something. The difference with these items is that they are valuable and are usable for an actual purpose. This,however is just LOL GAMES
well I was saying even if you didn't plan on using the GX-1, you can understand where the value comes from because a lot of famous people used it and it's so rare it might be THE one such and such used. (like Aphex Twin might have Stevie Wonder's old GX-1 etc.) It's like if you bought such-and-such's guitar, of course it's going to be worth something, but yeah I don't understand what makes these games so valuable
http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2009/6/60%20Nintendo%20Power.jpg rare copy of NES game once owned by this guy
like I can understand some video game nerd being crazy enough to pay/ask that much but how does it increase in value like is there a book for this stuff like baseball cards
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People collect all sorts of shit, if you are really into collecting games I don't see how this is any worse than putting tons of money into any other type of collection.
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I wish this was at least some cool prototype like Earthbound Zero or Mother 3 for N64 or something well really Earthbound is the only cool game series ever
well maybe also all the Resident Evil 2.5's, 3.5's that you can find videos of, if they exist somewhere as a physical game
Edit: extremely rare copy of black pac-man
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well I was saying even if you didn't plan on using the GX-1, you can understand where the value comes from because a lot of famous people used it and it's so rare it might be THE one such and such used. (like Aphex Twin might have Stevie Wonder's old GX-1 etc.) It's like if you bought such-and-such's guitar, of course it's going to be worth something, but yeah I don't understand what makes these games so valuable
http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2009/6/60%20Nintendo%20Power.jpg rare copy of NES game once owned by this guy
like I can understand some video game nerd being crazy enough to pay/ask that much but how does it increase in value like is there a book for this stuff like baseball cards
yea i totally see the whole thing that if somebody famous owned it being valuable but who famous owned/used this specific cartridge
People collect all sorts of shit, if you are really into collecting games I don't see how this is any worse than putting tons of money into any other type of collection.
but even in collecting games it can make sense if its like some out of print game or some uncensored or banned version of a game but this is just a snippet of a bunch of other games together and that doesn't seem like it would anything worthwhile considering it isn't original content/valubale content. (unless I am interpreting the contents of this cartridge wrong )
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Well I mean it is rare because there are only a handful of copies, why is this so weird to you? IIRC there's some sort of NES thing that's not even a game that's incredibly rare, I feel like it's something similar to the cartridge cleaner thing they had. It's like any other thing, if there's only a few in the world it is a hard thing to get into a collection, and so you have to pay a lot for it. Rare = collectable, that's all.
Also I don't see how you don't consider this out of print. It's about as out of print as you can get. Why shouldn't this count? Should only good games count for a collection? That's not how collecting works.
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So you think it's okay to buy something just because a celebrity but buying an extremely rare game THAT IS GOING TOO FAR!
Seriously, I don't get your point. You don't like it because it's not something you'd want to play? Have you ever watched Antique Roadshow? Who uses that stuff for its original purpose! They buy it because they like it.
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because it's essentially a demo disk.
EDIT: honestly i don't understand the point of paying a massive amount of money to collect ANYTHING that you can't get good use out of. paying shit loads of money for comics, cards, books, anything is a waste of money but who am i to tell someone not to waste their money. if you don't know how to spend money wisely you don't need it imo
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i'm not contesting that this item is rare or out of print or anything like that it just boggles me that VIDEO GAME demo disk can be something people would want to collect let alone pay money for, let alone this much money for.
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also
there is a burger in las vegas that goes for like 770$
it's a burger
._.
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is it the ribwich
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i'm not contesting that this item is rare or out of print or anything like that it just boggles me that VIDEO GAME demo disk can be something people would want to collect let alone pay money for, let alone this much money for.
Doesn't surprise me. Like I'd never pay that much for something like that but I don't have the collector's mind set for that. There are things that sell for ridiculous prices based solely on their rarity. You think someone who buys something that rare is going to USE the rare item? No, not a chance... they just want to possess it, that's it. Be the one to claim it is theirs. A trophy of some sort.
Collectors are crazy, so yeah definitely doesn't surprise me at all.
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Collecting games is this guys hobby, he enjoys it
imo this is no different than collecting anything else, people spend huge amounts of money on baseball cards and shit.
If I had a spare $17,500 I probably wouldnt spend it on something like this but i'm not him so whatever.
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I get the whole thing with that this guy is a collector and yes that games could and are something that people collect and would be desirable to do so. I am not trying to see either that things have to have a practical purpose to be collected either. I do think though for something to become a collectors item in the first place it has to be something that was originally desirable, and I don't see how this was originally desirable in the first place considering that well who wants a dumb ol' demo?
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it's desirable because there's only a few of them which means only a few people will get to have it in their collection why are you struggling with this???? it is desirable SOLELY because not many people get to have it
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people collect rocks
what if they hear of somebody selling a volcanic rock from like greece for like 15,000$ because it's ultra rare, and looking at it, it just BARELY looks different
it's just as ridiculous as video games, and people have been doing this forever
collecting jewelry and art however has the added extra that it is very pretty
i guess you can play your collection of videogames???
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What!?! That cartridge cleaner thingy was actually valuable!!! I had one a long time ago but I broke it a long time ago and trashed it. My god, i'm filled with so much regret right now. Velfarre you better not be shitting me about that.
This isn't that absurd, I find anything involving a celebrity being suddenly valuable absurd and also very creepy in a way.
EDIT: About art collecting, most of it is done by scouting amateurs' works and paying a miniscule amount for a decent painting.
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this is bullshit. this motherfucker's going down.
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murder him and his game.s he does nto deserve to live.....
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What!?! That cartridge cleaner thingy was actually valuable!!! I had one a long time ago but I broke it a long time ago and trashed it. My god, i'm filled with so much regret right now. Velfarre you better not be shitting me about that.
I don't think it was the regular cartridge cleaner, but it was something similar. Don't worry bro!
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I get the whole thing with that this guy is a collector and yes that games could and are something that people collect and would be desirable to do so. I am not trying to see either that things have to have a practical purpose to be collected either. I do think though for something to become a collectors item in the first place it has to be something that was originally desirable, and I don't see how this was originally desirable in the first place considering that well who wants a dumb ol' demo?
that's what I meant about something owned by a celebrity, if it was something like ELVIS'S Q-TIP not that it's any less stupid but I think a lot more people would want it just because a lot more people know who Elvis is. Who's even heard of this contest/cartridge?
Like wouldn't the value of the Elvis thing come from there being a lot of people who want to buy it, and it's one of a kind? How many people are vying for this cartridge, not that it couldn't become worth a lot too but I would think it'd be a lot less
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i remember back in 1997 a prototype english cartridge of mother for nes (http://www.lostlevels.org/200407/200407-earthbound.shtml) surfaced and sold, but that didn't go for near as much as this did. the guy who bought the cart paid about $125 and rom hackers paid $400 for the opportunity to backup the data. i have difficulty imagining how any nes game could possibly go for more than what mother is worth, although i could realistically see someone paying in the 10k range for the prototype mother cart.
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even moreso with the dedication the starmen.net people have
if it was worth 10k, no doubt they'd have raised funds and actually reached their goal
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yeah i wonder if mother 3(n64) is ever going to leak in some form or another.
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i don't think there is a prototype disc of it, i don't think anything was ever really completed in it, for it to be shown
either way, only the minimal people who own n64dd's could try it
the thing with the english mother prototype is that it was verily the complete english game, although never released whatsoever
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i remember back in 1997 a prototype english cartridge of mother for nes (http://www.lostlevels.org/200407/200407-earthbound.shtml) surfaced and sold, but that didn't go for near as much as this did. the guy who bought the cart paid about $125 and rom hackers paid $400 for the opportunity to backup the data. i have difficulty imagining how any nes game could possibly go for more than what mother is worth, although i could realistically see someone paying in the 10k range for the prototype mother cart.
That's actually an interesting website, I always liked reading the stories behind unreleased things and these are pretty detailed.
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a cartridge specially produced for use in a Nintendo-sponsored gaming contest
there you go it was pretty important???
also if this bugs you wait until you hear about STAMP COLLECTING and million dollar misprints
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Some things have a lot of value just for being rare and I understand, but 17k+ is quite a lot for a crappy NES cart.
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Chrono Trigger in the original package goes for over 1k, so does Earthbound. I can't really understand Chrono Trigger, as it's not exactly rare, but Earthbound I can; it was discontinued I think very early after being released because it wasnt LOL JRPG and that was all that was popular at its time of release (same time as Chrono Trigger, FF4, etc.) <- Needless to say it failed. People still pay around 400$ for romhacked carts of EB0 because they don't do research ahead of time. Basically, people do some fancy soldering work and put an EB0 rom onto a random cart. Most of the time it just displays the piracy notice. The piracy notice in EB doesn't exist, it just increases the monster spawn rate to 100% and deletes your save file right before Giygas; sneaky! [/verbose post]
EDIT: The article you posted was the article I was going to post hurray! :fogetmmh:
yeah i wonder if mother 3(n64) is ever going to leak in some form or another.
As for this, I have a bit of a tale. IIRC, the fansite starmen.net was going fucking mad over what they thought was a leak of the n64 M3, but I think it turned out to be some shitty tennis game once or something once the original leaker got around to hacking them so he could open em'. They came in these cute little blue blocks and had masking tape on them.
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Chrono Trigger in the original package goes for over 1k, so does Earthbound. I can't really understand Chrono Trigger, as it's not exactly rare, but Earthbound I can; it was discontinued I think very early after being released because it wasnt LOL JRPG and that was all that was popular at its time of release (same time as Chrono Trigger, FF4, etc.) <- Needless to say it failed. People still pay around 400$ for romhacked carts of EB0 because they don't do research ahead of time. Basically, people do some fancy soldering work and put an EB0 rom onto a random cart. Most of the time it just displays the piracy notice. The piracy notice in EB doesn't exist, it just increases the monster spawn rate to 100% and deletes your save file right before Giygas; sneaky! [/verbose post]
EDIT: The article you posted was the article I was going to post hurray! :fogetmmh:
As for this, I have a bit of a tale. IIRC, the fansite starmen.net was going fucking mad over what they thought was a leak of the n64 M3, but I think it turned out to be some shitty tennis game once or something once the original leaker got around to hacking them so he could open em'. They came in these cute little blue blocks and had masking tape on them.
No they don't. Where are you getting this?
edit: I mean, maybe they HAVE, but those people ridiculously overpaid. I just did a quick eBay search and there's multiple auctions for both games complete in box, in the 150-300 dollar range, some of them even Buy It Now.
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Words quoted within words.
I really should elaborate in my posts more. They can go for that range with the instruction booklet, unopened, poster, etc. Also, 1000$ isn't some sort of standard. So yeah, you're right. I have seen 3-4 auctions go for that range, though (one of the websites I frequent has a rare game cart tracker sort of jangle).
I did a quick ebay search for an example and I found these: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140338267104. If anyone wants a cheap Earthbound chart and is feeling lucky (5 days left), check this out. Earthbound has been selling like hotcakes ever since it was concluded that it wouldn't be coming out on the Wii.
How bout I just post the examples now:
A "rommed" cart (most likely): http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260456807564
This: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270412641645
and EB selling for 1k (link broken to ebay auction is broken, but I saw it a few days ago. (see: month?) ):http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/05/earthbound-auction-tops-1000/
EDIT:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Chrono-Trigger-Super-Nintendo-SNES-game-RARE_W0QQitemZ140337036336QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Vintage_Video_Games?hash=item20acbd3c30&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14
Just for fun. Want Chrono Trigger? 5 hours left no bids and a buy it now. 44 dollars.
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I went overboard, didn't I?
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Speaking of Snes carts, I was surprised at how available they are in Japan, especially in Akihabara. When I went there were atleast 3-4 shops dedicated to Snes/Nes and I was able to buy FFV and FFVI for 1000 yen each (in jap ofcourse).
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(in jap ofcourse).
I prefer games in their intended language. if I'm playing a jrpg (jap role playing game) and it's not in jap, is it really worth my time? I'm all about the authenticity.
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Speaking of Snes carts, I was surprised at how available they are in Japan, especially in Akihabara. When I went there were atleast 3-4 shops dedicated to Snes/Nes and I was able to buy FFV and FFVI for 1000 yen each (in jap ofcourse).
Even my local flea market has 3-4 shops dedicated to selling old games, especially NES and SNES games.
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Here's the game in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JbXqes9pC8&feature=related
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yeah, this cartridge is super super super rare. the fact that this man paid that amount is not a surprise to me at all.
a buddy of mine (he is about 39 now) played in that nintendo tournament and won back in like 1991, and has his nintendo world champ cartridge (grey edition) at his home. he says that it is worth about 8,000 dollars, but he would never sell it.
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got the power-up and won the tournament
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i would sell a videogame worth 8000$ in a heartbeat
do you grow feelings towards a cartdridge??
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I would too but if you're a HARDCORE VIDEO GAME COLLECTOR I would think that already owning it would be a lot better than shelling out $8000 yourself.
Plus idk considering he won it it would be a lot more sentimental than if someone just bought one. I could see wanting to keep it.
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i'd take a pic of me and the cartdridge and then make a plate that says "yeah, i won the competition"
and then sell the actual cart for monnies
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For that much money, I could probably purchase an NES and about 500 full-length games. I understand the guy's a collector and all, but why spend so much money on a game you'd only end up playing for no more than six minutes anyway?
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I understand the guy's a collector and all, but why spend so much money on a game you'd only end up playing for no more than six minutes anyway?
You answered your own question in this sentence. He's a collector. He's not going to be playing it anyway most likely.