Rare Video Games You Might Own & Are Worth Lots of $$$

I was researching some upcoming video games and stumbled upon a rare video games page on Amazon. It got my attention because of Final Fantasy VII being the first one on the page with a price tag of $199.99! When I clicked on the link, it goes even further than that as the highest price FFVII is being sold on Amazon is $1300.

I then decided to dig a little more into this “rare video games” collector market… And just to name a few as I am pretty sure the list go way further than that, here are some of the rare video games:

• 1990 Nintendo World Championships: Gold Edition NES cartridge (NTSC-U): This NES game was a Nintendo Power contest prize, promoting the famous Los Angeles Nintendo tournament popularized by the film The Wizard. 26 copies were created and given to lucky winners. The estimated value of this rare video game is $10,000+.

• Kizuna Encounter, NEO GEO cartridge (PAL): This is an interesting rare game because versions other than the PAL version are quite common. It is estimated that 12 exist in all. Recently, one of these rare video games sold for $13,500. Only 5 copies are known to have surfaced in the market.

• 1990 Nintendo World Championships: Tournament NES cartridge (NTSC-U): This game is identical to the above mentioned game, yet it was a gift to the 90 finalists of the competition. This rare video game is worth $4,000+.

• Pepsi Invaders, Atari 2600 cartridge (NTSC-U): This was a promotional game created by Coca Cola to celebrate its trouncing of Pepsi in the early 80s. 125 of these rare video games exist, and are valued at $1,200+.

• Bangai-O: Prize Edition, Sega Dreamcast CD (NTSC-J): This game was given out to winners of a Japanese tournament. Only 5 copies exist, so it is difficult to value the game, but it is worth over $1,000.

• Stadium Events, NES cartridge (NTSC-U): This is a relatively well-known rare title by anyone that has investigating game collecting. There are 2000 copies of this game. It was released, recalled, and re-released as “World Class Track Meet” with the Power Pad. It is valued at over $1000.

• Air Raid, Atari 2600 cartridge (NTSC-U): This $3500 game is known for having very limited release numbers and an insane looking blue cartridge with a handle.

• Virtual Bowling/SD Gundam Dimension War Virtual Boy cartridges (NTSC-J): These are equally rare video games and are from the fallen Virtual Boy system. They are valued at over $1,000 each.

• Atlantis II, Atari 2600 cartridge (NTSC-U): This game is rare because it was never officially release. This was a more difficult follow-up to a competition featuring “Atlantis,” because people did too well at the competition. It is extremely rare and worth $1,000.

• Metal Slug, NEO GEO cartridge (NTSC-U): Most of my friends thing that Metal Slug is the defining game of NEO GEO. It is so fun and so quirky. It is obviously still popular, since it will cost you around $1,000 to get it.

Here is an interesting source about the rare video games industry: Racketboy.com is an independent video game site that caters to the old-school console gamer and their unique gaming lifestyles so if you are interested to find out more about rare video games, check them out.

The cool part is that I actually own a FFVII video game, factory sealed… I was going to sell it on Ebay some years ago but never got around to list it. Do you think you might have some rare video games laying around the house?