Retro gaming in general seems as though it’s become a very expensive hobby in recent years. Games that were worth pennies in the 80s, 90s, or even early 2000s can now sell for hundreds. This unfortunate reality has also given rise to retro games selling for tens of thousands of dollars on major auction sites and elsewhere.
From a very specific copy of Super Mario Bros going for millions of dollars, to special competition cartridges that were never designed for retail, the rarest and most expensive video games are starting to match the prices people have been paying for rare comic books for years now. Let’s take a look at the 15 most impressive examples of how expensive retro games are these days.
15. Red Sea Crossing
Platform: Atari 2600
Price Range: $10,000 to $13,877
Year Sold: 2012
Discovered in 2007 by someone scanning the wares of a local garage sale, Red Sea Crossing was eventually discovered to be a very rare game indeed. Tasking players with crossing the red sea as Moses himself, dodging obstacles along the way, the Atari 2600 title in of itself isn’t that big of a deal. It’s a pretty standard game for the time, appealing to a niche Christian gamer market. Roughly 100 copies were made, and the guy who made the game didn’t seem to care what happened to them after that.
Flash forward to near the end of the 2000s, and a copy of Red Sea Crossing has been discovered. Only two copies are known to exist as of this writing, with one of those copies fetching an impressive $10,000 at auction.
14. Air Raid
Platform: Atari 2600
Price Range: $3,000 to $33,343
Year Sold: Various
Air Raid is another ultra-rare Atari 2600 release. Only fourteen or so copies are known to exist, with even fewer of those being CIB (complete in box).
A simple shoot-em-up with a unique cartridge design, Air Raid saw very limited distribution by its company Men-A-Vision, who only released just the one game. Before the 1983 market crash, it seemed as though everyone was making and selling Atari games, flooding the market with so many unremarkable products, some in extremely limited runs, a few were bound to get lost in the shuffle.
Until copies of the game with the box were discovered, with the first discovered example of such selling for over 30 grand in 2010, Atari fans weren’t even sure the game was actually called Air Raid.
13. Nintendo Campus Challenge
Platform: NES
Price Range: $14,000 to $20,1000
Year Sold: Various
If you’re planning to devote your life to collecting every NES cartridge that ever officially existed, we’ve got some bad news for you. Another example of the competition cartridges that Nintendo made for select events in which players went head-to-head in such games as Super Mario Bros 3, Nintendo Campus Challenge has just one existing copy that anyone is aware of. That’s right. Just one. Sold twice in the 2000s, the game hasn’t been heard from since.
There’s also little hope that another copy is going to be found anytime soon. The only reason why one exists at all is because a Nintendo employee kept it after all copies were ordered destroyed at the end of the 1991 competition.
As for what you’ll get for a cool $20K, demo versions of Super Mario Bros 3, PinBot, and Dr. Mario. For 20 grand, you might expect a little more.
12. Stadium Events
Platform: NES
Price Range: $2,600 to $41,300
Year Sold: Various
Another instance in which the version of the game in question is what really matters here. Stadium Events began its life as a game for an NES accessory that was published by Bandai. Nintendo would soon buy the rights to the fitness mat and game, rebranding everything but keeping the exact same game, and ordering all of Bandai’s original copies, of which approximately 200 were sold, to be destroyed.
While we don’t know exactly how many copies are out there, a CIB edition of the game has made its seller over $40,000 at auction. Collectors estimate that there might be as many as 20 copies of this game out there. The demand among these individuals has been so high that someone actually paid $10,000 for the box alone.
11. Nintendo World Championships 1990 (Grey/Gold)
Platform: NES
Price Range: $8,000 to $40,000+
Year Sold: Various
Another competition cartridge, Nintendo World Championships 1990 represents an extraordinary moment in time for Nintendo. The company had become so powerful over just a few years, they were able to start the 90s with a 30-city tournament of the best NES players around. Competitors had to come up with the best high score in just six minutes with three demo versions of popular Nintendo games, Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer, and Tetris.
Those who won in each age bracket received a grey copy of the Nintendo World Championships 1990, meaning around 90 were known to exist. That number has dropped significantly over the years, with grey editions selling for tens of thousands of dollars.
The gold version is even rarer, as it was a prize from a Nintendo Power contest. A gold copy of Nintendo World Championships 1990 can also go for 5-digit figures, with a near mint copy being valued at $160,000+.
10. Contra
Platform: NES
Price Range: $150,000+
Year Sold: 2021
Contra is certainly not a difficult game to track down. The NES classic established the run-and-gun formula like no one else ever had. Inspiring numerous sequels and a franchise that is still among Konami’s most beloved to this day, Contra is still one of the best NES games ever made.
It’s almost surreal to remember how easy it was to get your hands on this box just 30 years ago. However, if you’re a hardcore collector, and you’ve got a pristine edition of the game on hand, you might just be sitting on a goldmine.
Heritage Auctions, one of the most respected auctioneers of collectibles, claims the odds of having such a copy are slim. That’s likely why a near-mint copy of Contra in its original box sold for roughly $150,000 in 2021. Despite that huge figure, Contra isn’t even the most expensive NES game of all time — and not by a long shot.
9. Twisted Metal
Platform: PlayStation
Price Range: $156,000
Year Sold: 2021
While Heritage Auctions has often come under criticism for its high prices and grading guidelines, there’s no doubt they’ve become a go-to for collectors who want the most valuable games currently available. Twisted Metal, which has been seeing renewed interest with its new Peacock series, is considered rare because its packaging would soon be abandoned by Sony.
The ridged longbox style of casing was standard with the first run of Sony PlayStation games. These relatively large boxes were not particularly popular at the time, but their extreme scarcity today makes games like the car combat classic some of the most sought-after PS1 collectibles on the planet. Later editions of the original Twisted Metal go for significantly less, with the Greatest Hits version selling for about $45.
8. Super Mario Bros 3
Platform: NES
Price Range: $156,000+
Year Sold: 2020
Why is one of the best-selling NES games in history selling for over $100,000? It’s as simple as the placement of the word “BROS” on a boxed copy of Super Mario Bros 3. The text on this particular edition of the game overlaps Mario’s hand a bit. If you compare this version to other copies, you’ll find that most versions put the word “BROS” just above Mario’s hat.
“That’s really it?” you might be asking. That’s really it. Some of the most valuable collectibles in popular culture achieve their rarity simply because there was a minor mistake in the production process. In the specific context of Super Mario Bros 3, this simple error was enough to raise the value of the game in its original box by over $150,000.
7. Final Fantasy
Platform: NES
Price Range: $200,000+
Year Sold: 2021
If you want to play the original JRPG classic Final Fantasy, the first in one of the greatest video game franchises of all time, there’s a bunch of different ways to do just that. None of those other options cost roughly as much as a home in certain parts of the United States, though.
Going for approximately $204,000 at auction in 2021 (some people went really hard on pandemic depression spending), there’s nothing special about this particular copy of Final Fantasy. Its sole distinguishing trait is simply that it exists in the best possible condition you’re likely to find anywhere. The box and game almost look as though they were purchased just a little while ago. If you want a mint CIB copy of Final Fantasy, you may need to save up.
6. Resident Evil
Platform: PlayStation
Price Range: $260,000+
Year Sold: 2021
Resident Evil changed video games forever, helped the PlayStation dominate the generation’s console wars (despite also being on the Saturn), and is still producing titles to this day. All of that must have meant something very real to the individual who paid $264,000 for a copy of the game in the original, extremely rare ridged longbox.
It’s believed that there are less than ten sealed editions of Resident Evil on PlayStation in the world, and the overall spectacular condition of this example in particular was seemingly enough to fetch such a massive price at auction.
There’s certainly an element of historical value to this decades-old copy of the original Resident Evil. The ridged longbox packaging shows Sony still in the stage of figuring out what worked best for their new console.
5. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out
Platform: NES
Price Range: $300,000+
Year Sold: 2021
Returning once again to the seemingly distant shores of all the questionable decisions we made during the 2021 portion of the pandemic, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out sold for an extraordinary sum. It was graded as a WATA 9.8 A++ copy, which means this CIB copy is about the best condition you could hope to find for a 35+ year old NES game.
The condition of these games is naturally important to collectors. While a variety of factors influenced the prices people were willing to pay for retro games at this moment in time, there’s no doubt that one of the biggest factors is how hard it is to find pristine editions. Time and other elements have made these items rarer than some comic books.
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out is easy to get your hands on, but not like this.
4. Sonic the Hedgehog
Platform: Sega Genesis
Price Range: $400,000+
Year Sold: 2021
Another pristine, exceedingly rare copy of a classic video game that went for arguably too much money in 2021.
Sonic the Hedgehog’s shocking bidding war, which began at $75,000, was so wild that even Sonic creator Yuji Naka commented. There’s no question however that people were willing to pay a lot for a copy of the 1991 Sega Genesis smash that perhaps reminded them of a birthday or Christmas from an earlier and better time. The market will reflect just how intensely someone will follow their desire to have the best possible copy of one of their favorite games.
Sonic the Hedgehog CIB isn’t going for nearly as much these days, although often still sells for prices close to what the game demanded in its prime. We’ve still got a few more examples of the rarest and most expensive retro games to consider, but it remains the most expensive Sega game of all time.
3. The Legend of Zelda
Platform: NES
Price Range: $800,000+
Year Sold: 2021
The fact that The Legend of Zelda sold for close to one million dollars in that surreal summer of 2021 seems a bit excessive.
In fairness, this is not just a normal copy of the NES heavyweight, but a variant that existed for just two short months in 1987. Five screws instead of three makes this particular edition one of the rarest video games in history, and as such iIt’s entirely possible that this will be the only copy of this variant on the planet.
That’s a big deal to some retro collectors. Indeed, it was important enough that someone paid an amount of money that anyone could conceivably use to build a massive game library. It’s about quality and not quantity to some of the most dedicated, though the price leap from the prior entry is hard to overlook with a cynical eye.
2. Super Mario 64
Platform: Nintendo 64
Price Range: $1.5 million+
Year Sold: 2021
A million-and-a-half dollars for a WATA 9.8 A++ sealed copy of Super Mario 64 is a lot of money. Selling for a little less than that just 25 years ago, Super Mario 64 is one of the pillars of the lengths an individual will go for a flawless or near-flawless copy of an iconic and beloved video game.
Super Mario 64 proved the Nintendo 64 could deliver an extraordinary game. Its success and influence are still being felt to this day. How much of a premium are you willing to accept on having a physical representation of everything this legendary game might mean to you?
For some, there was seemingly no limit to what they were willing to pay in the summer of 2021. Most of us will never, ever see the $1.56 million someone paid for Super Mario 64, but auction houses saw even more than that for old Nintendo games in 2021.
1. Super Mario Bros
Platform: NES
Price Range: $2 million
Year Sold: 2021
It’s easy to appreciate the collectible status of a factory sealed copy of Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Yet $2 million seems to most of us like an unfathomable amount of money to pay for a Super Mario Bros that looks as though it just rolled off the factory line. Some have said this is the best-looking CIB edition of a game this old that has ever been discovered. There might be some truth to that.
At one time in history, Super Mario Bros powered a dramatic rise for Nintendo and a full-scale comeback for the video game industry that continues to this day. This is a game that was once dismissed as a mere fad, but hundreds of games later proves that wasn’t quite accurate. The prices some were willing to pay in 2020 and 2021, and are still willing to pay now, reflect just how far the industry has come from such sentiments.
This is a record unlikely to be broken, even if the authenticity of the sale has come under some scrutiny with the auction house and grading service responsible being accused of artificially inflating the price.
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