An extremely rare Nintendo game is expected to fetch
thousands of dollars in an eBay auction.
Only 116 copies of Nintendo World Championships were
ever made, as part of a special event in 1990.
The first bid came in at $4,999 (£3,000), but the game
is likely to fetch more, one Nintendo expert said.
Unfortunately for collectors, the cartridge is in poor
condition - with a ripped label and "Mario" written on it
in ballpoint pen.
"This is quite unfortunate but happened many decades
ago," explained the seller in his description of the
"super-rare" item, adding that whoever wrote on the
label did not have "a clue what they actually had".
Scratched Ferrari
Created for the Nintendo Entertainment System - better
known as NES - Nintendo World Championships was
designed for a competition, and never went on general
sale.
The game features shortened versions of three classics
- Super Mario, Tetris and Rad Racer.
Competition entrants were given six minutes to amass
points on the games, with whoever came top winning a
trophy, a trip to Universal Studios and various other
prizes. A detailed history of the contest and its winners
can be found on Wikipedia .
Each of the 90 semi-finalists was given a grey cartridge
like the one now up for auction.
Rarer still are the "golden" cartridges of the same game,
sent out as part of a separate competition by Nintendo
Power magazine.
Genuine copies of the game are hard to come by, and
so the poor condition would not be too much of a
deterrent to keen collectors, predicted Chris Scullion ,
games editor for Computer and Video Games.
"It's like finding the rarest Ferrari but with a scratch -
you'd still buy it.
"They are considered the holy grail among Nintendo
collectors."
In 2011, the same game sold at a charity auction for
$11,000 (£6,600) - but it was in better condition.
The auction is set to end on 25 January.
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