R1.1 million for rare game Nintendo World Championship

A seller on eBay has just secured a US$99,902 (approximately R1,110,120) bid for a very rare NES cartridge – Nintendo World Championship.

This makes it the most expensive game ever sold, beating the previous record holder, a sealed NTSC version of NES Stadium Events, which sold for $75,000.

As you can see in the picture below, the cart isn’t even in great condition, with a faded and torn label.

NES Nintendo World Championship Cart

The Nintendo World Championship game was produced as part of a Nintendo competition of the same name held in 1990 across the US. In the competition, competitors had 6 minutes 21 seconds to complete a customised mixture of Mario, Rad Racer, and Tetris.

Only 116 cartridges were manufactured. 90 of them were grey versions which were given to the tournament’s 90 finalists, and 26 special gold editions were given away as prizes in a Nintendo Power magazine contest.

The grey edition has a unique identifier making it difficult to counterfeit, while the gold edition has no such identifier. Both versions come equipped with a DIP switch to set the time limit of the game.

On 25 January, another cartridge went on auction on eBay – this one in much better condition. At the time of writing, it’s got a bid of $11,000 (approximately R122,233) so if you’ve got some spare change, why not pick up this collectible?