Nintendo is the oldest intact video game company in existence. For as many years as it has been producing video games, some of those games have gotten to the point where they have become rare products. These games can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. Of all the other types of consoles, Nintendo also has many of the top contenders for the most expensive games overall.
The featured games will be Nintendo games that sold for the highest value at auctions. Each game will only be mentioned once. Many of the same games sold for similar market values.
10/10 Final Fantasy III ($96,000)
On the Heritage Auctions website, a copy of Final Fantasy III sold for $96,000. This copy was rated by WATA Games with a score of 9.4 out of 10. What that means is that the game box was in very good condition. WATA gave the label an A+ rating, which is the second highest rating after A++.
The lowest score for a stamp is C, which means the stamp is damaged or torn. This game in this state is extremely rare. This game is also well loved and some people’s favorite Final Fantasy, which adds to its great value for money.
9/10 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past ($96,000)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past sold for $96,000 on the Heritage Auctions website. It has an extremely rare stamp score which makes it so valuable. The game gets a sealed WATA 9.2 A+ rating. It also has additional factors that add to its rarity, such as the fact that this is one of the only copies known to be above the 9.0 WATA rating.
This is the third game in the series, so having been released a while back in 1992 adds value to the game. This is a piece that should only increase in value over time if kept in this condition.
8/10 vs. ($150,000)
Contra had a total sale price of $150,000 on the Heritage Auctions website. Contra earned a WATA score of 9.8 A+. There was only one other copy that was known to be almost as rare as this variant. It came from what is known as the Carolina Convention.
That version of Contra has a sealed WATA 9.6 A++ rating, so only .2 points less than this one. This game from 1988 is one of the most classic side-scrolling shooters. Many people are also not sure if this could be the only copy of a version of Contra with a rating of 9.8.
7/10 Super Mario Bros. 3 ($156,000)
Super Mario Bros. 3 sold at auction for a total of $156,000 on the Heritage Auctions website. The game has a sealed WATA score of 9.2 A+ in its rarity. What makes it stand out is the kind of variant it is. If people look at his left hand, they’ll see it’s under “BROS”. text in the box. Most copies contain that word between Mario’s hat and the “RIO” in Mario’s text.
This could also be one of the highest WATA scoring copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 found in this variant form, as none have gone through other auction houses.
6/10 Final Fantasy ($204,000)
The Heritage Auctions website sold a copy of Final Fantasy for $204,000. It has a sealed WATA 9.8 A++ rating. This is probably the most pristine copy of Final Fantasy in existence. Even the company that sold it has some trouble figuring out why it was a 9.8 and not a 10 on the WATA scale, as the game seems frozen in time.
As the first Final Fantasy to come out with a release date of 1990 it takes this game back in time. This increases its rarity and causes more people to want to be able to get this piece.
5/10 Mike Tyson’s tee shot ($312,000)
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out sold at Heritage Auctions for $312,000. In that same year, in April 2021, a Mike Tyson Punch-Out was sold with a 9.6 A++ WATA rating, and nobody expected that there would be another copy as rare as this one. Then not long after, in October 2021, this sealed copy WATA 9.8 A++ was revealed and sold.
This copy doesn’t look like a game that was made in 1987. It looks like it was made yesterday. Whoever owned this game did a great job of preserving it and made quite a bit of money out of it.
4/10 Super Mario World ($360,000)
Heritage Auctions sold the popular Super Mario World on July 9, 2021. The game has a sealed WATA 9.4 A+ rating. The reason this specific version, known as the non-Player’s Choice copy, is so rare is that every Super Nintendo came with a loose cart of this game.
According to many collectors, finding any kind of sealed version of this game is extremely rare. The importance of this game also added to its value, as it provided something that felt original to the Mario series.
3/10 The Legend of Zelda ($870,000)
The Legend of Zelda sold at the Heritage auction for $870,000. The WATA score was at a sealed WATA 9.0 A. This may not sound like too high of a score, but for a variant so old that it was only available for two months, this is phenomenally rare.
This is a Non Rev-A cartridge. That means this cartridge has 5 screws instead of 3. There is a variant of the game that is known to be rarer than this copy. It is a variant that has a “NES R” rating instead of the “NES TM” rating that this box has. The thing is, most collectors only believe that one copy of “NES R” still exists. However, this hasn’t been tested, so it’s up in the air, making this probably the oldest version of the best-preserved game available.
2/10 Super Mario 64 ($1.56 million)
The Heritage Auctions website sold Super Mario 64 for $1.56 million at auction. The game has an immaculate WATA 9.8 A++ sealed score. That’s just two points away from being a perfect score, and to the untrained eye, it looks like an untouched version of the game.
Part of the reason the game sold so well is because of what Super Mario 64 did for the 3D platformer genre. This is a piece of video game history that has been kept to its original appearance since it was first created.
1/10 Super Mario Bros ($2,000,000)
This is one of the few games that was sold on the Rally website that allows multiple people to invest in a game and then sell it. There was an anonymous buyer who ended up buying it for $2 million. This was something that investors who originally owned the game had to vote on. Some of the investors, 25% of them, voted against selling the game, but with majority rule, the game was eventually sold.
This Super Mario Bros. is a rare variant of the game with a sealed WATA rating of 9.8 A+. The game has a lot of history on how it revolutionized the side-scrolling platformer genre. It is also one of the first variants of the game available.
