The title may sound odd, but I plan on doing a list of NES titles that you could have easily have bought and may find lying around the house.  THIS list is for the crazy stuff, the stuff that you probably don't have a high chance of just stumbling across.

The prices I am pulling are guesstimates.  Many of these titles do not pop up often, some only coming up once a year at best, some versions never.  Some can be new, while other never had a box to speak of to make it complete or new.

So without further ado, lets begin with NUMBER ELEVEN!

11.  Honey Peach


Release Date: 1990
Publisher: Sachen
Developer: Sachen

Sachen games were pretty plentiful.  You wouldn't have heard of them as they were primarily Taiwan based, they released dozens of games, all rip offs or just terrible games, and only a handful making it to the states. I literally can't list anything else they have done that truly matters as most of the titles were not released in America, thus we were spared 'Worm Visitor'.

Yes, Worm Visitor is a really poor Frogger clone.

You can probably surmise from the title that this game is up to something special.  Is it a Harvest Moon style game were you grow peaches and other fruits?  Does the character get special power ups from eating them?  So much wishing, so little to do with what it is about.  The saddest version of the story is that it is an adult game.  Yes, 8 bit pixelated (that word is not coming up on my spell check.) nudity.  This was yet another tired strip poker game for people who seriously had nothing better to do or cheaper way to go.  A good ole rock- paper- scissors throwdown (or as we call it, quartz-parchment-shears) with nes 8 bit girls playing.  I can not stress this enough that this was 8 bit.  Sure it looked better than the Atari, but really. . . you play, they strip, you get a code, there are six girls.  As you can imagine it probably gets old pretty quick if not already in this sentence.

However, as with a good deal of unlicensed games that feature nudity, they weren't sold in the general Mom and Pop's video game store, thus making it difficult to get.  They did however release quite a few of them, keeping it lower on the list than the others.

Collectors Value
Cart 500
Complete 800
New N/A

10.  Little Samson

Release Date: November 1992
Publisher: Taito
Developer: Tekeru

Video games have transitioned a lot.  There is always games that everyone else wants to copy the success of.  During the NES days, it was platformers.  Mario, Sonic, Adventure Island, Mega Man, all big franchises that made the companies millions.  Taito needed that hit.  Apparently Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble wasn't enough, but to be fair, a solid platformer was sorely needed.  This was one of the few games on this list you might have been able to get in the store, yet obscure enough to it still being highly unlikely.

The designer Shinichi Yoshimoto worked on the original Strider game for the arcades, a solid hit for Capcom in the arcades before Street Fighter 2.   The design work shows as the game has been well reviewed and enjoyed, despite being unknown.

So here's the plot, during a bad thunderstorm, an evil prince is awoken having been sealed away.  No reason or questioning., he's evil, it's Nintendo, deal with it.  Moving on.  The king summons four heroes to fight against the newly risen evil.  K.O. the mouse, Gamm the Golem, Kikira the Dragon, and the title character, Little Samson.  Much like 'Legacy of the Wizard' and 'Donkey Kong 64', each character has their own skill you have to use on various levels to move on.  Interestingly enough, the story has no dialogue in the game, it is all told in cutscenes much the same way Sonic games on the genesis were told using facial expressions and without narration.

What was supposed to be a huge platforming success, is virtually unheard of anymore. It's a shame because it looks like it would have been a lot of fun.

Collectors Value
Cart 650
Complete 1800
New N/A

9. Flintstones Surprise Dino Peak

Release Date: August 1994
Publisher: Taito
Developer: Konami

Meet the Flintstones!  The series now owned by Seth MacFarland, was one of the biggest hits on television and a weird cereal to boot.  It's games left something to be desired.  The first game was The Rescue of Dino and Hoppy.  It's easy to find and not worth much which means that most people wont know if they have a rare gem or a worthless game if they don't know the difference.  What made the second game worth so much?  Was it fantastic?  Nope, it wasn't released in stores, instead, this game was only released at the local blockbusters for rental.  You are going to see that a lot in rare games on these lists.

You switch between Fred and Barney as you search for missing Pebbles.  Not the stones, the baby.  Rock puns. . .Fred is stronger using a club, while Barney uses a long range slingshot attack and can climb up skinny poles being lighter than Fred.  The final boss is a flame breathing dinosaur with a punk rock hair do. They apparently has the kids and has control over the Lava trapping them.  Not making any of this up.  After defeating him and stopping the Lava, the kids become angry because they were going to roast marshmallows over the lava and are now upset at their fathers, leading Fred to exclaim, "Boy I feel foolish!".  Right. . .shutting off the lava was the only part that didn't make any sense. . .ah Nintendo games. . .

Released late in the consoles life (seriously, 1994?  Super Mario World came out 1990!) the game was virtually unknown and then as usual sold in the 9.99 bin to be forgotten.

Collectors Value
Cart 650-1000
Complete N/A
New N/A

8. Peek-a-Boo Poker, Hot Slots, Bubble Bath Babes

Yes, I'm combining these three, these three fabled Panesian games.  Where the Honey Peach is unknown, these gems went into a craze during the rise of the NES roms.  So many tales told of these rarities and the difficulties of finding them.  Most collectors own them with a show of pride on their wall due to the rate they continue to pop up online.  They are also pretty darn terrible. Sold without the Nintendo seal of quality(which really only meant that you followed their guideline and paid them, not that it was a good game), they were bootlegged carts sold through mail order in Japan, but released by another Taiwanese company called, you guessed it, Panesian.

Peek-a-Boo Poker was a poker game, Hot Slots a slot game and Bubble Bath Babes a bizarre tetris style game.  I'm really working here aren't I?  Only interesting thing to note is that Bubble Bath Babes had two releases, one regular, and one with the nudity removed and re-titled as 'Mermaids of Atlantis'.  Well that, and one of the other games developers, C&E, had one note worthy game, Beggar Prince for the Sega Genesis.

The more you know. . .

Collectors Value
Cart 900-1100
Complete 1200-1500
New N/A

7. Zelda Test Cartridge

Released: N/A
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo

In order to keep broken consoles working quicker, various repair technicians were spread throughout the country.  These certified reps were given test carts and tester systems, they would use one cart to test a pad or a controller and find what was wrong, and a test cart to test a system so that repairs and technical support could be offered locally.  However with the myriad of video game collectors, it's just another difficult to find version of a game.

The only difference is it is featured in a yellow cart rather than a gold or grey cart.  That's it.  It pops up almost never due to many of them being destroyed as most of these carts were once the new consoles were available.  No box or case was made for it so this is a cart only game.

Collectors Value
Cart 1000-1200
Complete N/A
New N/A

6.  Cheetahmen 2

Release date: N/A
Publisher: Active Enterprises
Developer: Active Enterprises

So there was this game. . .Action 52.  Anyone who watched the angry video game nerd (so much win) has to have seen the episode where he tries all the games on it.  Many of the games were crude, and a few didn't even work.  However it was all an elaborate ruse to get sales up to show off it's game, Cheetahmen.

There they are, the average consumer at the store.  They see the game and think, "Jimmeny wilikers!  What a deal!  52 games on just ONE dang gum cart?  That's way better than getting only one game, and I would be saving money at just under a dollar a game!  Jeepers, I would be a fool NOT to buy this game!" or so the marketing division, enacted using puppets and a crude understanding of the human language, told themselves. I believe this to be true thanks to the time period, and Cheetahmen.  Cheetahmen was a game trying to capture on the success of animal humanoids fighting villains.  I'm sure there was one or two in the 1990's right?  Ninja Turtles, Street Sharks, Street Frogs, Thundercats and Tiger Sharks. No there weren't any of these things then (gotta work on my sarcasm font).

So here's the skinny, a mad scientist, Dr. Morbis, kills a mother cheetah and then takes baby cheetah's and genetically modifies them to be part of his army.  Now that we have sufficiently painted him as an evil with no way to save him, we just need for the unexpected twist of his own creations turning on him.  Really?  After all he did for you, killing your mom and turning you into a part of his super powered army.  The three characters were, Hercules, Aries, and Apollo as all the famous painters were taken and philosophers might not have been cool enough.

Although that does sound pretty wicked.  "Horus!  Back up Diogenes!"

The first game was released on the Action 52.  However, the SECOND game was planned but never released.  So this wasn't one you could just find anywhere in particular.  So how did it get into circulation?  Well in 1996 a famous explorer, uncovered ancient incan ruins, revealed a secret plot to overthrow the junior baseball league of america.  Sorry, the actual version is a bit boring.  Someone bought a warehouse filled with games, including Cheetahmen 2, then just auctioned them off.  Only 1500 games were sold at auction.

Be warned, if you go out looking for this game, they did a reproduction of it as a kickstarter project.  You'll see complete games for around 2-300.  However original titles are far more expensive.  However if you are just the kind of person who HAS to own that game, go crazy.

Collectors Value
Cart 1200
Complete 1800
New 3500

5. Myriad 6-in-1

Hey look!  Another great buy of multiple games on one cart!  You see those guys selling 12,000 games in a plug and play controller?  We always assume having more is better, when the reverse is generally true.  Then again, these turned out to be worth a lot so perhaps the last laugh is on us.

Caltron 6-1 was one of many multicarts published in 1992 (just wait, I'm going somewhere with this. . .) released by Caltron (well yes. . .) for the NES, it was pretty terrible with every game being a quick slap together, and yes, it was unlicensed.  Shocker.  The game itself was pretty rare to begin with, as they didn't sell too many of them.  Shortly after, the business went south, and another company bought the games.  Can you guess what the name of that company was based on the clues?

So they released the game, slapping a quick sticker over the Myriad title with a plain white cover and printed text.  It was so bad you can still see the sticker underneath around the edges, and the opening of the game when started, still says 'Caltron 6-in-1'.  Hilariously, they went out of business as well.  With less than 100 copies of the game released, it is the rarest unlicensed game on the market.

Collectors Value
Cart 1200
Complete 4000
New 5500

4. Family Fun Fitness Stadium Events

Now we are getting to the fun ones.  Only a few more to go!  So, around 2009, people started going crazy for NES consoles when a ebay seller got 13,000 dollars for one online.  For months people believed that the old NES console was worth a ton of money, so much that there is an episode of Storage Wars where some dude thought they would get at least 5000 dollars for it after reading the 001 serial number on the back. Those of us who collect, just remember a triple title for the Nintendo that was the true cause of the price craze.

So you see, Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet was, as well all probably know, a triple title given free with the NES Fitness System package.  You run on the pad using by banging your hands on the pad because trying to run that fast normally is tiring and you just want to beat the fast cheetah guy at the end.  However, a company we know as Bandai, first released a Power Pad game called "Family Fun Fitness Stadium Events".  It was out for only a short time on the east coast.  Didn't sell at first, I mean, who buys a console to workout in the 1980s? Nintendo bought the game rights and then pulled the games from the market so they could have a quick game to sell with their Power Pad.  With so few released, in so small an area, with so few sold, you can see that just finding a game on it's own is astronomically difficult.  The person who sold the Nintendo had several BOXED COMPLETE games, one of them being that game.  THAT is what everyone was fighting for.

It is the rarest licensed release on the market.  Even the European PAL version is worth a good deal, however it is less rare, thus goes for a little less, but still, take a look at the numbers!

Collectors value
Cart 5000
Complete 8000
New 25,000

3/2. Nintendo World Champ Grey/ Nintendo World Champ Gold

The holy grail of the game collecting world.  Nintendo World Championship Gold, and Grey.  The titles are considered the crème de la crème (that's french for 'wow you have that cart?!') of the game collecting community, regardless of what system you collect.

Anyone who watched 'The Wizard' knows how ridiculous the game event in the movie really is.  You don't get points for using a warp whistle or finding a secret areas.  You get it for staying in the air and hitting the enemies in succession.  Dying actually is a better strategy, but I will come to that in a moment..  Back in the day before Pokemon, Nintendo would hold crazy game events, and one of them, in 1990, was the Nintendo World Championship.

There were three age categories and you had to score a minimum of 200,000 to qualify.  Once you did, you moved on to the World Finals in Universal Studios.  There they played on the specialized cart designed for the contest. They would play Super Mario Bros until they got 50 coins, then one custom level of Rad Racer, and then they would play Tetris as long as possible within a time limit.  The points would then be mulitiplied giving you your score.

This was how it was added up:

(Super Mario Bros. score) + (Rad Racer score x 10) + (Tetris score x 25) = final score.

The actual strategies employed were actually pretty brilliant.  The idea was that moving faster would get you a better score.  As I stated before, points were not determined by secrets. Many contestants simply ran around gathering coins but beat up enemies to get more points.  The most common tactic was using the warp pipe to gather coins and moving to the next level.  However dying proved to be a faster method, as you keep your coins and lose nothing by dying.  After all, you had 99 lives in Mario, and a full timer in Rad Racer.  You really couldn't die permanently in those two.  You could in the last game however, in Tetris, by stacking lines to the very top, ending your session and waiting for the timer to run out.  Thor Aackerlund is still one of the high score winners by gathering the coins, then dying, and gathering them again, scoring over 4,000,000 points!

The winners would receive a gold or grey cartridge of the game they just played along with fabulous other prizes like a 10,000 dollar savings bond (most of the contestants were under 18 mind you) new 1990 Geo Metro Convertible(and yet), a 40" rear-projection TV, and a gold painted Mario trophy(real gold might have posed a problem but would have been really cool to see Indiana Jones style).  the Second place got a silver Mario trophy.

We don't care about any of that however.  We care about the 116 carts made for the competition.  90 gray, 26 gold.  Each one has a unique number making it easy to track and to authenticate it.  It had the games and the format from the competition, only you can adjust the DIP switches to change up how you want to play the game as well.

A collector owns it and makes reproductions for others to try the game out on their own.  The cost for the original game is astronomical.  Grey copies are more readily available and still sell from as little as 5000, to more than 8000.  A gold has sold for no less than 15,000.  Crazy thing is, NOT ALL OF THEM HAVE BEEN LOCATED.  Take the story of an eBay bidder who's son died in the military.  They were just selling the games and took two big pictures. Collectors then noticed a hidden gold cart among them, leaping the bidding up to over 24,000.  There is speculation about the auction itself, but this is one of those wonderful 'hidden' gold we collectors love to imagine.  Coming across an old attic, opening it up and there is one hidden there covered in dust.  Still hiding, waiting to be found. . .

Collectors Value
Cart 18,000
Complete N/A
New N/A

1.  Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991

Wait, there is a game more valuable than the Holy Grail of gaming?!  Actually, yes there is.  Only recently was the throne upended when this cart was discovered in 2006 by the one of the world's luckiest jerks.  The game was found by Rob (the last known owner of the Genie's Lamp) Walters, at New York in 2006.  You see, they came across a garage sale and saw some nice SNES games.  The man who was selling them remains anonymous due to legal issues, having been a former Nintendo Employee.  They had a mountain of rare items in a box filled with dozens of rare carts, promo items, and more in a closet.

Now that the screaming has subsided, let's talk about this game.  The Campus Challenge was held at, you guessed it, colleges.  Running it out of 58 college campuses and spring break locations. You played on various game consoles, both the NES and the Game Boy, and could play as often as you wanted to try beating your score and getting the top prize.

This time they were flown to Disney World over New Year's weekend in January 1992 to play against one another.

The event gave each player a time limit to play.
Collect 25 coins in Super Mario Bros. 3.
Get 100,000 points in a custom version of Pin*Bot
Go as long as you can in Dr. Mario

The score was totaled using the following formula:
(Super Mario Bros. 3 score x 10) + (PinBot score) + (Dr. Mario score x 100)= total score

The final round pitted Steven Lucas who won with a score of 2,394,130 against Matt Sekelsky.  I don't know how, I wasn't there.

The cart was never given out, and they were all supposed to have been destroyed. However people forget about the pack rats who just sorta squirrel things away for no good reason. There is only one known pack rat whose name shall never be known, who still had an original copy of the 1991 Campus Challenge cartridge in existence.

Collectors Value
With only one game, it makes it harder to classify.   The game sold for $14,000 in July 2009. After 3 months, the game was resold on eBay for $20,100.

So that's it!  Those for the moment are the rarest most expensive titles that are currently known in collecting circles. If you have one, show it with pride if you didn't realize it was worth anything.  We will be doing another one on a regular basis and show off unknown games.  Think your game is worth something? Write in, take a picture, bring it by and let us tell you what its worth!

Til next time!  Later Gamers!