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Games Entertainment

Top Ten Most Collectible Video Games 583

Posted by michael from the duck-hunt dept.
Obiwan Kenobi writes "Gamespy has a new article up on the Top Ten All Time Rarest Video Games. This wacky list includes such gems as Chase the Chuck Wagon and Bubble Bath Babes, the only NES game with nudity (square nipples, anyone?). Makes me wonder what the top ten rarest PC games are..."
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Top Ten Most Collectible Video Games More

Top Ten Most Collectible Video Games

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  • Original Castle Wolfenstein (Score:4, Redundant)

    by Kymermosst ( 33885 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:39PM (#4909943) Journal
    The original 2-D Castle Wolfenstein, and others from the 8-bit famed Apple/Commodore/Atari machines.

    The Zork series on 5 1/4 disks.

    Original Ultima series games.

    Those are the true collectables.

    (first post?)
    • Or what about the old Adventure series on cassette tape? You'd start the tape, then go have dinner waiting for the game to load!
      • i found out that if you hit play and hold down fast forward a little, you would almost double the loading time. ;-)

        i had the first "Adventure" game on my atari and also on my XT. only on the XT the name was changed to "adventur" (8 character filenames, heh).
    • i had/have castle wolfenstein on my atari 5400.

      never really got into the whole ultima series. i liked the sierra SGI (kings quest, heros quest, space quest, etc) games a little more.
    • I guess I am getting old.
    • There is a store in Nebraska that still has old games like this on the shelf for $10 a pop. Instruction manual and everything. They are classics, but rare, lord no.

    • M.U.L.E. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )
      I've probably got the first Zork game for Apple][ computers, back before they called it Zork I. It was simply Zork.

      I've tried a couple times to buy M.U.L.E. with the original packaging, manual, disk, etc. on eBay and see it regularly surpass $35. When accounting for inflation it's still lost some value, but I can't imagine an E.T. VCS cartridge doing better, what with 10 million or so of them disposed of. ("Just when did Earth get that second moon?")

      I've still got a stack of Apple magazines from 80-81 and a couple promotional posters, one for Sneakers and the other, IIRC, for Beer Run. Rest assured, they're safely stowed.

  • Sierra games! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:42PM (#4909961)
    Police Quest I, Kings Quest I, Space Quest I, and Leisure Suit Larry!

    Original EGA versions, not that mouse-controlled VGA shit! I'm talking about typing commands at the ] prompt.

    • Re:Sierra games! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nogoodmonkey ( 614350 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:17PM (#4910284)
      i'll never forget how long it took me to figure out the command at the end of heros quest:

      ] use candelabra

      i was only 9, i had no idea what a "candelabra" was. ;-) but i agree that these games shouldnt be overlooked. <flamebait>they were much more entertaining than the flashy fps-type games of the current generation. i guess the industry is just trying to cater to the short attention span of the current gamers.</flamebait>
    • Police Quest was so cool. Even though the story line was linear, the text command interface and real-life duties and police situations made it feel like you were in a living world.

      Also, walking in on someone in the shower in the locker room and listening to them complain was my first experience of virtual sexual harassment.

    • Re:Sierra games! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Monkelectric ( 546685 )
      You forgot "heros Quest I" later renamed to "Quest for Glory" due to a lawsuit by hasbro (which had a board game called heros quest). Rare item :)

    • Sarien is your friend.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:50PM (#4910608)
      http://sarien.sourceforge.net/

      This is not an emulator. Those old Sierra games were developed with a system called AGI. Pretty much the same data files were used on all supported systems with an AGI interpreter tweaked to run the data files. Sarien is a GENERAL AGI interpreter and works quite well. As a matter of fact, I finished Leisure Suit Larry on my Debian box last week. I also tried out but haven't seriously played Kings Quest I and Space Quest with it as well. If you still have some old IBM PC versions of these games laying around (or aren't above some abandonware digging...) then Sarien will take care of you.

      One pisser is that it only has one save game slot but there is a workaround. The saved games can be copied and renamed elsewhere allowing arbitrarily many games to be saved albeit in a PITA fashion.

      Oh yeah, If you try this be sure to get the ID database file. It is a separate download for some reason and Sarien won't correctly run most games without it.

      Cheers!

  • The games that shipped with Windows 1.0 (Score:5, Funny)

    by JJAnon ( 180699 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:44PM (#4909975)
    Oh wait, they haven't changed since then, so I guess they don't qualify as rare. Unless you are talking about the number of people who play them. :)

  • Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by docbrown42 ( 535974 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:45PM (#4909985) Homepage
    ...on cassette tape, for a TI 994a!

  • Top 10 Collectible Games? (Score:3)

    by TimeReliesOnLadyLuck ( 634991 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:45PM (#4909989) Journal
    I'll just stick to ones I know. First, Space War on the old Fairchild Channel 1 (remember that one?). Second, maybe Battle Tank??? Third, that one game where you play the colonizers, trade, and profit!

    No, not Colonization, the Civ-related game, the Commodore 64 game.

  • Great read (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mupp252 ( 263650 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:47PM (#4909999)
    I can see collecting vintage video games becoming a hobby much the same as people who collect vinyl and record players.

    Sure, you can always get the emulated version of the game or the mp3 version of the album.. but it's just not the same.

  • My favorite rare game... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:47PM (#4910005)
    My favorite rare game [the-underdogs.org] was written by a now dead transsexual [anticlockwise.com] for the Apple ][. And I am not trolling, Cytron Masters [classicgaming.com] rocked and transsexuals wrote a lot of games during the 80s! Weird but true...

  • WARNING: Noisy flash ad (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:48PM (#4910007)
    For those of you who, like me, are stupid enough to have flash enabled. I got a nice noisy flash advert popping up and screaming sound when I loaded the page. Those of you at work be warned.

  • OMG!!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Exmet Paff Daxx ( 535601 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:48PM (#4910015) Homepage Journal
    A gold NWC cartridge recently sold for $6,500! Will their value increase in the future? It seems a safe bet.
    Holy Crap!!! My brother won this in 1990 and has one of these, I just called him! He's freaking out, he always thought it was garbage (though he apparently still plays it). Does anyone have any suggestions on how to sell this thing?

    • Re:OMG!!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dr Caleb ( 121505 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:50PM (#4910031) Homepage Journal
      Does anyone have any suggestions on how to sell this thing?

      Send it over to me. I'll take care of it for you. (does evil pinky finger thing).

    • Re:OMG!!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mike Schiraldi ( 18296 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:54PM (#4910061) Homepage Journal
      If only there were some sort of Internet auction site... :)

    • Re:OMG!!! (Score:5, Informative)

      by jlower ( 174474 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:56PM (#4910083) Homepage
      Find a completed auction on eBay that did very well for the same or a similar item and emulate that auction as closely as possible.

      • Re:OMG!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 )
        better yet contact the next highest losing bidder and offer it to him for $5500.00..

        screw ebay, they just want their cut.



    • my suggestion is find who purchased it. These will have teh most value to someone who has a set or best yet all of these cartagies. e-mail the person who wrote the article, and follow the lead to who purchased it. more than likely they have teh same cash to pay for yours. Having two of a set of collector item definately raises the individual value of each.

    • Re:OMG!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NeMon'ess ( 160583 )
      The value will not increase indefinitely. Like many SNES games, as the system dies their price declines. As it becomes difficult to locate new copies the price goes up again. In time most every collector who wants a copy will acquire one and the price will decline again. Everything pre-NES was before I could ride a bike (age 5) and I don't remember them nor care about the games. The same will happen with the SNES in time. Do you think kids born in 1990 will be ebaying Contra III for a hundred dollars in ten years? I highly doubt it. Every gamer from that era probably has their copy already so there won't be much demand anymore. My personal target is a copy of Snatcher for the Sega CD for $40 or less. HEY how about that, ebay's got it for $33 and 18 hours left. I doubt it'll stay that low as most auctions end at about 55.

  • Rare.. but bad? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RealBeanDip ( 26604 )
    I read over the list at Gamespy (I know, this is slashdot, but I wanted to see the list).

    Quite frankly I didn't see a game there that looked worth playing. Is that why they're rare?

    As far as the 2600 goes, I'd have to say Pitfall and Dragster where the best there.

    Rare games for the PC: I have, in my posession, the full boxed version [with manual] of "Solo Flight" on 5 1/4" disk written by none other than Sid Meier! ... sad, I know, but true.

  • Chuckwagon is not all that rare (Score:5, Insightful)

    by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:50PM (#4910029)
    This is sort of an urban legend type thing amongst game collectors, but the cart itself isn't all that rare. Thankfully, the article even points this out:

    It is neither the rarest nor the most enjoyable Atari 2600 game


    The article isn't so much about the 10 rarest games, as it is the 10 most collectible/sought after games. And considering "Prototypes" is #2, it's not even much of a top 10 list at that :)

    Oh, and for anyone interested in that Gold NES cart - yes, it's been dumped. I know I won't be shelling out $6k+ anytime soon to play the real thing.

    • Re:Chuckwagon is not all that rare (Score:4, Interesting)

      by richlb ( 168636 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:15PM (#4910264)
      Chase The Chuckwagon is not only synonymous with hunting for rare games, it's synonymous with the Great Video Game Crash of the early 80's.

      Part of what led to the video game crash was the proliferation of poor quality, quickly produced games that were flooding the market. Chase The Chuckwagon came to typify exactly the type of game that was being rushed out to "cash in" on the video game craze. Owning it is like owning a piece of Enron stock. Not exactly "rare", but it has a story all its own.

      • Re:Chuckwagon is not all that rare (Score:5, Informative)

        by Schnapple ( 262314 ) <tomkidd&gmail,com> on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:25PM (#4910377) Homepage
        Part of what led to the video game crash was the proliferation of poor quality, quickly produced games that were flooding the market. Chase The Chuckwagon came to typify exactly the type of game that was being rushed out to "cash in" on the video game craze.
        You're right about the reasons for why the video game industry crashed. However, this particular game, due to its distribution method, low number of produced cartridges, and known ending (that many of them were destroyed) does make it rare.

        What did more to crash the industry circa 1982 was the horrible port of Pac-Man for the 2600 and of course E.T. for the 2600. In 1982 only 10 million of the 20 million 2600 systems were in active use, but Atari made 12 million Pac-Man carts, meaning they expected every single active 2600 user to buy the game, plus 2 million more (either new users or old users with new interest). It didn't work. And as for E.T., they spent $25 million to get the rights to E.T. and paid some programmer to get the game done in six weeks so they could shove it out the door. The game is literally impossible to finish and only sold 1 million of the 5 million cartridges made - most of the rest made it into a landfill in New Mexico.

        This is what killed the game industry in the early 1980's.

  • Alkabeth (Score:3)

    by nightsweat ( 604367 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:52PM (#4910033)
    Loved it on the old Apple ][+

  • darn it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by greechneb ( 574646 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:52PM (#4910040) Journal
    1. 1990 Nintendo World Championship Cartridge (Nintendo Entertainment System)

    I just sold my copy last week for $.25 at a yard sale... I thought it was funny the guy took off laughing after I took his money. ;)

  • A wise investment? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bigboote66 ( 166717 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:53PM (#4910042)
    A gold NWC cartridge recently sold for $6,500! Will their value increase in the future? It seems a safe bet.
    I doubt it. For technology items like this, the value of the collectable is function of the earning potential of buyer and the nostalgia value of the item. For example, classic cars slowly go up in value as the demographic that remembers them from their teenage years reaches the age of massive disposable income, then drop in value as the same group slowly dies off.

    With geek items like this, the half-life is even shorter. Magic The Gathering cards are already past their prime in terms of collectable value; once the people who played the NES in their youth are past the age of buying this stuff, watch the prices plummet.

    -BbT
  • if you would pay $6500.00 for that #1 on their list.. I actually played that game it sucked, and just to get your hands on one of the gold-plated ones someone paid more than the cost of a Kia Rio!
    Holy cow, I though I was wacked for wanting my home computer automated... I dont feel bad now for spending 1/2 that and actually having something I can use!
  • here [dmoz.org] (hard to find these sites, so check out the ODP listings)

  • Note that 'Collectable' don't exactly mean 'Good'. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:58PM (#4910105)
    'Chase the Chuckwagon?' WTF I would have thrown that game away with other favorites like 'Avoid the Noid' and '7-up Spot'. Seriously...

    Top Ten Games that Don't Suck and I'd still willingly pay money for:

    Doom - PC - FPS Grandaddy.
    Battlezone - 2600 or any other platform since.
    Super Mario Bros. 3 - NES, SNES - Miyamoto's best work, IMHO.
    Metroid - NES. I once saw a prototype/display cartridge at Sears Roebuck in which Samus had a heart meter instead of a power meter.
    Burgertime - Colecovision? Arcade classic, at any rate. I can still play Burgertime for hours at a time on Mame.
    Galaga - Ditto.
    Legend of Zelda - NES - Excellent game design by Miyamoto before there really was such a thing.
    ChronoTrigger - SNes - All kinds of RPG Goodness from Square.
    Sonic the Hedgehog - Genesis. The first 'Twitch' game I ever played. Sonic rocked my world.
    Excitebike - NES - One of the first games you could truly edit. My friends and I would spend hours making nasty, yet well designed tracks to race through. We went so far as to write the letter/number track parts down because the save feature never worked quite right. I always assumed it was for the floppy-endabled Famicom.
    • Doom - PC - FPS Grandaddy.
      Actually, the FPS grandaddy would have to be Wolfenstein 3D. That was a hell of a game when it came out, and created the hype for Doom. The day Doom first came out for download, network traffic all over the internet ground to a halt, and the experience people had playing Wolf3D was one of the reasons.

      • Me too!! (Score:2)

        by Pac ( 9516 )
        I still have Wolf3D installed and I play it now and then. The graphics are obviously lousy compared to newer games, but it still feels good. "I am Death Incarnate" using just a gun in any night mission is still a hell of a good game. :)

      • Actually, the FPS grandaddy would have to be Wolfenstein 3D.

        Actually, you're not quite right, either. The real FPS grandaddy is actually Hovertank [idsoftware.com], with Catacomb 3D [idsoftware.com] coming shortly after that. Catacomb 3D evolved from Hovertank's engine, and Wolf3D evolved from Catacomb's.


        Now, I'm sure you can find some other first-person shooting game prior to 1991 if you really dig (Battlezone, perhaps?), but that's the history of the FPS and id.

      • Doom made two huge improvements that created the FPS genre we know now, non-grid based maps, and the DeathMatch (and put that term into our vocabularies). Those two things really paved the way for the mainstream popularity of the hundreds of FPS games released since.

        -B
    • I'd still willingly pay money for...Excitebike
      You're in luck - there's an adapter for the GBA called the e-Card reader [nintendo-e-reader.com]. You swipe special cards in it that have data along their edges. The decks are NES games - one of them is Excitebike. Once you get past the $70 GBA investment and the ~$40 for the card reader, the decks are $5 each. There's also some more NES titles. This, coupled with the ulockable Metroid in Metroid Prime is proof to me that Nintendo hasn't forgotten their roots.

  • What about rare PC games? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Toasty16 ( 586358 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @03:58PM (#4910108) Homepage
    I have a retail, boxed copy of Out of This World [the-underdogs.org], released by Interplay in 1991. It's in mint condition, complete with 5.25" and 3.5" diskettes and the bizarre security wheel used to enter the correct images on the installation screen. Any takers? ;-)

    But the real find would be the European version, called Another World.

    • I loved a lot of things about that game, how you'd have to randomly discover what controls would do for you in certain situations - like kicking a gaurd in "a most effective spot" to put it politley, or even better when you are trapped inside of the vehicle in the arena! Few moments in gaming have brought me such glee as that, though Half-Life came pretty close. I also loved the ending, possibly the best ending I've ever experienced in a game.

      I played it on an Atari ST though, not a PC... and it was still called "Another World" at that point as I remember.

  • Top 10 MOST collectible? (Score:5, Funny)

    by medscaper ( 238068 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:00PM (#4910122) Homepage
    I would want to collect these :
    - Unreal Tournament 2044
    - Doom CXVII
    - Ultima Online '72
    - Grand Theft Aircar 16
    - Age of Empires 13 - the 20th Century
    - Quake IIIIIIIIII
    - LOTR 12 - The return of the grandson of the guy who heard about the king (Live 5-d action)
    - Wolfenstein 16-d (Now with time-travel gameplay)
    - Medal of Honor 9 : Assault the Allies

    Oh...and Starcraft 2, for crying out loud.

  • NWC (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mike Schiraldi ( 18296 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:05PM (#4910162) Homepage Journal
    More info on the Nintendo World Championship ROM available here [disflux.net].

    Anyone got a copy of the ROM?
  • Does anyone actually have a copy of Zero Wing? THat would be quite a holy grail of gaming. How about the E.T. Game that they buried thousands of in the desert? Does anybody have that one?

  • Chase the Chuckwagon is crap! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:07PM (#4910180)
    It has always been crap, and even it's creator has stated that it's not a good game. Just because something is rare doesn't mean it's worth collecting.

  • Quake III Arena (Score:3, Informative)

    by CoffeeJedi ( 90936 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:08PM (#4910192)
    I have a metal-boxed copy of Quake III for Linux! I guess it can't be that rare, about 2 months ago i actually (i'm 100% serious about this) bought it at the Dollar Store, for a dollar!!! They had all the usual crappy $1 Store games there, and a stack of Q3A for Linux sitting on the bottom shelf. I should have bought 5 and kept them shrink wrapped!
    • At dollar stores throughout western Canada a few years ago (or maybe last year) you could get as many boxed copies of Shogo you could carry for a buck each.

      What's funny is all the local pawn shops had 5 or 6 copies of Shogo, obviously brought in as "trade-ins" - given that a few were still sealed, I would wager people bought copies and brought them to the pawn shops for credit against other games :)
    • This is true! My goofy neighbor bought Quake III for Linux at the dollar store only to discover that the game did not run on windows. When he asked me why laptop looked all funny, I said it ran Linux. Subsequently, he gave me the game, but he lost the tin. I was amazed that any retail outlet carried Linux games, let alone the dollar store.
    • Microcenter in Cambridge was selling QIII for linux for $3-5 (can't remember)..there was a sticker slapped to each one explaining what you needed to download to run it under Windows

  • Rarities Reprinted (Score:3, Interesting)

    by robbway ( 200983 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:10PM (#4910206) Journal
    Activision recently released Activision Anthology for PS2. In addition to almost all the Activision line, some Imagic, and an Atari game or two, it has a couple games called Kabobber and Thwacker that were either not USA releases, as they don't sound American, or they were prototypes.

    This shows that: 1) there is a market for crappy old games, 2) there is a way to get crappy old unreleased games, 3) the rarest games are still out there, and 4) I'm dumb enough to buy it.

    I can't say I'm not enjoying the old stuff, but Laser Blast is way too boring to go for the !!!!!!! score. I can't believe I ever did that.

  • KQ, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:11PM (#4910225)
    Anyone know where I can get a copy of King's Quest? This was one of the first EGA colored games I ever played, and one of the very early adventure games. You had free reign to do anything you wanted (to a certain extent), so this one felt really ground breaking to me. Anyone have a copy of this sucker? I've long since lost the box (actually, this one was distributed in a plastic case for the IBM PCjr by IBM themselves).
    • Tierra http://www.tierraentertainment.com/

      Has recreated the VGA version of KQ1. They also had the person who voice acted Graham in KQ5 & 6 do the voice for him.

      Overall it's a great free game. It's not a nostalgic as playing the 16 color AGI version; however, it's the same game in a prettier package.

      As for an original copy of King's Quest, your going to need to use eBay. Sierra has unfortantely stopped selling the Collector's Editions that included all these classics. You should be able to get just KQ1 for a few buck; however, a Collector's Edition can easily hit $50 or more.

  • Blackjack for Linux.
  • This site here [the-underdogs.org] has a lot of links to old games that aren't published anymore. Not the same as owning the orginal but if your dying to play an old game of Jumpman this is a place you can find it and a lot of other old games.

  • A text based game called 'Kabul Spy' for the Apple II. Suddenly it seems amazingly ahead of it's time. I don't remember much from it except that you spent a lot of time in a jeep up in the mountains looking for caves.

  • Texas Chainsaw Massacre for ATARI 2600 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tezzery ( 549213 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:21PM (#4910324)
    How about The Texas chainsaw massacre [atariage.com] game for Atari 2600. Apparently this game was banned from a lot of retailers for violence (pixelated blood!) I've seen it go for well over $100 on ebay. Not sure if its worthy of making that top-10 list, but certainly a worthy mention.
  • There was a game out around 1993/4-ish that was one of the best of its time. It was a top-down scrolling space shooter where you'd compete in various levels.

    Each level began by a big set of "doors" opening across the screen and they'd close again at the end of the level. It was highly addictive and had a great SoundBlaster (and Gravis) soundtrack of techno music.

    Anyone remember the name?

  • even more rare than the rare games are rare systems, especially all the ones made grey market in Korea. For someone who,is looking to collext every system, it makes things a pain.

    also what about Dev kits, im supriseed theyre not rare. id love a xbox dev kit or a ps2 dev kit. rare in 20, hell yeah.

  • Rarest PC game (Score:3, Funny)

    by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:24PM (#4910360)
    Duke Nukem Forever...
    That was relased what, 3 years ago, or, wait, its still "When its done!"
  • And they say Nintendo doesn't aim for the adult crowd...
  • The best thing about that game was the flame wars on usenet between the creator and all the suckers that shelled out for it. Ah, Derek Smart, where art thou?
  • These are, of course, the rarest/most "collectable" games, rather than the best. Despite being the only porno NES game, Bubble Bath Babes is CRAP. It's just another derivative 'line up the colored ___s' game with pr0n in the background. Of the lot, Phantasy Star was one of the few that stood out as actually being a GOOD game.

    If you don't mind, I'll go back to playing all the FUN classics now (all the Marios, Zeldas, Guardian Legend & the good RPGs) somewhere that supports our right to fair use (consoleclassix.com) ...
  • If you ask me there is no competition:

    E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the 2600

    A local electronics shop is selling them for PENNIES ($CDN! ;) ) and they have BOXES of 'em.

    Anyone else remember how unfun, and unlike the movie that game was? You would fall down a hole and just get stuck with that stupid flower - god I hated that game!!!
  • Did that ever come out? Back in university I had a friend who would play Wing Commander incessantly. We kept seeing the ads for Strike Commander in magazines, but I wasn't a big gamer so I never went looking for it (not that it would have run on my 386SX at the time anyway ;)

  • Starflight for the PC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ryu2 ( 89645 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:39PM (#4910512) Homepage Journal
    That has got to be one of the rarities out there, at least in terms of finding an original boxed version. I remember being absolutely engrossed by that game back in 1986 when it firsrt game out. Even though it had to run on primitive hardware of the time (CGA graphics, PC speaker sound), it was still a both a design and a technical masterpiece (they fit a whole universe of 300+ star systems, 20 sentinent alien races, 1000+ planets, each individually mapped, with unique terrain, artifacts, economies, etc.) on two 360K floppy discs. It was amazingly open ended and non linear, and yet had a completely fleshed out history, storyline, and universe.

    I remember many happy hours spent mining, trying to get the most money, upgrade my ship, find out all the secrets, make alliances with alien races, etc. Very fun, and almost impossible to find now (not counting downloading it from a abandonwarez site, of course.)

  • from the article (Score:3, Funny)

    by nege ( 263655 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:47PM (#4910580) Journal
    ""Chasing the Chuck Wagon" has become a synonym for hunting for rare games in thrift stores, pawn shops and other such locations."

    oh...i had ANOTHER meaning for that...

  • Rarest in terms of numbers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Schnapple ( 262314 ) <tomkidd&gmail,com> on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @04:49PM (#4910597) Homepage
    Quick story:

    There was this company called Active Enterprises [atarihq.com]. It basically amounted to a guy in his garage making games. They had a cart called Action 52 [atarihq.com] for the NES which had 52 games on it. Of course to call these things "games" was a stretch - most were like quick coding excercises. The idea was that they would make up for in quantity what they lacked in quantity. At an asking price of $199.99 its unclear if his target audience was Blockbuster (which is used to getting hosed with rental pricing) or parents who figured that 52 games at the price of four was a deal.

    One of the games on Action 52 was The Cheetahmen. Apparently Active Enterprises also wrote a game called Cheetahmen II [atarihq.com] . I say apparently because Active never released it. It appears that what happened was Active ordered 1,000 copies of Cheetahmen II and then couldn't pay the manufacturer for the carts, so after a year or two the manufacturer just sold them to people (which is legal).

    So, Cheetahmen II is probably one of the rarest cartridges ever made.

  • Bubble Bath Babes, the only NES game with nudity? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sludg-o ( 120354 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @05:52PM (#4911228)
    Ok, so it was only briefly, but if you finished Metroid quickly enough, the dude would strip and turn into a chick. I'm pretty sure I saw some nipples in the process too.

    Want to see it yourself? Enter "justin bailey" in passcode area (use 12 spaces to fill in the last 12 spaces) and you will start in very good shape. Just get the freeze gun, the power tank (the one closest to the start of the game) and go kill Mother Brain.
    • I thought the "dude" in Metroid was always assumed to be a woman?

      Besides, most guys I know have nipples, too.

    • Re:Bubble Bath Babes, the only NES game with nudit (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jace of Fuse! ( 72042 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @06:16PM (#4911445) Homepage
      Samus Aran is a chick.

      There were no nipples.

      JUSTIN BAILEY
      ------ ------

      Is the code you are refering to. Caps are required, as are the dashes.

      Alternatively, this code can be used.

      y19ZVz YMRU83
      WB--00 0000Zg

      It starts one off in BRINSTAR with Ice Beam and leaves the Energy Tank three sections to the right and hidden in the ceiling just before the large wall that can only be passed using Maru Mari. Getting this tank will refill Samus's energy allowing the player go to straight up in Brinstar to Tourin and defeat Mother Brain. (The Zeebetites are already destroyed).

  • NES games with nudity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by An Ominous Cow Erred ( 28892 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @06:10PM (#4911389)
    There were actually a fair number of games for the Famicom (the real name of the NES before the name was changed for the American market) in Japan that had nudity -- and even sex. The trick was that they were all for the Famicom Disk System, the floppy disk add-on, that wasn't released in the States.

    These games were sold without Nintendo's approval, but they are full, original games, not simple ROM hacks with changed graphics.

    If you do some searching (searching in Japanese helps :-) you can find quite a few adult games for the FDS for download.

    Anyway the article's list seems kind of U.S.-centric... It does list a couple of Japanese games, but there are in fact much harder games to find (that constitute a much greater prize) than those. ^_^ Well, aside from Phantasy Star for the Megadrive, which really IS rather hard to find.

    Quite a few ArcadeCD (as opposed to SuperCD) PCEngine games are rather rare. The Arcade Card games were among the best ports of many arcade games, (very notably among them, the best version of Strider).

    No matter what the origin though, rare games are expensive. ^_^ It's fun to find all the great hard-to-find classics (like Suchie Pai Remix for the Saturn, which undid the censorship of the original Suchie Pai port -- Suchie Pai Special, but was produced in far smaller numbers).

  • I think the coolest, rarest game I ever saw an advert for was Attack Of The Mutant Zombie Flesh Eating Chickens From Mars (starring Zippo the Dog) [google.com] for the old Spectrum (Timex-Sinclair 1000). The vapourware advert cassette cover art was amazing -- anyone who somehow still has a copy please scan it!

  • Why Collectible? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @07:26PM (#4912063) Homepage
    Games are software.
    Software is bits.
    Bits are infinitely copyable.

    Why is any game rare? If it is rare, it must mean few people are copying it. If few people are copying it, it must mean it's not popular. If it's not popular, chances are better than fair that it sucks.

    I could give a ratfuck about the original packaging.
    • Why is any game rare? If it is rare, it must mean few people are copying it. If few people are copying it, it must mean it's not popular. If it's not popular, chances are better than fair that it sucks.

      This isn't necessarily the case. While (as your next statement attests to) you may not care about original packaging, some do.

      There are games that are quite good that are quite difficult to find even copies of. Some of these are due to the fact there is a small release, and a great game goes unnoticed, whether it's from a small no-name publisher and it's not hyped by the media, or what. It happens.

      Also, there is bit decay. The attitude that digital media and information does not die is a wrong one. The copy on that floppy disk you made 5 years ago you just haven't played in awhile may now be corrupt. That dye on that CDR you burned may have faded. You might have forgotten about when your hard disk crashed. (And worse, you might have lost access keys or the original hardware to play it.)

      All in all, this makes actually collecting games pretty fun. It's mostly affordable (their top game listed is $6500, which compared to collecting antiques or something is nothing), and finding an original copy of a game, with manuals and packaging, can provide quite a challenge.

      Heck, there are games I have a hard time finding that are only a few years old: Dragon Warrior VII (PSX) and Suikoden 2 (PSX) you have to hunt for. Stores don't have them new or used.

      Which brings us to the third possibility: games made in limited run that people like and aren't willing to get rid of.

      You might be able to find copies of these someplace, but that's not exactly legal nor is it as much fun. Although, at some point it becomes more important to preserve the game than worrying about legality or packaging.

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