I’ve spent lots of time in game ships, since even though I sold off most of my collection it’s still a great hobby of mine. I’ve been writing here for years about the continuing rise in retro game prices so I won’t repeat myself. Today I’ll just show some examples.
Here’s one Bernard and I know well! Turtle Bridge was our first (and only) Game & Watch when we were kids and we played it religiously. I clocked it multiple times and recall I could get a pretty good score without even looking. This boxed version is interesting for a few reasons. First you can see the original price tag at lower left (¥2980/$18). Using the current price ($367) and an inflation calculator I determined the value of this has outstripped Japanese inflation by a factor of 18 times! And what makes the even more remarkable is the tag reveals this is damaged and even has LCD leakage (a common problem for old systems). This is truly for maniac collectors only.
Dicing Knight is an infamous Wonderswan game, sold only at certain fan events many years ago. I’ve known of it for many years but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one for sale. This is not surprising: it’s estimated there may have only been under a thousand manufactured. It’s yours for about $3400!
Eliminate Down is a legendary Megadrive shooter for two reasons. Firstly it’s apparently very good, and secondly it’s super rare and very expensive. This damaged version will set you back about $3100 which I believe is the most I’ve ever seen for a Megadrive cartridge. Since you can easily play this via emulation and even buy an official reprint cartridge for 1/40th of this price, this is another one for very wealthy mega collectors.
This is an extremely rare piece of official Nintendo software that – via the Game Boy Colour – controlled an embroidery machine to embroider Nintendo characters. For collectors of Nintendo software, this is one of the holy grails. I’ve never see it before, and was not at all surprised by the $2800 price.
Earlier today in Hirose Game Center I was playing Muchi Muchi Pork – the Cave arcade shooter from 2007 – and I was having so much fun and thinking about how great it would be to have it at home. And then less than half an hour later I find Beep selling the arcade board for $2700. That’s pricey of course, but if you’re a wealthy arcade shooter fan and have a candy cab at home then this would be tempting.
The game here is almost invisible under the tags, but it’s George Foreman: For Real, a boxing game for Game Boy. By all accounts it’s a terrible game, but the Japanese version is extremely rare and this copy – which comes with some sort of postcard that was given away when it first was released – is rarer still. I can’t even speculate who’s going to pay $3500 for this one 🙂
Let’s end with a few Wizardry games for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. These are all pricey (none are under $100 and collectively they sum to over $1200) but the second one from left with the tag is by far the most expensive ($550). This is because – as the tag identifies – it comes with a card. Many of the early Japanese Wizardry games came with a randomly packed monster trading card and since most of these were lost the cards now are often worth as much if not more than the game!
Incidentally I have all these Wizardry games, and a few even include their card. I bought them years ago and while I thought they were expensive then the prices were much less than today.
I’ll end with Athena for Famicom. I can’t believe I’m saying $500 isn’t that expensive, but that’s the reality of high-end game collecting in 2026. I’ve put this one on the blog before because I think it’s the quintessential example of a game with a high price for reasons other than playability. In this case, it’s all about the art, which many feel is the best for any Famicom game package. This is a complete example that includes a cassette version of the song that plays in the arcade version. I expect this one will sell quickly!