Under the hammer: A legendary golden NES cartridge from 1990

Imagine you win second place in a competition organised by the games magazine "Nintendo Power" in 1990. Like the 24 other runners-up and the main winner, you receive a gold-coloured cartridge for your Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) with the three games from that year's Nintendo World Championships, or NWC for short. You might be annoyed that you didn't win first place, which includes a four-day trip to the NWC finals in Florida in addition to the cartridge.

Even if that might have hurt a little: As time went on, the disappointment of the runners-up certainly eased when they realised that their prize far outweighed the value of the missed trip. Only 26 of these golden game modules were produced, making them highly coveted collector's items. One of them is currently being sold at auction.

The starting bid of the auction was 10,000 US dollars. As I write this article, the price stands at 57,000 US dollars. If the winner at the time, Patrick King from Wyoming, is still the current owner, he can look forward to a substantial cash injection. In 2014, another cartridge from this series was sold on eBay for more than 100,000 US dollars.

The 25 golden cartridges were advertised in the July/August 1990 issue.

E-Sports precursor: the Nintendo World Championships 1990

The NES module, an "exclusive NWC game cartridge" according to the tender, contains the three games "Super Mario Bros.", "Rad Racer" and "Tetris". These three games were part of the Nintendo World Championships, which attracted a lot of attention in 1990. This competition took place consecutively in 29 cities in the USA. The players, some of whom were under the age of eleven, demonstrated their speed and skill on the stages in front of an enthusiastic audience. The aim was to score as many points as possible in the three games within a set time.

The aim of this competition was to select the best player from the top finishers in the preliminary rounds in the final. The NWC is now regarded as one of the first e-sports events. Through the NWC, Nintendo increased its popularity enormously. The Nintendo World Championships were held again in 2015 and 2017, but did not attract nearly as much attention as they did in 1990.

Just a week ago, the game "Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition" was released on the Switch as a tribute to the original. My colleague Domagoj is very enthusiastic about it:

The original cartridges are rare and valuable

Around 350 cartridges with the three NWC games were produced under the label "Nintendo World Championships 1990" and used in the competitions. These cartridges are considered to be the most valuable NES modules, as they represent a reminder of the legendary time of the first NWC for collectors.

The 26 gold-coloured NWC modules for the "Nintendo Power" winners take the top spot among these official NWC cartridges due to their even greater limitation and their special colour. According to the auction description, only an estimated 13 of these modules still exist, the others have been lost or are defective.

The cartridge up for auction has slight signs of wear and the official label is missing. The original packaging is also missing. The auction will run until 18 August.