The biggest thing to hit my universe in the past week has been Mega Man 9, and it hit me hard enough to knock the paintbrush right out of my hand. Seriously, I need to get back to work.

Playing through the new game, which is styled in perfect 1990s-era 8-bit graphics, has sent me back into the dangerous tailspin of retro gaming. These things have to happen in phases, because if they all happened at once, my heart would explode like an atom bomb of love. Which would ruin the value of my collectibles.

Wikipedia tells me that there are 779 8-bit NES cartridges out there. Finally having a finite number in mind, I’d decided a few years back that I’d slowly collect them all, and when I had them all together, I’d probably do something neat, and as-yet-undetermined, with them. Not only is the cartridge art often an amazing example of ridiculous hyperbole, but the games bring back a simpler (and far more difficult) era in video gaming. In my day, we didn’t have any of this infinite continue nonsense. If anything, we had codes that we scoured the back of magazines for or traded snacks with friends for, and if you were really lucky, you had a Game Genie to tweak your way through the harder parts of the game.

Of the aforementioned 779 NES carts, not all of them are licensed or were sold in the US. While my collection currently only spans official Nintendo carts, I know that these are going to come into play eventually, and they won’t be cheap.

Wisdom Tree produced a variety of religion-based video games which are less common than the average NES cart, due to pressure from Nintendo which prevented retailers from selling Wisdom Tree’s unlicensed products next to official Nintendo products. For being a company that based their games on ethics and morality, their decision to craft games that worked around Nintendo’s proprietary system and lockout chip certainly doesn’t seem ethical. Their games for the NES include Bible Adventures, Sunday Funday, Exodus, Bible Buffet, King of Kings, and Spiritual Warfare - the latter of which concluded with an extremely creepy battle with Satan. Of this group, most can be purchased for under $10, with Bible Buffet, a bible quiz game with unsettling box art, fetching the highest price, at around $30. I think that at least $25 of that is for the pictures of the anthropomorphic food on the cover. Something tells me that a game that also happens in ‘Fast Food Land’ would not be ‘Family Approved’ today, either.

Generally, Wisdom Tree’s games are regarded as glitchy, overly simplistic and not exceptionally fun, so are usually only collected by NES completists, and completely ignored by purists.

Camerica is responsible for another collection of unlicensed, and often rarer, NES games. Of the 15 games that they eventually released, all can be visually distinguished from a genuine NES game by a slightly different shape (with the game ‘handle’ extending across the entire center of the cart), upside-down cart art, and silver or gold coloring instead of the typical NES grey. Like Wisdom Tree’s games, most can be bought for under $10, with a few exceptions. Quattro Arcade doesn’t seem to appear as often, and so fetches slightly higher prices.

While many of these games are regarded as fun and playable, it’s worth noting that seven of their games require the Aladdin Deck Enhancer add-on, also produced by Camerica. The Deck Enhancer functions like a regular NES cart into which smaller carts could be inserted (similar to a Super Game Boy for the SNES). Because the Enhancer cart itself contained the mechanism to get around the security devices of the NES, Camerica’s ‘Enhanced’ games could be produced for less. The Aladdin Deck Enhancer can be found for $50 to $100 dollars, and unfortunately, is a necessity to play Big Nose Freaks Out, Micro Machines, Quattro Adventure (which features four games, including the popular Super Robin Hood), Quattro Sports, Dizzy the Adventurer and the similarly titled Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy, and Linus Spacehead’s Cosmic Crusade. These carts are much smaller, and trapezoid shaped.

Some of these come in ‘Deck Enhancer’ versions. and some are full carts, so be aware of what you’re purchasing!

Far more rare are the two unlicensed Active Enterprises games, Action 52 and Cheetahmen II. Of all unlicensed NES games, these are the rarest, and usually regarded as the two worst games in the history of gaming, and an affront to human decency and all that is holy.

Action 52 included 52 mini-games, and originally retailed for $200. Seeing as how this debuted in 1991, when the average video game price was $50, the ridiculous price didn’t find many buyers. The manual that described play through the 52 games was incomplete, but offered more detailed manuals for each game at the price of $1 each. Not only was the manual incomplete, but the game itself was incomplete, with many games were constructed without being tested for actual playability. Games were repetitive, or would freeze in the middle of gameplay. Again, despite being an abysmal game, this cart can be found for around $50, which is still a steal compared to the original price of three human kidneys.

Cheetahmen II expanded upon one of Action 52’s minigames, but was never officially released. In 1997, all 1500 unreleased copies were found in a warehouse and trickled into circulation through the secondary market. While almost impossible to find, they do appear on eBay from time to time, and a sealed copy recently sold on eBay for $1450. Like Action 52, the game cannot be completed because of a bug that the developers never resolved before producing the game.

Panesian is another company that made unlicensed NES games, all of which were adult in nature. Bubble Bath Babes, Hot Slots, and Peek-a-Boo Poker probably weren’t things that your friends down the block had, as these were not distributed via the normal channels, and it’s fairly sad when your need for pornography is so great that you’ll settle for highly pixelated nudity on a video game system. These three games usually sell for around $300 each.

Perhaps the rarest, kinda-released game of all time is the 1990 Nintendo World Championship cart, which was used, predictably, during the 1990 Nintendo World Championships. Competitors had 6 minutes to earn as many points as they could through Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer and Tetris. 90 grey editions of this cart were given to finalists, and 25 gold carts were given to Nintendo Power subscribers. In addition to the one other cart that was used at the tournament, that equals 116 carts in existence. The asking price for a grey cart is $8000, while the gold cart easily goes for twice as much.

Astute vintage gamers will note my exclusion of ‘Stadium Events’, a game that was released only in Woolworths in the Northern US, and then quickly recalled. Because the game was licensed and released at retail, if even for a short time, it doesn’t really belong on this list. It also exists in a European (PAL, not NTSC) version, which is very common. The US eventually saw the re-release of this game as the common World Class Track Meet, for use with the Power Pad.

With 131 games in my collection, I’ll be focusing on the ‘pure’ Nintendo games - the ones that come with memories, rather than ones that come with a high price tag. And quietly hoping to find ‘Cheetahmen II’ at a tag sale.

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Article Tags: camerica, cheetahmen, NES, Nintendo, Panesian, retro gaming, video games

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