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(electronic game music)

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- For some reason, I came here during the week.

And It seemed like it was like a lot longer of a drive.

I thought that it was like an hour and 40 minutes forever,

but then I looked today and it was like 35 minutes.

- L.A. traffic man is always, you know how it is over here.

- [Edward] Yeah.

You've been hanging onto these for me for awhile.

Want to go through them?

- Yeah, of course, man.

I got your Sparkster right here,

your Battletech, Dune, and your Fire Shark

all complete in box, so, you know.

- You said 470?

- 470, man.

- My name is Edward Payson.

I'm a filmmaker in Burbank, California.

Something was missing in my life, right?

I was in California, I was making movies,

I was making commercials, I had lots of friends,

I was doing the things I thought that I wanted to do,

but something seemed like it was missing.

And I realized that it was retro video games.

So within one year,

I went from just wanting anything I could get my hands on,

retro video game related,

to really focusing on Sega Genesis.

And then by two years,

I was deciding that I wanted to collect

the entire Genesis collection.

And then from the entire Genesis collection,

I didn't just want the Genesis collection,

but I wanted prototypes.

I wanted sealed games.

And from there, you just keep getting bigger

and bigger and bigger.

Where it ends, I don't know.

But at this point, I just directed a horror movie

about a haunted Sega Genesis game.

And now I'm directing the documentary

that you're watching right now about retro game collecting.

So you can say that I'm all in at this point.

The question I asked myself is,

"What is this overwhelming feeling of nostalgia,

and do other people get this?

Is this a unique thing?"

- When people are going through difficult moments,

I think we tend to latch on to those comfort foods.

And by that, I mean those comfort video games.

(wrapper tearing)

- [Tyler's Dad] A box?

(gasps)

- [Young Tyler] Mega Man 2!

(screams in excitement)

- It's like a microwave.

You're reheating leftovers, right?

It's like, you know, nostalgia is the leftovers

that you remember it being so good,

it was such a great meal,

but it's never going to be as good as it was

when you first had the meal.

- [Young Tyler] I finally got Mega Man 2!

- But it was so good that you do want to keep having it

over and over again.

The leftovers are very good.

- Nostalgia such an interesting thing to me

because so many people place it in different categories,

and sometimes people will ask me what is nostalgia,

and the best way I normally explain it to people,

I start going, "Well, hold on,

let me ask you a few questions."

And I kind of start describing moments in their life

in their past.

And if they go, "Yeah, I remember that

and it was pretty cool."

I'm like, "Okay, I don't think that's nostalgia yet."

And I dig deeper.

"What about Saved By the Bell?

What about Ninja Turtles?

What about Skip It?

What about this old toy?"

And once in a while when we have those conversations,

you'll see someone like the light switches

and they're like, (gasps)

that.

And then you're not asking them questions

and all of a sudden they're going off, they're rambling,

they have so much to say, they're laughing, they're smiling.

I'm like, "Whop! That's nostalgia."

Nostalgia to me is those things

that were special in your past

where it's not just a memory.

Like, yeah, I remember I did this one time.

It's like, "Hey, I did this and oh my gosh,

let me tell you about it."

I feel like it's almost like your brain

has created your nostalgia for you.

It's not something that you can kind of pick and choose

what you're nostalgic for.

It's something that you're passionate about

because somewhere along the line in your past,

you were excited about something

and it means something to you now.

And it really is something

that you've kind of really can't recreate

or even try to create.

- Nostalgia for me definitely brings me back

to when I was younger,

when I didn't ache as much as I do, you know, (laughs)

pre-arthritis and stuff like that,

before I had responsibilities, before I had a full-time job.

Nostalgia brings me back to a time

when my dad literally went to go

to probably Montgomery Ward, or something back in the day,

to pick up the Atari 2600, and it blew my mind.

I remember literally asking my mom the question,

"So that has Pac-Man on it,

and I don't have to use quarters?"

I mean, I just, I couldn't wrap the concept.

I love the arcades at the time.

Every time we go to an arcade,

gas station, pizza place, grocery store,

there'd be arcade games everywhere,

or the arcade arcade at the mall.

But just the idea that I could have video games at home

that didn't look the same as the arcade,

but they were still just as fun to me

and I didn't have to use quarters on them.

That was great for me.

- I've been collecting games for a long time.

Ever since I got my first Commodore 64,

I've been a bit of a pack rat

because I love playing all games of all generations.

And so technically, I've been collecting

since the early '80s.

- My dad and I were hardcore collectors back in the day.

We used to collect everything under the sun for video games.

I mean, you name it, Nintendo, Sega, Atari.

It was crazy in my house.

We just had so many games,

and my dad especially was such a fanatic.

He was the one on top of every little detail,

every new system launch, everything.

And he recorded everything that involved games.

When they came into our house,

dad was there with the camera ready to record.

- [Tyler's Dad] Well, it's the next morning,

and Tyler's still playing Mega Man.

- 20, 22, 23.

- [Tyler's Dad] Wow, 23 games?

- Yeah.

- [Tyler's Dad] Wow, you must be proud.

- So I specifically remember, many times, many instances

where dad would come home with a video game in hand.

(overlapping speech)

- He loved surprising.

He loved the art.

I call it an art because there is an art

to surprising somebody with something.

And for him, it was surprising me with video games for sure.

- The reason I wanted to go back

and play these old games and collect them,

at the time, it wasn't really nostalgia yet.

I just kinda was like, "Man, I like those games."

They're just like, hey, I had a deeper connection with them.

I had a more intimate experiences playing with them.

I thought they were just more well-made games,

like core gameplay.

But as time went on,

I grabbed more NES games here and there.

I started developing nostalgia for the early days,

because as I got older,

you're going to get more distant from those memories.

And then you start to connect certain games

with certain people you played them with back in the day,

like your friend on the block.

- I'm James Rolf from Cinemassacre.

I like making movies.

People know me as The Angry Video Game Nerd.

I started collecting games ever since my eighth birthday,

but it wasn't really, you know, collecting per se,

I suppose.

You know, you'd get a game for your birthday

or for Christmas.

And a lot of times I'd rent games.

I was mostly renting games from the video store.

I can't recall exactly what was my first system,

but it was probably Atari 2600.

I was born into it.

It was my grandpa's or my aunt's or somebody's.

I don't remember who actually bought it originally,

but it was there when I was born.

So I played Atari at a very young age.

And then at some point during all that,

I remember playing the Odyssey 2 with my cousin.

The Nerd started out as just a simple joke.

I had no idea it was going to go this far

because the whole joke was, "Oh, remember

these old video games?"

Like, hey, you know, nobody's talking about the things

in these games that suck.

- [Young James] Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.

It makes no fucking sense.

It's like, what were they thinking?

That's what was funny about it.

That's what I thought it was just, you know,

who the hell would want to talk about these old games?

Who even remembered these games?

I totally underestimated that.

(electronic game music)

I just didn't know it would catch on as much as it did.

As soon as The Nerd kicked off,

then collecting came back into my life

because then I started seeking out these games

so that I can make videos on them.

This is the background that completes the picture,

so collecting has a whole new purpose for me.

And then people made it easier

because the fans would donate games a lot.

So this is a graded Jekyll and Hyde that's graded 90.

A fan gave this to me.

I mean, there it is.

It's in my collection.

It's just funny, you know, you always have this reminder

that people will go out of their way

to get you something like this,

because it must've made an impression on them.

- If you look at what's popular in the market

or what's expensive in the market,

it's usually when the target demographic

for whatever system turns about 30 years old.

And so that's like when you have,

in a lot of people's lives,

it's the first time that they have

really solid kind of disposable income,

maybe don't have children yet,

maybe don't have larger responsibilities like homes,

and so they're really then able

to start funneling their liquidity into a hobby.

And around that same time,

they get really nostalgic for their childhoods.

- What do we care about, right?

We care about pop culture, especially in America.

Like it's so American.

It's Americana,

like having physical products, you know,

it was capitalism.

I mean, '70s, '80s, '90s, think of how many toys came out,

how many actual physical products,

and us now trying to actually get that stuff back

is a representation of preserving culture,

preserving the culture that matters to us,

the culture that we grew up with.

In fact, there's a lot of young kids

who are educated about retro games,

and they're learning on YouTube

because the games they played

and the stuff they're growing up with today,

they want to know the origin.

- So physical media is something

that I think is kind of dying away a little bit,

because minimalism is really in right now.

And I think people want to just be able to have

more of a clean look, you know,

you see these streamers and people that are playing games

and they have like this whole entire area

that's just so put together

and there's barely anything on the table.

And, you know, everyone kind of thinks of a retro game

or a collector as a messy, almost,

but for somebody who's a collector,

I want to collect the physical media.

Like I want to have the case with the game inside of it

so I can just, you know, hug it and hold it.

And that's just kinda how I am.

- For me, it's the difference between listening to Spotify

or putting on an old vinyl record.

If you put on an old vinyl record,

you're going to listen to that one,

the whole thing with all the tracks,

because it takes time and effort to actually change it

and you made an effort putting it on.

When you browse through Spotify,

you can skip in the middle of a song

or, oh, not that one, and you just skip through.

It's more accessible that way

and sometimes you might prefer having it that way.

But there is a charm in actually engaging in the media.

For me, you know, putting on a cassette tape

on the Commodore 64 where you have to wait for 30 minutes

before the game even loads.

I'm not going to turn that off after two minutes

because it was a boring game.

I'm going to give it my all.

- I think collecting physical media is important

because when you are buying a digital product,

you are not actually buying the product.

You are buying a license to operate that product.

- When you'd only have digital content,

at some point that work is going to disappear.

It's inevitable.

I believe it is up to the manufacturers and developers

to at least give the modern day consumer

the right to have physical form of those games

so that we can protect that work.

There are a lot of people that put their hearts and soul

into those things,

the musicians, developers, electrical engineers.

I mean, the list goes on,

and lives that have gone into that game.

So if we don't keep a physical copy of that,

you know, it's all gone.

- Anybody can scroll through their digital library,

but I love walking by my shelves

and looking at the physical media.

And also, you know, we come from a time

where you get the game and you open it

and you flip through the manual.

And I mean, that's what I do before I would play the game.

Now games don't even come with manuals and it's so sad.

- It's like one of the biggest catastrophes

of the modern age, really, (laughs)

is no manuals, 'cause they are pretty helpful.

- Back then, I put tons of time, tons of energy,

tons of love into getting a box, opening it,

smelling it, feeling it, reading these guides, these books,

the video games.

Oh, look at the characters.

Look at this manual.

It's telling me every character's name.

Everything in my mind is vivid,

even looking back at console's old boxes.

When you see Super Nintendo boxes now, they're bright,

there's so many video games on the back.

They're showing you 20 video games in the back of the box.

Check this out.

This game is coming, this is coming, this is coming,

play it loud.

Everything's crazy.

- I wouldn't recommend to the common person

to fill up an entire room in their house

of video games or movies or anything, which is what I do.

I mean, we all have our own personal reasons for doing it.

It's more of a niche thing.

So I mean, nobody does this because this is the thing to do.

We just do it because we want to in some way or another,

and we may all have our different reasons.

(electronic game music)

(playful electronic music)

- I think a lot of collectors

prefer finding a game in the wild

as opposed to buying it online

because those particular collectors

are in it for the thrill of the hunt.

There's something maybe in them

where they are adventures, like Indiana Jones,

and they're out to find the lost Ark of the Covenant.

- It always feels the most satisfying

when you find it in person.

And especially if you get to interact

with the person who you bought it from.

And of course it's a lot more special.

Those moments are more rare for me nowadays.

- I love going game hunting.

I love going to garage sales, pawn shops, thrift stores,

retro gaming expos, looking underneath tables

and behind the counter,

and just looking for those really obscure and cool games

that no one has seen before,

or maybe I'm finding for a really good deal.

It's the thrill.

It's awesome.

- And that is basically how I was

when I was growing up with dad.

Every time we'd go out to a department store,

some old department store or a pawn shop,

we would be on the search.

It was like, you know, department stores and pawn shops

and these places, yard sales,

these were our tombs.

These were our catacombs.

And we were Indiana Jones searching for lost relics.

And that was what was so appealing about it to us.

And we'd find them too.

I mean, we would find really cool stuff back in those days,

I'm talking to the '90s and early, early 2000s.

- Swap meets and flea markets being so prominent in my life,

I think, is a lot accredited to my dad

in the way he raised us.

We grew up at a time in our life

when we were younger with a lot of money,

and then a lot of bad things happened in my dad's life,

and we took this big turn for growing up with no money,

to the point where, as embarrassing as it is to say,

I remember one Christmas going through trash cans

with my dad behind a Kmart to find toys for my brother.

And since then, my dad has bounced back

and life's been good.

But ever since then,

those old days of finding things and looking for things,

my dad kind of got into swap meets and flea markets,

and I would find myself complaining.

I don't want to walk around.

I don't want to pick up this junk.

But when I got into junior high and high school,

I started being like, I want to go to swap meets

and flea markets.

And it wasn't even necessarily video games back then.

I just think that's where I started to find my love

for collecting things and getting items that are used

and finding the deals.

- I think anyone who looks for rare things,

I mean, I remember my grandfather going to swap meets,

looking for old Winchester pieces.

When you find something that isn't being sold by someone

who knows what it is, you're hunting.

And the thrill of the hunt is that unexpected moment

when you see something that you shouldn't see,

that shouldn't be there, even though you're looking for it,

you can't believe that you're actually looking at it.

But I think there's also just a rush.

There's a rush to going out, having no expectation

that you're necessarily going to find anything.

And then when you do, it's a story to tell.

But I've never heard someone say,

"Man, I have this really great story.

I bet at the last minute.

I bet a hundred dollars more than the-

Just in case.

And I got it."

I mean, that's not a very compelling story.

So maybe it's the storytelling aspect,

that we want to have a good story.

We want to have high points in our life

and finding something in the wild

provides some of those high points.

- As far as my craziest pickup story,

I was at an event about five hours away from my house.

A person came walking up to me

and they asked me if I collected video games,

considering I have video games running down my leg.

(chuckles)

And I said, "Absolutely."

And they said, "We have a lot of that stuff for sale."

I said, "Well, you know, I'm here with somebody

and I don't really have a car.

I guess I'll take a chance, you know,

if you want to drive me to your place,

I'll be glad to take a look at it."

So I jumped in the car with that said person.

And I'm now about 45 minutes away from where I was,

which is about five hours away from where I live.

Without a car, I'm in the middle of the woods,

and I walk into a truly bizarre situation.

I walk in to cocaine addicted swingers

who were looking to have a good time.

And when I looked down on the ground,

I saw about $3,000 of games at one corner,

$3,000 of games at another corner.

And luckily I walked out of there unscathed

then I made a deal,

and I got probably 20 something thousand dollars

worth of games for two grand,

but it was the scariest damn thing I have ever walked into

in my entire life.

- One of my favorite finds ever at a swap meet in the wild

looking for video games was at a swap meet in Orange County.

I was with my buddy, Ricky, our cameraman, Chris,

and we were just cruising down the aisles,

not really in filming mode.

We weren't really in the spirits of filming.

We were just walking,

and Chris and Ricky walked past this one booth

with electronics, I would say, like had like car batteries,

some tools, some routers, Ethernet cable,

kind of cable equipment.

And they walked by it, and I kind of just glanced over

and I'm like, it was one of those days

where I'm just like, I don't know, I'm going to look.

There's going to be nothing here but I'm going to look.

And on the end of the table was a PC Core Engine,

basically a TurboGrafx just sitting there.

And I looked around and I'm like, there's no way

this place knows that this is what it is.

I grab it.

I hold it up.

It was early on, let me make that clear

and I'll tell you why in a sec,

I hold it up.

"How much is this?"

And they go, "What is it?"

And that's the fine line when you're doing this

because you don't want to lie.

You don't want to undercut people.

You don't want to be a sleazeball.

I admit it was early on, I was overly excited,

I just held it up and kind of nodded again

when they said, "What is that?"

I go, (mumbles) this.

And they go, "Ah, the router, $2."

And I was just like, "Okay."

God, forgive me, please.

Nope, don't want to go to hell, please.

And I just walked over, gave him the two bucks,

had Ricky and Chris roll the camera.

The person, I think, thought it was a car battery accessory.

So I am like super, super excited about this.

I never see these ever.

- How wonderful. - Ever out in the wild.

This thing right now is like $175

at the current time of filming this.

For two bucks, one of my favorite finds,

a funny find, a find that was really valuable.

And I have to admit, I did feel a little weird years later,

like I kinda got this, you know, the wrong way.

Then I actually ended up giving it

to one of our first subscribers in our old YouTube channel,

because I was like, that'd be kind of cool.

One of the first people to ever supported us,

let me put this demon product in their hand

and they could go to hell for it.

- [Brett] So the story of Kuon

is a long and treacherous one for me.

- So much pain.

- Yeah. - So much misery.

- There's a lot of history here.

I have always been a PS2 guy.

I've always been a horror guy.

Back in the day, Game Stop had a buy two, get one

free PS2 game, so I essentially got this game for free

and I played it, I loved it,

it sat in my collection for a while.

I went through some crazy purge thing

where I got rid of a bunch of games

that I was like, ah, probably not going to play this again,

whatever it may be.

Fell out of collecting for a hot minute

Recently, I mean, past handful of years, maybe,

- Yeah.

- the game skyrocketed in price.

A few years back, it was maybe $200 to $300.

Went up to $400.

I was like, "Great.

Now I'm never going to get my hands on this game."

Then at a birthday party of mine,

I had a bunch of people over my house

and we're all just kind of hanging out,

and I walk into the kitchen

and there is an artless case on the counter and I opened it

and there's this copy of Kuon on my kitchen counter.

Nobody there fessed up to bringing it over.

We have no idea how it got there.

So I'm not convinced that this isn't cursed to some degree.

I think the game's up to $700 to $1,000 on eBay

is what I'm seeing it for.

- [Tim] For a single PS2 game? - [Brett] A single PS2 game.

- [Tim] It's incredible.

And it is, yeah.

I mean, I've played that copy a few times

and I've had nightmares regularly after.

So I do believe it's cursed.

- It's a great game.

- [Robert] These two games.

They are not necessarily niche rare or anything like that.

They're just retail releases.

Like every guy who has big collection

usually has Chip 'n Dale 2 and Kid Klown.

When I got back into collecting for a second time,

I had a kind of a stroke of beginner's luck.

And I went to the flea market pretty early on,

like month or two into getting back into game collecting.

And I was walking on the flea market

and I was about to go home,

and then some guy who would just sell them like junkie tools

and stuff like that,

and like something, a guy that I never would have imagined

to be having video games on his table

just started laying these games out one by one on the table,

but like face down so you couldn't read any of the labels.

And I walked up as he was doing this.

He had like a bunch from the table

and I was like, "Hey man, what's going on with this?

How much, how much?"

And he's like, "Oh, I dunno, man."

He had a $3 price tag on each,

and he was like, "Yeah, three bucks each, man."

I was like, "Okay, cool."

And I pick up the first one and I was like, "Oh, Kid Klown."

I took up the second one.

I was like, "Oh, Donkey Kong Jr. Math."

And I picked up another one.

I was like, "Oh."

And like my adrenaline shot through the roof.

And then I was like, "Hey man, 40 bucks for all?"

And he was like, "Yeah, sure."

I break them all into a garbage bag that he was holding.

Two garbage bags.

And I just like ran out of the flea market.

I ran. (mumbling)

I was like, oh my God, oh my God.

Now back to the car

and just started sifting through the ones

that I couldn't actually see

because they're all facing down.

And I was like, "Oh, shit."

Like, you know, "Chip 'n Dale 2."

Oh, there's other ones in there,

like Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt, like Wampa, (inaudible)

I guess all these good, uncommon to rare games.

This is a copy of Action 52,

tying into my previous story about some beginner's luck

of my round two of collecting.

I think one of the second or third garage sales I went to

at like 5:00 PM on a Friday or something,

I saw the clear cartridge of Action 52

and I knew immediately what it was

because of my previous knowledge

from 10 years ago or something.

And I was like, holy shit, that's Action 52.

Got the cartridge for a dollar.

I can show you the cartridge.

I'm sure everybody's seen this game,

but for the sake of being thorough.

So I got this cartridge for a dollar in a lot of 10 games.

I later acquired the box and manual

just from trading to some guy in Chicago

some other stuff that I had just to complete it,

but I don't know.

That's my story of beginner's luck.

That's like a true wild find

for an actually rare game like Action 52.

I don't know how valuable it is per se these days,

but as a loose cart, like it's actually legitimately rare.

- All right, these are some of my more expensive items.

This is the famous Stadium Events game, complete in box.

It's not in beautiful shape.

It's in a label less Wata holder.

I guess that's the benefit of working at Wata

is having some protective cases.

And I also have the spare cartridge,

which this is the cartridge that,

I found this when I really started collecting early on,

it was a lot of about 150 games

and they were two bucks a piece.

And the guy said,

"Man, there's something really rare in here,"

but I didn't know what it was

and I didn't find out until I got home.

And I'd read something about, there was a PAL version

and I was like, there's no way.

And I went down and looked at the computer,

and lo and behold, this was the one.

So I was young.

I was known on the forums then

as the kid who found Stadium Events.

- [Young Deniz] I died and went to heaven.

- [Deniz's MOM] What happened?

- [Young Deniz] I will never forget this day in my life.

- [Deniz's MOM] (Turkish) Let me see you, huh?

Tell me.

- [Young Deniz] I can't.

There's too much- - [Deniz's Mom] What?

- [Young Deniz] To tell.

- [Deniz's Mom] What is that crap?

- The whole bag

- [Deniz's Mom] It's full? - It's filled.

- [Deniz's Dad] And there's some real neat stuff here

that is really rare, right?

- I could probably sell all of this for like $7,000.

- [Deniz's Mom] What? - 8,000.

- [Deniz's Mom] Get out.

- No exaggeration whatsoever.

- [Deniz's Mom] Wow. - [Young Deniz] None at all.

- The cartridge in here is actually nicer.

And I would sell that over this one any day

because of how much this one means to me.

- I had started to get back into retro games,

sort of circa 2005 to 2008,

and I couldn't really go places and just buy games.

Everything I was buying was off of eBay

or something like that.

So there wasn't any real,

like brick-and-mortar stuff around me.

When I came to Japan,

there are just so many dedicated game shops,

thrift stores, everything like that.

Especially in Tokyo, really densely populated area,

lots and lots of video games.

So it became way easier for me

to actually just go and take a drive down the street,

go to Hard Off or something,

and then come home with, you know, bags full of games.

When it comes to looking for retro games in Japan,

especially a place like Tokyo,

it's kind of like looking for sand at the beach.

They're just like everywhere.

But if you go to a thrift shop, like Hard Off,

you can go into their junk bins

and just find, you know, PlayStation games, Famicom games,

Super Famicom, all this stuff like a hundred yen a piece,

which I think with the exchange rate right now

is like 94 cents.

I think you'd be really hard pressed to find a game store,

a brick-and-mortar game store in the US

where you can go and just find 94 cent games

that aren't, you know, Madden, whatever year that was,

or something like that.

People, like locals, just dropping off

all their old games they don't want anymore.

And then they just throw it in the bin

and put a hundred yen sticker on it.

You can walk in with, you know, 50 bucks

and walk out with huge stacks of games.

(dramatic suspenseful music)

Maybe it's something specifically cultural about Japan.

It's a very common comment

on some of the videos I do with game hunting

is people remark how it's so awesome that, you know,

all those games are still boxed

and how the boxes are still in good condition

and how the manuals and everything

is still in good condition.

Obviously somebody really cared about this

and, you know, they really took good care of it.

It ties into a history of Shintoism in Japan,

where you can have an attachment to something.

It's my understanding that in Shinto,

even something like a doll can develop a soul

if you attach enough emotion and attachment to it,

or maybe there's a certain soul that's connected

to a piece of art because of the emotion

that you attach to it.

It compels people to take better care of things,

that you could put in an artistic context.

You could argue that, okay, this box is a piece of art.

This manual is a piece of art.

The cartridge itself, all of this,

the game inside is all art.

So I don't know, maybe there is something cultural here

that creates that kind of attachment,

that people want to take better care of things.

- Looking at other cultures,

video games was art and culture, and respected and revered.

I think we're finally seeing that in the United States.

For the longest time, we had the boomer generation,

nothing against them,

but they typically didn't grow up with video games.

And this generation had a significant control

on several businesses and opinions

throughout the United States.

And I think as time has gone on,

you've seen different generations

now occupy and own businesses and perspectives

with the aging Gen X,

and even the millennial generation behind them,

video games is a very different thing.

- I think, with any medium that you have,

it takes a while for people to truly accept it

as an art form.

When you look at photography, it was a novelty.

When you look at film, it was at first,

it was just like putting random group of pictures together.

And with video games,

I think it's a similar phenomenon

where initially it was looked at

as just a bit of entertainment for kids.

But as time has gone by, you know,

I always find it funny that art is its own thing,

its own category that's respected,

and music is a category that's respected,

and animation is a category that's respected.

But games have all of those things

and that it's taken so long

for people to truly accept it as art,

when in every category,

a game has a little bit of each of those things.

So I think that it's about time because they are art.

- This is probably the most interactive form of art

there is.

If you're staring at a painting,

you can stare at it all day and appreciate it.

If you're engaging with a comic book,

the most you can do is turn the pages.

If you're watching a movie,

the best you can do is sit there

and interpret what the director is trying to tell you.

With this form of art, you're actually literally involved.

It's the most immersive kind of art there is.

- The thing I've seen change over the last decade

in retro gaming is really two things.

It's many more people getting excited and jumping in

and building up their own game collections.

And then along with that is the prices of games have gone up

because of that.

It's basically just supply and demand.

So we have more and more people

growing up with video games

with a positive impact on their life.

And so I definitely see people loving video games

and what video games has brought to them.

And I'm seeing the culture kind of open up

and appreciate video games more and more

because they've had more experience with it.

- Any form of art, any form of art throughout history,

whether it was from the Greek era or Picasso,

when people realize it's special,

it is inevitable that it's going to end up

in private collector's homes, and it is inevitable

it's going to be behind three inches of glass at a museum.

- I have noticed, being in the collecting world

for such a long time,

that more people that I know

have gotten into grading games

and getting their video games graded

definitely more than there was back 10 years ago or so.

A lot of these collectors have kind of collected.

They've got their complete collection,

they've kind of hit a lot of milestones,

done a lot of the goals they've had,

let's say, in collecting.

And from personal experiences,

the people I talk to say,

"I kind of wanted to try something else.

I kind of wanted to go for a new style, a new subset."

And for a lot of these people, it was graded games.

- I do think the graded games market

has kind of had a negative residual effect

on your average everyday casual gamer,

because there are people out there

that just want a few cartridges,

or they just want to revisit their old games

that they played growing up.

And if one of them happens to be rare,

they don't even realize it,

then they're like, "Oh, now I have to pay

hundreds of dollars for this game

that I just own growing up."

And that's unfortunate

because those people just want to collect that thing

for themselves, and they have a passion for it.

Yet these people who have nothing to do with video games

are coming from other markets,

like coins and collectibles and whatnot.

They artificially inflated the prices all around

for their own greedy needs.

- I think graded games have affected the market greatly.

I think prices have gone up somewhat for the average gamer,

but I don't think significantly.

I think the only gamer that's significantly affected

is the sealed gamer

and the guys who want really good, clean copies of games.

I think, with regard to sealed game collecting,

with the prices have gone up, the values have gone-

And I think there's established marketplace

for people who want to preserve games like art.

There's two major companies right now,

which are VGA and Wata, who kind of control the market.

But I think Wata has a better control of the market

because of their relationship with Heritage Auctions.

To an average gamer, this plastic, it's just plastic.

It's irrelevant.

It doesn't mean anything.

But to a grader, it's paramount to everything.

The values are all determined in plastic quality,

which is insane.

What are we talking about,

grading plastic or grading games?

Sealed game variations.

There's Nintendo (inaudible)

like a very common sealed, which is the y-fold,

which is stripped right in the middle.

There's variations of packaging.

Not everyone did the same uniform packaging

with video games.

Throughout the years, things changed

and different production facilities existed.

Something like this, which is not an original seal.

If you can tell, for something like this,

the value is not there because it's not original seal.

Determining different packaging and variations of it,

if it's a real seal versus an authentic seal

or a repack or whatever the terminology people like to use,

it varies.

A lot of times, it's based on touch

to verify if it's original seal or not.

Visually, it's hard to tell, always.

But some giveaways are basically different white spots

on opening creases.

That kind of gives it away.

There's stuff like this, where we have its original seal.

It's not the typical original y-fold,

but there are variations.

- I'm glad there are people who are grading sealed games

because they're doing history a favor.

I mean, I'm not one of them,

but they are preserving something

that posterity will be able to see.

And I don't think really, if you ask gamers really,

is that something that we want to lose?

- I mean, the whole point of being a preservationist

is so that these things last longer than you do.

We're trying to preserve these so that when we're gone,

these things are still here.

- My name is Deniz Kahn.

I conceived and founded Wata Games,

and I'm a video game collector.

Wata is, in name, a certification and grading company,

but we aim to be a lot more and provide a lot more

to the video game collecting community

and collectibles as a whole.

Graded video games, certified video games

are a way to eliminate a lot of the risk

for people that are dealing with video game collecting

and buying and selling.

It's an authentication process.

It provides confidence to buyers

so they know exactly what they're getting

and the consistency of a grade,

which can actually impact the value tremendously.

Something that gets a 9.0 versus a 2.0 versus a 9.8

can have significantly different values in the market,

further with, you know, counterfeits

specifically in video games,

it's a way to protect people against spending money

on something that's fake essentially.

The vision behind Wata

was really to elevate video game collecting as a whole,

to legitimize it, and bring credibility and confidence

that just didn't exist previously.

So through our product, through the technology,

everything that's instilled there,

our CEO, Ryan Sabga, who provided that,

really also helped create a product

that not just elevated video game collecting,

but really push the boundaries

of how you can instill confidence in certification

across collectibles in all fields.

I think with the rise of graded games

and what Wata has sort of how it's transformed the market,

we've seen a lot of different effects, I think, as a whole,

because with the market just elevating so much

and growing and knocking down those barriers

to allow more people to come in,

we've just seen so many different types of collectors

coming into this.

So previously where you had this really small

community of video game collectors,

it's, you know, 10 times as big now, right?

So I think a lot of people feel like community is gone,

but I look at it a little bit differently

where it's more like, you know, this small thing

that I understood and that a lot of us, you know,

we were kind of weird, these video game collectors.

Like we were a small community.

Well now we get to share what we love

with that many more people.

I think it's awesome.

Yes, I don't collect the same way

as a lot of people who are coming in and collecting,

but who am I to tell someone

how they're supposed to collect.

Collecting is a very personal thing, right?

So if someone wants to spend $50,000 on a game,

that's their prerogative.

If someone wants to collect only cartridges,

that's totally cool.

- My name is Eric Naierman,

and I'm an avid video game collector.

And this is the VVG Club collection.

I estimate that this collection

is worth somewhere around five to $6 million today.

I'm a aesthetic general dentist in Hollywood, Florida.

I've always been a collector my entire life.

I'm known in the hobby as the dentist of video games,

because I spent a million dollars

on a group of very rare first print video games

last September.

They have that real, organic rarity,

especially the sealed ones.

When you collected sports cards back in the day,

you had organic rarity,

whereas no one knew to save a Mickey Mantle card.

No one knew to save a Babe Ruth card.

And the people that did

had something that was truly special

and almost became like an art piece.

What I love about sealed video games

is that the seal, the original factory seal

gives it that organic rarity

that you know that most of these games that were distributed

were open and you only have a select few that stayed closed.

So that becomes a special art piece right there,

and something truly special to collect.

What I love about Wata as well

is that their displayability on their cases

really turns that historic collectible into an art piece.

So these are the two gems of my collection

and the games that I spent the most money on.

This one is a first print Mario Brothers

with a sticker seal,

which means it's from the test market run

of Nintendo in 1986.

And there's only one of these in the world, and this is it.

And I spent $95,000 on this.

This one is a first print Castlevania.

The first time Castlevania was released to the public,

because it has the hang tab,

which signifies the first print.

And it's in amazing condition with almost a perfect seal.

This one, I spent $85,000 on.

Both of these were steals.

Since I bought these games,

I've gotten a few unofficial offers

of over $200,000 for each of them,

but I'll tell you right now,

if someone offered me $500,000 for each, I would not sell.

The reason I prefer Wata grading

over VGA grading for my games

is that I love that they split up the box

and the seal grade.

That's very important to me

because you know exactly what you're getting.

So as a collector,

you could say, okay, seal grade is really important to me

so I want games that have a perfect seal, which is an A++,

or some people really love the box grade,

so they want a 9.6 or a 9.8.

While VGA really groups them together as an average,

and to me that's very vague

and you could have a lot of games

with the same grade by VGA,

and they could be totally different quality and look,

and to me, that was just a vague scale of grading,

and Wata just speaks to me as a collector

and it's just so much more clear to me.

So these are two of the most special games in my collection.

They're both the same game.

One's a first print, matte seal,

and one's a second print, gloss seal.

This represents the first print

and second print of this game in 1985,

and there's only one in the matte print,

and there's only one in the gloss print

that have remained sealed.

And these are both of them right here.

So this is the only sticker sealed golf copies

in the entire world and I have both of them

and it's amazing to have them together in one collection.

So insider collectors will know

about the recent mold pedigree that we call,

where someone on eBay had found

some really nice first print games,

but they were left outside and became a little bit molded.

So you see here that there's some remnants on the mold

on top of his face over here

and there's a little bit in the back.

My theory about it is a lot of people didn't want to buy it

because obviously it's not in great condition.

But my theory is that some of the games were just so rare

that it was just too hard to let go.

And I didn't care what condition it was in.

I was going to buy them anyway just based on the rarity.

This was the first Super Mario Brothers that I ever saw.

And someone told me that just to have the circle seal

is super rare.

So I was interested in it right away.

And I had already seen some oval seals

sell for around $3,000 to $4,000 at the time.

And this was not only a circle seal,

but it was called a No-Rev

where it doesn't have a Rev-A marking,

and this is even more rare than most prints

that you get of this game, and this is the most iconic game.

So at the time, I got presented to buy this for $13,000

and it was hard to do at the time,

but I was confident that it would go up in price

and I did buy it for 13,000,

and many of these circle seal games

are now selling for $100,000 to $200,000 at the time.

I hear a lot that people tell me

that games are meant to be played and not to be encased,

but to me, that's just ridiculous

and it's a mantra of jealousy.

The reason I feel this way

is because you could play any game you want now digitally.

By me collecting sealed games,

it has no hindrance on anyone playing any game.

When I think about it, I think about, you know,

someone who really likes Diet Coke, for example.

We all know you could get Diet Coke at any store

if you enjoy it.

And let's say someone collects the first sealed Diet Coke

that was ever released by Coca-Cola as a collectible.

How does that affect your ability to get Diet Coke?

And to me, that's just a mantra of jealousy,

where why would anyone care

if I'm boxing up a piece of history

to enjoy and appreciate the nostalgia that it brought me.

Wouldn't make it easily play the game

at any time that they want.

- I do know there is a world out there

of people who love graded games

and love having a status or a price number

or a rating on their video game,

and that's cool and I like that,

and I tell people because I know there are some people

who talk down on that and they go, hey, that stupid.

For those of you who think it's dumb

and don't want to do it that way, then don't do it that way.

Regardless, I think that gaming is such a cool community,

especially retro gaming.

It's such a different world.

It's such a niche world.

And I think that we can all learn something from each other,

looking at different ways that people collect.

- The hard truth is whether it comes to the most expensive,

rare games or graded games that are in pristine condition,

the truth is every gamer wants them.

Every gamer wishes they could get those.

People that are serious collectors

really do wish they could get them,

but there is no way that the average person

is going to be getting those games.

And so I think that there is some jealousy.

I know I have it when I see some of those things.

I wish I could get those.

I wish I could fork over $600,000

for a pristine Super Mario Brothers, but I can't.

So I think, you know,

I have to cope with my own jealousy

and pull it back and just realize

that that's not going to be in the cards for me probably.

- I honestly don't have any idea if it's going to stick,

like the graded games thing,

or if it's just going to fizzle out

as a really expensive fad for the time being.

I think is going to be an expensive fad.

I really don't think that stuff's going to stick

in the long run.

I might be entirely wrong and that's fine,

but I'm sure there will always be a divide

and there'll be two communities now as a result.

- I do understand that Wata Games

has been getting a lot of negative press

from some people in the community.

And I do know that one of the founders of Wata Games,

Deniz Kahn in particular,

has literally been getting death threats.

I don't understand.

As far as my relationship with Deniz,

I like to reiterate,

I hold no stock in what Deniz is doing.

I don't own a single graded game.

But I do know Deniz as the collector.

That's how I met him.

I met him about five, six years ago.

And quite frankly, that man is passionate about this hobby.

I don't think you can lay the market on his shoulders

because quite frankly, if Deniz didn't start Wata Games

and the other three companies that were grading games

didn't continue what they were doing,

the market would have demand for it anyway.

It's just inevitable.

I believe that there's this misconception going around

that Deniz is just sitting back, collecting money from Wata,

and he was never a real collector.

I beg to differ, my friend.

He really has one of the greatest collections

I've ever seen, and that was in place

well before Wata was even conceptualized.

(electronic game music)

- This is original art for a game that I actually had

and that meant a lot to me as a kid,

which was Mickey Mania,

which I've got over here the box so you can see.

So this is not a print.

This is not, you know, reproduction or anything.

This is the piece of art done by Greg Ray

that they used for the cover.

So, as I said earlier,

I think original art is just the best it gets

with collecting.

And I've never spent on anything in my collection

than I did for this piece.

And I don't know if I'll ever own another piece of art

for a game that I had as a kid.

So it's incredibly important to me.

These are some of my favorite standees right here.

They're really hard to come by.

You got the Blankas for the Street Fighters.

Then you could actually swap these parts out.

And then Goro is from Mortal Kombat.

Personally, I'm a Mortal Kombat guy.

That's the game I grew up with.

But this one in particular,

I got this one early into my collecting display,

like Goro was one of my first significant displays I bought.

And the reason this one is special

is because of this note right here,

and I'm going to read it.

It's got a signature on it.

And it says it was sold to someone named Richard,

who someone bought it from

and then I bought it from that person.

"Hey Richard, thanks for being a fan

and for supporting Mortal Kombat over the years.

Like I said in my listing,

this Goro standee was given to me

by none other than the game creator, John Tobias,

back in the day when we did the games.

You have something very rare in your possession now.

Fight to keep it yours forever."

He didn't do real good job of that.

"No one else on this planet has what you have now

that came from an original Mortal Kombat actor

and was once in the office of the MK creator.

Thanks again."

And then it's the guy, I forget his name,

who played Kano, Baraka, Kabal, and Quan Chi in both,

he did the character stuff and then in the movies.

So knowing that this was in John Tobias' office,

(stammers) that's so special to me.

I could never get rid of something like that.

And I'm in love with it.

This is my Game Boy collection, CIB Game Boy collection.

I still have one game left

and I started collecting, started Game Boy in 2009,

so like, (laughs) over a decade has taken me

to get this far.

Game Boy is-

And this is with variants.

So if you see duplicates, they're all variants.

There's a ton of really cool variants on Game Boy,

like, you'll see Bonk's Adventure

was published by Hudson Soft,

but then there's also an Electro Brain re-release.

And, you know, where is it, like Alleyway or Baseball,

there's four different prints.

There's actually more than that.

So it never-

It was so fun to actually track them down

and figure out what variants exist

and checking them off one by one.

And Game Boy, no one had a reason to keep the boxes.

So it's so hard to find them in the box,

that's why it took so long.

Some of these titles, they don't even sell for that much,

but they show up on eBay once a year, if even,

so it was really, really fun to do that

and it was easily my favorite system to collect for.

I almost don't want to get that last game because if I do,

it's over. (laughs)

Yeah, I mean, the games are meant to be played.

It's the age old argument.

Comics are meant to be read.

You know, how far back can we go?

Again, I'm not one to tell someone how to collect,

but thank God for technology.

You see how many games I have.

I haven't put any of these games in a system

because I have an EverDrive.

I have, like, technology has enabled us

to have the exact same experience,

like with a comic it's actually, even it's different.

Reading a reprint or reading a digital comic

is not the same experience as holding the comic in your hand

from like, you know, if you have like an Amazing Fantasy 15,

right, the first appearance of Spider-Man,

it's a different experience.

It smells different.

With a video game,

the EverDrives work on original hardware, right?

It's not even emulation.

So your experience is more related

to the TV that you're using than the actual game itself.

So I think that because of technology,

because of the resources we have,

that argument becomes totally moot.

And what it does actually is it enables us to look

at the actual physical games in a different light

and enables us to appreciate it

for more than just the gameplay.

It enables us to look at it

and say, this has beautiful artwork.

Who was the artist who did this, right?

Packaging,

I mean, I collect displays.

That's all about-

These were just marketable materials that got thrown out.

And the last thing I have to say

is if games were meant to be played,

then they wouldn't be collected.

Because if they were meant to be collected,

they wouldn't be a collectible.

Beanie Babies were meant to be collected.

That's why they crashed.

It's the stuff that you were meant to use, to toss out,

the boxes, the original packaging,

that that becomes collectible over time.

And thank God we did that

because now there's a whole market around it

and there's all this excitement and a community

built around preserving these old pieces of history.

It's culture.

It's pop culture, and it's important to all of our lives.

(bright stringed music)

- My name is Donny Fillerup.

I'm a collector from the Netherlands,

and I'm the owner of Consolevariations.com

Consolevariations is a hyper database

with all the hardware you can think of,

all the controllers, all the consoles,

all the accessories and even prototype.

So this is my Nintendo GameCube collection.

It's a hundred percent complete collection,

including the controllers and accessories.

We start from the left, top,

which are the Super Smash Brothers controllers.

(upbeat electronic music)

Followed up by the Emerald Green and the WaveBirds.

The WaveBirds are wireless controllers.

The most rare one is the Gundam one.

There are only 2000 made.

It's also the most expensive one.

This is from Club Nintendo.

And then we have the wired versions of Club Nintendo.

The Mario version was also released in Europe,

but the rest are all Japanese exclusive.

Here we have Dev kits and prototypes.

These are two prototype controllers.

This is the first version,

and this is the second version.

This is an Orange GameCube that was only released in Japan.

We have the Starlight GameCube, which is gold,

and it was only available in Toys "R" Us.

Then we have the Resident Evil 4.

We have a very rare Heineken GameCube.

There was a contest in the Vibe magazine.

Only 50 are made.

And then we have the Panasonic Q,

which was basically the rival of PS2

because it supported DVD.

It also have a brand new Game Boy player.

Below is a Hanshin Tigers.

Back in 2003, Nintendo sponsored Hanshin Tigers,

so this was like a celebration console.

This was Tales of Symphonia,

it was an online game.

This is the Gundam One.

It came with the figure and the Game Boy player.

This is a very rare Final Fantasy

Crystal Chronicles version.

There are only 150 made,

and it was a giveaway in a magazine.

And this is the ATI console.

It was only given away to GPU employees.

And here are all the accessories.

I have them all, including the very rare SD card reader

that was only meant for Animal Crossing.

N-Zone is a magazine company that was licensed by Nintendo,

hosted in Germany.

N-Zone magazine is basically the Nintendo power of Europe.

When their 200th magazine was released,

they had a few contests.

So this is a contest page.

You have to fill in the form, send it to N-Zone,

and you had a chance to win one of these prices.

One of them is a Nintendo DS with Mario 64 on it.

The Nintendo DS was canceled

because there were just too less entries.

Apparently one of the insiders who worked there

just took it with him.

He stole it (chuckles)

and he probably sold it to me a few years later.

This is only one made.

It was bundled with Super Mario 64,

and it was issued 200th issue of the N-Zone magazine.

In 2009, THQ figured out that the queen of England

loved to play Wii bowling for the Nintendo Wii.

THQ was also developing a video game

called Big Family Games,

and to promote that system,

they made a 24-karat golden Wii

to give it to the queen of England and their family

to play on.

So this was disposed of all the press

and there were stories and everything

that they still have it,

but the truth is they never received it.

They canceled it without the press knowing.

When THQ got bankrupt,

there was a high level collector

who purchased every development console and prototypes

in the entire office basically.

And that system was included.

So on the forum called Assembler Games, I met him,

we talked, we discussed, and eventually we came to a deal

where I purchased that console from him.

So this is my holy grail cabinet.

All my rarest items are in here.

So we start with the golden Wii.

This internal Wii is actually exactly the same

as any other Wii, only it's 24-karat gold.

It's the first version, which still has the GameCube ports.

I'm wearing gloves (chuckles)

because it's too expensive to hold with my bare heads.

The Wii was actually displayed vertically on a pillow

when it was presented to the press.

Funny enough, it was actually glued on

because there's still some residue on the back.

So you could still see some red stuff on it from the pillow.

This is an unreleased color of the Nintendo 64.

It was actually set up on auction in 2011.

It was sold for $1,200 and never to be seen again.

Apparently, this buyer never paid

and the seller still had it.

I contacted the seller nine years later,

and this is the system.

This is an X-Box one of Rare Replay.

There are only five made in the world.

You can win one for your Comic-Con.

There was one given away for your Twitter,

and one for your Facebook.

And there was also one able to win at Gamescom.

At Gamescom, you have to participate in a special tournament

when they made a custom level of Battletoads

and the highest scorer was able to win this console.

This one came from Facebook.

When I let Rare, that's I own this console,

they invited me over.

And then when I did, everyone went down

and signed this console.

The reason why I collect consoles

is that they are challenging to collect than games,

in my opinion,

and everything has a story behind them.

Every limited edition, every giveaway,

there's always a story behind it that makes it special.

And that's the reason why I collect consoles.

And when you have a complete collection,

you have an entire story to tell others

about the whole history about that system.

(ominous music)

- So I remember growing up in a rural area

in Northern California,

and, you know, going to a rental store to get a video game

was typically a weekly or every other week experience.

You know, we would get a take and bake pizza,

we would get a movie in, and if we were good,

we would get a video game to rent

for our Nintendo Entertainment System typically

back in the day.

And so I remember going into one of two

main video rental stores in my hometown at the time,

and looking at the box art.

And you know, at the time,

I wasn't looking at video game magazines.

There wasn't the internet.

And so you had to go either by word of mouth

of other kids you went to school with,

or you would look at that box art,

you turn it on the backside and you'd make a judgment call.

Sometimes I would make that decision with my brother.

Sometimes we'd flip a coin.

Sometimes, you know, we'd just take a gamble.

Most of the time, we were pretty good at picking good games.

And you definitely found out pretty fast, you know,

if a game was terrible.

You would tell people about it

and you know, you'd find out what are the good games,

what are the bad games from, you know, kids at school.

- I remember going to the video store broke

just to see what game, just to see the selection,

just to see what they had.

It was like, oh, I saw that in Nintendo Power.

There's a Nintendo game that just came out.

I've never even heard of that one.

And you just have to grab the game

and look at the back of the box and look at the pictures.

That's all you had.

You didn't have the internet.

You couldn't look up gameplay footage.

You couldn't look up somebody streaming it on Twitch.

You certainly couldn't look up any reviews

or anything like that.

You actually either had to see it in a magazine

or literally just take-

You know, like, here's what the cover art looks like.

Cool.

Flip it around.

You see two or three screenshots,

a little synopsis about the game.

That's all you had to judge on.

- There was a time, not too long ago,

where if I saw a game that I wanted

but it had an old rental sticker on it,

I'd be like, "Oh, I'm not going to get that one."

But now, the whole concept of going out

and renting something is so antiquated

that that just adds to it.

So it's, you know, especially if it is a place

that we grew up going to.

- I love finding games with rental stickers on them

because that's a piece of history.

That's a part of its journey or where it came from.

Sometimes I'll find games here in the Northwest

that have rental sticker stores in Virginia

or something like that.

And I love it when people write on their cartridges.

I know a lot of people don't, but I love it.

Like, you know, turning on the back of the card,

and it's like, you know, Thompson,

and it has like their phone number or something.

I'm having to call the phone number

to see if the family still lives there

and say, "Hey, I've found your copy of Silent Scope.

Where can I send it back to you," you know.

- For me, that personally adds

to the likeability of the product.

You know, if I find somebody's high score

written in the back of an instruction booklet,

I can be like, oh my gosh, this kid, some of this guy,

he played this game when he was a little kid

and he got this high score, and I bet he loved this game,

I bet he cherished it.

- The sticker make it sicker.

- [Aaron] I absolutely love it when I find stickers

that are retro.

The original stickers,

it makes it so much cooler in my opinion.

You know what, it's just like a staple part

of physical media that isn't as popularized or polarized

as I think it should be.

(electronic game music)

- Video stores actually led to a lot of innovation.

Way back in 1994, Blockbuster actually teamed with New Leaf,

a company that basically wanted to make it easier

to get the games and get the movies

and get the music that you wanted on demand.

Blockbuster Game Factory green,

and Blockbuster Game Factory blue,

and basically what these were were flash carts

that were at kiosks in 10 Columbia, South Carolina stores,

where you could go in, you could type what game you wanted

and it would write the game to the cart.

You'd take it home, you'd play it, you'd bring it back,

it would erase it and be ready for the next person.

- We have any video game you like.

- What if I don't know what I want?

- You can preview them all right here.

- Then what do I do?

- Pick one and we'll produce it on the spot.

- And eventually they wanted to bring that into movies

and music as well.

- [Man On Video Commercial] Hi, excuse me.

Do you have the new album-

- We sure do.

CD or cassette?

- How do you know you have it?

I haven't even told you the title yet.

- We have everything.

- Well, you might be sold out.

- We're never sold out.

- Unfortunately, they did a test on this

in Columbia, South Carolina,

from August 10th through August 15th of 1994,

and some things they did not anticipate,

a lot of companies just wanted nothing to do with it

because it was such a new technology.

They thought that they were going to be losing money

because they couldn't actually keep track

of what was being rented.

Sega Genesis said yes, but then individual companies,

most of them said no.

So there are only a few games available.

The other thing that was the problem

was a bunch of the games took way too long to write.

So you had to wait in real time

as these games were written to these cartridges.

So New Leaf and Sega Genesis spent so much money

in advertising, trying to get as many companies

as they could.

They even hired Dennis Miller as a spokesperson.

And they were only able to put these in stores

for five measly days.

However, it made this one, the green,

and this one, the blue, very, very rare.

And it's actually one of the most rare things

in the Genesis set.

The green will run you between like $250 to $450

while we're filming this documentary.

The blue, you almost never see available

and could go upwards of a thousand dollars.

- This is actually not that rare.

This is a copy of a Baby Boomer on the NES.

It's unlicensed Color Dreams game.

And it's kind of printed black and white manual

because it came from a rental store.

I actually got this from my own childhood rental store

that I used to rent games from growing up,

in addition to a few other Nintendo games.

The name of the store is actually a really weird name.

It was called Take Home Our Movies.

It was awkward, and that was the name of the store.

It was in a strip mall.

It just said Take Home Our Movies.

I'm like, and that was it.

And I was like, okay, it makes sense to me.

I was driving through my hometown with my girlfriend

and we were driving past that strip mall,

and I was nostalgically being like, "Man,

there was my video store I used to go to."

'Cause I do that every time when we drive by it,

because I'm just like a sentimental bastard.

And then I had this idea.

I was like, well, what if I pull into the parking lot

and go into the liquor store

that was a few storefronts over.

And that's been there since the '80s

and still is there today,

and why don't I just talk to whoever's in there

and see if they remember the video store and who ran it.

So I went in there and I bought a drink

and I just struck up a conversation

with the owner of the liquor store

who happened to be there that day.

And I just casually was like, "Hey,

remember that video store over there?"

And he'd just like, "Oh yeah."

And so and so.

And so and so.

And, "I know the family and this and that,"

he knew all their names.

And I said that I wanted to reach out to them

to try to acquire some old games.

And he, you know, he was like into the idea.

That was cool and I remembered it

because no one ever talked about that place anymore

because it just kind of disappeared in time.

And so I took that information and I went home

and did some internet sleuthing,

and I tracked down the son of the owners of the video store.

And it was like, "Hey man, this sounds really weird.

And I'm sorry if it's like off putting,

but do you have any of the old video games

or whatever that your mom and dad's store used to carry?"

Like, "I have a lot of nostalgia

for renting games from their store

and I'm a big video game collector

and I'm just wondering if there's anything left over."

And he was like, "Actually there is a bunch of leftover

at my mom and dad's house up in Wisconsin.

And you know, I'll mediate it for you.

I'll go check on it and I'll get them all for you.

And then we can meet up at some point and you can buy them."

And I was like, "No way."

Like I was like so thrilled that I could finally have

a piece of that actual era.

Few weeks went by,

I was like, we're messaging back and forth

at a glacial pace.

I gave him my address.

He put two and two together

and he's like, "Oh, I'll be a block away from you

on Thursday.

We'll just meet."

So like weird twist of fate,

those games magically traveled down to Chicago

and I just walked out of my apartment door.

And he was like, "Here you go, man."

He was like, "Five bucks each."

And I was like, "Cool."

And then he also had some posters

and random VHS tapes and stuff that I also bought

just 'cause I was like, "Hey,

give me everything you've got."

- When collecting now, there's a lot of games

that are unlicensed, and there's a reason for that.

I mean, Nintendo had very strict standards

on what they wanted and what they would accept.

But there were a lot of people who saw this as a cash cow.

They wanted to get some money.

And so how could they do that?

So they figured out ways

to circumvent Nintendo's chip and everything,

and they also wanted to try to reach markets

that Nintendo wasn't really reaching.

They wanted to reach the adult market.

They wanted to reach the Christian market.

Those games, it's just they weren't printed

in the same kind of quantities.

It was so niche.

They weren't gonna be found at Toys "R" Us.

They weren't gonna be found, you know, in regular stores.

So they were so niche

that now there just aren't that many of them.

- This is the most common example of a Wisdom Tree game.

This is the Bible Adventures.

These are, as you could tell,

this is almost self-explanatory.

These are Christian-based video games.

- I distinctly remember when I was a kid,

we would go into this one Bible bookstore,

a Christian store.

And they had this one little counter, under the glass,

with Nintendo games, but they were all Bible Nintendo games.

I remember seeing Bible Adventures there for sure.

And I remember just, you know, because it was Nintendo,

I wanted to get it, but my parents always said no.

So seeing a game like Bible Adventures under that glass

at a Christian bookstore,

there weren't many ways you could get that game.

I mean, you could get it at that store.

You could maybe mail off

from a Christian catalog or something.

- From what I understand, I never saw them.

There were commercials supposedly with, you know,

where you can call and order these direct.

(electronic game music)

- [Woman On Video] So are you guys getting hungry?

- [Boys On Video] Yeah.

- [Woman On Video] Okay, good.

(electronic game music continues)

Do you ever worry that they're playing too much Nintendo?

- Oh, not anymore.

See, Matt has Bible Adventures.

They're actually learning Bible stories

while they're playing Nintendo.

- Quick, get that Bible quote before you run out of power.

- [Voiceover On Video] Bible Adventures features three games

in one cartridge:

Noah's Ark, Save Baby Moses, and David and Goliath,

a must for every family with Nintendo.

Call 1-800-77-BIBLE.

That's 1-800-77-bible.

- There really weren't many ways to get it.

So how is the average kid going to find it?

And that's why it's rare to this day.

- Later in the life of these games,

as a good friend of mine pointed out,

a lot of these ended up in a lot of use video game stores,

you know, (chuckles)

because this would be the first thing

that a kid would trade in

once they realize there were a lot better stuff out there.

The Nintendo versions of these games,

the NES version of these games, are uncommon,

but they're not extremely rare.

The ones that really got to be rare

are, you know, from the Super Nintendo era.

Those games seem to be the more valuable ones.

("Hallelujah")

- This is a cool little set.

It's very esoteric.

And I love odd ball, stuff like this.

This is the full, and some behind there,

the full HES set, which was Home Entertainment Suppliers.

They were basically the distributor

for unlicensed NES games in Australia.

They actually have like, I pulled one aside here,

because they either had these funky shaped cartridges

or they came with something called a dongle

to basically bypass the lockout chip on the NES.

So they come in these really funky VHS-style clamshells.

So another interesting one is Chiller,

which is also an unlicensed game for the NES.

- Sometimes you'd be at the video store,

you'd see this weird game, it looked a little different,

different color, different shape,

you'd bring it home and you'd play it.

And you were, "What the heck is this?

This is not Mario Brothers.

What is going on?"

And then you start wondering like,

maybe you don't want your mom to come in

and see what you're actually playing.

- I know with my friends growing up

and going to rent movies, kind of, the big thing to do

would be to go rent Faces of Death

and then tell your friends about it.

And I'm talking about when I was like 12 years old,

and the video game equivalent of Faces of Death

has to be Chiller.

- [Deniz] Chiller was actually an arcade machine.

It was very controversial when it was released.

It's a point and click game

and you have to just click a bunch of times

and it rips a girl's arm off and stuff.

Really messed up.

The arcade machine got banned because it was so gruesome.

They dumbed down,

like the NES version is a little bit more appropriate,

(laughs) even though it's still really messed up.

- [John H.] So Chiller was, to me,

like the anti-Nintendo game 'cause it was so violent.

It definitely was going for that shock value.

That was kind of a theme with several video games.

You know, even going back to the Atari 2600,

you had the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was not allowed

to be sold in several stores.

There's only a few places that offered it.

And the same thing with unlicensed games,

Nintendo just pretty much put the kibosh on that

and just said, "If you carry these games in your store,

then you cannot carry licensed games."

And so that really limited the places

where certain unlicensed games were sold.

- With their marketing,

they tried to make this game, which was all about torture,

you know, seem like it was the worst damn thing.

It was almost as if Satan made it himself.

So there was a real cult following,

trying to find this game and play it.

You know, there was no internet back then.

So, you know, if you wanted to find something,

you really had to go out there and look for it.

And I think Chiller is a good example of that.

- So actually by chance, I have the AGCI,

which is the unlicensed version on the NES

that you usually see as a pretty little fun game there.

- [John H.] Typically, and this is where I found

my copy of Chiller, was actually a rental store,

and the rental store had a copy,

and when they went out of business, they sold it.

And that's how I got my copy.

So rental stores became kind of a place,

especially Ma and Pa Rental Stores,

for these unlicensed games back in the yesteryear.

'Cause, you know, big corporations

aren't going to go hunt down an individual rental store

in a small rural community.

And so that typically was where you found

some of these games.

- For the moment everyone's been waiting for,

my pornographic Panesian games.

I only have two of them.

There are three of them in the set

and it kind of bothers me I don't have the third one,

but I'm working on that and maybe I'll someday get it.

These two games, Peek-A-Boo Poker and Hot Slots,

but in my own sense, I like to call mine Hot Lots

because I have label tare that tore off the S,

so I got the rare variant right here.

But these two games, they're pornographic Nintendo games.

They were unlicensed.

They weren't licensed by Nintendo officially.

Some company made three pornographic Nintendo games

and made them available to Mom and Pop Video Stores

to rent out,

and I think that's the only way

you could actually experience them back in the day.

So nowadays, they're extremely rare.

Like the level of rarity is through the roof

because you can actually couldn't buy them in the store.

So the only way they leaked out into the market

is from clearance bins

of when video stores are shutting down or whatnot.

- [Man On Video] Spudic's Movie Empire.

Nintendo games for $2.50.

We have Sega Genesis games for $2.50.

We got some Super Nintendo games, $2.50.

You can't find these at Walmart.

Spudic's Movie Empire.

- These last couple of years,

I've been buying a bunch of erotic games

because I have basically everything else.

That's interesting for me.

I found Bubble Bath Babes for the Famicom.

I didn't know what it was until I got it,

but just the cover alone made me want to get it.

And from the backside, it looks like a puzzle game

and I love puzzle games, so I got it.

And it's actually a really, really good puzzle game.

I've never seen a puzzle game that has these mechanics.

Exactly like this one.

It's very enjoyable, especially in two player mode as well.

I've played it a lot with friends,

not because of the nudity,

because it's actually a good game as well.

So this is apparently a very rare game today.

I bought it many years ago

and it's quite minty with everything intact.

It's for the Famicom and I gave a hundred dollars for it

many years ago.

- I don't actually know where they were actually in,

like where they were located in the video stores.

I think you had to ask about them.

I think it's a lot of lore at this point.

Nobody really knows the actual story behind it.

I think some of the old timers might know,

but I feel like, well, those guys

don't even really post on forums anymore or anything.

So I think they just probably had them readily available

'cause I definitely read online

that some people remember seeing them at the video store,

like somewhere on the bottom shelf, I think,

like in the video game section.

So I don't think they had it in a porno section

or maybe it was up to the discretion

of whoever ran the store.

Maybe they wanted to put them in the porno section

or maybe they put them in the video game section.

I don't know.

No, I never looked at these games with blacklight,

and I'm afraid to.

Probably these are box protectors.

So if in case anything new happens, there'll be protected.

- [Heidi] Soft porn Adventure by Online Systems.

And this is the prequel to,

or the game that is the whole Leisure Suit Larry Series

is based on, the first Leisure Suit Larry game.

And the woman here, Roberta Williams,

is the woman who wrote the whole game

and she's done like knight quests and a bunch of other games

after that as well.

And it's a brilliant game.

It's so funny.

It's not as-

It's soft, it's soft porn, and it is a floppy disc,

like a real floppy disc.

And I've played this game with so many friends

and everybody has been laughing and having so much fun.

And I bought it.

And a few months later, a friend of mine

who knows that I bought it told me that it was just sold,

a copy on eBay, in not as good condition as mine

and everything like that, and it was 15,000 kroners,

which is approximately, I don't know, $2,000 or something.

- You know, a lot of these unlicensed games

were controversial.

They had adult content.

So you might find some of these unlicensed games

in like an adult section at a video rental store.

You might find them behind the counter.

Even some games were sold with a lock and key,

and you know, going back to the Atari 2600 days.

And so, you know, because they were so recluse

and the distribution of them was so limited,

that as time went along,

not many copies of these games survived.

And so most of these copies of these games

are now in collector's hands.

There's not many out in the wild.

You know, you can't go to many thrift stores

and just find them.

And so finding these controversial games now

is rare and would typically fetch quite a lot.

(gentle serene music)

- As much as game collecting is awesome,

there's downfalls if you get too into it,

kind of really with anything in the world.

Too much of something can be a bad thing, per se,

not specifically speaking about game collecting.

I know personally in my life before,

there's been times where I've maybe spent

a little more money than I would've liked to,

or tried to keep up with other YouTubers,

and that's something that I think also needs to be looked at

is a lot of times, pick up videos or collectors

were kind of known by some people on the outside,

like you guys are just trying to show off.

You're just trying to one up each other.

And as much as I like to back myself away from that,

I have to realize that there is some times

where I have to step back and go,

"The only really reason that I picked that up

is because I wanted to show people.

I don't really have a connection to it.

I don't really feel any nostalgia for it.

And heck I don't even really like the game."

So personally for me,

I feel like I've had to pull back the reins

quite a few times.

If I'm collecting for just some sort of status,

of saying I own this, or I have this,

for me, that's personally unhealthy.

Also with my family as well,

there's been multiple times

where I'm, "Hey, I'm going to go to the swap meet

instead of going out with the family,"

like I know I said I would.

So I stepped back from that and I also tell our people now,

like going forward, be careful

how much you dive deep into this.

You know, make sure you put

the important things in your life

a step above of your hobbies.

- I get this question a lot,

what is the difference between collecting and hoarding?

Honestly, I don't know if there is.

(laughs)

I want there to be.

As a collector, I really do.

- So I think as long as you keep things organized

and you can walk on the floor, it's not hoarding.

It's collecting.

- Yeah, I've been called a hoarder a lot.

I don't think it's the same as the real hoarding.

I mean, it depends what it is, you know,

whatever it is you're filling your house up.

If it's something that makes you happy, I'm all for it.

Yeah, I mean, that's all I say.

Like if it's something you like,

if you want to have it, then it's good.

- The funny thing about collecting

is I know people who have basically the library of Congress

when it comes to books in their living room,

like next to their TV console and stuff like that,

and people will go up to them and say,

"Oh, that's a nice collection of books,"

but they see my pile of video games,

and it's like, "Oh, you're just a hoarder."

It's like where's the divide

that says my collection of video games isn't hoarding,

but somebody who has a bunch of books,

how's it any different?

- I've seen collecting destroy people

where it's gone too far.

Some of the unhealthy choices that comes

with video game collecting: debt,

I've seen a lot of gamers out there collect too much

where it's impacted their relationships with their partners,

where they've gone into debt,

where they couldn't pay their bills.

Space, where it takes up too much space

and then that becomes a problem.

It impacts their day-to-day living,

which then, you know, impacts your mental health.

- The most important aspect of being a person

is the relationships we have with people.

And unfortunately, collecting,

there's a dark side where it can interrupt relationships,

whether friendships.

I've known of people who fought

over games that they couldn't get,

or sweeping in and taking something

that someone else wanted, and then it causes a rift,

or I've known of marriages that have fallen apart

because people are spending too much

or hiding the purchases, hiding how much they're spending

from their husband or wife.

- So I have family overseas that, you know, again,

it's a very cultural thing like I said earlier.

It's very American to collect stuff

in the way that we collect it,

and they just don't get it, right?

It's very different, but again,

it's because it's not part of their culture.

So I totally understand where people are coming from

where they don't get it.

But for us, it's just a representation

of what we grew up with and capturing that.

- Having a game collection,

I don't want to say necessarily

that it's like a taboo in Japan.

It kind of goes along with that sort of Otaku culture,

I guess, which is like obsessive fandom.

So some people are really obsessed with manga, for example,

so they'll have huge collections of manga or figures

or something like that.

It's not necessarily frowned upon,

but I think most people do tend

to keep things like that personal,

unless you're sharing it with a group of friends

and you're all into the same thing.

It's not necessarily something that you're like, you know,

making this big public thing about you.

So I think, for example,

like there are less Japanese gaming YouTubers

that the focus of their channel is they're game collecting.

Like if you go and watch a lot of Japanese YouTube gaming,

it focuses a lot more on gameplay,

showing expertise in gameplay and things like that.

Whereas it's way more commonplace

for North American channels,

collecting is a big part of that.

So doing pickups videos and doing room tours

and then showing off your collection and things like that,

that is far less common on Japanese Gaming YouTube.

Not so much that there's a stigma attached to it,

but I think generally people are just more personal

about that kind of thing here.

- Are there positive things about collecting?

Absolutely.

You know, with my mental health background,

collecting can give you an outlet.

I've seen a lot of people use collecting

as a healthy outlet for stress.

You know, they might have a day job that's really stressful.

I know my previous journey with jobs,

I've had stressful jobs before,

and I used collecting as a healthy outlet

to kind of relieve that stress.

Playing games or collecting games

or even just having conversations about collecting

with others has been really healthy.

You definitely have to remember balance in your life

and knowing what's best for you,

knowing what's best for your family,

and ultimately in the end of the day,

are you having fun doing it,

are you still enjoying the hobby,

are you still have finding that passion about collecting

or talking about something?

You know, that's really the determining factor

of continuing with it.

- My husband and I actually met in 2014,

right after I got my first N64.

I bought an N64.

And then about two weeks later, I met him,

and I noticed on his Instagram he had pictures

of game collection and it was like half of this.

I'm just going to say that, okay.

We've collected a lot since we've been married together.

But we really, when I first saw that,

I was like, okay, this guy like collects retro games too.

This is really cool.

He likes to play games.

He's a video gamer.

But then diving into it more,

I really found out that he was a collector

and there was a whole world that I didn't even know about

of retro gaming that I never knew would be a thing

because of the fact that, you know,

he was already involved in it

and already in the retro community

and already getting those games.

So he really introduced me to the retro world

after we got married, you know.

We walked down the aisle to a Legend of Zelda song,

and our whole entire reception and everything we had,

video game music.

Like we just love it.

It's been a bit huge part of our relationship.

We had an N64 at our wedding.

So it's always been a really cool thing for us

to kind of do and play.

These are my husband's (laughs)

from when he was a child.

They're not from right now.

They are Super Mario.

I think Super Mario 3 little undies, and I love them.

We found them when we were cleaning,

the last time we were cleaning up the game room,

and I was like, "Okay, we're putting these on the wall."

So these hang on our wall.

So we're really not too sure where these came from.

They were his, but they just all of a sudden

appeared in a box.

So we think that he just put them

in his box of collectibles when he was 10 or 11 years old.

'Cause these, you know, obviously would probably fit

a seven to 10 year old on figuring.

And so we figured that he just put them in the box

with all his little collectibles

'cause he did have a lot of collectible figurines

and all of these video games.

And so they've just lasted until then.

And they're actually in really good shape

and everyone's always like, oh, that's gross.

But you know, you wash underwear

and you wear it all the time, so why not?

And obviously, they're starting to wear out a little bit,

but other than that, they're pretty, pretty cute

and something that's really rare in a collection

that a lot of people don't have.

They don't have underwear on their wall (laughs)

for video game collecting.

If my husband one day walked away

from the retro video game world,

I would be so excited

because I would get all these video games.

I'd be like, "Listen, I don't know

how we're going to do this anymore."

It would depend on how much he walked away from.

But you know, if he walked away from it and said,

"I don't want to see a retro video game

for the rest of my life,"

we would probably have a bigger issue than, you know,

than just our collection

because there's no way I'd think I could be with somebody

who could not be into video games or support somebody

who likes something, you know.

It's a big thing to be supportive of each other

and have those connections with something,

whether it's just one thing or 10 things.

And that is one of the things that we have is retro gaming.

And we love it together and that in itself

makes us stronger.

- My wife had cancer.

And so it was like this crossroads

of really needing something to distract myself

from that part of my life

and wanting to get into something new.

So I basically started liquidating my toys and comics

and started funneling it in mass

into a video game collection.

My wife passed away of stage four breast cancer,

and I was her primary caretaker for that entire journey,

and that was about four years.

But when she was diagnosed terminal,

which means like no chance of ultimate survival,

she wouldn't be able to be cured at that point,

then her life insurance policy unexpectedly paid out.

So we did lots of responsible adult things

with most of that money,

but then afterwards she had some leftover

and she came to me and she said, "Hey, you know,

you stuck through me with this

and you take care of me and I love you.

I'd love to do something for you.

What do you want?"

This was the copy of Stadium Events that my wife bought me

when we discovered that she was sick.

It's one of my favorite pieces,

and not because of the monetary value necessarily

as much as the intrinsic sentimental value.

It means a lot to me.

So I started collecting about five years ago,

five or six years ago.

And it did transform over time,

and I think any hobby does that.

And I do think it's very important to set goals,

especially when you starting out

because you don't get a collection like this immediately,

right?

So you start, you know,

start with very achievable goals

and then you kind of get bigger and bigger and bigger.

And so I started out collecting games

and I just had decided that when I started,

I had maybe a shoe box collection of, you know,

10 or 15 Super Nintendo games.

And I had decided that, okay, well I want to get

every Super Nintendo game ever made or every North American

or every English Super Nintendo game ever made.

So I ended up getting the whole Super Nintendo set

in two and a half months, (chuckles)

which is bonkers.

And then I was, kind of, set to set

and I've done 11 or 12 sets now, full sets.

Part of collecting that I really love is the chase.

Not just the, oh yeah, I have this artifact

from my childhood or whatever.

Some of these things, definitely not from my childhood,

but the chase is really important to me.

And so I had gotten to the point

where I started to get bored with games, right,

because retail games are expensive, but not difficult.

Really your only gate is monetary, right?

Like with the advent of eBay and different Facebook groups

and all that kind of stuff,

you can essentially buy as fast as you can afford to

for most things.

I really started to feel a need to try to hunt things

that were more and more difficult.

So one of the things that I collect

is internal Nintendo awards.

So awards that were given to employees for various reasons.

This one is absolutely my favorite.

This is a 20 year Nintendo Service Award.

So an employee would have to be with Nintendo

for 20 years before receiving them.

Now they don't even give them these.

They give them these block, like crystal block numbers.

So even if you were there for 20 years now,

you don't get one of these statues.

This guy is solid bronze and marble.

And so he is very, very heavy,

and he's actually made by the same company

that makes the Oscars.

So he's very, very high quality

and extremely challenging to find

because, generally, if someone is with Nintendo

for 20 years, they have very fond memories of that.

So finding someone who is willing to even part with one,

or even willing to talk to you about it is very challenging.

So I'm super happy to have this,

but yeah, he's my favorite.

I like to say that if something is for sale,

I'm not interested.

Like that's the level of rarity

that I generally look for at this point.

So the things that I'm hunting for,

a lot of times I don't know that I'm even looking for them,

you know, because I am doing things

where I am discovering that things exist

as I'm finding them.

That happens a lot with,

especially with the original art pieces,

like people ask me what my holy grail is

and I just say, well, it's the next thing,

it's the next piece.

And I don't even know what that is yet.

This jacket actually started my obsession

with Nintendo Game Play Counselors.

- You're going to come across this big sea serpent.

(electronic game music)

- You'll get to a place

where there's this big skullhead guy.

It looks kind of like something from Star Wars.

- [Stephan] If you look at the very first page

of the first issue of Nintendo Power,

there is an ad for the Nintendo Power Line,

the tip line that you would call

to talk to a Game Play Counselor.

And there were three actors, I'm assuming,

wearing these gray jackets.

And so I was curious as to whether or not

those jackets actually existed.

And I was eventually able to find them.

It turns out that these gray Samus jackets

were only given to the first 40 or so

Nintendo Game Play Counselors.

And then afterwards, they were, you know, subsequent hires

were then able to sort of pick their own jacket,

pick their own design.

So this whole case is full of original clay MCATs

from Nintendo Power Magazine in the early run

of Nintendo Power, like say the first 12 issues or so.

A lot of them weren't drawn covers.

They were sculpted covers.

So they would have someone sculpt these maquettes

and then photograph them for the covers.

So you can see in here, they all sort of correspond-

They have the corresponding cover paired with them.

So there's the shoes from the Track & Field II cover.

Here's the Mario Paint Mario, the Mario 3 Mario,

Wily and Mega Man from the Mega man 2 cover

and the kind of mechanical robot from Super C.

And these are all partially polymer clay,

but then also kitbashes.

If you look at the underside of Wily,

you'll see a lot of Gundam parts and stuff like that,

that they just sort of cobbled together.

The shoes for Track& Field II

are just in a pair of Converse that they glued things to.

And one thing that I love about these

is that they were modeled very intentionally.

They were sculpted with just the angle

that the photographer was going to shoot them at in mind.

So if you turn around this Mario Paint Mario,

he is this like horror show (inaudible) monstrosity

made of Popsicle sticks.

And I just think it's funny to me

that they were so cognizant

of like just what the photographer was going to shoot,

that they saved time and money

by not sculpting the front of him.

So this is definitely one of my favorite

and also one of my rarest signs in the collection.

This is a fiber-optic Nintendo Power Glove sign.

This is from CES 1990, we think.

It was made for a single trade show.

They've made two of them in this size.

We did also find the third one

in like a smaller desktop size.

But if you want these big three by three signs,

there's only two of them.

And these were found in a storage locker in Arizona,

and they were actually on Craigslist forever

and no one knew what they were

and nobody thought that they were legitimate.

They thought someone had made them,

like a custom thing.

It wasn't until someone actually drove out there

and pick them up and then did some research

to find out that they were from the Mattel booth

at CES in 1990.

So as far as we know from photos and accounts

from actually the people who made these signs,

there are two of them.

This is one example.

And the other one actually is owned by Deniz Kahn.

- The guy who actually had these,

I think he worked at Mattel.

He had both, and he was only selling one.

And he said, I got to him and I said,

"Well, you know, whatever, it'll take, I'll figure it out."

And we were trying to work it out.

But then he said, "I'm only interested in trading

for other fiber signs."

And I said, "Well, I don't have any fiber signs to trade."

So Stephan did.

And so he got the one and I was so pissed off

and I said, I harassed the guy,

I said that, "If you ever sell the other one, let me know."

Well, he let Stephan know and Stephan got the other one

and then he was gracious enough to let me know

when that happened.

So now we both have the two that are out there,

which is a pretty special.

It's a really neat sign

and it's a cool piece of history

promoting something that was just so bad.

- So I've talked a little bit about how difficult it is

to find any art from Nintendo Power at all,

but there are sort of sublevels of difficulty there

as well.

One of the most notoriously difficult things to find

is reader submitted art,

and generally they would do that

by sending in art on the front of envelopes,

and because they were children

and Nintendo wants to protect privacy and all that,

generally these were either destroyed

or kept at Nintendo essentially forever.

I was fortunate enough to not only find envelope art,

but an entire set of envelope art.

So this is every piece of envelope art

that was published in this issue of Nintendo Power.

And I mean, just the likelihood of finding a piece

of envelope art is crazy,

and then finding a whole set of it was just otherworldly.

Rarity is, first of all, it's a really subjective thing

to talk about,

especially when you're talking about value of things,

because at the very rare end

where you're talking about one of a kind

or just a couple of something in existence,

it's very difficult to talk about value

because sometimes when you're asking me about an item,

well, the first time that it was ever sold

was when I bought it.

So I can't really put a price tag on something,

or sometimes I won't exactly know how to evaluate something

until someone comes to me and asks to buy it.

So I have, certainly, I have standing offers on a few things

that previously I wouldn't have known how to evaluate them

because I was the first one to buy them.

But something like my Super Metroid strategy guide cover,

I have the original painting for that.

I have a standing offer for $75,000 on that piece.

Very much, things are only worth

what someone will pay for it.

So oftentimes, again,

especially when you're talking about things

that sell so infrequently that I can't evaluate them.

That's the only way that I would ever know

how much something is worth is when someone asks

to buy it from me,

which almost is always the answer is almost always no.

(upbeat electronic music)

- The infamous Cardi B game that never existed (chuckles)

probably for a good reason.

I was going to hack this as dance aerobics,

and I was going to put her in dance aerobics,

which is a power pad game, just for fun, just to be silly.

But I was like, I gave up about halfway through

or part way through anyway.

It's again, it's a long process to hack these video games.

I figured if Cardi B was going to be in a Nintendo game,

it'd be an LJN game.

(laughs)

It's pretty silly all the same.

(upbeat electronic music continues)

- So Outback Joey was part of-

it's tactically doesn't work on a Sega Genesis.

You actually need the Heartbeat System controllers.

You can plug it into a Sega Genesis,

but you have to have these specific,

exclusive to this Heartbeat System

to make it actually work and play.

And so it's really bizarre, very, very rare game.

And the other thing is the manual.

So I do have the manual to it,

which is incredibly difficult to get as well.

(upbeat electronic music continues)

- So this is your famous McDonald's DSi.

Nintendo made these for McDonald's employees

to teach them how to make their burger.

All of them are used, probably smell like burgers,

and there are probably around a thousand made.

(upbeat electronic music continues)

- Slightly before The Nerd started,

I began selling off a lot of my games, you know.

A lot of it was, I just needed the money.

So I sold Contra for like $7

just so I could buy a sandwich, you know,

so I'll never remember what that sandwich was,

but I'll always remember Contra.