Yesterday afternoon a second copy of Nintendo Campus Challenge 1992 was found and verified to exist. Up until now there was only one known copy, which was found at a now legendary garage sale in New York.
This second copy is owned by someone who is not a collector but was given the cartridge by Nintendo back in 1992 and forgot all about it until now. Here is how the owner describes it:
I was involved in a project where we received a range of games, a few consoles and this one [Campus Challenge 92]. We actually ran the project both in the US and in Europe. It was not the campus challenge itself. We built gear around it and was offered to keep a few consoles, games and the Campus Challenge which at the time was seen as more or less worthless.
I just found it in the attic when looking for other stuff and thought I'd google it to find info about it and... well it was a nice surprise :-)
Even though he felt Campus Challenge was "more or less worthless", I'm sure he's glad he kept it around. The only known sale for this game was back in 2006 for $4,000. Game prices have increased substantially since then (just look at our Vintage Game Index for evidence of this). I am sure the game is worth upwards of $10,000 today.
UPDATE: An owner of another Campus Challenge 92 cartridge contacted me and posted in the comments below stating that this game is more rare and less rare than previously thought. How is that possible? There are four copies of this game in existence now so it is less rare than my initial research led me to believe. But one of those copies is a Super Famicom version and the other two are NTSC versions. This new one is a PAL version for Europe.
So it is one of a kind, but also one of four. Thank you snesmaster for your update.
Below are some more videos of the owner starting up his Campus Challenge 92 cartridge and playing it for a while:
3 comments :
That's exciting news.
One thing unique about collecting competition cartridges is that they're all essentially identical. In some sense, finding a new one decreases the value of the other extant copies. That contrasts with hand-made collectibles like Stradivarius violins, Faberge eggs or Da Vinci paintings. When a new one of those surfaces, it's one of a kind and extant items are still one of a kind too. I'm curious to see how this dynamic plays out in the coming decades.
I own the Super Famicom version of this game that was used in a televised competition in Japan against the top US and top Japanese players. My version has a generic "Nintendo Challenge" title screen. A person in Sweden owns the US cartridge with the "Campus Challenge" title screen. A 3rd person that wants to remain anonymous owns a US version as well. The one this article is about is the 4th one known to surface and appears to be a PAL version of the game from the videos.
You can view information about this game as well as videos from the competition in Japan at:
http://www.snesmaps.com/maps/1992Challenge/1992Challenge.html
A PAL version? Impressive.
Post a Comment