We all
remember the Nintendo competition from
The Wizard, but what many people don't realize is that it spawned
a real event. In 1990, Nintendo held a World Championships event where the
best gamers from around the globe would compete in a timed competition in
three of their most popular games at the time (Super Mario Bros., Rad
Racer and Tetris) to see who could score the most points.
Even more
legendary than the event itself are the 116 special cartridges that were
created for the event. 90 of the cartridges were grey and 26 were gold.
The grey ones were given out to the semi-finalists, while the gold ones
were only given to the winners of the competition and runner-ups from a
Nintendo Power magazine contest. While the cartridges simply contain the
same timed trial of all 3 games from the competition, they've become #1
desirable item on any Nintendo collector's list.
No, I'm not
talking about people paying a couple hundred bucks for one of these
cartridges. People have in excess of $20,000 for these
things! Perhaps the most infamous appearance of one of the rare gold
cartridges was in an online auction where a father was selling off his
son's NES game collection since he had died in the Iraq war. Little did
the father know that he included one of the ultimate NES item. As a
result, the 24-game collection sold for a whopping $21,400.
Care to take a guess as to how much of that cash was because of the gold
Nintendo World Championships cartridge?
Perhaps the
greatest thing about the 1990 Nintendo World Championships was the name of
the winner of the entire competition:
Thor
Aackerlund
You really
can't go wrong with a name like Thor. Camerica, a producer of some fairly
weak (and unlicensed) games for the NES was quick to scoop up ol' Thor to
be the official spokesman for their games.
Camerica?
Come on Thor, you could've easily held out and struck a deal with Capcom
or Konami. How could they resist you with a name like Thor and such a
winning smile?