If you pride yourself on being a devoted Nintendo fan, a rare video game has popped up on eBay that may pique your interest.
Nintendo collectors are racing over to eBay to bid on an auction for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game Nintendo World Championships.
See also: 'Press Start': Every Nintendo Start Screen in Three Hours
Initial bidding started at $4,999, but, at the time of this writing, the latest bid on the rare game cartridge was $98,601. According to BBC News, one Nintendo expert thinks the cartridge is likely to earn more, despite the item's poor condition (a ripped label and the words “Mario” written on its casing), as genuine copies of Nintendo World Championships are hard to come by.
“[The writing on the case] is quite unfortunate but happened many decades ago by this point in time,” explained the seller in the auction’s description. “[S]omeone probably wrote on there long ago not having a clue what they actually had.”
Part of what makes the game so rare is the fact that only 116 copies of Nintendo World Championships were ever made. The game was designed for the actual Nintendo World Championships — a competition in 1990 that toured 29 cities in the U.S — but was never offered for sale to the general public. Each of the 90 semi-finalists at the Nintendo World Championships were given one for making it that far in the competition.
The game includes three shortened “mini-game” versions of classic Nintendo games: Super Mario Bros., Tetris and Rad Racer.
Nintendo specially designed the three mini-games for the competition’s format. Each contestant was given just a few minutes to play through all three of the shortened games and earn as many points as possible.
The auction will end on January 25.

The video game crash of the early 1980s was caused by very few controls on hardware and software and manufacturers. Designers released poor-quality games, including big-budget tie-ins like the E.T. game for Atari, which flopped so badly that all extra copies were taken to a landfill.
Artwork courtesy of MBAOnline
Nintendo enjoyed some success in America due to arcade cabinets. Plus, Donkey Kong had become a huge success.
After the Famicom had done well for two years in Japan, it was time to bring it to America. The Nintendo Entertainment System reached U.S. test markets in October 1985, then became widely available in 1986.
Fusajiro Yamaguchi founded Nintendo in 1889 as a playing card company. It specialized in hand-drawn cards used in popular games of the time. In Japanese, the name Nintendo means "leave luck to heaven," and relates to the card games the company produced.
One hundred years later, and it was finally making a big splash in America.
Nintendo's consoles remain relevant thanks to its strategic franchises. For many Americans, the NES was their first real introduction to Mario, and Super Mario Bros. was the first huge game success that told a powerful story.
Add to that the magically engrossing action-adventure game The Legend of Zelda, which took players into the mystical world of Hyrule to meet Link for the first time.
Nintendo consoles have historically done well, though it has completely dominated the competition in the handheld market.
Games like Tetris, Brain Age and Nintendogs, along with Mario, were accessible to everyone. They pushed high sales of Nintendo's handhelds, which beat out many consoles for the most units sold over time.
The Wii signaled a revolutionary jump forward in gaming for its radically different motion controls. The pack-in game of Wii Sports tremendously boosted the system's appeal — it became easy for anyone to virtually bowl, golf or box.
Despite competition from Sony or other companies, Nintendo has been able to dominate the handheld market.
Recent years have seen the rise of mobile phone and tablet gaming threaten handhelds, but Nintendo's newest handheld, the 3DS, has sold 6 million units in the U.S., so far.
The Power Glove was Nintendo's first foray into motion controls for the Nintendo Entertainment System. However, it was complicated to set up, very difficult to use, and few games were compatible.
Beyond the scope of Mario, Nintendo owns The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Kirby, Star Fox, F-Zero and Pikmin.
Of course, you can't forget about Pokémon, the second most popular gaming franchise ever. This Nintendo exclusive also helped sell millions of portable systems and spawned a television show, movies, toys and a trading card game.
Five years after the release of the Wii U, Nintendo was still more profitable than Microsoft or Sony, in terms of games. The Wii proved to be a hit that had longevity.
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