Just a few days ago the game "The Legend of Zelda" for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) became the most expensive video game ever, but that record didn’t last long. Now a sealed version of the game "Super Mario 64" for the Nintendo 64 game console (N64) for 1.56 million US dollars (approx. 1.314 million) sold at Heritage Auctions.
With this price, the Mario game fetched almost twice the rare Zelda version, which had a lottery ticket of 870.000 dollars (approx. 730.000 euros). The early production copy of the first game in the Zelda series achieved its rarity value by being manufactured for only a few months in late 1987 before finally being replaced in mass production in early 1988 by a "REV-A"-variant has been replaced.
Nearly perfect Wata rating
The now auctioned version of the "Super Mario 64" for N64 on the other hand benefited from the extremely high Wata rating. While the Zelda game only received "Wata 9.0 A" the old video game reviewers have given the Mario game in question a rating of "Wata 9.8 A++" rated. According to Heritage Auctions, this makes it the highest-rated edition of this classic game and the best-selling game on the N64 system.
Wata Games rates old video games based on the condition of the box, the enclosed documentation, and the game itself, ranking it on a scale with a maximum of 10 points. With "Wata 9.8 A++" the now 25-year-old N64 game about the Italian plant mechanic for sanitary engineering is considered practically untouched and almost perfectly preserved.