An unopened copy of a vintage Super Mario Bros. video game has been sold for $114,000 (~Rs 85.72 lakh) in an auction that underscored the enduring popularity of entertainment created decades ago. A bidder who wished to remain anonymous snapped up an early version of the pioneering Super Mario Bros. game released in 1985 for Nintendo’s NES console during an auction conducted Friday by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions.
The $114,000 price eclipsed Heritage Auctions’ previous record amount for a video game, which was a $100,150 bid made early last year for an unopened copy of the same game. The Super Mario Bros. copy that sold for a new record was part of a collection of video games from the 1980s and 1990s that sold to various buyers for nearly $700,000, which was well above Heritage Auction’s initial target of about $500,000.
Other titles auctioned off included “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!” a 1987 video game based on the former former heavyweight boxing champion, that sold for $50,400. It is important to note that the price that has made this humble copy of Super Mario Bros from 1985, made for Nintendo's NES console, to be the most expensive video game of all time, is most likely because of it remaining unsold and sealed for all these years. The auctioneers reportedly noted that such unopened copies of old and rare video games only remain in the world in 'single digits' which makes it quite a collector's items to lap up.
Meanwhile, on the other end of things, both Sony and Microsoft are expected to heat up the gaming world in the closing months of 2020. With PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X set to bring massive performance jumps, it remains to be seen which console manages to outdo the other in terms of overall popularity.
(With inputs from Associated Press)
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