What’s so special about the world’s most expensive video game tape?

On July 11, the Super Mario 64 tape was sold for $ 1,560,000, causing a stir in the press. This value broke the record for the world’s most expensive video game set by The Legend of Zelda on July 9 for $ 870,000.

In fact, this is not a rare story in the gaming world, which is always vibrant with tapes, virtual and real items sold for up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Of course, Super Mario 64 tape also has a few unique features to make buyers accept to spend more than 1.5 million USD to own it.

Tape not peeled off

According to the assessment, Super Mario 64 tape sold is unopened, preserved by Wata under quality 9.8/10, A++/A++. That is, the condition of the preserved ice is almost new compared to the original time.

Super Mario 64 is a game released on the Nintendo 64 system in 1996. At the time of release, the game cost about 60 USD and sold more than 11 million copies, becoming the best-selling game on the Nintendo 64 system.

Super Mario 64 Tape has not been peeled and is currently stored in a Wata box.

Thus, the value of Super Mario 64 lies in the popularity of this game, as well as the careful preservation of the seller.

But even with used Super Mario 64 tapes, its value today is not less than $ 60, which is equivalent to a blockbuster AAA game. The reason is because Nintendo is the exclusive manufacturer of these tapes, contributing to blowing up the price of game tapes many times over.

The technology of using cartridges (cartridge) has been used by Nintendo for a long time instead of disc players, extending from four-button electronic systems (NES), floppy disks (SNES) to the GameCube. born.

Interestingly, the original SNES used a tape player, but pirated machines from China switched to using floppy disks to play crack games.

Therefore, Nintendo’s use of tape technology has contributed to blowing the price of old game tapes up many times.

First 3D game Game

The great success of Super Mario 64 is thanks to this being the first 3D game version of the famous series Super Mario Bros. Remember, Mario at that time was already a famous brand not only in Japan but also globally but all in the form of 2D images.

It wasn’t until Super Mario 64 that players could fully see the Mario dwarf character and the environmental landscape in the form of 3D graphics, something that was extremely meaningful to gamers around the world at that time. .

Mario 3D graphics can be considered a breakthrough in 1996.

For comparison, the best-selling PlayStation 1 game of the time, Gran Turismo, also sold more than 10 million copies, but on CD. And the graphics of Gran Turismo are also very limited, 3D locking the perspective.

Therefore, Super Mario 64 can be considered a breakthrough at the time of 1996, although the Nintendo 64 system was not too successful compared to the rival PlayStation 1.

So what will a buyer do with an unopened game tape? Of course, they will not peel it off to try it out, but use it as collectibles. And if you want to have fun on an old system, the simplest way today is to use an emulator on a computer or smartphone.