Kirby’s Adventure

I made some recent sales on my local classified as I downsize my loose cart collection of Nintendo NES and SNES games. I then took that money straight to Retro Game Bros. in the hopes of finding some nice complete Super Nintendo or NES games.

I’ve decided that I want to chase complete games rather than loose cartridges and because that means spending more money I’ve decided that I’m OK having less games in the collection.

Of course I would love all my complete games to be like new and in super mint condition but I know that’s not realistic. Complete and mint games are hard to find and will be very expensive. And with the somewhat recent trend of ‘Graded’ games prices seem to have no upper limit.

So I’m truly content with having games that show some ~~wear~~ love.

But this does not mean I’m left scraping the bottom of the barrel. Below is my new Complete in Box (CIB) Kirby’s Adventure. Right away you’ll be able to see where it’s aged but all in this is a very good copy of the game.

Thanks to the Video Game documentary series called High Score I’ve learned that our beloved Bald and Pink Kriby was named and imaged (in a fashion) after the attorney John Kirby who successfully saved Nintendo from Universal Studios in a dispute over Donkey Kong and his similarity to King Kong. Thank you John!

In order to help judge retro video game value I’ve been using two web site: www.pricecharting.com and gamevaluenow.com.

I’ve started to notice a trend where these two site don’t always show a similar value for some games and most times when this happens GameValueNow will show a higher value. Sometimes the spread between the two values can be significant. So I’ll often take an average between the two to give myself something to work with.

In the case of Kirby’s Adventure there is a small different of $10 CAD between the two sites; giving the game an average CIB value of $75 CAD (~$57 USD). RetroGameBros. asking price was $80 CAD. But that is not what I paid. Without even asking they were slashing prices left right and centre for me. They’re good like that 🙂

Their sticker price for the four games I purchased were as follows:

Kiryb’s Adventure $80 CAD (~$60 USD)
Final Fantasy $80 CAD (~$60 USD)
Double Dragon II $50 (~$38 USD)
Gauntlet $25 (~$19 USD)

For a total of $235 CAD (~$178 US) and I paid $200 CAD (~$152 USD).

Also consider that Final Fantasy’s averaged online value is about $130 CAD (~$99 USD). With Double Dragon II at about $68 CAD (~$52 USD) and Gauntlet at $33 CAD (~$25 USD).

Next up is the first ever Final Fantasy. A game that the developers Square thought would be their last before going bankrupt. But instead it sold extremely well and we’re still getting Final Fantasy games 20 years later.

Thanks to the box cover I can see that I am missing the Game World and Dungeon map as well as the Monster Chart. I’ll have to keep an eye out for those.

Should I have gone for a near mint graded Final Fantasy for a cool $1,500 CAD (~$1,140 USD)? Hells no!

I wasn’t intending on adding Double Dragon to the collection but after seeing the price and how nice the condition is I decided to go for it.

I guess this means I’ll be hunting for Double Dragon 1 and 3 as well.

Gauntlet is another iconic video game and also not a game I was planning on buying for that price it was hard to say no.

The outer box shows the most wear of all four of these games but it’s nice to see that inner sleeve looking so new. This is very different from the standard dust cover sleeves that most NES games came with making Tengen’s Gauntlet a bit unique.

Speaking of cartridge dust covers. The three I received with these games look like aftermarket non-Nintendo sleeves. But it won’t be long before I can swap them out. My buddy Nintendo Joe has a pile of authentic Nintendo dust covers that he’ll be giving to me.

Nintendo Joe is getting very close to having a complete NES game library. Check him out on Instagram.

I started collecting NES and Super Nintendo games much too late to try for complete boxed games. Personally, the cost is too high now. But I’ve found that occasionally you can get manuals to go along with NES and SNES carts for reasonable prices but you have to be very patient. One of the last purchases I made on ebay before recently closing my account are the following games from a seller who appeared to be a collector that was unloading his collection. These three auctions were a little bit extra exciting because they included the original manual for each game. This is what I call ‘life simplified’.

Super Mario RPG gets a lot of hype as being a really good game so I went the distance and spent a good amount of money to get it in the collection with an original manual at a cost of $95 CAD all in.

I haven’t played all the NES Mega Man games and I’ve been told many times that they are not all made equal. But since Mega Man is such an iconic game for the NES I would like to have all six one day. This Mega Man 4 with manual which cost me $52 CAD.

And finally, Kirby’s Adventure with manual at a grand total cost of $24.50 CAD. Kirby feels like a bargain compared to the others above.

This was not a cheap purchase but they are some really good titles for the NES. And it wont be long before I have these games and manuals in some very nice looking aftermarket cases.