With the advent of the Internet, it has become significantly easier to preserve video games. However, some people still do the good work of actually preserving the cartridges on which the games were manufactured.
The Atari 2600, being one of the first cartridge-based gaming consoles and really the first massively successful piece of video game hardware to ever release, has a massive library of titles with some impressively valuable cartridges. The ten rare games listed below are coveted by collectors everywhere. Most of them are quite valuable, while a couple are desired simply because of their place in gaming history.
10 Air Raid
This simple shoot ’em up is worth well over 30 thousand dollars with the complete package. This is partly due to the curious T-shape design of the cartridge. Even in an incomplete state, just the cartridge has been known to sell for about three thousand dollars. Less than five transactions of this game have taken place, making it the veritable holy grail for collectors looking for truly valuable Atari 2600 games.
9 Red Sea Crossing
The story behind this game is as mysterious and magical as the biblical event that inspired it. The game, which depicts Moses parting and traversing the Red Sea after leaving Egypt, was made by Steve Slack at Inspirational Video Concepts. Only one hundred copies were made, and they all disappeared without a trace. Only within the past ten years have copies popped up, often selling for exorbitant sums. The real kicker is there is a coloring book that accompanies the game. If the two were sold together, the value would be exponentially higher.
8 Extra Terrestrials
Do not confuse this one for the infamous video game adaptation of E.T. for the same console. This game was made by a small family who wanted to take advantage of the video game craze but came in just a little too late, and production was finished by the programmer after the market had crashed as a result of the aforementioned adaptation.
To try and salvage their money, the game was reportedly sold door to door locally, with only one hundred copies produced. This game and its rarity did not come to light again until 2011, and now it is worth 80 thousand dollars.
7 Birthday Mania
The idea of Birthday Mania was people would send money to the company and receive a personalized copy of it for either themselves or the birthday person. Their name would be written inside the game congratulating the person on their special day. Needless to say, the idea was not super successful, or else the cartridges would not be worth between 15 and 35 thousand dollars today.
6 Gamma-Attack
Gamma Attack beats out all the others on this list in terms of rarity. Reportedly, only a single copy exists, and its whereabouts are well documented. One collector has it, and will not part with it for anything less than half a million dollars. One wonders if any collector other is bold enough to take the offer. No other modern video game even comes close to such value, not unless someone really goes overboard with microtransactions.
5 Superman
The Man of Steel has not had the best luck in the video game space. His first entry into the medium fared better than most follow-ups, however, and is important for being both one of the first licensed games and one of the first action-adventure games to utilize numerous screens, even predating Adventure. While not every edition of the title is worth something, certain editions can fetch up to ten thousand dollars.
4 Karate
Back in 1982, games were so novel one could release with a title as generic as Karate. By all accounts, this fighting game is not particularly great. However, it was released by two different publishers, Ultravision and Froggo.
The copies from Ultravision are particularly valuable finds. Considering the game is not of high quality, surely most would not mind parting with it for that a nice chunk of change.
3 Gauntlet
Not to be confused with the popular arcade game, Gauntlet is a western where players go through a series of trials as a cowboy. Instead of buying the title at a store like most, one had to buy and wait for it in the mail. This mail-order style perhaps lends to its value, which goes between three and five thousand dollars. Coincidentally, Atari would go on to make the unrelated arcade game, which was far too powerful to ever work on the 2600.
2 Pepsi Invaders
People complain about ads in sports games all the time. Back in the Atari 2600’s day entire games were essentially interactive ads — like Pepsi Invaders, a clone of Space Invaders made by the Coca-Cola company. In it, players destroy ships that spell out the word of their main competitor, Pepsi. Only about 125 copies were made and given out for free during conventions.
1 E.T.
Much has been written about E.T. on the Atari 2600, mainly about its quality (or lack thereof), though one should not think any less of programmer Howard Scott Warshaw who developed the game. When the mythical buried copies were finally unearthed in 2014, nine hundred of them were found. When brought to auction, they sold for over 100 thousand dollars. Few great games will ever be worth that much, so it is not such a bad legacy for E.T. after all.
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