Phantom 2040
Lee Faulk's The Phantom has been a pulp hero icon since February 1936. The Ghost Who Walks saw some revitalization in the 1990s thanks to the 1996 film The Phantom, and the 1994 cartoon show The Phantom 2040. The cartoon focused on the 24th Phantom, who took the mantle from his father who died under mysterious circumstances. The show was a big enough hit to spawn a comic series from Marvel, as well as a video game for the Sega Genesis, the Sega Game Gear, and the Super Nintendo. I owned the Game Gear port, which also allows you to play as Kit Walker Jr., the human identity of The Phantom.
This sealed 8.5 A+ WATA-graded copy for the Super Nintendo is a hard one to come by. Less than a dozen of these games have been graded by WATA. Graded copies also do not come up for auction too often. The last time a similar copy sold was in April 2021 for $849. Due to this, it is possible this game ends at over $1K.
Judge Dredd
In my opinion, there is no better badass comic character than Judge Dredd. Since 1977 he's been a judge, jury, and executioner. He's a tough son of a bitch who doesn't take anything from anybody. In the early, to mid-1990s we saw a slew of live-action movies based on comic characters the general audience might not have been familiar with -- The Shadow, The Phantom, Dick Tracey, and of course Judge Dredd. Dredd was the focus of a 1995 Sylvester Stallone film, where he had the whole audacity to take his helmet off. The movie wasn't a great Dredd film, but it was a decent action movie -- and it absolutely got a video game tie-in.
Judge Dredd was released for the Super Nintendo, the Game Boy, the Genesis, the Game Gear, and DOS in June 1995. This single-player side-scroller had decent graphics but was a difficult game to get through. This sealed 9.2 B+ WATA-graded game looks like it was just plucked from a Toys R Us shelf and graded right away. The one-year average on this grade is only $192, making this an affordable game for collectors.
Kiss Pinball
KISS might seem like an odd choice for a pinball machine video game -- especially when there are a few KISS pin's out there already. Pinball video games are a niche already, and this only adds to it. Released in North America in 2001 for the PlayStation, to very negative reviews. But bad games are collectors' pieces in their own right. It can be a ton of fun talking about why a game tanked! Reports mention the lack of consistency between the KISS brand and the general concept of pinball, which is a hard thing to mess up.
This sealed 9.8 A+ WATA-graded copy is beautiful. These come up for auction every now and again, and won't cost you an arm and a leg. The one-year average for 9.8 copies is only $149, with no signs of moving in either direction anytime soon.
