Whatever happened to video games like Duck Tales, Exertainment Mountain Bike Rally-Speed Racer, Double Dribble, and the very first John Madden? Let’s dive into each title and see how they stand from a collector’s point of view and if they are even worth collecting at all.

Duck Tales

I remember the first time I laid eyes on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was 1988, It was a gray box that came with two joysticks of unrivaled excitement. It was dynamite at the fireworks stand. Simply put, it was out of the future before the future existed. I had to have one. I remember my NES came with the gray gun to match and a hot copy of Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt.

Although Mario Brothers was a great game, it was Duck Hunt that gave me hours of hunting simulation. Little did I know, the game that would also prove to be so addictive would be another duck title, Duck Tales. Uncle Scrooge was one tough duck on tv and now on my brand-new game console.

So many treasures to find and so much ducking money. This is where life truly imitates art. If you can manage to find one of the 150 rare golden Duck Tales cartridges, you will NET yourself a treasure of around $3,000.00 in brand new condition on multiple online sites. According to GoCollect, a  Wata 9.6 A+ graded copy of Duck Tails sold for as much as $19,200.00 back in January of this year. No ducking kidding! (Okay, that was my last duck expletive.)

Exertainment Mountain Bike Rally/Speed Racer

I know I hit you with a stumper with this title. You could easily find Speed Racer as a solo title but joined together with the Mountain Bike Rally is what makes this such a valuable game.

The Mountain Bike Rally game was sold with the Exertainment Life Cycle. The Life Cycle was an exercise bike that worked on the SNES System. This would prove to be one of the most terrible ideas that SNES came up with during that time period.

Although the game didn’t profit a lot, years later that same failed idea of the double gamed cartridge is a very valuable cartridge to own. The last sold price I’ve seen online was $6,999 for a graded WATA 8.5 A+ sold on eBay. That is some expensive exercise.

Double Dribble

As a teenager (which my kids don’t understand about me yet), I absolutely couldn’t be interrupted for one minute while playing Double Dribble, (yet another thing my kids don’t fully understand) just how critical every second was in that game. For instance, did you know if you hit the right jpeg square you could hit a long-distance half-court missile sounding 3 pointer as you heard the explosion of it hitting nothing but net! THREE!!!

This game set the bar for all the future NBA games as their predecessor; it changed the single block Atari basketball game by actually looking like, for a lack of a better term, a basketball game. Double Dribble did for basketball like what Tecmo bowl did for football before Madden.

Some prices I've seen online for loose copies go from $6.00 to $40.00. New-to-graded are anywhere between $300 and $4500.00. In my eyes, there will never be a game that rocked like Double Dribble. Better maybe, but in the beginning… let’s leave it there.

John Madden

It’s crazy that I’m getting to be a dinosaur, but I love it. I get to tell my boys about the very first time I played Madden. I thought Madden made me a player/coach. It was really like calling all the shots with real x’s and o’s while executing each detailed play to perfection.

It’s incredible to think that in 1988, the Nintendo Game System kids of that time had Flo Jo win three gold medals in the summer games in track and field. Ben Johnson set the world record in the men’s 100 meters just to have it stripped away for using a banned substance (steroids). Mike Tyson knocked out Mike Spinks in no time flat, and the newly named Commanders (formally known as the Washington NFL team) won the Superbowl. That’s really hard to believe. I turned 15 that year and Madden was only Madden One!

My house used to be packed with at least five of my friends waiting to play. Thirty-three years later, you can play your friend back in Jersey without ever getting out of bed; just ask my son. I hear you. What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Everything.

Madden changed gaming as we know it! And it deserves all the praise it gets from a gaming standpoint. It is simply the best sporting game in the history of gaming, in my opinion. A sealed Wata 9.2 A+ copy of Madden sold for $480,000.00 through Heritage just earlier this year.

We lost Coach Madden at 85 years old on December 28th, 2021. And yes, he was a man of many words but what I remember the most was his “Maddenisms”. My favorite was, “You don’t want to lose your hat with your head in it”. I would like to add to that.

You don’t want to get rid of your games before checking their value at GoCollect.

Go, collect!!

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*Any perceived investment advice is that of the freelance blogger and does not represent advice on behalf of GoCollect.