Two unreleased NES games are going up for auction on eBay, and could prove significant collector’s items.
As tweeted by the Video Game History Foundation’s Frank Cifaldi yesterday on October 11, two surprise NES games have appeared for auction on eBay. As the organization Cifaldi runs is unfortunately stretched thin with funds right now, the founder is urging collector’s out there to put money forward for the two unreleased NES games.
🚨Attention video game preservation fans with money to spare🚨There are currently TWO unreleased, one-of-a-kind, never-digitized games for the original NES on eBay right now. This has literally never happened before. Our resources are stretched thin, and we could use help. pic.twitter.com/54ym603mHMOctober 11, 2022
In the follow-up tweets, Cifaldi reveals what these two unreleased games actually are. The first is Battlefields of Napoleon, which Cifaldi reveals is actually a fully finished game, basically ready to ship to NES users around the world, complete with retail packaging. Perhaps we’ll never know why Battlefields of Napoleon never saw the light of day.
The second project is actually an unreleased demo for a Power Glove game, made by Sea of Thieves developer Rare. Somewhat famously, only one game ever took advantage of the whacky accessory, but this NES game, had it ever actually been released, would’ve been the second game in existence to use the Power Glove.
Cifaldi is putting together a fund for the Video Game History Foundation to bid on these two unreleased NES games. The fund isn’t public, so you’ll have to contact the founder via Twitter to get the information necessary, but the fund is already well over $4,000 as of yesterday, so it seems plenty of Cifaldi’s followers have already chipped in.
Considering a sealed NES cartridge for The Legend of Zelda earned a massive $870,000 at auction last year, we could be looking at a much higher fee than the public has already raised for the two unreleased games.
Check out our guide to the 10 best NES games of all time to see which forgotten classics we reckon rise above the others.
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I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.