I should have put a warning on this post in case you saw it and suddenly felt faint. Whenever I watch Antiques Roadshow here in the UK, it's usually old paintings, porcelain plates, and family heirlooms. The last thing I expect to see is a SNES cartridge popping up to make me feel like I'm something that Nintendo pulled out of their company vaults.
Yes, we're all officially old now - Donkey Kong Country has appeared on Antiques Roadshow, with a still of the episode being shown by Rare Gamer on X. The only saving grace is that this is a competition cartridge, which makes it significantly rarer than the normal cartridges that you or I have in our game collection. But still, I think my back got a lot more painful after reading this headline!
The Donkey Kong Country Competition cart was first used as part of the Nintendo PowerFest back in 1994, though according to the date of 1995 on the screen grab from the episode, it looks like this one could have been used at the Blockbuster World Video Game Championship II event. There were only 2,500 of these cartridges made after the event, sold via a Nintendo Power subscribers catalogue.
There are only a few levels on this competition cartridge, with a few differences to the gameplay, like the player starting with 50 extra lives instead of 5. You have to get as many points as possible within 5 minutes of gameplay, making this a rare adaptation of the game we've all probably spent far too much time playing on in our lives thus far.
As for the valuation of $2,000 - $4,000, that seems about right for a cartridge-only copy of the game. Some boxed copies have sold for around $7,000, which is mega money!
Sorry for making you all feel super old, but it's a cool piece of news, and if you're sitting on one of these competition cartridges at home, then I might have just made you very happy!
