Nintendo World Championships 1990

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Nintendo

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Summary

In the year 1990, Nintendo held a now rather famous video game competition called Nintendo World Championships as part of the Powerfest traveling video game festival. Contestants would compete against each other in a triathlon of the NES titles Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer, and Tetris. The ROMs themselves were modified to suit the competition, and the winners would be determined by an overall score count from all three games. High placing winners took home a cash prize amongst other goodies. However, the finalists of this competition each took home their own copy of the specially made ROM on a standard NES cartridge. Another issue of the cartridge, colored in a golden tint similar to The Legend of Zelda cartridge, was even more elusive and was only distributed as a prize giveaway in Nintendo Power Magazine. Today, these two cartridge variations are some of the most elusive and sought after video games in history and are often considered a holy grail of video game collecting. As of recent years, only 116 gray cartridges and 26 golden cartridges are known to have ever been printed.