16 September 2024 , 20:28
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Over £40 million worth of counterfeit retro consoles have been seized by police in Italy, featuring games like Street Fighter and Super Mario Bros.
The price of retro video games has ballooned over the past decade, especially when it comes to sealed boxed copies of games that are either rare or have historical significance.
In 2021, a pristine copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for $2 million (£1.44 million) in the US during an auction. Just a few months prior, a copy of Super Mario 64 sold for $1.56 million (£1.12m).
The consoles themselves are often worth a lot too, if they’re in good working order, and that makes the prospect of fakes inevitable – something which has come to light via a busted video game trafficking ring in Italy.
According to Turin police, around 12,000 consoles holding over 47 million pirated games were seized last week. The machines were faked versions of Nintendo, Sega, and Atari consoles, which were fitted with non-certified batteries and circuits that did not meet EU safety standards.
It’s said the consoles, which were sourced from China and sold in specialised shops and online, included pirated versions of Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter, among many other games from the 1980s and 1990s.
As reported by the BBC, the haul is estimated to be worth over €47.5m (£40 million) in total, which includes the value of the consoles and licences for the pirated games.
Nine Italian nationals have been arrested and charged with trading in counterfeited goods over the incident. If found guilty, they face up to eight years in prison.
Police state the seized items have been destroyed.
While many buy retro games purely based on their monetary worth, some collectors seek out titles based on their own nostalgia. Earlier this year, a collector bought a copy of Castlevania on the NES for £70,900 to honour his mum.
Your original NES might be valuable today (Nintendo)