10 Rarest N64 Games & How Much They’re Worth

The Nintendo 64 was the very first game console I ever owned, and I miss mine dearly. While technically not the first 64-bit platform, having been beaten to the punch by the Atari Jaguar, it was definitely one of the power players of its generation, and home to some truly timeless games to boot. Yeah, nobody quite knew how to hold the controller, but it maintains a special place in our hearts nonetheless.

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Of course, there’s a difference between sentimental value and tangible value. As any collector of video games will tell you, it’s not always the quality of a particular retro game that determines its value, but additional factors like general rarity or pack-ins.

While some of the greats of the N64 are appropriately valuable in the right conditions, many of the console’s biggest collectibles were obscure at best and awful at worst in their heydays. Life is funny like that.

Why Is This Worth Money?

The best way to illustrate my previous point about unusually high collector’s values is to hold up our first game, Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals, a fighting game based on the animated series of the same name. This game is, in a word, terrible. It is so, so terrible, and I know this for a fact because I rented it from Blockbuster a couple of times as a kid.

With a positively tiny roster of Maximals and Predicons, you engage in battle by pew-pewing lasers at each other until your stamina runs out, then shift into vehicle or beast mode and wait around until it fills back up. Wanna know how to win consistently? Mash the C-buttons at random and hope for a miracle.

Presumably as some manner of promotional contract, Beast Wars was originally not available for retail purchase. The only way you could play was by renting a copy from Blockbuster. I haven’t the foggiest idea why either Bandai or Blockbuster thought this was a good idea given the quality of the game, but this odd circumstance has given it its trademark undeserved collector’s value.

That Little Figure Makes The Difference

A great way to give any game, good or bad, some additional value is to give it a pack-in bonus. It’s a much more common practice these days, but back in the N64 times, there were only a handful of games that came with some kind of tangible swag you could put on display. One of those games happened to be the N64 port of Gauntlet Legends.

Gauntlet Legends was a great game on its own, a meaty console adventure and an excellent successor to the old arcade dungeon crawler classic with some modern (at the time) touch-ups. However, despite how good it is, that quality does not translate into value, as even a brand-new, sealed copy of Gauntlet Legends for the N64 will only get you about $187.

On the other hand, if you managed to get one of the few copies of Gauntlet Legends that came bundled with a little figurine in the box, then you’re looking at some serious cheddar.

That figurine, cast in the image of the game’s Warrior class, is positively tiny, less than half the size of the actual cartridge. But if it’s in the box with the cartridge and manual, the whole kaboodle could buy you nearly ten copies of the regular game.

8 Super Smash Bros.

A Hallmark Of The Console

Not every valuable video game is inexplicably so; sometimes, games are valuable just because they’re good and well-loved. Though, perhaps precisely because they’re well-loved, it ironically becomes more difficult to find a brand-new, unopened copy, which can increase the collector’s value. One such game for the N64 is the very first Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. is… well, you don’t need me to explain what Super Smash Bros. is. It’s one of Nintendo’s biggest franchises, itself composed of every franchise Nintendo owns or could strike a deal with.

If you’ve owned any Nintendo game console from the Nintendo 64 and onward in your life, it is pretty much statistically impossible that you haven’t played at least one entry in this series. I’ve played all of them, N64 one included, and love them all.

Because the game is so popular, finding a loose cartridge is pretty easy, and for a reasonable price as well. If, however, you can get your hands on a brand-new, never-been-opened box, you’d make enough cash to buy ten N64s. Not accounting for inflation, at least.

7 Mario Kart 64

Everyone’s Old Favorite

Speaking of old favorites, Nintendo’s other biggest franchise, the one that managed to sell a not-insignificant number of people on the Switch 2, is Mario Kart. Pretty much since its inception, Mario Kart has been Nintendo’s de facto multiplayer game, with every subsequent entry being a requirement for anyone who wanted to play games with their friends.

The same was naturally true for the Nintendo 64’s entry, Mario Kart 64. This was the first 3D entry in the series, though much like Super Mario Kart and its Mode 7-powered tracks, this was accomplished through a bit of a magic trick.

The tracks were all full 3D, but the racers were all prerendered using a technique called “billboarding,” shifting between a handful of 2D images to create an illusion of 3D. That little space-saver allowed the devs to be much more ambitious with both the tracks and gameplay.

As with Super Smash Bros., there’s no particular reason for Mario Kart 64 to be especially valuable beyond just being a well-loved game, or at least not one I can think of. Just like Smash, loose copies are floating all over the place, but sealed, new copies will cost you an arm and a leg.

6 Rampage 2: Universal Tour (Big Box)

I Want That Plushie

Returning to the subject of pack-ins, most pack-in bonuses were something small like a little figure or a rolled-up poster or what have you. Something small enough that it could fit cleanly into a relatively normal-sized box.

Some pack-ins got a little more ambitious, though, being so large that they required the box to grow in size to match their proportions. One game with such a pack-in was the big box version of Rampage 2: Universal Tour.

Another sequel to a Midway arcade classic, Rampage 2 added a variety of new playable giant monsters in addition to the original trio of George, Lizzie, and Ralph, as well as new cities to wreck all over the world and beyond. I’ve got some great memories playing this one with friends, but I wasn’t lucky enough to get one of the big box copies.

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The big box edition of Rampage 2 came bundled with a “Rampage Baby,” a cute little plushie in the image of one of the game’s monsters with a keychain ring. The monster you got was randomized between Lizzie, Ralph, Ruby, or Boris, but any one of them packed into the big box would make for an exceptional collector’s item.

5 Worms Armageddon

Wiggled Out Of PC

The Nintendo 64 was home to a couple of ports of games that originated on other platforms. Some of these were surprisingly good, like Resident Evil 2, while others didn’t quite match their origins, like Starcraft 64. One port that thankfully landed in the former category was the N64 version of Worms Armageddon.

Originally released for Windows PCs in 1999, Worms Armageddon made the jump to N64 in the summer of the following year, largely unchanged from its origin. In fact, in addition to the usual single-player and multiplayer game modes, the N64 port even maintained the original’s terrain editor mode for making custom stages.

The reason for this game’s impressive value is unclear, though I’ve heard some rumblings that its high values are mostly centered around the United States, with copies in the United Kingdom being more plentiful. The game’s developer, Team17, is based in England, so there may be credence to that, but don’t quote me.

Whatever the precise reason, a factory-fresh copy will get you nearly $3,000. Think of all the worms you could buy at a gardening store.

4 F1 Racing Championship

Getting Into The Weeds

As we get into the higher echelons of N64 game value, we get further into the weeds of the console’s overall game library. I consider myself an experienced person as far as N64 games go, but I definitely haven’t played all of them, and I’m willing to bet money you’ve neither played nor heard of F1 Racing Championship.

F1 Racing Championship is a sim racing game, as opposed to party racing games like Mario Kart 64, emphasizing realism and accuracy to the actual sport – at least to the best of the hardware’s capabilities.

The N64 version is a port of the PlayStation version released several months prior in late 2000, which drummed up support by featuring racers and tracks from the 1999 Formula One World Championship. I have no particular interest in formula racing, and so I’ve never played this game.

I can’t find any hard statistics on how well the N64 version sold, but based on how ridiculously valuable a sealed copy is, I can’t imagine it sold very well. After all, if everyone had one, they wouldn’t be such rare collectibles, now would they?

3 Stunt Racer

Mid Game, High Price

The Nintendo 64 was home to quite a few different racing games of varying levels of intensity, most likely to cash in on the runaway success of Mario Kart 64. Some examples that immediately spring to my mind are Extreme-G, Beetle Adventure Racing, and S.C.A.R.S., all of which were decent, if not especially memorable.

Another, arguably even more obscure racing game from late in the N64’s lifespan was Stunt Racer, also known as Stunt Racer 64. Despite what the name may imply, Stunt Racer was not a particularly stunt-centric game.

There were only four cars to choose from, with which you drove across a handful of vaguely Hot Wheels-esque tracks with the occasional loop-de-loop, incline jump, or wavy track pattern. No items, no noteworthy characters; it looks like the kind of generic racing game you’d see kids playing in the background in a sitcom.

Like Beast Wars, Stunt Racer was another Blockbuster-exclusive game. Combine that with how late it was released in the N64’s lifespan, and the game was pretty much already forgotten by the time it escaped to second-hand shelves, leaving the collectors to pick up the pieces.

2 Super Bowling

Not Sure What’s Super About It

As with racing games, the N64 had plenty of various sports games, covering the usual spectrum of events like baseball, football, golf, and so on. Bowling was surprisingly well-represented on the console, with at least three different games covering the sport. My favorite was Milo’s Astro Lanes, but we’re not talking about that one. Nope, we’re talking about Super Bowling.

Super Bowling was a 3D remake of a bowling game originally released for the Super Nintendo. It was… fine, for what it was, with a decent variety of bowlers and fantastical lanes to play on, though it didn’t have much in the way of gimmicks like items or stage hazards.

You could play concurrently with a friend via split-screen, which was nice compared to other games where you had to take turns, but that’s about the nicest thing I can say about it.

Super Bowling didn’t sell or review very well, due in part to releasing at the tail end of the N64’s lifespan. As we’ve learned by now, though, poor sales means low distribution, and low distribution means higher collector’s value. Truly, we live in a bizarre, backwards universe.

1 ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut

I Miss Blockbuster

At last, we come to the holy grail. The most valuable Nintendo 64 game there is: ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s another instance of Blockbuster exclusivity driving up value, though in this case, there are a few other factors at work here giving this seemingly ordinary fighting game its remarkable pricing.

ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut is an updated version of another N64 fighting game, ClayFighter 63⅓, which includes some characters and content that were cut from that game. The game was exclusively available for rental at Blockbuster throughout 1998 and 1999, though unlike Beast Wars and Stunt Racer, it was actually good.

It even had fatality moves a la Mortal Kombat, which helped give it a lot of word of mouth.

When the promotional period for ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut ended, every Blockbuster location sold off its copies exclusively to customers for a discounted price. I guess there weren’t that many in the first place, though, because this game’s value has become astronomical. A brand-new, sealed copy of this thing could put your kid through college.

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