Two Unreleased NES Titles Are Up For Auction On eBay

Two never-before-released or digitized NES games are currently up for auction on eBay.

The first is Battlegrounds of Napoleon, a strategy game which was ready to ship to Nintendo, but never saw the light of day. According to the listing, the game includes the actual files that would have been sent to Nintendo for printing, meaning that digital versions can likely be created.

The second is a brief Power Glove compatible demo developed by legendary studio Rare. The Power Glove was a motion controller peripheral for the Nintendo Entertainment System, featuring prominently in the feature film The Wizard. The glove was a massive flop and only one game was ever released specifically for it. In an interview with The Verge, Video Game History Foundation co-director Frank Cifaldi speculates that the Power Glove game is a prototype that Rare would show to retailers to gauge interest in a full title.

Cifaldi also took to Twitter in an attempt to raise money for the Video Game History Foundation to purchase the titles. In the aforementioned interview, Cifaldi expresses concern that they will be outbid by collectors or that preservationists will be unable to get their hands on them before they begin to degrade. Since these games never had official releases, they are contained on rewritable chips which can degrade in a process called “bit rot,” even if they have been properly sealed and stored.