Nintendo Quest NES Collection Budget

Remember a while ago (three years to be exact) that movie called Nintendo Quest that was a documentary on a guy (Jay Bartlett) who challenged himself to getting all 678 North American released NES games in 30 days?!  There are some spoilers here so stop reading if you intend on watching it.  I thought that it was a pretty good film if you are into game collecting and I met Jay at a game swap in Waterloo ON,.

I do however have a few issues with the film:

1. They never mentioned what Jay’s budget for all the games was, however I’ve done some calculations and figure that he spent around $15,000 – $18,000… give or take3 a few bucks.  I’ll explain my calculations more on this at the end of this entry.
2. They rarely mentioned how much Jay paid for each game which would have been nice to see how much of a deal he received as well as a better estimate on what we the common people should be paying for these games.  This is especially bothersome as he went into some stores and claimed to have received some really good deals.  One of the stores he went to in Toronto that he said gave him the best prices was A&C Games on Spadina Ave..  I know first hand that this store has ridiculous prices… five years ago, they wanted to charge me $15 for an Atari version of E.T.  The guys said that was because E.T. is rated the worst game to ever be released on every console to date.  The game was and still worth $1 or less.  What really burns me is that even the Game Chasers who have a Youtube show went into this store and received good deals just because they featured the store on the show.  So unless you are filming a movie/show and are willing to give free media recognition, stay away from A&C Games unless you want to get ripped off.  A&C Games sucks!
3. Jay had some friends who GAVE him some really rare and expensive games like Stadium Events, Panic Restaurant, Cowboy Kid, etc.  While very generous of them, these options aren’t available to most of us collectors so and I felt a little cheated… and jealous!
4. Jay never mentioned his girlfriend once in the entire film.  It would have been more realistic to see him arguing with her about how much money he was spending/wasting on games when he could have been paying down the mortgage.

Onto how I calculated the amount Jay I think spent on the entire North American NES library.

Firstly, at the end of the 30 days, he was short 25 games and it said he had 9% of his budget left.  I calculated the market value of how much each game cost in todays prices, and that came to roughly $3,140.  Figuring that the price of games back in 2014 when the movie was filmed were considerably lower, I can estimate that the missing games would have cost him somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2,200.  If this was represented 9% of Jays total budget, then he started with around $24, 444 .  However, we must keep in mind that he bought in bulk and therefore received a discount, and the store owners saw an opportunity to advertise their store on Jay’s movie, and thus gave him a much lower price then any of us would ever get… like at A&C Games.  With this in mind, and considering he received some of the most expensive games for free, I think it is safe to say that Jay spent somewhere between $15,000 – $18,000 on completing his NES collection.

I’m envious, jealous, and all that of Jay Bartlett for it really felt like he had a lot of fun on his quest.  Congratulations on completing such an awesome collection… now go pay off that mortgage!

Nintendo Joe