From DuckTales to Super Mario Bros: Here are the 10 most expensive games

If you're anything like us, you'll often feel like you're spending far too much money on video games.

If so - consider this a motivational episode that'll show you that you're really not that bad at all, as we count down the top 10 most expensive games ever sold.

10. Wrecking Crew - $4000

We're kicking things off with a familiar face, but perhaps not in the way you'd usually expect to see them. A few months before he burst onto our screens and took the world by Storm, Mario made a brief appearance in Wrecking Crew, which featured block breaking puzzles, as opposed to the more familiar goomba squashing platforming.

It didn't really have the same appeal as future titles, and unsurprisingly wasn't all that popular. Whilst copies have been in circulation for years following its release, rare sealed editions are a big nab for collectors, with one copy selling for just over $4000.

9. DuckTales - $5100

With these you can feel like Scrooge McDuck (Photo: Capcom, Ars Technica)

Now here's one with a bit of history to it, and had some unique promotional strategies which netted it a high price and soon become a prize in someone's collection. We're sure a lot of you will remember the class NES title DuckTales. Before you start going through you old collections looking for a copy to put on the market - the game isn't worth that much. Hold on to it, it's a great game.

With the release of the remastered version in 2013, Capcom looked to get on the press' good side by sending out 150 limited editions to different companies. These included the original game in a golden NES cartridge, as well as some recreated ads for different Capcom titles, all lovingly packed away inside a collectors lunch box.

They even padded the box with - we kid you not - real shredded dollar bills. It's a peculiar gambit, but it's made it a hot collectors edition, with one rare 'Artist proof' version going for $5,100 - despite originally being listed for a lowly $5.

8. Super Copa - $6,900

Do we have any fans of Tony Meola's Sidekicks Soccer here? Nope? Didn't think so. It's not really a name that means that much outside of a very certain sect of American soccer fans.

And it's no surprise that when this game was pushed to outside markets the name was altered, in Japan it was marketed under Ruy Ramos, and in Latin America it was given the fantastic name of Super Copa.

Due to its different runs, different versions of the game got increasingly rare. Especially Super Copa. So much so, the market started flooding with fake Brazilian versions of the game to try and dupe potential collectors. It's no surprise when a factory sealed version of Super Copa - and yes, we're sorry, we can't stop saying it, it's a great name for a game - sold for a whopping $6,900.

7. Nintendo Powerfest - $12,000

Before esports took over as the peak of top level competition in games, things were done very differently, with regional tournaments, showcases, and mashups of different games to find the overall 'best gamer'.

One such example was the Nintendo PowerFest '94 - which saw local competitions held in 130 towns around the US, with the victors of each competition winning the chance to take part in a large scale tournament in San Diego, with the victor to be crowned as the 'Nintendo World Champion' - which surely would be worth some kudos at the time.

The tournaments were played on modified cartridges which saw players try and amass high scores on 3 games - Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, Super Mario Kart - both of which are very obvious choices and definitely make sense - and then the third title was Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. Something just doesn't add up there.

Anyway, out of all these cartridges all were returned to Nintendo and disassembled apart from two, who found their way into the hands of competitors. A few years later, one found it's way online with a buy out price of $300,000. Unsurprisingly, there were no bidders. A few years later however, another cartridge was uncovered and successfully sold for $12,000.

6. Red Sea Crossing - $13,877

So we've seen a few things that might make you think "okay, I can see why someone might want that", this next one however? This one is just straight up bizarre - and it just keeps getting stranger and stranger. So this is Red Sea Crossing - and just look at it. Why was this made? Who would think of making this a game? You take on the role of Moses as you cross the Red Sea, which is awash with inexplicably garish colours for some reason.

And it gets worse! The game was never advertised in gaming magazines, and marketed exclusively in religious publications. Furthermore, the game was intended to come with a colouring book and an audio tape.

Oh and there's more - while sources range from 100 to 500 copies originally produced, the fact is that only 2 copies are known to exist. Where did the rest of them go? No one knows. However due to its bizarre nature and straight up rareness, a copy of this game has been sold for just shy of $14,000.

If you've ever received a weird video game from a religious relative, we urge you to check if it could be Red Sea Crossing. You'll be in for a big pay day if it is.

5. Campus Challenge - $20,100

Acting as a precursor to the '94 PowerFest, in 1991 and 1992 Nintendo held a series of gaming competitions across American universities - with the same basic premise.

Players faced off to achieve top scores in Dr Mario, Pinbot and Super Mario Bros 3. You'll notice the lack of Major League Baseball on this one, which may factor into its higher selling price, but we won't speculate.

So Nintendo toured America finding the best and brightest gamers, with the winner of the whole tournament receiving a cool $10,000. That sounds like a lot until you find out that the one surviving cartridge eventually sold for $14,000 - to the same guy who bought the PowerFest cartridge no less. Although he did sell it a few months later for a whopping $20,100

4. Super Mario Bros - $30,100

As you've surely picked up so far, a lot of these titles are going for crazy amounts of money down to there only being a few copies in existence. That isn't the case for our next title - which is a game known all over.

With tens of millions of physical copies shipped, its not like cartridges are all that hard to come by. Even fully boxed and in mint condition, a copy of the game would net you a nice amount, but not enough to make this list.

However when one lucky seller noticed he had a copy on his shelf that had been gathering dust for years, he put it up for sale - with the modest starting bid of 1 penny. What ensued was a ferocious bidding war, which eventually capped off at a whopping $30,100 dollars. 30 grand for a game nearly all of us have owned at some point!

Why did it go for so much? Well, firstly it was one of the earlier editions, but that wouldn't have pushed it up to those levels. What was the driving force was the fact that it was factory sealed, and it still had it's original price tag of $26.99.

It was the perfect embodiment of video game appreciation - and you know some collector's going to need to have that.

3. Air Raid - $33,433

It's basically Space Invaders but worth over $30,000 (Photo: Atari)

Alright - so we've covered a game you've all heard of, now it's time to get right back to weird and obscure titles prized for their rarity alone. Looking at the 1982 Air Raid you'll probably think of this as little more than a budget Space Invaders - and you'd be absolutely right in thinking that. That's basically all it is.

But this, unsurprisingly, was a heavily sought after item for collectors. By 2010 only one known copy including the box was known to exist - and this made it a top commodity, selling for over $31,000 dollars. However 2 years later the holy grail was uncovered. A copy of the game, with it's box, and the instruction manual.

The analogy for this for game collectors was like putting a drop of blood into a pool of sharks. This caused an absolute frenzy. Bids were coming in quickly, with the winning bid being over $34,000 dollars. Just to think about that for a moment - that's over $3000 for a games instruction manual. Just think about that next time you throw one out thinking "I'll probably never need this".

Although it's an astronomical price for a single game, the team behind Air Raid could have done a lot better if they came out with the concept a few years earlier - given that Space Invaders was the first of it's kind and grossed a mind boggling $13 billion dollars during its lifetime.

2. Stadium Events - $41,300

20 years before there was Wii Fit, another movement based game was set to keep gamers in shape as they exercised there way to high scores. Bandai's Stadium Events aimed to be this game, and came equipped with a mat to track player inputs as they performed all sort of physical tasks to power their on screen character.

The title was very quickly picked up and re-branded by Nintendo into World Class Track Meet and was reintroduced to stores with a new Power Matt after a mass recall of Stadium Events. However a few copies of Stadium Events still got out, and today they're dubbed as some of the rarest NES games of all time.

Now this title is a bit more difficult to collect - not only do you require the cartridge and it's original box, with these two things together netting you upwards of $20,000 dollars, we're still missing two components. The input matt, and it's box.

These were the big ticket items, with an original box - with no matt included - being sold for nearly $10,000 dollars at one point. Altogether a fully sealed set has been successfully sold for just shy of $42,000 dollars. This is absolutely staggering money for a game, but we've still got one title that can top it.

1. Nintendo World Gold - $100,088

Brb, going to check my attic for old Nintendo games (Photo: Nintendo, Emuparadise)

We're back with Nintendo for our top spot. Before PowerFest, and before the Campus Challenge, there was the Nintendo World Championships.

Unlike the other titles, this isn't the story of how one cartridge got loose and made its way to a collector however. The tournament was played on specially designed cartridges with customised versions of Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer and Tetris. Of these customised cartridges, 90 were made.

Those alone are some pretty prestigious items who would have any collector reaching into their pockets for wads of cash - but that's not we're eluding to here. Alongside these 90 cartridges, 26 more were made. These were way more special - because they were gold. These were given away as prizes to a few lucky winners.

So we have prestige, we have rarity, we have a unique customised item, and we have a swanky golden coat. You can guess that this is going to go for a lot - so what do you reckon? $50,000? $75,000? $100,000? Oh you were so close! The highest selling copy, and the priciest single video game of all time sold for a whopping $100,088.

We're not going to lie - we had no idea that some of these games would go for such crazy prices when we started this. There's a great life lesson here to never throw out your games - and now would be a great time to check all those old boxes to see if you have any of these hidden gems lying around - they'll certainly pick up a pretty penny.