The 10 Most Expensive North American N64 Games (and Why)

Every N64 collector eventually runs into the same wall: a handful of games standing between them and a complete set that cost more than an entire shelf of everything else combined. I’ve been tracking loose cartridge prices for all 296 licensed North American N64 games as part of the N64 Project, pulling numbers from PriceCharting as I go, and the gap between the cheap end and the expensive end of that list is bigger than most people expect. So here’s the actual top 10, what they cost right now, and the real reason each one got there. One of them is already sitting in my collection.

A quick note before the list: all prices below are in Canadian dollars, they’re averages at the time I’m writing this, and secondhand game prices move constantly. Treat these as a snapshot, not a fixed number, especially if you’re reading this well after it was published.

10. Starshot: Space Circus Fever — $209.04

Infogrames released this 3D platformer in North America on June 29, 1999, a full six months after it had already come out in Europe that December. By the time it landed on North American shelves, the N64’s platformer crowd already had Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, and Mario 64 to choose from, and reviews at the time weren’t kind either, with critics generally landing somewhere between “ambitious but let down by poor execution” and outright mediocre. A late release plus a lukewarm reception meant retailers didn’t reorder it, print numbers stayed small, and thirty years later that same small print run is exactly why loose copies aren’t easy to find.

9. Rat Attack — $224.88

A puzzle-action game built around clearing waves of evil mutant space rats using a team of cats, developed by Pure Entertainment and published by Mindscape. It actually released first on PlayStation in 1999, with the N64 version following in 2000, arriving as a bit of an afterthought on a console where it was competing for shelf space against much bigger names. It’s not a game most collectors are chasing for the gameplay, it’s a small, easily overlooked third-party title from a publisher that never had the marketing muscle of Nintendo or the bigger third parties, and that combination of a late, quiet port and thin advertising is exactly what keeps supply low today.

8. Conker’s Bad Fur Day — $232.05 (already in the N64 Project)

This is the one on the list I actually own, and the story behind why it’s expensive is better than the usual “it just didn’t sell” explanation. Rare built Conker to look exactly like their earlier mascot platformers, the same cute-animal energy as Banjo-Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing, and then filled it with drug jokes, swearing, and mature humor that earned it an M rating. That mismatch made a lot of retailers reluctant to market it heavily, and it launched in 2001, less than a year before the GameCube took over, with a marketing push that didn’t match its actual budget. It sold only around 55,000 copies despite reviewing incredibly well, and that combination of low print numbers and a game people now recognize as one of Rare’s best is exactly what drives a price up over time.

I picked up my copy years ago for around $50, back when it was just a good game with a slightly rough reputation instead of a $232 line item. That’s the part that’s easy to forget when you’re only looking at today’s number: prices like these didn’t start here, they climbed here, and the climb happened slowly enough that plenty of people bought in before it looked like an investment.

If you want to see just how far Conker’s Bad Fur Day drifted from where it started, the Video Game History Foundation recently uploaded restored footage of Conker’s Quest, the cute, all-ages E3 1997 build of the game before it went through the Twelve Tales: Conker 64 phase and eventually got rebooted into the mature-rated version everyone knows. It’s a genuinely wild before-and-after.

7. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness — $248.02

Konami released the original Castlevania 64 in early 1999 to a mixed reception, and rather than let that be the final word, they put out Legacy of Darkness that November as something closer to a do-over than a traditional sequel. It kept Reinhardt and Carrie from the original but made both of them unlockable instead of available from the start, redesigned most of the existing stages with new bosses, expanded the soundtrack, and added Cornell, a new playable werewolf character whose entire story is a prequel with its own new levels, including a ghost galleon guarded by a lake monster. It wasn’t a huge print run to begin with, and the Castlevania name has only gotten more popular with collectors since, which keeps demand well ahead of supply.

6. Worms Armageddon — $375.60

Worms was a massive hit on PC and PlayStation, but the N64 conversion of a turn-based artillery strategy game was already an odd fit for a console better known for platformers and racers, and it barely made a dent at retail when it released in 2000. It’s one of those ports that got quietly overlooked for years, both by the people who already had it on PC and by N64 owners who never knew a version existed, and that long stretch of nobody-cared before collectors caught on is a big part of why supply is so thin now.

5. Bomberman 64: The Second Attack — $467.65

Known in Japan as Baku Bomberman 2, Hudson Soft released this sequel there in December 1999 and in North America the following May, right as attention had already shifted toward the N64’s final years. It actually expanded on the original in almost every way, deeper story, elemental bomb types, a playable companion, light RPG elements, but reviews were mixed at best, with GameSpot and IGN both landing around 5 out of 10 even as Nintendo Power scored it much higher. That combination of late timing, minimal marketing, and so-so reviews meant it came and went quietly, and quiet releases near the end of a console’s life are one of the most reliable ways to end up rare later.

4. Stunt Racer 64 — $566.87

This one wasn’t just sold at Blockbuster, it was exclusive to Blockbuster for both rental and retail purchase, and never released outside North America at all. Almost every surviving copy started life as a rental, which means loose carts are the norm and complete-in-box copies are a genuinely rare find. The price history tells the real story here too: loose copies were sitting around $5 before 2010, climbed to roughly $25 loose (with complete copies around $250-500) through the first half of the 2010s, and then jumped hard again starting in late 2016, pushing well past $100 loose and settling into the price it commands today. That’s a pattern that shows up again and again with retail-exclusive titles like this: nobody notices until collectors start actively hunting down every store-exclusive release, and once they do, the tiny surviving supply can’t keep up.

3. F1 Racing Championship — $673.24

This is the strangest one on the list. F1 Racing Championship never actually released in the United States or Canada. The only NTSC-compatible cartridge came out of Brazil, published by Gradiente, with the game itself in English but the box and manual in Portuguese. It counts as part of a North American price guide purely because it’s the NTSC cartridge, not because anyone in North America could have walked into a store and bought it. There was reportedly Expansion Pak support planned for upgraded textures, but the N64’s 8MB RAM ceiling wasn’t enough to make that upgrade work, so it shipped without it. Between the Brazil-only release, the language mismatch between cart and packaging, and a distribution footprint that never touched North American retail at all, this is about as niche as an “NTSC N64 game” gets, and that scarcity is entirely why it’s priced the way it is.

2. Super Bowling — $930.75

Released in January 2001, just months before the GameCube launched, a bowling game was never going to be a big seller at full retail price on a console that was already on its way out. It’s actually a full 3D remake of an earlier SNES title, not a new concept, which made it even less of a sales pitch this late in the N64’s life against a console library already packed with higher-profile releases. It sold so poorly that it’s now considered one of the genuine “holy grail” finds in N64 collecting, and the price history shows just how recent that recognition is: loose copies sat around $10 through 2012, crept up to roughly $30 loose (with complete copies around $200-300) between 2013 and 2015, and then surged past the $100 mark starting in 2016 as collectors caught on to just how few copies were actually printed. It’s a textbook case of a game that was worthless to the market right up until enough people finally noticed how rare it was.

1. ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut — $1,913.18

The most expensive North American N64 game by a wide margin, and it’s not close. Interplay and Blockbuster partnered up to release Sculptor’s Cut, an expanded rental-exclusive variant of ClayFighter 63 1/3, on May 15, 1998, and it never sold through normal retail at all. It went out to Blockbuster’s roughly 9,000 stores at an estimated two copies per store, putting the total print run somewhere around 18,000 copies for the entire rental promotion, and once that promotion wound down around 1999, Blockbuster sold off its rental stock to customers for about $40 a copy, which was a completely unremarkable price at the time for what looked like just another used rental game.

The reason it’s the single most expensive N64 game today comes down to how a rental-only release destroys the normal survival odds of a complete game. Retail copies get bought once and often kept sealed or boxed by collectors from day one; rental copies get repackaged, shelved, played, and eventually junked, with nobody thinking to preserve the box or manual because there was never a retail box to preserve in the first place. Almost nothing survived complete. Sealed copies are close to mythical, and before a specific “Heritage copy” surfaced, there were only one or two known graded sealed copies across every major grading company combined (there are now two or three). One of those sealed copies actually sold at public auction for $175,000, the first time a sealed copy had ever changed hands publicly at all.

The price climb on this one is dramatic even by this list’s standards: around $50 loose and $120 boxed in 2010, up to $850-1,200 loose and roughly $6,000 for a genuinely complete copy by 2023. The box alone, without a cartridge, trades for around $1,100, and just the manual runs $500-600. There’s even a documented case of an eBay listing for nothing but the original store purchase receipt for a copy reportedly selling for $500, which says everything about how far collectors will go to own any physical trace of this release. Even a bare cartridge alone commands a four-figure price today.

What This Actually Means for the N64 Project

Right now the N64 Project tracker sits at 25 of 296 games, and this list is a good reminder of where the real finish line is. Most of what’s left to find is cheap and easy, the kind of game sitting in a $5 bin at a flea market. But closing out a full 296-game set eventually means running into games like these, and at some point “collecting every North American N64 game” and “spending several thousand dollars on ten cartridges” become the same sentence. I’m not in a hurry to get there.

If you want to see what the rest of that project actually looks like, I’ve written about Pokemon Stadium coming home, a six-game sports lot landing in one shot, and why Diddy Kong Racing finally earned its due over Mario Kart 64.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are these prices going to keep going up?
No way to know for certain, but the trend across most of retro collecting has been steadily upward for the last decade, especially for games with a real story behind their rarity rather than just low print numbers. Blockbuster exclusives and games that never got a proper US release, like several on this list, tend to hold or climb rather than drop.

Where do these prices come from, and are they in USD?
Loose cartridge prices pulled from PriceCharting as part of the N64 Project tracker, listed here in Canadian dollars. They’re averages current as of when this post was written, not live prices, so expect actual listings to vary and shift over time.

Is it worth chasing these for a complete N64 collection?
That’s a personal call more than a strategic one. If completing all 296 is the actual goal, these ten are unavoidable eventually. If the goal is just a solid, fun N64 collection, there’s no shortage of excellent games well under $50 to fill a shelf with first.

What’s the cheapest way to still own a piece of this list?
Manuals and loose boxes, where available, are usually far cheaper than the cartridge itself for the ultra-rare ones, though for Blockbuster exclusives like Sculptor’s Cut and Stunt Racer 64, even that isn’t guaranteed to be cheap.