30 years ago, Sonic the Hedgehog burst onto the gaming scene, carrying a lot of attitude and blast processing. 30 years later and a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog has sold for $430,500, and the series' creator has some thoughts on the sale.
In recent years, it has been a tough go for video game collectors as they have been selling for inordinate prices, especially while at the auction block. These formalized sales are handled through a variety of auctioneers, but all tend to have the involvement of Wata Games, a company that has designed a rating system for designating the value of retro video games. Earlier this year, a Wata 9.6 copy of Super Mario 64 sold for over $1.5 million, setting a new auction record for a single video game. Despite the apparent utility of the Wata rating system, the company has started to become suspicious of fraudulent business practices in light of the ever-climbing prices for video games.
A copy of Sonic the Hedgehog sold for $430,500, and series' creator Yuji Naka, is critical of the transaction. The copy of the game was a non-Genesis-pack-in and was certified with a Wata 9.4 rating, with Goldin Auctions conducting the sale. Yuji Naka begins his comments with a quote tweet of Goldin Auctions' announcement, simply stating, "What's this," with a hedgehog emoji. The Sonic the Hedgehog creator has began considering retirement following his most recent project, the critical and commercial failure, Balan Wonderworld,
Naka continues his thoughts in a series of additional tweets, questioning if there is any fraudulent behavior at play. He asks "Is it a scam? That's a scam, right?" before musing, "I wondered if it was time for Sonic to reach a high." After this, he quotes Goldin Auctions from the day before, where the bidding was only at $150,000, before apologizing, saying, "I saw the news that Mario was sold at a high price recently, so I though Sonic was also a high price, but it's different. I'm sorry." Prior to Super Mario 64 setting the record for largest single video game sale, it was broken in April, when a copy of the original Super Mario Bros. sold for $660,000.
While Naka's comments suggest that he was perhaps hoping the original Sonic the Hedgehog would sell for even higher, especially with how much Mario has sold for, Naka is very quick to point out the racket on display here. Even if the game is in pristine packaging and of a limited running, it is still rather preposterous for such a massive amount of money to be spent on a singular video game. As long as Wata and its affiliated auction houses continue to operate this way, the prices for lucrative video games are only going to climb higher and higher, and that is not a good sign for modest collectors.
Sonic the Hedgehog is available on iOS and Android.