Ultra rare NES carts like the "World Championship Cartridge" (grey cartridge with the Super Man shaped symbol in the middle of the picture). In 1990, Nintendo held a special competition called the "Nintendo World Championships." The Wizard, a movie starring Freddy Savage, was based on this competition. Special cartridges (90 Grey and 26 Gold) were manufactured and given to the winners. Two of those cartridges were displayed in this case at the 2005 CGE. These cartridges occassionally show up on eBay and fetch big big bucks. One of the grey cartridge recently sold for over $6,000.

Cool console add-ons for the Genesis like the "Sega Channel Adapter" and the "Mega CD Karaoke" attachment. The "Sega Channel Adapter" (bottom right of the picture) was a project in 1994 between Time-Warner and Sega to provide unlimited access to downloadable games for a $12.95 monthly fee. According to Wikipedia, the service was only available in select countries like the UK, Argentina and Chile. The service also allowed you to download "test-drives" of games where you could play 15 minutes before the game cut-off. Don't be fooled into thinking that Sega was the first to envision on-line console game play. Nintendo released a modem in Japan for the Famicom, a full generation before Sega came out with the Channel Adapter.

A lot of creative minds showed up for CGE 2005. One vendor specialized in turning old consoles like the Dreamcast, NES, etc. into hand-held devices. Pictured is the Nintendo hand-held. It plays the original Nintendo cartridges. Although cool in concept, it was a bit tough to handle and felt like a brick.

Before the Colecovision, the folks at Coleco released the "Telstar". Originally sold in 1976, Coleco produced 14 variations of their Telstar, the coolest being the "Telstar Arcade" (shown to the right). Can you say "Gaming Perfection?" Built on a rotating swivel, the Telstar featured a light gun, a steering wheel and pong controls. The game cartridges were triangular shaped and connected to the top. According to pong-story.com, only four cartridges were released. Rumor has it that the silver color of the cartrdiges is a heat-resistant coating (tin foil?) because the original cartridges overheated.

In Summary, NWCGE 2K6 may or may not have any of this stuff but will surely have its own unique collection of treasures that are rarely seen first hand.

Don't forget to sign up for the Atari 2600 tournament. Check out nwcge.org for registration details.