So a while back, this sold – and apparently it was paid for. $4,500 for a Sealed Cheetahman II, which to be quite honest -Â is absolutely insane.
Cheetahmen II is an interesting game for several reasons. Firstly, it is probably the only NES title that actually exists with more sealed copies than open.
It was relatively unknown until a guy by the name Mike Etler started selling the game in his store, Videogame Connections. That name sound familiar? If you’re an older gamer, than you might remember Elter’s List, the original NES rarity guide.
Now according to some sources Elter bought the entire unreleased stock of the game with 1500 copies.
However, an old post by him on Digitpress says that “The manufacturer claimed about 1200 pieces were made. A number of them were sold to flea market dealers in Florida (where the mfr was located). I had 100 and I know one other collector had either 100 or 200. I was told by the mfr that the last couple hundred were donated to charity to finally get them out of the warehouse.”
The game was developed by Active Enterprises, famous for their Action52 cartridge, released for the NES and Genesis. It uses the casing from Action 52. The manufacturer was a company called GTI. Active (producer/publisher) had little to do with the Cheetahmen II production as GTI was primarily looking to make back some of what Active owed them from Action 52, which is why no additional cart shells were made.
As the cases probably already had a Action 52 sticker on them, a small gold sticker was placed on the back of the cartridge, indicating that this was Cheetahmen II and not Action 52. The funny thing is that they even spelled the title wrong, as the gold sticker says “CHEETAMEN II”
With the recent sale, another collector is trying to see if the sale was a total fluke or not.
