"I finally caught them all."
You hit 500 games. Your shelf starts to groan. You have all the "Greatest Hits." You start buying the weird stuff: Bassin’s Black Bass , Super Bowling , Rocky Rodent .
Spiritually? If you complete it... you get to stand in a room, look at 721 rectangles of plastic and silicon, and whisper: snes full set
So why spend $15,000–$25,000 (and rising) to own them all?
You will stare at the cover art for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and ask yourself, "Why did this get a license?" The answer doesn't matter. You need it. To finish a full SNES set, you must conquer three legendary "price walls." These are the games that separate the wealthy from the merely enthusiastic. 1. Hagane: The Final Conflict A sidescrolling ninja action game released exclusively to Blockbuster Video in the US. It is incredibly good, incredibly rare, and incredibly expensive. A loose cartridge will cost you more than a used car. A boxed copy costs a down payment on a house. 2. EarthBound Everyone knows this one. The massive box with the strategy guide is the holy grail of cardboard. But even the loose cartridge—with its distinctive yellow/grey plastic—hovers around $300-$400. It’s not the rarest, but it is the gatekeeper . 3. Aero Fighters This is the true monster. A top-down shooter by a defunct developer. Nobody knows exactly how many copies were sold, but estimates hover around 4,000–6,000. It is boring to look at (a generic plane shooter) but fetches $1,500+ for the cartridge alone. It is the final lock on the door. The "Almost" Impossible Variants Just when you think you have 721 carts, the variant hunter whispers in your ear: "But do you have the 'Player's Choice' version? Do you have the 'Mario Paint' with the mouse? Do you have the competition cartridges?" "I finally caught them all
Then you sit down, turn on the SNES, and play Super Mario World for the 1,000th time. Because that’s the only one you really needed in the first place.
Financially? Yes. SNES cartridges have outpaced the stock market for a decade. Spiritually
In the world of retro game collecting, there are casual fans with a dusty console and a copy of Super Mario World . Then, there are the obsessed—those who stare into the abyss of eBay, tracking numbers, and plastic shelf organizers. At the very peak of that obsession sits a mythical beast: The Full Set.