Legend of Zelda II challenge set

[Hybrid | 426]

Ok while browsing eBay for new things for my website I came across this. I tried a few basic searches but came up blank

 

[Tulpa | 3,510]

Whoa. I always thought the Challenge set came with just SMB3.

Does it look like someone could have removed the tape/cellophane from an SMB3 and put it on this?

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

Reminds me a bit of the Zelda II “no red stripe” classic series I found.

There timelines for that seal of quality just don’t match up at all. If it was a different variant I’d say it’s possible, but a circle seal in the 90s when Oval seal variants exist? Nah.

Still interesting though and I’d love to see more! Who knows, it could be like the Golgomania pack where they just grabbed whatever copy they had sealed and threw it in.

[a3quit4s | 4,102]

I saw this on eBay as well it’s titled as an error but I thought it looked suspect. 

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

After looking at the auction, I think I may know what happened here. The description reads "I purchased this from a man whos uncle worked for Nintendo in the early days of the company". Now this sounds like the classic "Uncle who worked for Nintendo", but they may be on to something. 

I've read before (https://connect.gocollect.com/discussion/comment/3167721/#Comment_3167721) that Nintendo put NFR stickers on games sold through employee sales (so that they wouldn't try to resell it). If you scroll up in that thread you'll see pictures of a Tetris with one such sticker. I've also seen a couple other similar stickers that I think were also used for this purpose (https://connect.gocollect.com/discussion/89119, and http://web.archive.org/web/20090725071306/http://zeldacollectorsmuseum.com:80/). So, my guess is that instead of using one of those stickers, they put a challenge set NFR sticker on it when that "uncle who worked for Nintendo" bought it.

[RH | 4,912]

Man... I feel sorry for all of those kids whose uncle really did work at Nintendo because that line has been used so many times, no one today believes they were telling the truth.

[Tenjikuronin | 1,732]

14 hours ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

I've read before (https://connect.gocollect.com/discussion/comment/3167721/#Comment_3167721) that Nintendo put NFR stickers on games sold through employee sales (so that they wouldn't try to resell it). If you scroll up in that thread you'll see pictures of a Tetris with one such sticker. I've also seen a couple other similar stickers that I think were also used for this purpose (https://connect.gocollect.com/discussion/89119, and http://web.archive.org/web/20090725071306/http://zeldacollectorsmuseum.com:80/). So, my guess is that instead of using one of those stickers, they put a challenge set NFR sticker on it when that "uncle who worked for Nintendo" bought it.

I can verify the first half -- throughout the mid-90s, whenever someone would buy games from NOA's employee store (Fun & Games), the clerk would slap one of these stickers on to the box.  They usually had a giant spindle of such stickers at the counter which they would peel off and attach to the front of games, mostly to discourage employees and other buyers from reselling them (as they were usually bought at a steep discount -- like $10 for brand new SNES games in 1996).  Later onwards, they switched to a white colored label (I don't have a picture on me at the moment) which served the same purpose. 

[Jfreakofkorn | 282]

Either way its a pretty cool piece . . . 

[DefaultGen | 5,411]

On 6/10/2020 at 9:26 AM, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

After looking at the auction, I think I may know what happened here. The description reads "I purchased this from a man whos uncle worked for Nintendo in the early days of the company". Now this sounds like the classic "Uncle who worked for Nintendo", but they may be on to something. 

Man, even if this story is for real, saying your friend's uncle worked for Nintendo just makes it sound so much shadier. Just lie at that point.