“Friend of mine received this sealed and graded original copy of Pokémon Yellow,” Kick said. “U.S. Customs: Broke the acrylic case, ripped and discarded the seal, [and] sliced the front of the box off. Maybe they weren’t fans of Wata Games?”

Wata Games is an independent company that grades and certifies games for collectors. Chances are you’ll encounter Wata Games if you’re looking for high-quality, mint copies of old games. The company was responsible for grading and certifying The_Master_Of_Unlocking’s copy, giving it an A+ rating and a score of 9.2. According to Wata Games’ website, the game is in “exceptional condition” and worth $3,800. Or it was until U.S. Customs came through and decimated the certification.

“So…either they hated the battery inside the cartridge…or they thought it’d contain drugs or something,” one tweeter suggested in Kick’s mentions. “Can U.S. Customs just destroy things without recourse,” asked another tweeter, with many others demanding consequences against the agency.

...

    • spacejunk [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think the classic game collections should be viewed similarly to that of art. And by that I mean we should break into the houses of collectors seize their shit. Video games are a medium where we have a chance of preserving most of if not all of it. Imagine if we could have done that with movies.

      We need a centralized authority dedicated towards the preservation of video games, presumably under the authority of a global communist historical preservation society. These games, they aren't going to last forever, their parts have shelf lives, dvds expire, batteries expire, we have no "permanent" means of storage. What we need to do is have all the retro games in one place and restore or emulate them. Also it probably won't be bad to just destroy shit like clusters revenge or other racist video games.