Collector Discovers Unreleased Version of Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt in Historic HaulFocus Reset

Home›News›Duck Hunt<br>How 97 Copies of an Unreleased Version of Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt Were Discovered in a Wisconsin Warehouse<br>Only five were graded perfect 10s — the first in PSA history.

By Virginia Glaze

Updated: Jul 29, 2026 3:31pm UTC

2 comments

When Jason Ganos was asked to help sell an old box full of NES cartridges, he figured they would be pre-owned copies of games that had already been circulated in the market. He had no idea that he was about to make a historic discovery that would change his life forever.

Waukesha, Wisconsin is a suburb of the greater Milwaukee metropolitan area that boasts around 71,000 people. Its downtown center looks like it jumped straight out of the '50s, packed with old-fashioned soda shops, classic burger joints, and antique stores.<br>One of these stores is a vintage collectibles shop called OneStopWonders, owned by collector Kevin Braun. It’s got everything from VHS tapes, retro games, vintage clothes, and anything else a nostalgic Gen X / Millennial could want. Jason Ganos, owner of the website NintendoWire and an avid Nintendo fan, began working with Braun three months ago, initially helping him repair old pinball machines.<br>10 Best NES Games of All Time

Getting the list down to ten was NOT easy. I left off dozens of legitimate contenders, zeroing in on games that in many cases beat their closest rivals not by miles but by mere inches.

But in the end, I narrowed it down to these ten. Now remember, these are NES games... no Famicom-exclusives allowed. Every game here was available for the stock Nintendo Entertainment System, (though one of the ten, a European exclusive, never made it it to America). These are the games that encapsulate what was great about the Nintendo Entertainment System. Let’s Play with Power.

Written by Jared Petty" decoding="async" class="progressive-image jsx-2896921488 image aspect-ratio aspect-ratio-16-9 jsx-2605834259 jsx-2338608387 hover-opacity" loading="lazy" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" data-cy="progressive-image"/>Super Mario Brothers (1985) The grand-daddy of em’ all, Super Mario Brothers blew the doors off video gaming. It represented one of the few true seismic shifts in the history of entertainment, reigniting the video games industry in the US, redefining it in Japan, and advancing the state of the art. A technical showpiece and a design revolution, Super Mario Brothers was so much further ahead of anything that had come before it that its existence was almost incomprehensible to the mind. Decades after the novelty wore off, Super Mario Brothers remains a near-perfect essay on the craft of game design. Its simple appearance belies intricate, purposeful craftsmanship. Every tile and block seems perfectly placed. Mario’s handling is the archetype for all platform characters to follow. The unforgettable melodies feel synchronized to the action unfolding onscreen. Over three decades after its release, Mario’s first adventure in the Mushroom Kingdom is still one of gaming’s greatest feats." decoding="async" class="progressive-image jsx-2896921488 image aspect-ratio aspect-ratio-16-9 jsx-2605834259 jsx-2338608387 hover-opacity" loading="lazy" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" data-cy="progressive-image"/>View 11 Images

The Legend of Zelda (1987) Much of the mental vocabulary of contemporary video game was perfected in Zelda. It probably sounds silly now, but Zelda was a mind-blowing technical achievement when it was introduced. The scope of Hyrule and the tremendous variety of enemies and items was far ahead of what had previously been considered possible in a home console action game. Its American release took advantage of the NES’s ability to utilize upgrade chips included in the cartridge to stretch the hardware beyond its designers’ original intentions, creating a bright and colorful world full of sweeping melodies and accommodating the game’s extended length with an on-board save system battery. When you think about saving your game, saving any game, on PS4 or Xbox One, thank Zelda.<br>" decoding="async" class="progressive-image jsx-2896921488 image aspect-ratio aspect-ratio-16-9 jsx-2605834259 jsx-2338608387 hover-opacity" loading="lazy" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" data-cy="progressive-image"/>Tetris (1989) Thanks to one of the weirdest licensing stories in video game history, there are two different Tetris games on NES: one by Tengen (Atari), and the other published by Nintendo. The Tengen carts were eventually pulled from circulation by legal action and are now a rarity. The official NES port of Tetris lacks the multiplayer competitive mode of Tengen’s version, but it is colorful, responsive, stylistically interesting, features great music, and it introduced...