DALLAS, TX.- Capcom and fans of the Resident Evil series are celebrating the 30th anniversary of its first installment, which debuted with the March 22, 1996, release of the initial PlayStation game. Among the events in store for the year are a new arcade shooter, Resident Evil 2: Arcade; a Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra tour featuring music from the series; and a surprise event planned for March 22 — not to mention last month’s release of the latest installment in the horror survival series, Resident Evil Requiem.

Heritage’s March 27–28 Video Games Signature® Auction features a lot that will take the ultimate Resident Evil fan back to where it all began to mark the occasion in the highest style possible: the top-graded copy of the first production variant listed in PSA/Wata’s December 2025 population report, a 9.8 A+ Sealed Ridged Longbox.

“Early PlayStation 1-era games were displayed on shelves in longboxes rather than just the jeweled cases, so they look stunning with the full artwork,” says Evan Masingill, Heritage Auctions’ Consignment Director of Video Games. “People love them, and they’re just really hard to find 30 years later. This one is the highest graded by PSA and the highest to ever sell at auction, the only 9.8, so it should be very exciting to see where it ends up.”

It’s part of the TheGraded80s_Kid Collection, a selection of items offered by a pioneer of the video game collecting hobby. The consignor was among the first hobbyists to envision the potential for unopened, sealed and well-preserved copies of video games and related merchandise and ephemera to gain considerable value for the same reason antique and vintage sports cards and other collectibles have: scarcity. These totems of childhood nostalgia were intended to be played with, not collected, and so even the most popular titles don’t have many surviving specimens that have been kept in mint condition.

Resident Evil is not the only massively popular game series marking three decades this year. Pokémon debuted 30 years ago last month in Japan with the release of its first Nintendo Game Boy titles, Pocket Monsters Red and Green, which would go on to be released outside of Japan to the delight of a generation of young trainers as Pokémon Red Version and Blue Version. A 9.6 A++ Sealed copy of the first production of the U.S. Blue Version of the game is among the top lots in the auction. It’s distinguishable as a first-production copy of the title by a typo on the back of the box in which the copy refers to it as Red Version, an error that was corrected in subsequent print runs and adds to its collectability.

“The misprint was very quickly corrected, so not many of these sealed misprint copies are out there,” Masingill says. “PSA has only graded 21 in total, and only two are graded higher than this one.”

Masingill points out there may be hundreds or even thousands of high-grade copies of some of the most valuable Pokémon Trading Card Game cards, but perfectly preserved Pokémon Game Boy game copies are exceedingly rare in comparison.

“Pokémon is extremely hot right now, and we’re seeing — slowly, finally — some of that momentum cross over into Pokémon video games,” he says.

There are plenty of other Pokémon items for trainers to catch in addition to the U.S. Blue Version, including unopened copies of the original Japanese Pocket Monsters Aka (Japanese for “Red”), Pocket Monsters Midori (Green) and Pocket Monsters Ao (Blue). Verified unopened Japanese copies are especially uncommon because the packages are manufactured without seals. Determining they have not been opened is a much more involved grading process that includes close examination of the box’s hinge under UV light to look for signs of cracking or breakage.

ven less common than unopened games from 30 years ago are developmental prototypes from nearly 40 years in the past, and this auction offers a truly remarkable discovered artifact from the formative years of the Nintendo Entertainment System: the earliest known prototype of Punch-Out!!, the boxing arcade game adaptation that would go on to be released for the system as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! in 1987. Predating the completion of the licensing deal with Tyson, game code on this copy was not final and features only four fighters — Glass Joe, Bald Bull, King Hippo and Don Flamenco — repeating in order four times, with few special moves, no evolution of opponent behavior during each bout, no music and other signs of its unfinished state.

Further illustrating the scarcity of well-preserved copies of early retail video games, PSA/Wata has graded only 39 sealed copies of the 1987 classic Castlevania across all variants. Of those, only one has been certified at 9.8, and it is up for bids.

Other highlights of the March 27–28 Video Games Signature® Auction include, to name just a few of the more than 300 lots:

• An illustration of Link from The Legend of Zelda signed by Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Zelda franchise as well as Super Mario and Donkey Kong

• A full set of the Game Boy Mega Man series, including IV and V, the rarest games in the series according to the public population report

• A PSA 9.8 A+ Sealed copy of the original Grand Theft Auto for PlayStation, one of only 34 copies of its mid-production variant with none graded higher

• A Wata 9.6 A+ Sealed copy of Super Mario Bros., the second highest-graded example of its mid-production variant