NES Bandai Character Action Series

[Tony Lama]

I believe the first NES games released by Bandai were Ninja Kid, M.U.S.C.L.E. and Chubby Cherub. Each game made up what was called the "Character Action Series". From what I've been hearing on different game collecting forums, each of these game boxes is worth MORE than the actual game. Does anyone know why this is the case for THIS particular series?

[Bojay1997]

I believe the first NES games released by Bandai were Ninja Kid, M.U.S.C.L.E. and Chubby Cherub. Each game made up what was called the "Character Action Series". From what I've been hearing on different game collecting forums, each of these game boxes is worth MORE than the actual game. Does anyone know why this is the case for THIS particular series?

Rarity and demand. Those certainly aren't the only games where the value of the box outweighs the value of the loose cartridge.

[Tony Lama]

Rarity and demand. Those certainly aren't the only games where the value of the box outweighs the value of the loose cartridge.

Question: Are the games from the Character Action Series considered rare? I've recently been told Chubby Cherub is considered uncommon. But I had believed M.U.S.C.L.E and Ninja Kid to be somewhat common.

[Tanooki]

Bandai I believe was also the first licensed publisher of games that had their product put out in their own packaging/boxes. Before that point anyone who had a game out, it was put into a black box like IREM's Kung Fu. Since this was a baby of a market on the recovery at that point games such as those would have been printed as a test or sorts in small batches. Gamemaster Howard over at NintendoAge stated that Nintendo would do orders in totals of 10K or higher, so keeping that in mind, there's probably few of those games in general printed, and when you factor in how many 'normal' individuals would throw out useless store packaging boxes to get the game and manual out, that would make a lower printed box with far fewer non-trashed boxes remaining in peoples hands to trade and sell.

Chubby Cherub was their first, MUSCLE and Ninja Kid came after and those two have more copies printed, but CC there just aren't a huge pile of those around.

[Tony Lama]

Bandai I believe was also the first licensed publisher of games that had their product put out in their own packaging/boxes. Before that point anyone who had a game out, it was put into a black box like IREM's Kung Fu. Since this was a baby of a market on the recovery at that point games such as those would have been printed as a test or sorts in small batches. Gamemaster Howard over at NintendoAge stated that Nintendo would do orders in totals of 10K or higher, so keeping that in mind, there's probably few of those games in general printed, and when you factor in how many 'normal' individuals would throw out useless store packaging boxes to get the game and manual out, that would make a lower printed box with far fewer non-trashed boxes remaining in peoples hands to trade and sell.

Chubby Cherub was their first, MUSCLE and Ninja Kid came after and those two have more copies printed, but CC there just aren't a huge pile of those around.

Hmmm...your response seems to make sense to me. I was a freshman in high school when the NES came out. And I remember going to various retailers and seeing more of the black box NES games more than anything else. In fact, I believe that Toys R Us was the only place I found the Bandai games. Every NES owner that I knew had most of the black box stuff like Super Mario and Kung Fu. But you really had to search for the 3rd party stuff. Later on, 3rd party games were found at more retailers. I remember Capcom and Konami being in the forefront. But the Bandai launch titles had all but disappeared three years into the NES life cycle. I was lucky to get a copy of Ninja Kid the first year I had my NES. But I was never able to track down a copy of Chubby Cherub .

[Blitzwing256]

I found an oldstock sealed copy of MUSCLES at a flea market years ago, only one of the bandai games I've ever seen boxed in person.

[BlastProcessing402]

Bandai I believe was also the first licensed publisher of games that had their product put out in their own packaging/boxes. Before that point anyone who had a game out, it was put into a black box like IREM's Kung Fu. \

Kung Fu came out in a black box because Nintendo published it (in America anyway).

[Tanooki]

I know that, and Bandai was the first to gain third party rights here to publish as Irem chose not to so Nintendo took Spartan X and made it Kung Fu. They werent the only, Square didnt bother to start either, they had Nintendo handle Rad Racer aka Highway Star.

[Tony Lama]

I know that, and Bandai was the first to gain third party rights here to publish as Irem chose not to so Nintendo took Spartan X and made it Kung Fu. They werent the only, Square didnt bother to start either, they had Nintendo handle Rad Racer aka Highway Star.

I wonder if Bandai chose to support the NES in its infancy because they were more financially secure at the time than some other companies. After all, they are a toy manufacturing giant. If the NES was a flop, they may have been able to recoup better than say Irem. Although Irem did eventually bring there own games to the States. I can only recall 3 releases: Sqoon, Metal Storm, and Image Fight. In retrospect, it's funny to see that once the NES became successful, everyone wanted a piece of the action...like Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers! I applaud Bandai for taking the leap into the NES arena...and with CHUBBY CHERUB leading the charge!! !!

[Tanooki]

That's probably the case. The other early players being Konami, Capcom, and a few others were at most arcade game developers and despite success in the mid 80s they weren't huge by any means so it was more risk involved. BanDai was in the US as you said due to their big toy enterprise so they had more money by far to put a risk into play to see if it paid off. It's not like it was much later (it wasn't) at all before the others got stuff out, but it would make sense BanDai could commit first or at least have more people on a project to have it to market the fastest. If you look at what those other guys did put out in 1986 it's kind of telling anyway.

Bandai was first with Chubby Cherub, Ninja Kid and MUSCLE, but also Data East also oddly got out Tag Team Wrestling Oct 1986 too and followed that up a month later with Karate Champ. Capcom was out in that following month too with 1942, GnG and Commando. Notice a pattern? Arcade conversions all. KOnami only got in just before Christmas with Gradius, again arcade. Even going into 1987 aside from Tecmo (Bomb Jack) and Gauntlet (Tengen-Atari) it took until September that year to get something that wasn't an arcade conversion from Broderbund(Raid on Bungling Bay, Lode Runner, Deadly Towers) and Acclaim(3D World Runner.) It basically took 2 years for the NES to get non-arcade stuff, and clearly the ports made logical sense. They were taking already made games cutting out a lot of development time and just repurposing hot money making arcade games as it was safe.

Bandai if you look at it, they were the only NON-arcade conversion guys and they got their stuff out before everyone else. The others stuck around sure, but it took a couple years before they started making legit non-arcade conversions while others flooded into to get a piece of the action too.