File this one under “places most likely to make your accountant sweat.” This Autry Park steakhouse is Berg Hospitality’s over-the-top ode to indulgence, serving Japanese Kobe filet, Australian Wagyu tomahawk, beef Wellington, and a double lobster tail big enough to share (but why would you?). Bourbon pours roll deep, oysters roll in on a gilded cart, and nearly anything can be crowned with caviar. If you’re not putting this on the company card, you’re doing it wrong.
An incredibly elusive creature was photographed on trail cameras in the Colorado wilderness, and the photos provide some clues about why some say they call the animals “bigfoot.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife
An incredibly elusive creature was spotted on a trail camera in Colorado, and the photos provide some clues about why some say they call the animals “bigfoot.”
The cameras are set up to monitor the species, which is federally threatened and endangered in Colorado, officials said.
“Thanks to our reintroduction efforts, CO is now home to approx. 150-250 lynx,” officials said.
The agency shared the photo for National Endangered Species Day. Viewers immediately noticed the size of the creature’s enormous paws.
“Look at those mitts! Snow kitty!” someone said in comments on the Facebook post.
Another person described the Lynx paws in the same way.
“Lynx are so cool! Look at those huge mitts!” they said.
The species is often confused with bobcats, and the comments section reflects that. Several people shared photos asking if a creature they had seen was a bobcat or a much more elusive lynx.
“I love Lynx!” someone said under the agency’s post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “They are like Bigfoot. You know they may exist but you rarely get a sighting. So beautiful.”
Brooke (she/them) is a McClatchy Real-Time reporter who covers LGBTQ+ entertainment news and national parks out west. They studied journalism at the University of Florida, and previously covered LGBTQ+ news for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. When they’re not writing stories, they enjoy hanging out with their cats, riding horses or spending time outdoors.
A tour boat in Australia watched as a pod of orcas chased and attacked a group of sperm whales. A rare video shows the predators fighting.
Photo from Jodie Lowe, shared by Naturaliste Charters
Tourists on a boat in Australia were left stunned as they watched a pod of orcas chase and attack a group of sperm whales. A rare video shows the “titans of the ocean” battling.
Naturaliste Charters took a boat of tourists to Bremer Canyon for a whale watching expedition on March 19, the company wrote in a Facebook post. The boat quickly arrived at a “hotspot” to find a pod of orcas foraging.
Then, “with a large splash … everything changed,” the company said. The pod of orcas “began to pick up speed” and chase something.
The pod chased its target for just over 7 miles, herding the target into shallower water, Naturaliste Charters wrote in an Instagram post.
When the hidden target finally surfaced, “what we saw left our jaws gaping,” the company said. They saw “the unmistakable arched back and tail of a sperm whale.” Four more sperm whales eventually surfaced.
Sperm whales are massive deep-sea predators with a gray body, pointed teeth and a block-like head.
Naturaliste Charters shared a video of the rare encounter on Facebook on March 26. In the video, the gray sperm whales are seen huddled together as orcas circle around them.
“The group of sperm whales appeared distressed and exhausted,” the company said, but they quickly began splashing their tails to fend off the orcas. Video footage shows the churning waters.
Suddenly, the whale watchers saw a “large dark bubble” of something reddish brown erupt from around the sperm whales, and an orca surfaced with a chunk of meat in its mouth. The video shows this murky bubble and the orca with its hard-won meat.
Soon after, the orcas called off their attack and moved away. “The mood onboard became solemn as we processed what may have just unfolded in front of our eyes,” the company said. “Had the orca really just taken down a sperm whale?”
After the trip, the company looked closer at the photographs and videos of the fight. A different picture emerged.
“What was originally thought to have been a bubble of blood exploding on the surface has since been confirmed as feces,” the company said. “Sperm whales are known to defecate when threatened … The cloud of diarrhea created when the whale waves its tail through its poo appears to deter predators and in this case, seemed to work!”
The meat the orcas took was likely squid, the company said, either “stolen from the sperm whales’ jaws or regurgitated (by the sperm whales) in a defensive effort to relinquish a potential attack on themselves.”
These two “titans of the ocean” are rarely seen battling, Naturaliste Charters said. For a long time, people assumed sperm whales and orcas were too evenly matched for the two predators to attack each other.
The whale watching company said the intense encounter was “an immense privilege and a reminder of just how wild these animals and this place are.”
Bremer Canyon is off the southwestern coast of Australia.
Aspen Pflughoeft covers real-time news for McClatchy. She is a graduate of Minerva University where she studied communications, history, and international politics. Previously, she reported for Deseret News.
This alligator in Georgia had researchers looking for explanations after they realized it had mysterious jaw appendage — with teeth.
UGA Coastal Ecology Lab photo
A 7-foot alligator caught in southeast Georgia has researchers looking for explanations after discovering it had a mysterious jaw appendage — with teeth.
Alligators are prone to deformities due to their violent lifestyle, but this is something new, the University’s of Georgia’s Coastal Ecology Lab wrote in a Feb. 19 Facebook post.
“We see a variety of injuries in the alligators that we catch in the Okefenokee Swamp, from missing limbs and eyes to a tooth that pokes through the upper jaw, but we have never seen an injury quite like the one,” lab officials said in the post.
It’s suspected the alligator was born with a normal jaw that was broken and never realigned after healing, officials say. UGA Coastal Ecology Lab photo
“Her lower jaw appeared to protrude out from under her upper jaw on the left side of her face. … The part of her jaw that is sticking out has teeth in it still.”
It’s suspected the alligator was born with a normal jaw that snapped in two — perhaps while battling a much larger alligator, lab officials say.
The alligator survived and her jaw healed, but never realigned. The alligator likely suffered during the healing process, but continued to hunt and eat, experts say.
“The section where those teeth should be in her jaw has been filled back in with bone and was very solid,” the lab reports.
“This unique injury does not appear to affect her ability to eat as her body and tail girth were comparable to other alligators of similar size. This is just another example of how resilient the American alligator is.”
Alligators are known to fight to the death over turf, mates and protecting their young. The species is also not above cannibalism, studies show.
Okefenokee Swamp is in Georgia’s southeast corner, about 45 miles northwest of Jacksonville.
The Coastal Ecology Lab is studying alligators in and around the area, including a program that tracks their movements, nesting habits and lineage.
Mark Price is a National Reporter for McClatchy News. He joined the network of newspapers in 1991 at The Charlotte Observer, covering beats including schools, crime, immigration, LGBTQ issues, homelessness and nonprofits. He graduated from the University of Memphis with majors in journalism and art history, and a minor in geology.
Back when I was running the game for my local Dungeons & Dragons group, I would always pride myself on bringing something handmade each time we got together around the table. Maybe it was a leather-bound book filled with vintage David Sutherland illustrations of the Tomb of Horrors, or a 3D map of a few rooms from Castle Ravenloft with just the right assortment of miniatures from my collection. As a lifelong fan of D&D, Rick Perry knows that impulse well. But as production designer and creative producer on Dropout’s Dimension 20, he’s operating at a scale that’s on another level entirely.
Season 21 of Dimension 20, an actual play program on the streaming television service Dropout, will premiere on Jan. 10, 2024. It’s an incredible run that shows no sign of slowing down, and Perry’s work has been integral in its popularity. To celebrate his impact, Dropout has released a feature documentary titled The Legendary Rick Perry and the Art of Dimension 20. In advance of its release, Polygon sat down with the lifelong Texan, now a resident of Washington state, to discuss his work.
A miniature high school dance inside the gymnasium at Fantasy High.Image: Dropout
While world class Dungeon Masters like Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, Gabe Hicks, and Matthew Mercer lead each game at the start of each Dimension 20 season with a high-level creative direction, it’s up to Perry and his team of skilled artists to bring that vision to life in miniature on the table. That means creating hundreds of inch-tall figures from scratch using clay and sculpting tools; kitbashing dozens of scale models into fantastical landscapes to anchor the viewer in the world; and crafting dynamic, multi-tiered battle maps where skilled improv actors can chew up the set.
Just like the props you bring to your home games, it’s bait, really, that he willfully uses to draw players — and viewers — closer to the center of whatever complex story he’s trying to tell.
“Dimension 20 [requires] a massive amount of creative genesis to create a 20-episode series,” Perry said, “[one that] that takes place in a completely new world where we don’t know what color the sky is, or what food the people are eating. So there’s this massive amount of creative activity that has to start at the beginning of it, and that takes a big chunk of time.”
The documentary details how that creative work begins at his homestead on Lopez Island in San Juan County, Washington at an outdoor sink first cobbled together by his father-in-law in the 1970s. It then moves into a converted three-car garage that once held farming equipment, but is now filled with bins labeled for the miniatures they contain — a box of trolls here, bugbears in the corner. Only after weeks, sometimes months of effort on the farm with a whole team of designers do the larger pieces get crated up and shipped to Los Angeles. Often, Perry said, that’s where the real work begins.
Rick Perry (right) with his team on Lopez Island taking the original Fantasy High Dungeon Master’s screen from storage for the first time in four years.Image: Dropout
The trick, he went on, is to stay nimble — even when you’re building maps for tabletop encounters that won’t happen for weeks.
“It’s part of the DNA of Dimension 20,” Perry said, “because at the very beginning when we decided we wanted these eight battle maps that are custom, that have this mix of say high school and fantasy, it’s not like something we can just crank out really fast. We need to know ahead of time in order to make skater dwarves, and all this sort of stuff.
“That means that we have to map all that out down to every detail — as much as we can,” Perry continued. That sort of on-rails gameplay is, unfortunately, anathema to modern role-play, which emphasizes creative freedom for the Dungeon Master as well as the players at the table. It’s always a challenge, Perry said, to keep things on track. But with a miniature set that, often times, costs just as much as a full-scale one, it’s up to everyone involved to keep the trains running on time.
“That tells the Dungeon Master that these are landmarks,” Perry said. “These [scenes that we are building] are places that you have to pilot the ship through these little hoops. We try to build in as much flexibility, as much opportunity for improvisation as possible, meaning that sometimes where a battle map falls, they could switch places or we could cut one. We try not to cut one because they cost money to make. And it’s a business venture, the show, and we want all that production value to appear on screen.”
The nearly 45-minute film goes even further in its exploration of Perry and his work, delving deep into his childhood and his time spent in college as a member of a troupe of performance artists. For fans of Dimension 20, it’s a rare behind-the-scenes look at how its particular brand of storytelling comes to life. But for artists, craftspeople, or even just casual hobbyists who paint miniatures on the weekend for fun, it’s the story of a kindred spirit who has found a vital, transformative role in the creative industry.
The Legendary Rick Perry and the Art of Dimension 20 is now streaming on Dropout.
Mario gave a healthy injection of life to the gaming industry in 1985 with the first Super Mario Bros. on the Famicom (NES) in Japan. Since then, Mario has introduced many new consoles and has pushed tech-forward into the 3D space and even jumped into space itself.
There’s hardly a more rich and historically significant legacy than Mario in gaming, so collectors have naturally held great interest in the storied franchise. Here are 10 of the rarest and most expensive Mario games that will empty your pockets.
Like our previous lists, PriceCharting is the source used for new and used game values. We’re ranking these Mario gems using the New Price listings, from lowest to highest. We include the average used price as well based on the “Loose Price” from PriceCharting. Console bundles are not included since they typically top these lists and skew individual game values.
10. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (SNES)
$1,156 New | $38.86 Used
Image Source: Nintendo
Nintendo’s follow-up to Super Mario World didn’t come until the Super Nintendo was four years old. The game is titled Super Mario World 2 despite not starring Mario as the main character. This title was contentious to players since Yoshi’s Island is a prequel to existing Mario games and only featured Mario as a baby. regardless, Nintendo considers it as Super Mario World 2, and its quality certainly reflects that.
The title is not the only thing that put some players off of Yoshi’s Island. The Super Nintendo was nearing the end of its life cycle when Super Mario World 2 was released. Some players were already fixated on Nintendo’s leap to 3D with the upcoming Nintendo 64, and as a result, Yoshi’s Island became one of a handful of games to become somewhat rare and underrated.
Despite the name confusion and release so close to Nintendo’s new 3D console, Yoshi’s Island remains one of the most beloved Mario games. Yoshi’s Island’s quality can be attributed to Nintendo EAD spending a full 4 years to develop the game, an unprecedented development cycle back then. Now, sealed copies of this Super Nintendo classic fetch a premium with recent sales eclipsing $1,000.
9. Mario Kart 64 [Player’s Choice]
$1,189 New | $39.75 Used
Image Source: Nintendo via TheVideoGameCavern
Releasing at the dawn of 1997 in America, Mario Kart 64 realized Nintendo’s push for 3D in high-octane kart racing form. The Nintendo 64’s emphasis on multiplayer games introduced four controller slots to consoles for the first time. Every 90s kid remembers just how fun get-togethers were with all the four-player party games the Nintendo 64 had in its lineup.
As such, the console capable of rendering 3D environments and four simultaneous players sold remarkably well. Mario Kart 64 would go on to hold the number two position in terms of Nintendo 64 game sales with a whopping 10 million units sold as of November 2023. But there’s one edition of the game that became a bit less common.
Player’s Choice was a label Nintendo used to advertise games that sold the most copies on the console. As such, these copies often came later in the console’s life cycle after the initial fervor of the game died down. The relative scarcity of Mario Kart 64 Player’s Choice Edition help make it one of the most expensive Mario games with a recent example being sold for $2,500 in April 2023.
8. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
$1,700 New | $18.44 Used
Image Source: Nintendo
The West didn’t get Super Mario Bros. 3 until early 1990, a full year and a half after the initial Japanese release of the game. Despite being released close to the new Super Nintendo console, Super Mario Bros. 3 proved to be one of the all-time greats in terms of quality and sales.
Super Mario Bros. 3 marked the moment the series came into its own. It firmly takes everything that came before and does a masterclass with it. Levels no longer followed each other in a locked linear pattern. Mario 3 instead gave players a lively overworld dotted with branching paths and hidden secrets. The explorative nature of Super Mario Bros. 3 became a definitive carryover for the games that followed, including the wildly popular Super Mario World.
Because of its reputation as one of the all-time greats in the series and its progressive popularity in the West, North American sealed copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 fetch the highest price of them all.
7. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
$1,916 New | $89.99 Used
Image Source: Nintendo
Releasing just four months before the Nintendo 64 console was the new Mario RPG co-developed by SquareSoft on the Super Nintendo. Everything about this game was bizarre and amazing in equal measure. This would mark the first time Nintendo collaborated with RPG giant Square while they were at the height of their craft.
Because of the late release and the unconventional genre coming from Nintendo, Super Mario RPG became a very rare and hot item on the collecting scene. This is one of those games that even sells well used. If you have a beat-up old copy of this game for Super Nintendo lying in a closet like I do, you could easily get $100 for it.
The new Super Mario RPG Remake of the same game has since boosted awareness of the old Super Nintendo classic. Now, sales for the game are projected to increase even more than they were before. A new copy of the SNES game sold for $1,532 the same month the Remake was released.
6. Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)
$2,375 New | $21.92 Used
Image Source: Nintendo
Super Mario Bros. 2 was actually based on a prototype tech demo for the Family Computer Disk System. Presented at the Yume Kōjō ’87 media technology expo, Doki Doki Panic used festival theming for the characters and environments. Super Mario Bros. 2 would develop from this prototype, eschewing the difficulty of Lost Levels and creating a much more polished and unique game.
Like most video games released before the year 2000, the true sequel to the first Super Mario Bros. came to the West after its initial Japanese launch. Today, English versions of Super Mario Bros. 2 sell for over $2,000, granted it’s a sealed copy of the game. Out of all the games on this list, Super Mario Bros. 2 has been one of the most consistent sellers with continuous sales at the thousand-dollar mark month after month.
5. Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64)
$2,557 New | $32.36 Used
Image Source: Nintendo
Long considered one of the most revolutionary games of all time, Super Mario 64 launched with the forward-thinking Nintendo 64. Super Mario 64 rendered complex platforming stages in full 3D and yet somehow still retained that Nintendo quality we’ve come to rely on.
Well, collectors love it just as much as we gamers do, as the English edition has become one of the most valuable Mario games. A bit part of the reason for its high value can be attributed to the simple fact that Mario’s first foray into 3D generated much hype and popularity. Super Mario 64 is the best-selling game on the Nintendo 64 console, and finding a sealed copy is like running into a gold mine today.
4. Mario Bros. Arcade Classic Series (NES)
$3,259 New | $32.02 Used
Image Source: Heritage Auctions
The original Mario Bros. on the Atari 2600 wasn’t the revolutionary hit that Super Mario Bros. would go on to be, but it was still popular. Mario Bros. wasn’t a platformer at all, but rather a bout of combat in a vertical arena. Versions of Mario Bros. would be included in many Nintendo games to come such as the Mario All Stars version of Super Mario. Bros 3.
While the original Atari Mario Bros. is worth a pretty penny averaging around $800 for a new copy, its NES sibling version would go on to be truly valuable. The Nintendo Entertainment System released a series of classic arcade games with touched-up visuals and controls titled the Arcade Classic Series. Mario Bros. was one such game to grace the lineup and has since rocketed in value becoming the fourth highest-selling Mario game on the market.
3. Super Mario Bros. YM-901 (Game & Watch)
$3,487 New | $750 Used
Image Source: Ebay via samuraisellercooljapanc.t
This one’s wild. Most gamers today know Game & Watch from Smash Bros. The odd character’s stilted movements echo the hardware it was based on. Game & Watch was a portable machine used to play first-party arcade games with a watch built in to tell time and set alarms to. It became a hot seller in Japan due to the nature of commuting and the need for handheld devices.
Game & Watch was usually packed with just one or two games installed, which entailed many many versions tailored for specific games. One particularly popular Game & Watch title was Super Mario Bros. No, not that Super Mario Bros., a completely unique Game & Watch version with all the stilted animation and quirkiness that comes with it. It’s a completely different game from the classic we’ve come to know, as can be seen in this playthrough of the game:
Super Mario Bros. for the Game & Watch still retained that eight world platforming structure the original had, but everything from platforms to Mario himself was designed in the Game & Watch style. The YM-901 release of Super Mario Bros. had a unique yellow “Mr. Famicom” game case with googly eyes on the front. Only 10,000 of these limited edition Game & Watch copies were printed, and could only be obtained by winning Nintendo’s Japanese raffles from 1987.
2. Super Mario Bros. (NES)
$3,692 New | $13.33 Used
Image Source: Nintendo
The game that legitimized video gaming as a thing, Super Mario. Bros single-handedly saved the gaming crash of the 80s. It was one of the first platforming games to connect dozens of unique levels across a single campaign. Most games up to that point were known for their brevity and short-term playability from the arcade format. Super Mario Bros. gave players a lengthy game with unique design from start to finish right from the comfort of their home.
This popularity would continue on into the 2000s when the earliest sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. was sold for a whopping $2 million on the Pawn Stars show. While that $2 million price was in fact an anomaly based on the first edition grading of the cartridge, sealed copies of the game still sell well over $3,000. As of 2023, NES copies of English versions of Super Mario Bros. sell for $3,500 new.
1. Super Mario World (SNES)
$4,200 New | $16.50 Used
Image Source: Nintendo
Super Mario World introduced the world to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1991 as a launch title. The game would outsell every video game at the time. Not only has Super Mario World stood the test of time on the resell market, but it’s held up as one of the best platforming games of all time.
Whether it’s because of its popularity on the Super Nintendo, or because Super Mario World is still highly regarded as the best Mario game today, copies sell for insanely high amounts new. Super Mario World is a very rare game to find unopened because it was such a darn fun game that demanded to be played. Because of this, the discrepancy between new and used prices is laughably wide. Used copies of Super Mario World can be found in every retro game store imaginable fetching prices as low as $15, yet sealed copies remain a distant dream for collectors demanding $4,000 and up.
That sums up the top 10 rarest and most expensive Mario games we’ll never get our hands on. What are some valuable games you own? Check out our other rare games lists here on Twinfinite.
About the author
Matthew Carmosino
Matthew Carmosino is a freelance writer for Twinfinite. He started gaming in the mid-90s where his love for SquareSoft RPGs like Chrono Trigger changed him forever. Matthew has been working in the game industry for two years covering everything from story-rich RPGs to puzzle-platformers.
Listening to piano music on a rainy day is his idea of a really good time, which probably explains his unnatural tolerance for level-grinding.
JACKSON, Miss., September 14, 2021 (Newswire.com)
– Sonicbidder.com, the world’s most interactive online auction, has made a name for itself. The platform helped hype the Ford vs Ferrari movie craze, with its $3.2 Million auction, which saw a 2005 Ford GT beat a 1987 Ferrari 328 GTS to set the stage. In 2020, Sonicbidder.com hosted the now annual Hershey At Home auction in the wake of the canceled Hershey Auction. Adding to the $5.6 Million in sales was an Amelia Island award-winning 1929 Rolls Royce Phantom I York, which sold for over $500,000.
JD Pass, the owner of TheVaultMS.com, LLC, has catapulted Sonicbidder.com to the preferred auction platform for his collection. Together they’ve garnered impressive automotive sales. Among those sold were a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, a 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback, a 1963 Split Window Chevrolet Corvette, and many others. Other established collector car connoisseurs have partnered with the Sonicbidder.com platform. Long-time known car enthusiast Steven Plaster, owner of Evergreen Historic Automobiles, recently said, “We’ve sold some of the rarest and finest cars in the world. Sonicbidder.com has given me an opportunity and I want to say, ‘Thank You.’” Other giants in the collector car world like the Audrain Auto Museum, Nobles Family Auto Museum, Gentry Lane, Cars Remember When, and more are joining Sonicbidder.com daily.
Sonicbidder.com shakes the industry again, selling the lowest mileage Hemi Cuda on the planet ahead of its Muscle Car Madness auction. The “True Grit” 1970 Plymouth Hemi Cuda was special-ordered new at Shreves Plymouth-Dodge in June of 1970 by Bill Reardon from West Virginia. He was buying his dream car at 62 years of age. Tor-Red exterior with black interior. Reardon immediately began modifying True Grit to be drag strip ready, removing many original, factory parts. He replaced them with the best performance parts available, while carefully storing the originals. Sadly, Reardon only raced one season before passing away. In 1977, his son sold the car and the original parts to Marvin Dillion, who returned it to its original configuration at 42 miles. It was driven less than a mile in the years he owned it. Since then, it was moved enough to take the odometer to its present reading of 86 miles. Today, it’s a time capsule: unmolested, original, and superb verification of the numbers and codes.
Sonicbidder.com is bringing a three-week sprint of auctions for the Fall Season. These online-only auctions include some of the most sought-after classic, muscle, exotic, racing, and Formula 1 cars.
Check out Sonicbidder.com’s upcoming Fall Auctions: September 22, 2021, Muscle Car Madness staring at 10:30 a.m. CST September 29, 2021, Auto Exotix starting at 10:30 a.m. CST October 5, 2021, 2nd Annual Hershey At Home starting at 10:30 a.m. CST
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