Pokemon vending machine spotted selling Game Boy cartridges – but are they real?

A Pokemon vending machine has been spotted selling Game Boy Cartridges in a California mall, but are the games actually real?

Since their release in 1999, the original Gen 1 Pokemon GameBoy games have skyrocketed in popularity with just about every fan of the franchise looking to own a copy.

It’s become increasingly hard to acquire a good condition copy of the original games, with some going for hundreds of dollars if you have the box and manual.

Twitch streamer Serinide recently went viral after spotting a vending machine in her local mall selling Pokemon GameBoy games for just $10.00 cash — but are they real?

why does this mall have a pokémon gameboy cartridge vending machine??? pic.twitter.com/YxSgpM2qtc

— Reb (@serinide) July 27, 2023

Pokemon vending machine spotted selling bootleg Pokemon

Unfortunately, it’s quite unlikely that the games inside of the vending machine are authentic. Just by looking at the picture shared by Serinide you can see that it is filled to the brim with Pokemon games from Red and Blue all the way to Ruby and Emerald.

Just the Gen 1 titles, Yellow, Red, and Blue, are worth significantly more than the 10 dollars being charged by the owner of the machine. Video Games Price Charting states that a loose copy of Pokemon Blue sells for $48.00 on average.

It wouldn’t make any sense for someone to sell games at 1/5 of their current value, and Serinide as well as many of those in the replies of her comments agree with them being fake.

“This can’t be real, for only $10? You can turn those around for easy profit, gotta be fake,” one user replied.

Another commented: “Does it boot? Like obviously it’s a bootleg but hell, if it plays that’s amazing!”

While many bootleg versions of Pokemon games can offer a fine experience, many have issues with glitches during boss battles as well as not having the ability to save the game.

For this reason, as well as the fact that they’re illegal, we recommend checking the authenticity of popular Game Boy games before purchasing.

Speaking of the value of retro video games, check out the super rare Nintendo game OpTic Gaming co-owner Hastr0 found in his childhood collection.