Nintendo Quest: 30 days. 678 games.

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: BROOKE FOSTER
Jay Bartlett signs movie posters for fans at Forest City Comicon.

London local, Jay Bartlett and his crew piled into a van with the goal of collecting every official game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Bartlett travelled over 10,000 miles across North America to find all 678 classic Nintendo games. Oh, and he only has 30 days to do it.

The idea started as a dare from Bartlett’s lifelong friend and filmmaker, Rob McCallum. The boys saved every nickel and dime they could and eventually turned the dream into a documentary.

Members of The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Club, Mc- Callum and Bartlett started work on a film called Nintendo Quest.

“We took a film crew, we took a van and went across North America twice,” he said. “We were going to game stores, pawn shops, friend’s houses and to anyone who was selling NES stuff. “It was the most fun time I’ve ever had and also the most stressful.”

Bartlett did all of the purchasing himself.

“I had to use all my own cash,” he said. “We did a Kickstarter fundraiser, which was quite successful. That was just for the production of the film. I had to save my butt off to buy the games.”

There are rules to the quest. Mc- Callum made sure the task of collecting wouldn’t be easy on Bartlett.

“There are so many shows out there like American Pickers and so [McCallum] decided to add fuel to the fire and said, ‘OK well you have to do it in 30 days,’” Bartlett said.

He also can’t make any online purchases or interact online.

“I had to just travel to different shops and stores to find each game.”

Bartlett’s adventure had its bumps in the road. He was tasked with finding every NES game, including the rare ones. He found himself buying some games for reasonable prices and others for incredibly unreasonable prices. They didn’t travel on schedule often times and dealt with having games sold out or scooped by other collectors.

There were good moments though. They had their chances to talk with gaming legends. Billy Mitchell dubbed the gamer of the century, Mr. Activision Todd Rogers and Call of Duty game designer James Portnow are just a few of the big names seen in the film.

Bartlett didn’t give any spoilers, so we don’t know if the boys were successful or not. “If I told people if we were successful, they might not want to watch it.”

You’ll have to watch the film to find out if Bartlett makes his goal of finding every NES game released.

There is no official release date, but the film is anticipated for early 2015. Visit the NES Club at twitter.com/TheNESclub for more info and to find links to the trailer.