Others were more helpful. “When it comes to the bigger collections, and when something gets stolen, we [collectors] are like individual fingers, and when connected we can form a fist,” says John Hancock, a retro game enthusiast with his own significant collection. “When something shitty like this happens, collectors work with one another.”
When Jackson went to establishments closer to home, like Prestige Electronics and Arch City Gaming Company in Bridgeton, Missouri, he didn’t bother to disguise himself. And he’d apparently never truly considered the proximity of the stores to each other—or that the owners could possibly know one another. This was no criminal mastermind. He always had “some bullshit story,” says Brassard. His caper extended in scope, but the lack of creativity ultimately did him in. Jackson drove to Denver in a pickup truck, and the clerk working at Level 7 Games saw it in the parking lot.
“He told me, ‘I just…had them,’ ” says Jon Young, the Level 7 clerk. “He had some crazy rare stuff, like Bubble Bath Babes in the box. Games that we’d never seen before, and he didn’t give a shit at all.” Again, Jackson declined to provide any ID. While Young pretended to look up prices—he had no intention of purchasing any of the games—he told a colleague to take a picture of Jackson’s license plate. Young remembered reading about Trade-N-Games, and he called Brassard. That was December 13, 2019.
Jackson’s story about the games wasn’t that unusual, and he told the various clerks that he’d never played them, which rang true. “Because he didn’t know shit about them,” says John Merz, the owner of Bodach’s Games in St. Louis, another stop on Jackson’s list. “It didn’t flip a switch in my head. It didn’t trigger that it was the stuff from Jason’s heist.” Jackson had a box copy of Bubble Bobble Part 2 (Bob and Bub versus skulls, 1993), and a copy of the NES game WURM: Journey to the Center of the Earth (combat chick versus subterranean humanoids, 1991) that had also been in the safe, but this one was ripped out of its plastic WATA-graded case. What Merz didn’t know at the time was that Brassard was staking Jackson out.
“I paid [Jackson] in cash,” Merz says. “We posted the games on Facebook, and Jason came in with a police officer and said, ‘This stuff is mine.’ ” So when Jackson called Merz and said he was going to return with more games, this time three undercover agents were waiting, dressed like civilians, idly rifling through Magic: The Gathering cards and NES cartridges. As Jackson was leaving the counter, the officers descended.
ASSAULT MODE
The thief failed to crack the safe, but that didn’t stop him from taking it.ILLUSTRATIONS BY QUICKHONEY
“He began cursing,” Merz says. “These are mine! I’ve had them forever, this is fucking bullshit!” Then: “I have to go to the bathroom!” Jackson clutched his chest when they were putting on handcuffs; the officers had to call an ambulance to the store. Brassard was sitting just outside, in his truck, biting his fingernails.
Jackson was arrested for possession of stolen property, taken to a local hospital, and released. After the stakeout, Brassard went to the police station with the undercover officers. The men couldn’t get over any of it; the ordinary break-in that was also historic and kind of hilarious. And, there were NES porn games, really? And so Brassard pulled up videos of Peek-a-Boo Poker on YouTube to show them that it was true.
Jackson was arrested again in February 2020 for driving a car with expired plates, and then charged with one count of burglary, and three counts of stealing, one for over $25,000, two for amounts over $750. By then Lunsford had enough evidence to pinpoint him at Trade-N-Games at the time of the theft, using his phone data from a GPS warrant request.
For what is likely the most valuable video game theft in history, Jackson was sentenced to 17 years in prison, deferred on felony probation. Part of his probation agreement depended upon his providing information on the rest of the games and paying around $24,000 in restitution. (Charges were never filed against English, or the other woman, in connection with the case.)
Brassard used to walk to the back room of the store in the morning, just so he could see his games. To behold them was to breathe a little easier, never mind the paperwork growing on his desk, the bathroom trash can overflowing with wadded-up paper towels, the mini fridge in need of more Diet Cokes. Walking slowly into the mass of his collection, he could gaze on the colorful spines of the boxes, alphabetized in congruency on shelves that stretched the walls. Nothing else ever made him feel such ambition, the years required, the dedication—how he’d sought to find not only the games but the ones in the very best condition. He’d brought his fiancée, Hope, to the store one evening, held her hand, and took her into the vault.
“Everything lit up…and he showed me around, and it was overwhelming,” says Hope, now his wife. This is how she first understood the pride of the man she was going to marry—the type of collector who’d gone after it all. He showed her R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy), the 1986 NES robot console in its sought-after box, esoterica like a clean copy of the Outback Joey exercise game for the Genesis (kangaroo versus calories, 1993) and his cherry Rampage 2: Universal Tour for Nintendo 64 (giant animals versus buildings, 1999) that came with a plush rat key chain. He drove her to Tennessee to pick up an Atari 2600 mall kiosk from the late 1970s, to conventions like the Midwest Gaming Classic in Wisconsin; he knew all the vendors and toured her through the booths full of games. When he asked her to marry him and she said yes, his friend presented them with a custom NES painted bridal white, with his and hers controllers. Did she know about the games in the safe? Duh—Cheetahmen II, Final Fight Guy, Hagane for Super Nintendo. Not only his work, but his life’s work, which had become a part of her own; their kids, from different marriages, played at the store, at home.
A few months after the heist, something weirder than usual happened at Grumpy Bob’s Emporium.
After he received some of the stolen games from police evidence in three batches—the last of which had come in a Huggies box—he set them out on the table with a white photo backdrop where he usually took pictures of the store’s games before putting them online to sell, so he could see them better. The copy of Tapper that had been sold to Slackers, cherry in the safe, looked like a car had backed over it. Stuntman (guy versus laws of physics, 1983), a rare game by the Panda company, and Quadrun (runts versus captors, 1983)—Jackson had unsealed those from the ancient factory shrink-wrap. The Atari 2600 game Boing! (bubble versus squares, 1983), complete in box, was now flattened, the cardboard furrowed. His copy of Guardian (planet versus ship, 1982) gashed where an old price sticker had been on the top right, untouched from whoever purchased it long ago. Jackson had eradicated the serial numbers off the Panesian “porn” trinity—Bubble Bath Babes (bubbles versus gravity, plus a naked woman), Hot Slots (slot machine versus lust, plus, eventually, a naked woman), Peek-a-Boo Poker (the hand you’re dealt versus a naked woman’s)—with what Brassard imagined had to be steel wool or a belt sander.
Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/06/rare-nintendo-atari-games-stolen
