PokePark Fishing Rally is a real, official Pokemon game that was released for the Nintendo DS back in 2005 – but only in the most obscure circumstances. Since distribution ended around 2006, the game has effectively been lost media, but some fans are hopeful that this might change with an eBay auction that's currently seeking a $9,000 bid.
A seller who goes by catbearpaws recently listed a "Nintendo DS Development/Test Cartridge" with a starting bid of €7,999, or as eBay calculates it, around $9,104 USD. "This listing is for the exact physical development/test cartridge shown in the photos," the seller explains in the listing. "Acquired as part of a private lot, no further history or provenance documentation is available."
The seller notably included an image of this cartridge booting to a screen filled with Japanese text. A Twitter user called Tiramisu090401 soon realized that this text identified it as a part of PokePark Fishing Rally, and other Pokemon fans soon started taking a great interest in the listing (thanks, Dexerto).
Long considered lost media, the software for the Poképark Fishing Tournament has become available for sale…Hopefully it will fall into the hands of someone who wishes to preserve it so everyone else can experience it once more.Fingers crossed that some hoarder doesn’t buy it… https://t.co/hCluPlfAqs pic.twitter.com/88dw2JiWpxJuly 29, 2026
PokePark Fishing Rally was released in 2005 through DS Download Play at the PokePark in Japan. You'd visit a kiosk at the theme park, download the game to your DS, and play it until you either turned off your console or 12 hours passed – whichever came first. The game itself would have you catching various underwater Pokemon, and based on their size, rarity, and level, you'd get a rating that could be uploaded to a high score server.
The key question about this eBay listing is whether the cartridge actually contains the data for the game itself, or merely some back-end program – perhaps the transmission of the high score data. It would be a massive discovery either way, as while there were some later distributions of PokePark Fishing Rally, no copies of the game or its ROM are known to exist publicly.
The Lost Media Wiki notes, however, that "a YouTube user named Tim Schuerewegen has uploaded two gameplay video of the game, which suggests that he may have a ROM dump." But those original videos have long since been made private (archives do exist), and the ROM has never been released or even demonstrated publicly.
That makes this eBay listing the most intriguing sign of life for PokePark Fishing Rally in many, many years. Nobody's bitten on that $9,000 opening bid yet – though there is one "active offer," according to eBay – but here's hoping that whoever ends up with the cartridge helps this game escape lost media hell.
Check out our ranking of the best Pokemon games.
