The Price of Retro Games

Yeah I wrote a long post, it came up twice so I deleted the second one and then upon refreshing, my second post was gone and my initial long reply just had 'double post' written in it.

Have I mentioned that I hate Vanilla?

Some crazy pricing out there at the moment. Was in local CEX recently and spotted they are charging €32 for Wii Sports in the cardboard sleeve, though this was <€5 game. Nintendo always seems to have it's own eco-system on keeping game prices high, but this is a whole new level of craziness. Same with wii console, think these were about 25 or 30 last time I looked in CEX, recommended one to a friend for his kids as I thought they were cheap as chips, he came back and said they were 70. Dusted off an old one and gave it to him (hopefully it doesn't cost him a tv or two!)

Agreed that ebay is a disaster now, UK can be basically considered too much hassle and the postage costs from the EU normally puts everything into the not worth it category

Hmmm...maybe it's time to see what my copy of Conkers Bad Fur Day in its box with all literature would get so :D

I think in the medium term, it'll be the shops and then the sole-trader sorts that will move first on price points as they begin to want to shift stock, but I think that'll be the far end of "medium" at any rate. Joe soap sales prices on ebay will not come down because "that's the price I once saw it sold for" or "that's the price I paid". If and when rates fall, it wont be back to what they were though as you said, it'll be more along the lines of the inevitable price climbs over time that have just happened that much quicker.

I haven't bought a new retro game in about 2 years I'd guess.

Prices are just gone ridiculous. There's a few I still want to get but with prices for some of those €400-€500+ now I'm not bothered.

I was talking about this with a guy yesterday in work. Toys are gone the same way. But will people in 20 years really care about 16 bit games? Is the arse going to fall out of it?

I see a lot of graded games being sold for thousands and even hundreds of thousands. I don't get that either, if you pay €10'000 for a graded sealed copy of sonic, in 30 years time that's not going to be worth more money, I don't even think it's going to be worth the same money. That's just IMO though

I actually have a selection of Akira cels going off to Heritage Auctions for their signature animation auction early 2022. Same crowd who sold that Mario 64 cart. Been speaking with their director of animation sales over the last few weeks while putting a consignment together and they're literally making millions with each signature auction they do, prices are through the roof.

There are a few contributors to price rises at the mo.

The availability of unspent cash due to 12months plus of near zero recreational travel, gym/golf/whatever fees.

The drive to be entertained and to try an catch a little sentimental buzz from our gaming. And;

Tying into sentiment and something that anecdotally at least from my own experience is currently bearing very, very true. The fabled 25yr cycle.

1995/96 are my golden 16bit yrs. The best games, Brian Plank banging them in on FIFA, kicking ass on MK and SF2, bomberman, Mario and sonic all finally beatable by me on the regular.

Lots more late 30's upto mid 40's are now in the same boat looking for the same buzz. We are competing for a reducing market of original items with the benefit of 20 yrs professional experience and it's commensurate effect on our disposable income. Prices will imo go one way for the next couple of years before the cycle moves onto the PlayStation/XBox era and starts all over again.

I paid 200 euro for a GBA SP AGS101, you have to keep watching to even get one. They’re few and far between. The 001 was 10-20 before a few years ago. Now 50-70 and climbing. Cartridges will just get more expensive.

That said I got a GPD XD+ great piece of kit. Even plays ps1 games.

There's a huge amount of ignorance out there geared towards emulation. The majority of cynics would judge what they've seen from the likes of the Mini consoles/cheap ARM solutions, and the likes of a Raspberry Pi. That's the same as judging a Snes connected to a modern display via an RF cable....it's the literal bare minimum needed to get games running, without any of the niceties. Both real hardware, and emulation (software and hardware) have their trials that you need to go through to get the best out of them, and when you do, they're very close to each other. If you could do a blind taste test on a desk, and underneath the desk was a Snes, a decent PC with emulation software configured correctly, and a Mister.....all connected to three identical screens, you'd have some seriously embarrassed anoraks huffing and puffing to find excuses as to why they guessed wrong. I'm fussy when it comes to input lag etc, so if a game feels right to me (Super Mario World and the likes), then it's right (or at least, not perceptibly wrong....and that's good enough for me.)

Of course certain parties have an agenda against emulation too, because there's money to be made out of other solutions.

With all that said, as has been alluded to, there's a predatory pricing element that has engrained itself into the collecting market too. The prices are not being driven up by collectors alone, but by scalping and reselling practices. The further notion that old=€€€ too, backed up by nonsense articles written by 'journalists' who haven't touched a game in 20 years, has helped cement that notion. It has become not fun anymore, everyone thinks the games they're selling are worth twice what they're actually worth, so for me I was better off out of it.

It does have a way to go, but it IS making progress at the same time. It's such a bespoke hardware architecture, almost completely undocumented too, which is why it has been such a long term emulation project.

Compare it with Ryujinx or Yuzu, and the progress they've made with Switch emulation has been nothing short of astounding. The hardware is heavily documented, using off the shelf parts to boot....thats the difference.

@sugarman those ODE's are a nice solution, and they strike a lovely balance between authenticity and convenience.

My experience is exactly the same, anything I've used Pcsx2 for has been a positive experience, looks gorgeous, and enjoyable to play. The vast majority of games I've played have worked 'out of the box' with no additional configuration too.

@Retr0gamer they are currently merging/removing the plugin model, it's an in progress job. Are you definitely sure you're using the latest development versions, and not some antiquated stable release? The only info about corrupted graphics I can find in WA3 don't seem to be recent or common. Anyway, it's an experimental PS2 emulator, it's not going to be a one size fits all solution. If you have a PS2 and an Xrgb....that's gonna be the way to go for the time being for exploring the library.

@Retr0gamer I can only say again I've not had many issues with it, but admittedly I would only use it to play the big releases that I missed back in the day. For those, it doesn't miss a beat. The machine is so complex, and emulation of it so difficult, that using it like Snes9x or Bsnes to explore a games library just isn't the right use case. It's experimental, not a one shop stop.

They are moving away from plugins though, which will help a lot.