Who's making older games so expensive?
Who's making older games so expensive?
I don't want to buy games digitally anymore until I can actually own the game rather than the license. But then some freak on eBay is asking for $500 for a copy of Klonoa on the PS1. Then there are even more freaks who are willing to bid higher than that! Then the smaller retro games stores around me base their prices on these prices. There needs to be a price cap on this stuff. We can't let all of the richest nerds control the economy.
Emulators are your friend. Hoarders, graders, and scalpers can go suck a railroad spike.
Or if you prefer original hardware, flash carts and optical drive emulators.
MiSTer is another great option that's like a halfway point between software emulation and real hardware. It's still emulation, but it's done in hardware instead of software.
That's what I'm talking about!
Supply and demand, since they're all collectors items now.
And I hate to say this but also the success of vintage/retro PC and video game channels on YouTube.
On the flipside this has led to a whole slew of new businesses that cater to people who just play the ROM's and even new mini PC's just to play vintage/retro games on.
Yep, it's the collectors' market. I say that as someone inspired by those very YT channels to get into the hobby myself. But I'm just looking to get games I remember and enjoy, not looking to get whole complete collections or anything. If a game I have my eye on becomes some "holy grail" $500 thing, I can live without it. What helps me, though, is living in a bigger town for a rural area that does have one or two brick-and-mortar retro game stores, where I may be able to find games I'm looking for at below eBay prices. That's another hint; hit up the physical shops you may have near you, be they specialized game shops or even thrift stores. Diamonds in the rough do exist sometimes.
EDIT: I mention rural areas specifically because they usually won't have as much demand driving up prices as the big urban areas will, even if supply is lower.
On every retrogaming forum I’ve ever been on, this has been a topic and it’s been a topic for at least 15 years. A few practical bits of advice:
- The cheapest games will always be last generations games
- Anything not deemed “retro” yet is cheap
- Nintendo is always super expensive unless it’s Wii or handheld
- Anything Xbox is cheap
- PC is cheap, unless it’s big box, but even then sellers will sell big box for cheap because they often don’t know what they have
- There’s nothing wrong with buying from GOG, burning to disc, and making your own labels and box art—which is easy to do because it’s DRM-free
- Except for PS1, Sony is cheap. But even then PS1 is cheaper than N64 or Saturn.
- Nothing wrong with an Everdrive, especially since that’s the best way to play aftermarket games
Got to disagree with you on #6 unless you explicitly mention that it's a DIY replica.
If one is buying a PC box, you expect the original from when it was released, not a DIY GOG package (which you can do yourself).
I'm not suggesting that you sell your DIY GOG package to someone else. I'm suggesting you do that for yourself.
unless you explicitly mention that it's a DIY replica.
I’m sure the OP will be careful to let himself know that he’s made a DIY replica.
For burning to a disc from GOG, is there a way to do that with the old consoles? I have all of the PlayStations, because I have never liked playing on my PC. I wasn't allowed to play many of the games that came out on PS1 or PS2 growing up, and now that I have some sort of disposable income, I want to check out the stuff I missed out on. The issue is that those are the games that scalpers love. If there was a way to bypass them on the games like Silent Hill or Diablo I would love that.
If you have a PS2, mod it to play backups. There's a new method called MMCE that is very promising and looks very easy to setup.
https://stoneagegamer.com/memcard-pro-2-for-playstation-and-playstation-2.html
Scarcity. Those games are no longer in print so there is no new units to bring the price down.
You can make many backup copies of your rom collection. Not so with old discs that are not reading, or carts suffering from bitrot or physical damage.
With retro gaming; emulation IS the way forward. Physical media is more of a display piece for nostalgia maniacs, or an investment for speculators.
I know that emulation is good for preservation and accessibility and I am all for it. My preference for physical media comes from wanting to support the mom and pop local stores and, while convenient, I don't like to have everything stored on a hard drive. All of the consoles I own work perfectly fine and I think it would be a waste for them to rot away in a landfill. Or worse yet, to gather dust on a shelf, unused as some collectors item to be shown off like a taxidermied elk.
Scarcity and some artificial scarcity called grading. Take for example Pokémon vintage trading card game packs. Base set has a bunch of print differences but even buying a normal unlimited version pack is $300-400. The value of a Charizard, if you pull it out of that pack, is ~$200-400 raw. However, if you grade it and it comes back a 10, it’s suddenly “worth” $1000+.
This is not quite as prevalent in video games but it is happening. The price of popular Pokémon games that are complete in box are sky high because someone somewhere wants to buy it and submit it for the chance it’s “worth” 10x the price.
Pricecharting.com is your friend. Patience is a virtue.
Get an Everdrive or blank CD and flash ROMs to them to play on your original systems.
GoG while they are still selling the license you can download it and save it for the future. All games have no DRM.
Who's making old games so expensive?
GoG while they are still selling the license you can download it and save it for the future. All games have no DRM.
It makes it sound like you're blaming GOG, lol
Everdrives and hacking systems are your friends
Some of it is just them getting hard to find for things that were made in smaller numbers. As time goes on there are less of them floating around.
But also: grading and internet hype has drawn the eyes of a certain class of investor that want to sit on these "assets." Then everyone that sees a graded copy of a game sell for a high dollar amount assumes their grungy copy with no box and their name written on the cartridge is worth the same amount. You see the same thing across a lot of collectibles hobbies, unfortunately.
The no box and no manual postings drive me mad. Firstly, I kept all of that stuff because it's fun to look at and reread the manual after years of not touching it, so it just boggles me that so many people immediately threw those things away and slipped the disc into a sleeve. But secondly, how are you going to sit there and tell me your loose, scratched up, sugar encrusted copy of Armored Core is worth over $100?
I'm guilty of tossing plenty of stuff out over the years. So many boxes full of boxes, eventually the downsizing bug bites and I need to separate wheat from chaff.
But the idea that people pretend to have no idea that those things adds to the value confuses me as well. I'm also perpetually confused that people don't understand the difference between something being listed for an amount and something selling for an amount. Anyone can list anything they want for any amount, but that doesn't mean other people are buying it! I could list my copy of Low G Man for 10 billion dollars if I want to, but it's sure as heck not worth that.
Videogame publishers not caring about their backcatalogs. If they'd care about preservation and actual long term gain, they'd make old games available.
It took EA so long to make Sims 1 and 2 available. It felt like they actively hate money. And there are plenty of other games that people would love to buy and that are just not made available.
If owning the physical retro game is the only way to play the game (legally) that will help drive up prices.
This is of course but one of the reasons.
Good luck with that.
thanks
Not expensive when you live in the Indian ocean
Just to give you some background information:
In comparison, Japanese sales figures for the original Door to Phantomile on the PS1 sold 51,441 units in its first week and went on to sell 159,284 units. The original JP release of Lunatea's Veil on the PS2 sold 45,639 units in its first week and 133,401 units in nine months.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Klonoa/comments/xc3b9l/klonoa_phantasy_reverie_series_total_sales/
This one is giving you 25851 sales in north america:
So there were never that much copies out there and there can't be that many copys left. The game was released 27 years ago - discs were thrown out, were destroyed, became scratched and unreadable, house fires, floods etc. happened, but even if every copy was still in existence: You would still only need 25852 people who are trying to collect all north american PSX releases to create a scarity.
If I had a ps1 I wanted to use then I would look at FreePSXBoot and UniROM - https://github.com/brad-lin/FreePSXBoot