Is the retro game market overpriced?

[BlazeHeatnix]

You hear people talk about how overly expensive the retro game market is due to scalpers or whatever, along with memes about paying $300 for a Gamecube game. But is that really true? If I go and look for, say, Eternal Darkness, the price is about $60 for the disc alone. And that may be a bit pricey for such an old game, but it's a far cry from the exorbitant prices people quote (in fact, it's probably how much Nintendo would sell it for today on the eshop). Obviously there are some exceptions, but usually those exceptions are preserved elsewhere. Mega Man X3, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, and Ducktales 2 are all some of the most expensive games available for their respective platforms, but they've also been re-released on far more available and cheaper outlets.

I guess what I'm asking here is, what are people trying to do that they can't when they complain about the retro game market? Are they just trying to play these games without resorting to piracy, like they claim? If that's the case, then why do they want anything other than the disc or cartridge? The manuals for these games are all preserved online and you can easily find them if you need them, and sleeves and cases are as cheap as dirt. Unless you're a collector or a preservationist, what do you need the manual and box for? And if you ARE a collector or preservationist, then why are you surprised that these items cost a premium?

 

[yankii]

Rare physical games are "overpriced" [not really], not just retro ones.

There are many Switch games I've bought for $200, and that's on the lower end. One was $150 for just the cartridge.

Having the box, manual, and art work does make a huge difference as I don't want to waste time printing perfect copies and lone games are a hassle to store.

Saying an incomplete copy or digital manual is equivalent to all this is absurd to me. Holding it in your hand makes all the difference in the world.

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

Saying an incomplete copy or digital manual is equivalent to all this is absurd to me. Holding it in your hand makes all the difference in the world.

That's fine, but I'm not talking about people like you. I'm talking about the casual crowd who are buying physicals, the people who just want to play old games without resorting to piracy, or want the safety and security that physical media provides. The things people complain about in regards to a lack of preservation. That should be the #1 priority. Any enthusiast interests like the "feeling" of physical media should be expected to cost more.

There are many Switch games I've bought for $200, and that's on the lower end. One was $150 for just the cartridge.

What games are you talking about? Pricecharting doesn't list ANY game selling for that much that wasn't some limited/collector's edition.

 

[yankii]

That's fine, but I'm not talking about people like you. I'm talking about the casual crowd who are buying physicals, the people who just want to play old games without resorting to piracy, or want the safety and security that physical media provides.

Where are these casual people you speak of? Because casuals would just sub to NSO or PSO or some shit and be happy with the limited selection they're fed. Or they already have the games from their childhood. Or buy a flash cart/emulation device filled with 100000 games, not knowing it's illegal. I know people like that myself.

What games are you talking about? Pricecharting doesn't list ANY game selling for that much that wasn't a limited edition or collector's edition.

Because pricecharting is run by baboons who can't figure out how to filter by "Sold" and "Completed" listings on eBay, or have their system do it.

Switch games like Fran Bow, Darkwood, Sally Face, etc. regularly go for $200+. Blasphemous and Inscryption were much more expensive before the price drop/reprint from what I recall. I think Inscryption was even $400 at one point...

Also, do you have something against collector's/limited editions? They're frequently the only way to buy game music, which many people want [yes, even my casual friends].

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

Where are these casual people you speak of? Because casuals would just sub to NSO or PSO or some shit and be happy with the limited selection they're fed. Or they already have the games from their childhood. Or buy a flash cart/emulation device filled with 100000 games, not knowing it's illegal. I know people like that myself.

None of those people are complaining about the state of game preservation, or making posts about how "oh, if only Nintendo would make these games available on their service, we wouldn't resort to piracy" even though the original games and system are not that goddamn expensive. I'm not saying game preservation isn't in a bad state, but if you believe most people online, playing retro games legally is an expensive logistics nightmare.

It's almost sounds like you're saying retro gaming should be a niche enthusiast hobby.

Because pricecharting is run by baboons who can't figure out how to filter by "Sold" and "Completed" listings on eBay, or have their system do it.

Switch games like Fran Bow, Darkwood, Sally Face, etc. regularly go for $200+. Blasphemous and Inscryption were much more expensive before the price drop/reprint from what I recall. I think Inscryption was even $400 at one point...

Fran Bow, Darkwood, and Sally Face were all published by Super Rare Games. They released limited print runs on purpose and they're designed to be stupidly expensive. Those kinds of games are not even sold in stores.

Also, do you have something against collector's/limited editions? They're frequently the only way to buy game music, which many people want [yes, even my casual friends].

No, but there's a reason the collector's edition is expensive. It's called that for a reason. As for the soundtrack, I dare you to come up with one you can't easily purchase offhand, or find on Spotify, iTunes, or some other outlet. Unless your goal is to directly support the artist, but if that's the case, then it's their own damn fault for not making it more available.

 

[yankii]

None of those people are complaining about the state of game preservation, or making posts about how "oh, if only Nintendo would make these games available on their service, we wouldn't resort to piracy" even though the original games and system are not that goddamn expensive. I'm not saying game preservation isn't in a bad state, but if you believe most people online, playing retro games legally is an expensive logistics nightmare.

It's almost sounds like you're saying retro gaming should be a niche enthusiast hobby.

The people complaining are enthusiasts. And while this is selfish, I do hope retro gaming sans piracy is niche because I don't want to pay high prices, lol.

Fran Bow, Darkwood, and Sally Face were all published by Super Rare Games. They released limited print runs on purpose and they're designed to be stupidly expensive. Those kinds of games are not even sold in stores.

They do small print runs because the games aren't popular enough to get retail releases. Of course they'll be expensive once sold out, if the game is good enough and people want it.

Just because they aren't "sold in stores" doesn't make them lesser.

No, but there's a reason the collector's edition is expensive. It's called that for a reason. As for the soundtrack, I dare you to come up with one you can't easily purchase offhand, or find on Spotify, iTunes, or some other outlet. Unless your goal is to directly support the artist, but if that's the case, then it's their own damn fault for not making it more available.

Most games [outside of Japan] don't sell soundtrack CDs other than with special editions. Streaming isn't really buying [or even lossless, a lot of the time] and most certainly not physical.

Yes, I want to support the artist but I can't blame them for not releasing a soundtrack CD to a game that only sold 3000 copies; that'd be ridiculous.

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

The people complaining are enthusiasts.

If the people complaining are enthusiasts, then maybe they should stop talking about wanting to "play" games when what they really want to do is collect games. I'm getting mixed signals on what the goal is here. They claim they just want to play games legally, but you're saying that's bullshit and what they really want is to buy CIB games at less than $60 each.

They do small print runs because the games aren't popular enough to get retail releases. Of course they'll be expensive once sold out, if the game is good enough and people want it.

Just because they aren't "sold in stores" doesn't make them lesser.

I didn't say they were. I'm just saying they're expensive for a reason, which is the same thing you said. But you're acting like they represent most Switch games, or even that they're a sizable minority, when in reality it's only a very small handful of cases.

Most games [outside of Japan] don't sell soundtrack CDs other than with special editions. Streaming isn't really buying [or even lossless, a lot of the time] and most certainly not physical.

And I'm pretty sure you can find the soundtrack CD for sale on its own, separate from the full collector's edition package. People do list those things.

Yes, I want to support the artist but I can't blame them for not releasing a soundtrack CD to a game that only sold 3000 copies; that'd be ridiculous.

So are you trying to buy music, or are you trying to buy CDs? Because if you just want the music (in a lossless format, I might add), there's nothing stopping the artist from just slapping their soundtrack on Bandcamp or some shit.

 

[yankii]

If the people complaining are enthusiasts, then maybe they should stop talking about wanting to "play" games when what they really want to do is collect games. I'm getting mixed signals on what the goal is here. They claim they just want to play games legally, but you're saying that's bullshit and what they really want is to buy CIB games at less than $60 each.

Yes, I'd say almost everyone complaining is collectors who're mad they were broke and 7 in 2007.

I didn't say they were. I'm just saying they're expensive for a reason, which is the same thing you said. But you're acting like they represent most Switch games, or even that they're a sizable minority, when in reality it's only a very small handful of cases.

You said they're designed to be expensive, which is simply not true. A lot of [hell, even most] limited releases never go up in price but the ones that do become unreachable for the average collector.

And while the number of cases may be small, it's still indicative of something when a game as popular as Persona 4 is $80 for a standard copy, and "cheap" copies [$50] sell out in minutes.

And I'm pretty sure you can find the soundtrack CD for sale on its own, separate from the full collector's edition package. People do list those things.

I've been trying to find the full Fata Morgana soundtrack for ages, but the only hits I get are from the incomplete, non-Revenants edition CD. Might just buy the damn CE one of these days, lol.

So are you trying to buy music, or are you trying to buy CDs? Because if you just want the music (in a lossless format, I might add), there's nothing stopping the artist from just slapping their soundtrack on Bandcamp or some shit.

I am trying to buy the complete experience, which, for me at least, includes the CD artwork and booklets and stuff. And I have some bandcamp downloads that publishers included out of pity, and they're always mp3s and not lossless for some reason. I'm not saying it can't be done but I don't like taking a chance because publishers will almost always do the worst.

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

I've been trying to find the full Fata Morgana soundtrack for ages, but the only hits I get are from the incomplete, non-Revenants edition CD. Might just buy the damn CE one of these days, lol.

The Revenants Edition version is literally just three separate soundtrack releases merged together. It doesn't add anything that those don't have. And I found listings for the original, Requiem for Innocence, and Reincarnation. Granted. all three together will cost around $200, but it's still less expensive than buying the CE. Unless you are just desperate for that very specific release.

 

[yankii]

The Revenants Edition version is literally just three separate soundtrack releases merged together. It doesn't add anything that those don't have. And I found listings for the original, Requiem for Innocence, and Reincarnation. Granted. all three together will cost around $200, but it's still less expensive than buying the CE. Unless you are just desperate for that very specific release.

How is it cheaper? I found a sealed CE for $200. Granted, it's for the Vita, but I have the game anyway...

Anyway, thanks for making me realize that I really need this.

 

[Aep]

GameCube games mainly are expensive as fuck.

 

[choconado]

Retro games are stupidly overpriced these days and the balloon started inflating around a decade ago, and it's all very obviously the fault of games being the latest target of the heritage auction speculative con game they've been pulling for decades, whether it was the stamp boom in the early 80s, the coin collecting of the late 80s, the comic and card collectings of the 90s, etc. It's always them, and it always works because they're super scammy in ways that are hard to regulate. Like making shadow companies out of the grading business. Or just plain running the scam that lots of NFT sellers did of Auctioning to a bidder that was secretly themselves for absurd money numbers, jacking up the price while actual money doesn't change hands, then finding a rube willing to buy it in turn for what looks like a loss from the previous (fictional) sale, thinking they'll be able to sell it for that kind of money themselves.

This in turn leads to all the retro markets, both second hand person to person sales and full on brick and mortar storefronts seeing these price values and just going with them. Which is a part of the scam's lifecycle, because it validates their fake inflation of pricing. I know in my region it's definitely neck deep in that stage.

 

[Hippocampus_Hamster]

Personally I've watched the market cool off post-Human-Malware, but as long as there's people out there willing to pay several grand for a complete Earthbound box/manual/game/misc, they'll keep being priced that high. And if you REALLY want to see scalping gone insane, look into the failed consoles; regularly see some of the better-regarded titles for the Saturn starting in the low hundreds (complete copies, at least), and stuff on the Neo Geo home console starts in the high hundreds without the boxes, and easily reaches the thousands apiece when complete, but those are some of the outliers. It's the next round-about of people wanting to relive/keep a part of their childhood, with an unhealthy dash of poorly-construed scam artists taking advantage of legal (and illegal) loopholes for short-term profit.

While PriceCharting has many issues (not least of which being their abysmal filtering, poor bot coding, and complete ignorance game-wise of the Asian market's physical game releases), their prices are usually a decent enough benchmark to start from. Provided that there are enough sales to make a discerning decision, and not, say, three or less per year. In all fairness, they are handling so much data all at once, while Ebay continues to refuse to archive sales, even as raw data, making it difficult to verify sales after a month or two.

@yankii Which Switch games were you buying? I could see those prices on collector's editions, with their general tossing in of random garbage (with some exceptions), or the "limited editions" from the likes of LRG, Super Rare, and others. The vast majority outside of the first-party releases I've seen are more in their original MSRP range; hell, even XBC2 Torna eventually dropped to ~$40-50 from its high of nearly $100 during mid-2020.

GameCube games mainly are expensive as fuck.

Nintendo games in general. Especially first-party/exclusives.

 

[JulietStMoon]

As someone who was selling unwanted games from my own collection as well as buying for a few years before and after covid hit, yes.

It's actually crazy how much the bubble inflated during covid, and while it would've been good for me in the moment if I was JUST a seller, it was actually just kinda annoying because it meant I had to sell games at these high prices to turn around and buy games I wanted that were ALSO at high prices, and when the boom slowed down, the prices stayed the same... so selling games is a barren wasteland and games in general are too expensive to buy. It really sucks.

 

[Hippocampus_Hamster]

Its weird, though.

Since the Human Malware more or less passed, I've seen some things stay more or less the same, while certain consoles & games for them have come down a lot. Less a bubble bursting and more a slowly-deflating, if uneven, balloon. Certainly didn't help when ShopGoodwill started gaining popularity, although some stuff can still occasionally be gotten for fairly cheap through them if you're lucky.

Would love to see the days of 99 cent games again, but I feel that's just not going to happen again. Especially with games of this generation and the last not even having the full games on physical media anymore.

 

[SylverReZ]

It's more about the collectors that inflate the prices, and even companies like WATA were the ones to destroy the ability to purchase retro games for cheap, and it went from there. The only thing I wish would happen, is for many marketplaces to take note of prices of video games and blacklist users who price them for much higher than its counterparts, that would resolve the world's problems; however, it's not quite easy if this is outside of online marketplaces.

 

[Exnor]

In a word: Yes.

There are a few exceptions of course.

 

[JK_]

I actually stopped buying retro games because of this. I'm lucky I always kept what I really liked, like Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, etc, because I'd never pay what they're going for now even if they're some of my favorites.

I do take advantage of it though. I sold a copy of Xenosaga III I bought at a Gamestop for $15 years ago for $200 recently. That's insane to me, but someone out there wanted it that bad.

 

[Skelletonike]

The more mainstream something becomes, the more expensive things end up.
I used to buy a lot of old GBA's and other systems for 10€ or so. Got Pokemon Leaf Green for 2€, Medabots: Rokusho for 5€, several sealed GBA games for 25€ (Zone of Enders, Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance, Final Fantasy 1&2, Boktai, and a few others).
I'm mostly mentioning GBA since it's one of my favourites, but there were also a lot of cheap SNES games before.

After covid everything skyrocketed.

 

[lordelan]

Is the retro game market overpriced?​

Yes.

And I'm glad I don't care. In the Wii era I found myself moving to "digital only" as soon as USB Loaders became a thing. I loved the fact I don't have to get my lazy ass up the couch to swap discs. I just launch another game from the USB Loader.
Same applies to my Analogue Pocket. I have a few cartridges and it's a nice feeling owning them but I refuse to take them with me as it makes the bag bulkier and everything is on the inserted SD card anyway.

However...
It's sometimes still a nice feeling to use physical media. Therefore I started putting NFC tags (NTAG215, the same as Amiibo) inside my cartridges so that I can use them on my MiSTer. Here's one of my favorite YouTube videos from a friend of mine showcasing the result on his MiSTer (that he put in a SNES shell):