Retro Renaissance?

[GAL]

We all know it by now. Retro games are more sought after than ever. People want them digitally, physically, on their phones, in their cars...

Gaming is cool.

So much console software is damned to high pricing based on the idea that it won't get made again, yet there weren't massive market moves based on that a decade and a half ago.

Am I the only one who remembers Amazon's pricing in 2010? Dreamcast games for a few bucks, stuff that'll run you a hundred or better now?

When does it happen - when does nostalgia become the hand that grasps an entire library even if you haven't experienced the game yourself? Is it awareness of supply lacking? Trying to compete with newcomers to the hobby?

What trends have you noticed that are surefire examples of massive spikes in interest and demand?

 

[PhrawzT]

There were always some high priced games due to rarity, but I remember about 12 years ago prices started to skyrocket. Plenty of games that I have wanted to play had become unaffordable. People started becoming obsessed with collecting every game for a system to show off and not even bother playing, which goes against everything that gaming should stand for.
What's the point in owning a game if you have no intention of playing it?

 

[fake-kun]

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Demanding thousands or hundreds of dollars for some crappy console from early 90s should be considered a scam it won't even run doom

 

[PhrawzT]

Demanding thousands or hundreds of dollars for some crappy console from early 90s should be considered a scam it won't even run doom

I owned a Sega CDX back in the early 2000s, but sold it off to pay rent. I refuse to replace it since they can easily go for $600 today. I just picked up a model 2 Genesis for $50 and will emulate any Sega CD game I feel like playing.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I owned a Sega CDX back in the early 2000s, but sold it off to pay rent. I refuse to replace it since they can easily go for $600 today. I just picked up a model 2 Genesis for $50 and will emulate any Sega CD game I feel like playing.

Better than 600$

 

[RustySK]

I used to collect SNES, Gameboy and N64 games back in the day, but when the market grew and speculators started paying attention and tried to figure out a way to make big bucks off of it the whole thing fell apart instantly.

These days I've completely switched to reproduction carts and emulation devices when I want the physical game owner experience. The people that buy up used games in bulk, "grade" carts and consoles and break the reseller market with those 600$ and up offers can go to hell.

The same thing happened to the VHS market as well and it's utterly ridiculous.
Greedy people with a budget that know how to price gouge a specific audience effectively and don't care about anything but their bottom line.

 

[RookerSalen]

Here in Mexico, sometimes I can see retro games being sold in "flea markets (Called tianguis here)" for very afordable prices. Like 2 to 3 dollars. I don't have any retro console except my DSi, but I really want to start a collection. Mostly looking for old SHUMPS like darius burst or the original Ikaruga

 

[bjork]

Having seen it pre-ebay, I'll say the internet broke a lot of people's brains. That's a pretty vague statement but between ebay and then the onset of YT and social media being able to reinforce that something produced in mass quantities like Chrono Trigger is somehow rare. No, you just weren't there when it was new and now you can't immediately find it.

 

[CaptainToad]

It's not the internet itself, but the economy. Won't preach too much but the pattern of rent-seeking (AKA scalping) we see in retro video games selling is repeating itself across the entire western economy: trading cards, toys, apps, Kickstarter grifts, new and old video games, collectibles, cars, housing, etc.

 

[ASwano]

I just accepted that I'll never acquire something like a Snes or PSX. So much legends in there that I wish to own plus their home console, but with the comically expensive retro items and the economy in general I have to say no.

I believe retrogames nostalgia was always there. We can feel nostalgic for things that are not that old. I can quickly remember the NES series on GBA calling it 'classic' for more appeal. The GBA era was 20+ years ago.

 

[Shameless]

At some local tech stores in my area you can get some retro consoles and games for a reasonable price, they got a ps1 for like £70 along with other consoles around that same price range. picked up Zone Of The Enders & MGS2 for like £5 each

 

[RanmyakuIchi's iconRanmyakuIchi]

Seemed like people having more free time in 2020 lend to a bunch of people rediscovering games they grew up with, and that led to a spike in prices and emulation interest. Speculative investors took notice and artificially inflated the market prices as well.

 

[trickybus]

Speculative investors took notice and artificially inflated the market prices as well.

This right here. Enshittification of an innocent hobby due to greed. I was in a video game collector's Discord channel once. It was straight-up depressing in there. All the nerding out reserved for price speculation and nothing else.

 

[CaptainToad]

Seemed like people having more free time in 2020 lend to a bunch of people rediscovering games they grew up with, and that led to a spike in prices and emulation interest. Speculative investors took notice and artificially inflated the market prices as well.

How does this explain the rise in prices from 2010 to 2020? It wasn't free time and speculative investors were already an established thing in other hobbies and the concept of buying a bunch of game to raise the eBay price was already possible. Maaaaybe the ease internet purchasing off eBay, Amazon, etc. helped but if anything it should have increased the volume of available games to sell too.

I wish I could find the video, but I watched it 6+ years ago I think that was trying to map out games covered by retro video game youtubers like MetalJesus, AVGN, etc. and it didn't show much effect on the prices of games. Despite people claiming they do because it 'feels' right.

People will talk around the actual economy of game sales and just blame names of people they recognize because it's easier to mentally process than trying to understand what's actually happening.

Like, I see the result of dudes who used to call themselves "collectors" becoming scalpers as part of that and then they started calling themselves "preservationists" and still act as scalpers. And the way they think about video games changed from a personal hobby to a economic activity. Why do you think people are increasingly commodifying their hobbies. What's driving the ideology that buying up shit from an online store and selling it at 100% markup on eBay et al. is a worthwhile and acceptable thing to do?

 

[trickybus]

Why do you think people are increasingly commodifying their hobbies. What's driving the ideology that buying up shit from an online store and selling it at 100% markup on eBay et al. is a worthwhile and acceptable thing to do?

Those are great questions but I don't think it's possible to answer them without looking at QoL for the general public and venturing dangerously close to politics. So, I'm going to be over here with this ten-foot pole

 

[RanmyakuIchi's iconRanmyakuIchi]

How does this explain the rise in prices from 2010 to 2020? It wasn't free time and speculative investors were already an established thing in other hobbies and the concept of buying a bunch of game to raise the eBay price was already possible. Maaaaybe the ease internet purchasing off eBay, Amazon, etc. helped but if anything it should have increased the volume of available games to sell too.

I wish I could find the video, but I watched it 6+ years ago I think that was trying to map out games covered by retro video game youtubers like MetalJesus, AVGN, etc. and it didn't show much effect on the prices of games. Despite people claiming they do because it 'feels' right.

People will talk around the actual economy of game sales and just blame names of people they recognize because it's easier to mentally process than trying to understand what's actually happening.

Like, I see the result of dudes who used to call themselves "collectors" becoming scalpers as part of that and then they started calling themselves "preservationists" and still act as scalpers. And the way they think about video games changed from a personal hobby to a economic activity. Why do you think people are increasingly commodifying their hobbies. What's driving the ideology that buying up shit from an online store and selling it at 100% markup on eBay et al. is a worthwhile and acceptable thing to do?

I might be out of the loop on this, I don't recall prices increasing in my area at this time beyond the expected amount, I actually snagged a number of rare SNES games around 2012 fairly cheap. You could be right that it was ease of internet, going off of my local Ma and Pa game shops still being reasonably priced at the time.

Come to think of it, I seem to remember buying Demon's Chest for around 15-25$ (Can't remember exactly) and seeing it listed on Amazon for nearly triple around the same time.

 

[Lainon]

How does this explain the rise in prices from 2010 to 2020? It wasn't free time and speculative investors were already an established thing in other hobbies and the concept of buying a bunch of game to raise the eBay price was already possible. Maaaaybe the ease internet purchasing off eBay, Amazon, etc. helped but if anything it should have increased the volume of available games to sell too.

I wish I could find the video, but I watched it 6+ years ago I think that was trying to map out games covered by retro video game youtubers like MetalJesus, AVGN, etc. and it didn't show much effect on the prices of games. Despite people claiming they do because it 'feels' right.

People will talk around the actual economy of game sales and just blame names of people they recognize because it's easier to mentally process than trying to understand what's actually happening.

Like, I see the result of dudes who used to call themselves "collectors" becoming scalpers as part of that and then they started calling themselves "preservationists" and still act as scalpers. And the way they think about video games changed from a personal hobby to a economic activity. Why do you think people are increasingly commodifying their hobbies. What's driving the ideology that buying up shit from an online store and selling it at 100% markup on eBay et al. is a worthwhile and acceptable thing to do?

I got into collecting in the early 2010 and from what I saw a lot of it was due to scalpers driving up the prices on games they would see online or on eBay. I saw guys with garages full of games who would say something was so incredibly rare and show me the value on eBay just for him to also show that he had a whole box of them. Collecting now just seems like people on reddit or discord obsessing over speculative pricing on graded games or rare items.

I got out of it years ago and sold of most of my collection. Anything I hold on to or buy now (which isn't anything rare) is for display or to occasionally play. It used to be a fun hobby, like with comics, but as soon as people go overboard and obsess over prices and trying to make money on the hobby then it ruins it for everyone else.

 

[ATenderLad]

In the 90's, stories about collectors becoming fabulously wealthy from raiding Gran-Gran's attic fueled a mania for everything from trading cards to Beanie Babies.

Seems similar to today, albeit with a *lot* more scams.

 

[CaptainToad]

I might be out of the loop on this, I don't recall prices increasing in my area at this time beyond the expected amount, I actually snagged a number of rare SNES games around 2012 fairly cheap. You could be right that it was ease of internet, going off of my local Ma and Pa game shops still being reasonably priced at the time.

Come to think of it, I seem to remember buying Demon's Chest for around 15-25$ (Can't remember exactly) and seeing it listed on Amazon for nearly triple around the same time.

I remember prices raising on everything pretty consistently. People seem to ignore it now 'cause if you look on Pricecharting, compared to the post-2020 spike, it 'looks' relatively stable, but for, say, Silent Hill 2 the price was around 12-15$ USD in 2013.

But by November 2019 it was already up to around $30, so 2-3 times in price.

I got out of physical collecting around 2015-ish because I already couldn't reasonably afford buying stuff, especially stuff like mainline Nintendo games which, despite being literally the most popular games ever, Super Mario Bros. 3 was still like $45 (CAD) from a store.

I think it's also the games people are focusing on. I'm still unsure if the generational shift of games is the rise in interest of young adults buying the games of their childhood or speculators raising prices in anticipation of it happening. So in the early 2010s it was NES, SNES, Genesis that had the high prices with N64 and PS1 just starting to get crazy from what I remember. But like, if it was just general interest in games raising prices I don't see how the prices of games with millions and millions of copies like SMB3 would remain high unless there's massive hoarding. Or if people just don't resell their games anymore, once something enters someone's collection, be they a collector or not, it's almost permanent.

I've had the kids of coworkers reveal they're into retro games, although I'm still pretty sure that's a minority. Like, how many people are actually retro gamers, really? I wish I could have knowledge of these stats. It's really hard to know things when we don't have any numbers to go off. Just prices and sales which contain a lot of information kinda' mixed in which makes it easy to pretend to know about things but without actually being sure. Like, how many sales are happening entirely offline? How many video game collections are just being offloaded onto their kids? I'm glad I switch to flashcarts, hacked consoles, emulation, etc. Honestly so much more convenient. I have my own personal 360/PS3 collection since I have a personal attachment to that era of games but that's about it and I'm still kinda' mad at the space it takes up.

 

[bjork]

How does this explain the rise in prices from 2010 to 2020?

Easier/more widespread access to the internet via cheaper smartphones, great for people who don't own PCs. You had internet access prior to this on phones but it was clunky at best.

 

[CaptainToad]

Easier/more widespread access to the internet via cheaper smartphones, great for people who don't own PCs. You had internet access prior to this on phones but it was clunky at best.

The US and Canada had 75% internet-connected households by 2008. And took another 12 years to get to 90%-ish in each.

I'd also assume people who buy games to be more technologically literate than the average person (although not by much considering what I've seen in retro game communities sometimes). I don't see this mapping to prices at all, and then also again, presumably these people who will only buy retro games online should also be selling these games online too which would bring the prices down and increase the velocity of games sales, but I'm not sure if that happened either.

Unless Amazon, etc. conditioned people to impulse-buy things online, like retro games, (which would tie into the idea that retro youtubers affect game prices a lot), like what's the actual reality of these new video game buyers like? Are they keeping these games? Are they permanent retro game fans now? Are they continuing to buy retro games up through the generations as they age, or just sticking to their childhood games?

 

[bjork]

I feel like having the internet in your pocket 24/7 kind of makes household connectivity irrelevant? I don't have some graph handy, but I'm gonna go ahead and guess that phones vastly outnumber PCs in the world, and a PC at home doesn't let me browse ebay or whatever while I'm literally anywhere. ?‍

 

[gundamnut14]

Did anyone have weird uncles telling them not to take stuff out of the box when they were a kid? Those guys have been vindicated now.... tenfold.

 

[ATenderLad]

Did anyone have weird uncles telling them not to take stuff out of the box when they were a kid? Those guys have been vindicated now.... tenfold.

Nope, my natural inclination was to keep everything on nice little rows in the closet, but cardboard NES/SNES cases didn't have a prayer against pets and multiple siblings.

I still have a bunch of Genesis games boxed up though, thanks for the hard shell, Sega.