This is pretty much an appeal to people’s common sense, and it requires a bit of personal history & a bit of a technical walk-through of alternatives. This will be Part 1 in a series of posts regarding the “Retro Gaming Delusion”. Let’s get into it.
The big takeaway from these series of posts is that “retro gaming” is not a long-term investment, and if you want to simply play these games, there are alternatives to the real thing. Right, so, many people have been bitten by the nostalgia bug and wish to buy a few games for consoles that were around in their childhood, such as the NES or the Genesis (Megadrive everywhere but the US). However, prices have bubbled due largely in part to: (a) hoarding, (b) “re-sellers”, (c) inflated eBay prices, (d) YouTube “retro gaming” personalities, and (e) lack of a decentralized & objective valuation on these products.
We’re used to relying on a rudimentary supply/demand mechanism to determine value, for most things. Then again, normal people are dealing with gamers. They are notorious for overvaluing their junk, and they are known hoarders of crap. Anime fans can be similarly obsessive, but they are constantly on the lookout for higher quality versions of the things they like. They might have an entire VHS collection of a series, but they wouldn’t bat an eyelid getting rid of it for the Blu-ray equivalent (at the right price). And really, that’s as it should be. Not so with gamers. Strap yourselves in.
Hoarders
Not a new tactic; scalpers have used the technique for years. Buy up all the stock then mark it up because you can’t get it anywhere else. I think universally, scalpers are considered the lowest of the low. To others, they are merely playing the game (I disagree – they should be shot on sight. Get a real job). On eBay, there has been numerous cases of games being bought, then sat on for years. Sometimes they might pop up again … at a far higher price than they were being sold for years prior. People shrug their shoulders and pay, and the circle of shite continues. Here’s a recent example – some person bought Rampart for the GameBoy, sat on it, then jacked the price up. They now think that, if they sell off copies for the price he bought them for, prices will fall. Oh, sweet Summer child. (link here).
Re-sellers
The art of buying everything you can see, then marking it up for punters. Rinse repeat. Unfortunately, within the hobby of gaming, there exists an insane number of such re-sellers. I’ve noticed that in Japan specifically, there seems to be a disproportionately high number of French immigrants setting up eBay “stores” to flog their product – the product that they paid a pittance for at thrift stores like Hard-Off. But let’s be quite obvious here – reselling is an exploitative act that has had the effect of freezing out people from considering game collecting. They simply don’t have the funds needed to get these incredibly overvalued commodities. If I walk into a store, and see some mong clearing the shelves of stock, I don’t think “big fan” anymore – I think “bloody eBay re-seller”.
One might ask “Why do you say retro gaming is overvalued?”. Because of the current state of emulation software. There are a couple of gaming platforms that are poorly emulated, certainly, but if one is simply seeking to play these games, it is easy to do so for a vast majority of video games. You don’t even need to look very far. So why would a sane person buy a copy of Sega Saturn’s Slam Dunk for a thousand dollars on eBay, when they can just play it for free on an emulator? Well? “B-but Saturn so vurry collectible nowadays” – bollocks.
Inflated eBay prices
They absolutely are inflated, given the state of emulation. People would only be collecting if they felt that they need to have the “authentic experience”. Those people are setting themselves up for a lot of unnecessary financial pain. As mentioned before, Sega Saturn games are skyrocketing at the moment. Which is incredibly stupid, because of the threat of disc-rot, and the imminent release of Prof. Abrasive’s Satiator (a Sega Saturn device that will let people play backups on the original hardware). You also have systems like the SNES, which have a stupidly large library of games – all of which have been hyper-inflated up the arse. I’m not kidding! Super Mario World, a game that came with the system (and therefore one Nintendo made heaps of) is going for roughly $100 (or higher). Again, can be played flawlessly from an emulator for free.
YouTube “retro gaming” personalities
It started with the Angry Nintendo Nerd (now the Angry Video Game Nerd). And then it all went downhill from there. Typically, one of these “personalities” will highlight a particular game and then suddenly, online prices double (or more). This isn’t hyperbole – it happens every single time, without fail. But there’s another (bigger) reason why I’m not enamored by such YouTubers. It’s the mediocre quality of their naff content, combined with their bland & forgettable personalities. Their “content” often consists of a bit of gameplay footage, a bit of Wikipedia “research”, and their personal opinion on a title (“it good” / “it bad”). Done! Another freshly-baked YouTube turd. Some of these people have the gall to ask for Patreon – not to improve their content, but to expand their personal video game library! In case you’re wondering about examples, pretty much anyone within the MetalJesusRocks circlejerk falls within this category (that’s just the tip of the iceberg). There are many, many people out there that will never have the chance of the “original experience”, primarily because of such YouTubers hyping the perceived value of retro gaming to absurd levels. We don’t want to see your “epin collection” videos on YT – we want to play the effing games ourselves! AAAAAAAH!
No objective valuator
There have been some half-assed attempts at people cornering the market on this, for example video game grading services like Video Game Grading Authority (lol wtf). I’m not kidding you – that game you wanted to play? Perish the thought, it’s worth more in the box. Reminds me of Beckett grading cards as “Mint”, “Near Mint”, etc. But there exists no nuanced valuation service for video games currently. It’s solely based on how much a person is willing to pay for a game. That’s right – it’s the Wild West, and I can say “Buy my game for $150?” and eBay will (often) back me up on that price. I have several games falling into that category, which I find amusing. Anyway, I’m getting off-topic. I feel that a good decentralized valuator will have these qualities: How much of a product was produced (for example, several runs of 100,000 units), a timeline of completed eBay/Alibaba/Rakuten/Yahoo Auctions sales (starting from when these services began), a description of the potential factors that decrease the value of the game (such as missing manuals, the box is half-destroyed, etc.), and a projected valuation of the product over a 1-year/5-year/10-year period. That’s just the start – I’ve not given serious thought to the specifics (yet).
People need to understand that the actual market for retro gaming is very small – it’s not that gaming as a hobby isn’t popular; it’s that most gamers crave the newer gaming experiences. They don’t usually want to return to 10/15/20 year old games and say “These are the games I want to play from now on – screw these new games!”. Which is why I find it frustrating to see obsessives inflate the value of such games to the point of disbelief. What about a 10-year-old that gets curious about the SNES? Would you buy them the actual hardware? Hell no – you’d either show them how to emulate, or you’d get them into the Raspberry Pi/Retropie world. Unless you’re insane, in which case you ‘d probably be looking at about $300 or so to get the console (with cords) and 1 semi-popular game. Daym. Another reason why people don’t want to deal with retro gaming is that it’s not going to easily work with today’s televisions (well sure, you can buy adapters, but it’s a lot of effing around).
These games, suddenly so sought after by all and sundry, are not worth the prices currently being asked for them. They aren’t even a sound investment – comic books can be preserved with the proper precautions, as can coins and stamps. Video games? Not so. Bit-Rot and Disc-Rot are very real phenomenon that will render these original games unplayable (and physically damaged, in the case of Disc-Rot) within 20 to 30 years – there is literally no escaping it. Oh, there are some that say “Nah, it’s not as bad as you might think” – these people are usually (a) game collectors, or (b) involved in the buying & selling of video games. If you’re keen on retro gaming, like I am, then be sensible. Learn about emulation & where to find ROMs. Don’t sell your arse to buy a single copy of Suikoden 2 for the PSX. You want the “original experience”? Get the hardware and then a mod chip/backup device. Sorted.
Funnily enough, that’s what I intend to write about for the next post – how to get into emulation. Stay tuned for that.
Peace.
