Hello /vr/ I have a question for you all.As some of you may know there are a lot of accounts that you could buy seven trillion retro games for 50 cents a pop back in 2004 or something. And I hear also the reasoning for this is because only nerd fucks cared back then normal people thought "who cares about that fucking outdated retarded trash!"How true is this? Is it really true that this was the average person's opinion until the mass AVGN brainwashing?
>>11499387games used to get better over time so people were excited for new games and didnt need old ones. In the late 2000s people started to come to the realization that games werent getting better and all the best games were already made so they became valuable again.
>>11499387People used to move on quick. As a kid, I didn't give a fuck about my Sega Genesis once I got a PS1.
>>11499387I know some people who threw away their old game discs to clear up house space and haven't had a single regret about itI also know people who did the same or traded their games for "new" ones back then, and they are deeply regretting about their decision now.There's also many instances of "hey anon, I threw out your old Nintendo and all of your PC discs into trash while you were away, because I have decided for you that you don't need 'em anymore" aka "thanks a lot for caring mom".
>>11499387>As some of you may know there are a lot of accounts that you could buy seven trillion retro games for 50 cents a pop back in 2004 or something. Yes it's true. I remember when each generation was getting liquidated from game stores. I remember SNES was getting purged from Gamestop, then it was N64, then Dreamcast, and then Gamecube. All being sold for ridiculously low low prices. It was only considered old junk and old plastic that couldn't play the latest "cool games with better graphics" . Then around 2015, some Gaming Nerds and Investor Bros and created WATA games - a company that "grades" old games. They started "rating" old games still in box, and writing articles saying how old games were worth so much money. This obviously was an artificial push and not true. But it worked. They created a bubble and made old games worth thousands. It's basically the same scam that artists use to make paintings worth millions.Here are the steps:1. Create hype around something worthless. 2. Sell worthless thing back and forth between friends (who are in on the scam). 3. Publish articles saying that worthless thing sold for millions in "private sale" (buyer names not disclosed). 4. Worthless thing is not so worthless anymore. 5. Get insurance to insure worthless thing to be worth millions. Now it will never drop in value.
>>11499387I always sold my old consoles as a kid to buy new stuff. Games generally got better and better up until about halfway through the PS3/360 generation, and then it all went to shit.
>>11499387it's just become another grift
>>11499391>games used to get better over time so people were excited for new games and didnt need old onesThis really was the attitude until about 6th or 7th gen. It was like:>bleep bloop>early 8bit unpolished 2D>late polished 16bit era 2D>the early promises of an upcoming 3D revolution>janky 32/64bit era 3D that excited people>the 6th gen polished experience>the wonder of the widescreen HD 7th gen graphicsThen realization that game design has been more or less polished set in and there are only gimmicks and graphical improvements moving forward.As for what caused the retro boom. Part of it is that 3D games got so long and complex with 30 minute prologues and endless cutscenes that people started to want to return. Emulation played a big role as all the games being free led people to try them and develop an interest in retro games which led many to want to own real hardware either because the believed in real hardware supremacy or just as an aesthetic. Since new retro games were not being made, as the supply decreased, prices increased. As prices increased more people rushed to buy to get ahead of the high prices. Now here we are 30 years later.
>>11499443Games were better when they were a nerd thing. There's not a single piece of media or talent that gained something good from going mainstream. Except 80's Japanese pop singers maybe because their songs got a brief spark of worldwide recognition.
>>11499447>As for what caused the retro boom. Part of it is that 3D games got so long and complex with 30 minute prologuesNah. Scam companies like WATA Games, and YouTubers ruin it. They made videos talking about rare valuable finds at goodwill thrift stores which ruined retro gaming. This drew too much attention to the hobby. Then bottom feeders, who only care about making quick money, flooded the retro gaming hobbyand bought up all the old stock.
Not exactly, but people had them, people viewed them as outdated, and people would sell them off/trade them in to buy newer releases. Obviously people bought them, and a lot of game stores made a sizable part of their business out of reselling old used games, but there were fewer collectors and a larger proportion of said old games were bought primarily because they were cheap. Game collecting as a widespread fad is indeed a relatively recent (well, over 10 years at this point, but still) phenomenon.
>>11499387Yes. I was in high-school in the late 90s/early 2000s, and kids would just bring me backpacks full of their old "garbage" and give it to me for free. Thrift stores and flea markets were also overflowing with the stuff. Conventions were basically swap-meets and not collectibles in glass cases. Stuff got price slashed on store shelves aggresively and also would pile into discount stores. It was a glorious era.
>>11499440The exact same people behind WATA were also the ones behind the collectible coins and baseball card bubbles in the 80's, as well as fucking the entire American comic book industry in the 90's.
you used to find consoles and games at goodwill all the time. got a CIB virtual boy at a salvation army thrift store for like $5 in 2009.
>>11499387In 2004, 4th/5th gen games were the equivalent of a Xbox 360 or PS3 today. Very common and extremely dated, and newer machines made them look like crap. Like, put Super Star Wars on SNES next to Rogue Leader on Gamecube and tell me which one looks more impressive. At the time you could also trade in old hardware/games, so you had dollar bins full of 16-bit carts.Since then we have moved away into 3d slop so much that a high quality 2D game with great pixel art and tight controls is in itself a treat. That, plus you had influencers hyping up old consoles.
>>11499387i worked in a used vidya store at that timethings like sports games we generally wouldn't buy, but if we had them on hand, would still sell for like $5all pricing was done by looking for average going prices on ebaysomething like chrono trigger would still fetch $60
>>11499519>The exact same people behind WATA were also the ones behind the collectible coins and baseball card bubbles in the 80's, as well as fucking the entire American comic book industry in the 90's.Yup.Only extremely old (like 1920s to 1960s) American comics are worth money. 90s and modern comics? Not worth anything. The American comic collector industry has crashed recently. Lots of posts of people trying to sell their huge collections. But no buyers really want them.
>>11499454This basically. I remember getting into retro gaming again around 2011, right when Skyrim dropped I was done. It's the last new game I played to completion. I was stupid at first and only emulated but I amassed a nice collection for cheap af. I then lost it all in a fire. I'm still collecting my things back... Slowly. But it's so fucking crazy how common games are more expensive than some relatively unknown bangers. Like why is sonic 3 and smb3 worth like 30-50+ dollars. That's insane. I've finally just come to terms with how fucking shit everything is in the retro market and shell out for what I want.
>>11499387This nintendo in a wall doesn't exist anymore. Being outdoors in sunlight caused the plastic to become extremely brittle and crack into pieces in about a year.
>>11499443How common was this? I never sold any of my old games; my family wasn't rich or anything we were as working class as you could get.
>>11499387Yest. an oldfag
>>11499387Yes it was like this. Games during that generation were good and plentiful, so it was easy to forget about outdated good games from the previous generations. Once the 7th gen+ came around did people start yearning for simpler good games.
>>11499583Some parents make their teens get part time jobs if they want to buy big purchases like consoles. Those same teens don't want to be the only one on the friend group to miss out on the next big console. So their only option is to sell their old console and put that money towards a new one.It's a working class solution but just from a different perspective.
>>11499387I can verify there is validity to that interpretation of the time. I remember in 2004 just getting random loose GBA games under $5USD each some of which are my favorites on the system since people just wanted better returns than Gamestop offers. I wasn't rich so I did not get those huge wholesale bundles, but getting US Symphony of the Night for $10USD (no tax!) or getting lots of games from clearance bins/junk sections was just a simple visit to the store. While the cost of living still wasn't easy then, it was still manageable and sometimes some spare change can net a video game to ease the stress.
>>11499387I remember the shoebox behind the counter full of gameboy carts and the clerk saying "Huh, no one ever looks at those."
In the early 00s you could hardly go to a single yard sale without seeing a DMG GameBoy, a Genesis, or a N64. Usually with a stack of the common games and it'd run you $10.Because people tended to throw things out, you would really have to go out of your way if you wanted to get into a cult system like Saturn or Turbografx. There weren't any retro game stores, so you'd either be going on eBay (a lot less common back in the day) or getting lucky at a pawn shop, which I never did.
>>11499387I remember that old games and consoles used to be cheap and easy to find until about 2014. Like stores were literally trying to get rid of old Atari, Nintendo, and Sega consoles, etc. Old Atari and Nintendo games would like $2 dollars each. Super cheap. Sega Saturn was on clearance at one point for like $1 dollar games, and the new Saturn console was $20. Nobody wanted it. The gaming hobby store wanted it gone. A complete working Sega Dreamcast with 4 controllers was $25. I remember one store had used A Gamecube with 4 controllers, a Donkey Kong bongo drum set, and 2 games as a bundle (all wrapped together in plastic wrap) for sale for $30. This was around 2007. Then prices started going crazy high around 2014. I only found out later about WATA games and Collector YouTubers hyping up the market.But I'm glad I collected all the things I wanted before that happened. I don't have a huge collection. But I bought the things that meant a lot to me. Mostly N64, Dreamcast, Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox.I wasn't interested in the Xbox 360 or PS3.
>>11499387Once 80s and early 90s games got old enough to become collectable, people started looking to the future and games stopped losing their value as steeply under the assumption that they would be be worth something in 10-20 years
I remember going to a little shack of a thrift store around 2003, and getting FF7, Power Stone, Psychic Force and Marvel vs Capcom 2, for a grand total of 8 dollars.
>>11499387If you're asking if old games and consoles used to be a lot cheaper and in less demand, the answer is yes
>>11499387It was very true.I bought all my used Pokémon games for a fiver each. Blue, Yellow, Gold and Crystal.You can't do that anymore.
>>11499387You're exaggerating.And AVGN had NOTHING to do with it.
>>11500474Hell, i had people give me multiple copies of Crystal version for free in the mid 2000s.
>>11500483He wasn't the singular culprit, but he absolutely did help the younger and less "hardcore" get into retro gaming. You constantly see people who were kids in the late 2000s/early 2010s state that AVGN got them into the hobby.
>>11499387My mom almost gave away my Mega Drive and DMG GameBoy because "who cares about old consoles when I have a PS1/2".Fortunely I started growing interest in retro stuff and avoided such fate.>>11500474I kind of lost interest in Pokemon after the initial craze but still got a Pokemon Blue, Gold and Emerald all complete in box for cheap years later in some used games store.Something that is pretty much impossible nowadays.
>>11499387It's not that different from buying Wii, PS2, or Xbox games now. You can still find sports games and other western games on most post-2000 consoles for dirt cheap. It's the 80's and 90's specifically that went up, as well as maybe GameCube. Niche titles are also obviously more expensive but generally cheaper if you import from Japan. Back then there was no real retro gaming, it was just gaming.
>>11500562>Wii, PS2, or XboxI think you mean Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360Ps2 and OG Xbox have gone up in price.
>>11499387We had an NES and an SNES in the 90s and we all played both of them regularly. When we got an N64, that got hooked up to the living room TV but the NES and SNES were still hooked up to an old TV in one of the bedrooms because we still played them occasionally. No one around me ever thought, "These games are outdated," they were just different games to play. When you have the itch to play Duck Hunt or Tetris or SMB3 or SMW or DKC, you just go play it on the system it's on. We also watched reruns on TV from shows in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s on a regular basis. This "old is bad" idea seems like a very recent phenomenon to me, media didn't used to die out so fast back then.
>>11500569I'm talking about western games. Madden, FIFA, 2K. Nascar, NHL, Tony Hawk games, and any licensed games like Disney or Harry Potter are going to be dirt cheap on any platform. Most anything by EA or Activision or games like GTA shouldn't exceed the $20 range.
>>11499387>>11500621That said, I don't think anyone really went out to buy used copies of older systems or games back then. Everyone would buy whatever is available new in stores, but would continue to hold onto and play older games and systems that they happened to already have from back when it was new. But it wasn't because people hated old things, if someone had an older system people would want to play it, it's just because thrifting wasn't a popular thing and everyone was well off enough to buy new stuff, so no one cared to go out and buy older used things. "Retro gaming" wasn't a popular hobby.
>>11499437This happened to my boss. His mom sold all his consoles when he was in college to the neighbors son for forty bucks.
It started with AVGN in the late 2000s. He definitely got more people interested in retro games. Listings on ebay went from "old games" with a single blurry photo of an NES and 20 cartridges loosely thrown into a box selling for $20, to individual games selling at $5-20. The prices were noticeably higher, but it was still somewhat reasonable relative to today. Then in the mid 2010s people started treating them as investments and the prices went retarded. "$200 Madden NFL 64 WOW RETRO L@@K".
I got a CIB Super Scope with a CIB Yoshi's Story in 2003 for $10.The Scope was so new that it still had that particular new SNES plastic scent. It still has it, +20 years later.
>>11499387>How true is this?Not true at all. 50 cents is a gross exaggeration. $2 for the cheapest games. $5 for common games.Both amounts worth more buying power at the time.
>>11500750For example in January 2024 a copy of Mike Tyson's Punch Out! for NES might have been found a yard sale or flea market for $5 in 2004. That's $8.52 adjusted for inflation to today. In January 2004 the average price of a gallon of gas in the USA was $1.52and tbqh I think Punch-Out for $5 at the time was really great deal. I think $10 for the game on ebay would have been realistic. So that's 5.6 gallons of gas. That ain't chump change.
>>11499440There were cheap games around, but at no point ever was "50 cents per game" the standard for any system ever.
>>11500750>>11500761I got my NES from the local dump for free in the late 90s to early 00s. Youre being revisionist if you think $5 was the lowest a nes game went for, those were basically worthless.
>>11500767>>11500761>>11500750I know zoomers think they invented consciousness but you can just look up old funcoland catalogs and see what actual stores were selling old games for, Punchout for 2.99 in 1996 do you really think the price would go up?
>>11500767>There were cheap games around, but at no point ever was "50 cents per game" the standard for any system ever.Those prices I wrote were items on clearance. The store I went to wanted to dump Gamecube and Dreamcasts to make room for next Gen systems.And yes old school games were cheap. I remember old used games because as low as like 3 or 4 dollars. But that was the 90s
>>11500804By 2004? Yes, a little bit. 1996 is the low point of NES game values, and by 2004 they would have kicked back up a bit. Also I did say $2-5 and you conveniently neglected to address that fact, nor the fact that $2.99 is six times more than the 50 cents OP was asking about.
>>11499391fpbpYou also have to take into account how much smaller the video game market was back then, and the fact that the people who DID still value and want to play older stuff were the ones who simply kept their old consoles and games, so they didn't really factor in to driving up demand. People who got into "new" games by the turn of the century were indeed far less likely to be interested in older stuff because it was viewed as "outdated"; why would someone who wanted to play Madden 2k2 or GTA III have any interest in Super Metroid?And I wouldn't say that has changed. I think a majority of modern gamers have zero interest in retro vidya, but retro vidya has become its own culture, thanks to things like Smash Bros., AVGN, and the cultural nostalgia cycle.>>11499440>around 2015, some Gaming Nerds and Investor Bros and created WATA games - a company that "grades" old games. They started "rating" old games still in box, and writing articles saying how old games were worth so much money. This obviously was an artificial push and not true. But it worked. They created a bubble and made old games worth thousands.By 2015, game prices were already getting ridiculous. I know because this was right around the time I stopped collecting, as even consignment shops and flea market junk peddlers started catching onto the trend and copying ebay prices. The "grading" fad didn't create the bubble, it merely inflated it a bit more.
>>11500750>Both amounts worth more buying power at the time.While this IS technically true, 2-5 dollars was still viewed collectively as "chump change" during that era. The fact that it actually had more buying power is something that skews the perception of the value of money moreso than actual inflation; not only did 2-5 dollars buy more, but it was valued less by the average person--it was still "just a couple of bucks".Not that I'm arguing in favor of anything. Just pointing out how there's more to the value of money than just what it could actually buy.
>>11500907Ignore anyone who uses the word zoomer in their posts.
>>11500931It would depend on who's doing the buying. I was a freshman in college in 2004 and 5 bucks was not chump change to me. That was a good meal, a half tank of gas, or relevant to this thread: the cost of an entire retro video game. It wasn't something I'd put no thought towards. If I bought a $5 game very week that'd be $15 a month, and that was a decent little bill at the time. Not chump change.
>>11500941>I was a freshman in college in 2004So, literally a child then? Gotcha. 5 bucks was chump change. It's just that in 2004, chump change could buy you a good meal or half a tank of gas. You're really only proving my point, lol.
>>11499387The only time you'd ever get games for 50 cents each were in some giant lot from a clueless silent generation type or buying games that were from the pre-NES era. 2004 was when prices started going up on NES and SNES games.
>>11500990Who do you think was the biggest group buying and collecting retro games in 2004? It wasn't boomers. It wasn't Gen X. It was Millennials, who were college aged at the time.
>>11501075So? That has nothing to do with anything that's being asked here.Paying 5 bucks for an entire video game in 2004, even if it was "outdated", was still seen as extremely cheap.
>>11499413LARP
>>11499437>I know some people who threw away their old game discs to clear up house space and haven't had a single regret about itYou knew a couple of retards then. Most people weren't in a hurry to throw away things they paid decent money for ($20 to $60 each) and could easily have been sold or traded in at any pawn shop.
>>11500321>Sega Saturn was on clearance at one point for like $1 dollar gamesThe only games that were $1 were the pack-in games that came with the system, and a few sports games.
ITT: ¢50 = $5The people who say zoomer logic works on feelings instead of facts were on to something.
>>11501087>Paying 5 bucks for an entire video game in 2004, even if it was "outdated", was still seen as extremely cheap.A dollar would have been "extremely cheap". 5 dollars was a reasonable price for a game that old. And if you started collecting them willy nilly at that price it would add up quickly.
>>11500750I paid 10 cents for maniac mansion on nes out of a junk box at a sidewalk sale around 2004. I also got a free Genesis set complete with 20 games and a Vectrex from two of my moms friends who just wanted to get rid of the "junk". You definitely could find stuff a dollar or free, though not constantly.
>>11500767EB Games had nes bins with games that cheap.
>>11501114Well, that's what I think too, you always can re-sell stuff if you don't need it but some prefer to just throw it into the dump.That's the reason people throw out rare VHS and burn down vintage newspapers, either they don't know the value or just don't want to take extra time to sell it.I know a collector who was just sitting outside drinking beer once and saw a dude throwing out NES, he took that console home, and it was in perfect condition. That was like, 5-6 years ago
General antiques dealer here (I sell various categories- games are small % of sales), I sold large amounts of vintage nes/snes/N64 games from 2007-2018, and have been selling smaller amounts ever since. I collected NES/SNES/Sega for fun from 1996-2005.In the 1990's you could go to any 2nd garage sale and buy a NES system for $5 with games-$20 with lots of games. Late 90's SNES's were everywhere and were $20 used. Flea markets were filled with slow selling used games. As soon as PS2/XBOX/Gamecube came out N64/PS1 flooded the used market and were mostly cheap. I paid for the last semester of school by reselling used systems on weekends- it was that easy and plentiful.The cultural difference was: Things were assumed to improve and old stuff was obsolete/junk- why resell when you could get a regular job? People waited for the new system with better graphics to come out, discarding the old. The economic reality was also very important- people didn't think they would need the extra cash since employment was far easier, so used stuff was more of a burden. A friend of mine has a Saturn. then N64, then finally XBOX- the idea was to upgrade and the old stuff would be played on occasion but eventually discarded.As the internet culture of playing used games combined with AVGN, the market dramatically increased as several anon's mentioned not all new games were that good. The 2008 economic crisis meant people would scavenge anything to sell and I personally saw loads of games being dug up from basements to sell at pawn stores.Around 2015 I saw the hype growing (there was always a smaller group of collectors but nothing like this) and soon everyone assumed their vintage items were valuable. Grading didn't help!It's hard to imagine for younger collectors how good things were for hunting games! The only issue was without internet (or limited) certain games were hard to track down.) >>11499526>you used to find consoles and games at goodwill all the time
>>11500907>By 2004? Yes, a little bit. 1996 is the low point of NES game values, and by 2004 they would have kicked back up a bit.lol, the world you created in your head is wild. If you look in that picture I posted Duck Hunt is being sold for a quarter and like 50 games are being sold for under a dollar. You are asserting that games NEVER went for 50c and im supposed to continue respecting your intelligence. Please.
By no means the best titles or prices, but i recently found some old receipts i had from right around the era OP is referring to.
>>11501354
>>11501313Some other stories for curious people. If you have any questions feel free to ask though it may take some time to respond.>2008>put up craigslist buying ad>guy has 100 NES/SNES/N64 games in a large box, some in box and one sealed>ask how much he wants>$200>buy it assuming I will make $100, take it to local reseller>he pays $400>find out he quickly sold them for $600>keep in mind harder to resell then, lots on market>today with price charting the price would likely be $3000+Another:>friend and I poor>find sega 32x at garage sale with games for $5>plug it into sega, turns on but can't move controller>turns out its missing a cord at the back>can't find cord in stores, it's 2000- online? good luck. Only clues were going to library and buying for 25 cents 1990's game magazines that showed the set up>give up, later find another sega 32X with games and the cords for $10Another:>Get 30 CIB boxed NES games at thrift store for $40.>sell for $100>value today likely 1500-2000+It's incomprehensible to newer generations how much different (easier and harder) certain things were less than 20 years ago.
>>11499453>Games were better when they were a nerd thing.Never existed. Don't let Millennials gas light you.
>>11500314>genesis, gameboy, n64These three things do not go together in terms of commonality at yard sales.
>>11501320SMB + Duckhunt was a notable exception to the point memes were made about it and there's that one pic of a guy who has covered his bed in the carts when he went around to every Funcoland.You're taking the joke exception as the norm. You're an idiot. Look at how many games on your lists are less than a dollar and look at how many are *not*.
>>11501285You know very well that 10 cents was an extremely rare instance and that you were essentially just given the game. Don't be facetious. >I also got a free Genesis set complete with 20 games and a Vectrex from two of my moms friends who just wanted to get rid of the "junk".I was given games too. OP is asking about prices on the open market.
OP here>all of these people talking about 50 centsThat was a random joke number like 7 trillion, I didn't literally mean 50 centsAlso, I wasn't asking about the fact that they were cheap. I know that already. I'm asking about how people saw old games back in the day in general, and how much youtubers like AVGN had an impact on that.Thank you all for your answers!
>>11501313You sold PAL games but you're American?
>>11501120>The only games that were $1 were the pack-in games that came with the system, and a few sports games.Lmao.Are you so angry that Sega Saturn games was being sold for almost nothing?Are you seriously trying to argue with people are about their memories? >nooooo Sega Saturn was not that cheap! Not my precious Saturn! It was a good boy! You are wrong!!! Lmao
>>11500124I was too young to get a job during the time that I was selling off my shit to buy new stuff. I was 11 when the N64 came out and I remember trading in my PS1 and games towards it. I traded in that N64 at some point, though I also then ended up with another N64 somehow that I still have. Zero idea when and where I got it. I also still have my Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox and PS2, as I was old enough to not need to sell things by then (though I sold my Xbox 360 because I was tired of it and PS4 because it had no games).The ones I really regret selling are my Mega Drive and Saturn. I had a really nice Saturn collection with a whole bunch of games and the light gun bundle with Virtua Cop 2. Pretty sure I got close to jack shit for it all too.
>>11501571As I remember:>late 90s around when Dreamcast came outOlder games were cheap but still not totally cheap, many people were still playing on their old 8bit and 16bit machines well into the 5th gen. Some SNES games still rivaled some new 5th gen games in popularity. Stores still had a lot of unopened older games.>early 00sWhen 6th gen kicked properly with ps2, gc and xbox, older games started to drop in price drastically. Seemed like one people became used to new 3D games, everything previous was instantly shit (not absolutely and not for everyone, but the thing is, all main focus was in new games only, on PC people were going nuts over Counter-Strike online play, and then WoW online and stuff like that. Around this time, arcades also started waning off with only dancing games like DDR keeping arcade centers alive.This is THE time period you want to go if you get a time machine. Lots of cheap, forgotten pre-6th gen consoles and games you could easily find at random electronics stores or toy stores everywhere. Also old video rental clubs and many other places, asking around your friends and neighbors, people would gladly give you these old games for free sometimes.>Mid to late 2000sThis is around when 7th gen kicked in. 3D game and open world became the norm and people started remembering how good 2D was. Games like SOTN finally start getting more attention from the general public and becoming a real classic, when at release it was mostly a sleeper hit. Slowly but surely, more people were starting their retro collections, though it was still mostly a quirky hobby and not maintream, you could notice an increase in price from western online prices, Japan still had very, very cheap prices, Saturn collectors were having easy mode still. But in the west, resellers started working their nets.>2010s and beyondThis is the decade retro games became en vogue, prices escalates all throughout the decade and reached peaks during and after covid until today.
>>11501579>You sold PAL games but you're American? Canadian but did deals in the States- picture was just on PC.Story about PAL games>Had European/Japanese games 10-15 years ago>Couldn't sell them anywhere, people wanted nes/snes/n64 they could play and not novelties>Now when/if I find them they sell for decent money>flashback 25 years ago when Dad's friend gives me a Sega system with japanese games and sick large metal joystick controller>wish I never sold it
>>11501595He's right though. Look at the Funcoland lists from the time period.
>>11501571>I didn't literally mean 50 centsTypical zoomer mentality. Has to exaggerate his statement because $2 doesn't sound cheap enough.
>>11501737>only zoomers use hyperbole-oomerfags have gone insane
>>11501534This. Only nerd genres exist, like hardcore RPGs and space sims and such. Video games themselves are basic normalfag shit.
>>11501723He specifically said he was talking about CLEARANCE prices.
>>11501723Did you even read his post? He said clearance items. So it's even cheaper than your funcoland prices which probably closer to the prime of Saturn's life cycle.
>>11501535Those were far and away the most common consoles at any yard sale I've ever seen along with the NES and its light gun
>>11501916I've seen 10x as many NES and Genesis for sale as I have DMG Gameboys. I have seen quite a few Gameboy Colors.
>>11501758Zoomers think feelings are more important than facts. So they say games cost less than they actually did because they think it conveys their feelings more accurately.
>>11501737>>11501926jesus fucking christ
>>11499387I used to be able to buy snes games for £5 in 2005, for a while my local gamestation even had an NES with 25 games for £55 or something, and i remember wanting to get it sort of ironically, just as a sort of curiosity for my student flat.Didn't get it because even as a videogame enthusiast, I just wasn't interested.Imho, old vidya was plentiful back then, same as 360/ps3 stuff is now, and the market for it was as niche as 360/ps3. If you wanted it, you probably already had it, or there was no competition for it.
>>11500914>even consignment shops and flea market junk peddlers started catching onto the trend and copying ebay pricesThat's why I stopped collecting records, actually around that same time. Thankfully they haven't caught onto CDs yet.
>>11501686It was pretty for cheap games back but not crazy most of the time, its like with wii games, they are $5 but the vast majority of the ones you found back then were pretty common like streets of rage, donkey kong, street fighter 2, virtua fighter 2. Even back then I wanted a flash cart for the truly interesting games like the sequals of popular games that got limited runs.>>11501041at least $5, less if it was like a pc demo disc>>11500621A lot of people kept stuff like the snes as the backup system for when the main one was busy
I got a SNES with 20 pristine condition CIB highly desirable games for $80 bucks around that time, I'm talking all the classic RPGs and morealso picked up dozens of Genesis games I always wanted for ~$5 bucks each
>>11499387generally speaking almost all hobbies were cheaper before youtube came along to shine spotlights on things that no one else had heard of. suddenly people realized there were things out there they had not yet experienced but they could without much barrier to entry. anytime something like this occurs people come out to make a quick buck off of them. the lockdowns have amplified this effect even though we are nearly half a decade past them.in the late 00's early 10's top end computers were like a grand at most, old video games were thrown away or were sold for pennies. old used cars could be bought with a single weeks paycheck. etc etc so on and so forth. i personally sold tons of games to gamestop for literal cents in some cases so that i could afford something new, because as a 13 year old i had no other form of income, and a parent who was earning $10 an hour, over double the minimum wage, a $60 video game was out of the budget save for special occasions. we live in a time where we can get a dozen games on steam during a sale for the same price 1 game used to cost, and thats not even factoring in inflation. imagine if every time you wanted a new game on launch you had to drop over $100 for it, the price gets worse the further back in time you go. donkey kong at launch is the equivalent of $175 today.the wealth of information now at peoples fingertips and the enshitification of modern media and materials has given increased value to the old. but not all old, things come and go in waves, and the things that are new and expensive now, in half a decade when the next generation or model comes out, or perhaps the next next iteration launches, you'll be able to pick what is currently new up for pennies on the dollar. the heyday of used xbox one and ps4 will soon be upon you, the day of valueless wiiu is now.
>>11502658>you'll be able to pick what is currently new up for pennies on the dollarlol no, new tech prices barely drop, even a used gtx 10xx will go for almost what it cost brand new a decade agothere's also unlikely to be a future retro market for current era tech, these games are purely digital and will simply be available on forever shops in whatever future game console version they're on (perhaps an exception for Nintendo consoles, although who knows with the new management)
>>11499387It's true. It was like trying to buy an iPhone 4 or a Galaxy S2 today, or any kind of technology from 2010.
>>11499541>90s and modern comics? Not worth anything.My general feeling is that it will become quite valuable (as "authentic human art") once the world gets entirely covered with AI slop and dematerialized media. Probably a good time to buy huge collections for cheap now.
>>11499454I started actively collecting around 2010. for me it was just trying to rebuy the games i had as a kid after being given an NES for free from a friend. then i realized it was cheap enough that i could get all kinds of things i never got to play when they were new. i had probably 200 games and a dozen consoles by the end of the year and that was even with me mostly just focusing on all the things i couldn't emulate at the time and hunting for "deals" at thrift stores and yard sales or on craigslist.there was a general uptick in "retro" content in general around that time. not just from youtubers but from indie devs and the media as well. i dont know exactly what caused it but there was an avalanche of shit quality "pixel art inspired" games like the bit trip runners and fez and super meatboy, and a bunch of others i cant remember the name of anymore. lots of people wouldn't shut up about cave story at the time. youtubers are absolutely the reason why they ruined the prices of collecting though, the goodwill and yardsale hunting type videos killed it. the exact same thing has happened to old guns.I dont think WATA has any actual effect on the market, no one but retards buys graded video games, and anyone actually looking to play a game wont care if its a pristine 10/10 boxed copy or whatever grading scale they use, and usually wont pay more than average for it just because it is.>>11500321there was a pretty long time period where gamecube controllers were worth more than the console, because all the smash players were on wii and all wanted a controller but didn't want the console. that was around 2018-2013 or so iirc. i dont recall the games for it ever really dropping in value too much (beyond the normal that is, as in they were never like $1 for 3 or something) because of that wii backwards compatibility.>>11500990>>11501087$5 was not much money, but it was way too much for a single cartridge video game.
>>11499526>>11499540>>11500750>>11500761i absolutely got games for $0.50 regularly, and way later than most of the people in this thread are talking about. i went to the exact same game store every day on my way home from work to bullshit with the employees and buy stuff. i thought it would be fun at the time to see how much things would cost me, so afaik i have kept every single receipt from that store i've ever gotten up to the most recent time i went a couple years ago. i'll try to find where i kept them and post some photos of what i was paying. i remember paying $20 for a sega cd console, i think 50 cents for SNES final fight. most of my genesis games were a dollar or less. all atari stuff was just listed as "atari game" in their system and all of it was a quarter each, it was my favorite stuff to collect at the time. pretty often i'd cut the middle man and buy customers atari games while they were in line trying to trade them in because iirc the in-store value was only like 2 cents each i think.and thats just the deals i was getting in that store, the stuff on the street was even cheaper. but i dont have a paper trail for those obviously. i did get whatever the rare blockbuster claymation n64 game is, both zeldas, smash, mario 64, and both castlevanias plus a couple others for $30 on craigslist around 2013. i drove for an hour in the dark to meet up with some old lady for that one, it stands out in my mind because i almost wrecked on the way back home and i sold most of them that night for a profit because i really only wanted the zelda games.>>11501542it really wasn't. video games were for kids, they were toys. in yard sales adults would price them for kids just like all the other toys. i remember boxes of happy meal toys, action figures, random lego pieces, and game cartridges all jumbled up together, everything in the box was a penny or a nickle or something similar. that was like late 90's early 00's though.
>>11502675Bad example. Custom PC parts and graphics cards never go down too far in price.There is NEVER a surplus of PC parts like CPUs or Graphics cards. They always make just slightly more than enough to meet demand. Graphics cards are used for bitcoin mining so they never get cheap. Any capable graphics card gets used for mining until it breaks, or snatched up by other miners or resellers.
>>11502703>I dont think WATA has any actual effect on the market, no one but retards buys graded video games, and anyone actually looking to play a game wont care if its a pristine 10/10 boxed copy or whatever grading scale they use, and usually wont pay more than average for it just because it is. Nope. WATA and other "grading companies" have ABSOLUTELY affected the market. They've started this trend. Not just in video games but in multiple hobbies. Ontop of video games, I'm also a part of several physical games and hobbies. Prices have gone way up because investors and collectors are buying up stock and getting them "graded". Stores now sell "graded" items and treat them money. There are entire discussions now on old forums I used to visit. We used to talk about gameplay on forums, but now there's a huge portion of investors talking about the resale value of their cards/items and getting them graded. It's Really disappointing to read. I'm apart of a few VHS tape hobby groups and a few members are taking about grading their VHS tapes. Ugh.
>>11502703The worst thing YouTubers did is ruin thrifting, flea markets, and yard sales. I can't get a deal anymore. Before, sellers thought they were selling old junk and just happy to get rid of it for cash. Now everyone thinks they are selling ultra rare items and deserve high end eBay prices. Insane.
>>11502740prices of all hobbies are up and everything is an "investment" now man. like i said i also collect old milsurp firearms, my main hobby really, and when i started you could go to any pawnshop and come home with something that shot at a german from some direction in the 40's for like $100-200. now days even rust pretending to still be metal is $500-1k at minimum. values have way outpaced inflation. then theres shit like the car market thats fucked up even worse. its some kind of weird economic situation we're in idk.
>>11499387Yes it's true but I was a broke teenager so I couldn't get anything. Believe me I wish I could have bought up everything. Don't even get me started on the now rare fourth gen games I traded in back in the late '90s just so I could get fifth gen stuff. It hurts and the hurt only intensifies with time. Don't be like me, kys before it's too late.
>>11502762>then theres shit like the car market thats fucked up even worse.Diff anon here. That 2009 "Cash 4 Clunkers" car program that Obama pushed actually got rid of tons of older used cars that were still perfectly usable. Thus car dealerships got leverage again to charge much higher prices because they knew a ton of vehicles were removed from the used car market. I imagine similar things are happening with retro games. Tons of people buying up old stock and just holding onto them.
>>11499387It was around that time I bought DKC at a yard sale for $3. Also had a friend who gave me his NES collection once he got a PSX, well, in exchange to borrow all my Spider-man toys for a week.
>>11499440I picked up a brand new Gamecube at Sears for $80 in November 2006, since they were liquidating for the Wii.
>>11502740>vhsI remember the exact moment took off. I use to pick up tapes 10 for a dollar at my local thrift shop. Then one day, they were suddenly a dollar each, then a year later, they started being individually priced. I will admit, im tempted to be a part of the problem and see if I cant fleece some cash out of the graded shit collectors with a sealed first run jurassic park tape i have.
>>11499387I'm a mid 20's zoomer and it's real. I can't speak for before the 6th gen, but when I was like 11 or 12 gamestop was pushing ps2 and gamecube stuff for stupid cheap.I remember them selling loose ps2 games in the yellow sleeves for actual pennies.Mom gave me $5 and I snagged loose copies of mk shalion monks, naruto ultimate ninja and god of war for less than that $5Also I remember gamestop selling gamecubes for $20.I traded in my dsi and all my games got about $60-$70 in credit and walked out with a silver gamecube, 2 controllers, sonic mega collection, melee, naruto clash of ninja 2 (I was a huge naruto fag as a kid) and final fantasy crystal chronicles.When I was about 16-17 I was well into working my shitty fast food minimum wage job.Collecting older games had gone up but for certain systems it was still stupid cheap.I was making $7.25 an hour and I spent and entire paycheck on a ps2 and a psp with a huge stack of games.It was common stuff like ffx, mgs2, dmc3, dq8, kingdom hearts 1 and birth by sleep, budokai 3 even the psp persona games were dirt cheap back then. It was all common stuff but you could really stretch your dollar and get a legit good game albeit common for $5 or less.Honestly it wasn't until covid where the game and collecting market really fucked up.When a new console came out you could go to gamestop and get the last consoles games for pennies.It was like that with ps2 when the ps3 game out, ps3 when ps4 came out and it's still somewhat happening with ps4 now.It's retards making video essays on le hidden gems and wata really screwing things up.They are hyper inflating the already inflated bubble.I'm still a dumbass zoomer but I'm glad I got into collecting when I was like 12. I will say some games were always kind of expensive.I bought silent hill 2 for $50 before covid and I thought I paid way too much at the time.
>>11501907I simply do not believe his post about Saturn games being sold for $1 each at Wal-mart, K-mart, etc.
>>11499387Reverence for games as an artform and collecting them is a relatively new thing. Old=Good is purely a zoomer ideal pushed on them by their Gen X parents and YouTube.For me growing up in the 90's with only $30 a week for allowance and school lunch, I bought a game, beat it and then I traded it in for $15-$25 to Gamestop or my local Mom and Pop towards a new one, so I can play more new games, and I would keep the games I really loved, now that I have money I do go back and buy the games I regretted trading from time to time.Maybe if you were Richie Rich, you could buy all the game you wanted but I was gaming on a budget.
>>11501114surprise surprise, most people aren't that bright about money.i would wager a good amount of people never resold or traded in games, just let them go in yardsales for a few dollars, left them to rot in attics, or threw them out. A majority of people saw these as disposable toys or amusements that weren't worth keeping around when they lost interest. And even if they did try to trade in or resell, the value they were getting wasn't much anyway. Because the demand just wasn't there. At least not the demand that'd have people spending big money.
>>11503757I hate speed readers like you. He said it was a local game store
>>11500647My rich friend in college just straight up gave me all of his Xbox games for free because he got a 360. As a kid who only got one new game on his birthday and one for Christmas, this was mindblowing.
>we used to sell games back when we were done playing them
>>11503995>had to sell old games to buy new ones
>>11503757>anon simply cannot fathom that there was a time when Sega Saturn was considered junk and sold in stores for almost nothing on clearance, and that no one wanted it.Kek
>>11503757Yeah it never happened
>>11504178Stop replying to yourself. I've seen Sega Saturn games sold for $1 dollar at flea markets and garage sales. It's not a big deal.
>>11499387From a store perspective, places wanted to clear out old stock to make room for new stock that was being sold at higher prices and had higher demand. I grew up poor and my parents took advantage of the fact pretty regularly, which led to me being a console generation behind all the time. For example, K-Mart had a bargain rack of NES cames after the release of the SNES for $5 and $10 which is where I picked up all the Megamans and a few other things, then I got a ton of SNES games once the N64 was out for a year or so. There's a window where the new console adoption rate is high enough that everyone's buying new stuff at full price and old games weren't moving, so they just dropped the price to stop them from cluttering up the shelf. It was the same sort of concept as VHS sales once DVDs became common.From an owner standpoint, there were fewer actual hobbyists that would want to keep games forever, especially because the target demographic was kids who moved on from a game after a while and had other activities they enjoyed. This led to a lot of people selling old game systems in garage sales or giving their old systems away as hand me downs when they got something new. I had quite a few people just give me their NES and SNES games, although by the PSX and N64, that practice had kind of stopped.Disc based games during the era of Gamestop went for pennies if they were a gen old. I filled out my PS2 collection quite a bit by ordering there and eBay. For some reason, a lot of people don't hold discs in the same regard as cartridges, or perhaps they simply printed so many for so cheap that there was a bigger glut of them.And of course, not retro, but things from the last three gens don't get hardly any attention due to planned obsolesce. A lot of games you can't even play without an online connection which either isn't working anymore or in danger of cutting off. They're not worth collecting for playing because you can't.
>>11499387do you care about shitty wii u, xbox 360 and ps3 games?
>>11501534I can confirm it existed, there was a time when the market catered more towards nerdy white guys and more games were centered around it. Devs still wanted to break in to other groups and made games to appeal to more casual players, but then there were still genres like strategy games, in depth RPGs, and early MMOs who were pretty much focused on the loser who sits in his parents' basement playing video games all day. Those sort of games are specialist games now because the market share of nerds is much smaller and they're worth less revenue to cater to as a whole.Trying to say there wasn't a demographic shift in gaming that was fully solidified by the time of World of Warcraft and the Wii is wholly incorrect, even if it's not the easiest thing to qualify with data. Any casual internet user of the 90s could tell you the culture in gaming and the internet as a whole has changed.
I know it's a complete fever dream that's at odds with every reason a company would ever do something, but I still believe one day that someone will start manufacturing highly accurate console and cartridge replicas that will become commonplace on the market. There will come a time where we'll buy knock-off SNES that are indistinguishable from the real thing with a cursory glance and buy bulk copies of Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and all sorts of other games for a few dollars each.I believe a time will return where we'll be able to buy a video game system, plug it in to our TV, and just boot straight to a game without any sort of modern internet integration or need to configure it. That's really what I miss most about gaming, not suffering constant intrusions from the rest of the world while I want to play a game.
>>11504624You sure are a dreamer. Wake up. It's just ridiculous from a material manufacturing perspective. Do you realize how much plastic that is. It's not feasible.
>>11504617moving goalposts to your particular small niche of video gaming instead of the medium as a whole, which has been mainstream since the 70s.
>>11504624>but I still believe one day that someone will start manufacturing highly accurate console and cartridge replicasI mean, if you want to you can get an eeprom writter and learn how to fix the headers on ROMS. There's guys that make new NES/SNES/Genesis PCBs. Then get a printer and some cartridge shells (or really cheap shovelware games and desolder the chips and peel off the stickers). I did that for a couple SNES games I still needed.
>>11499387>only nerd fucks cared back thenthere is your answer
>>11504628If we're going to dream anon, let's dream big. What sucks is there's no practical reason why manufacturing replicas of old video game products should be impossible other than the profit motive.
>>11504818Are you kidding? The infrastructure isn't there anymore. Who the fuck is making the chips? The physical materials? Hell, even the damn stickers for the carts. These were products born of massive industries taking huge amounts of infrastructure and cooperation between many companies. You can't just start doing this stuff out of thin air and the framework for doing all of this stuff is straight up gone. It doesn't exist anymore. Same reason why no one on this planet can create CRTs like they used to be or neon lights or cel animation. Just because it's older technology doesn't mean it can be created nowadays.
>>11504821I'm not saying everything is still there, but that the world's done it once, surely it can do it again by looking back at documented technology and starting from there. Don't tell me we've literally regressed technologically to the point that old video games have become lost technology that no one knows how to make despite knowing in my heart that it's true, and it's even more terrifying to think it applies to the world as a whole--everyone's getting dumber and pretty soon we won't understand how half the things we use were designed in the first place.
>>11504832The world did it when it made sense to do it because the foundations were already in place. To set up that infrastructure again for video game console makes zero sense and isn't feasible from a financial and logistics standpoint. Also the knowledge is incomplete. The people who worked on that stuff are mostly gone and not everything was written down. It has nothing to do with intelligence but rather experience and practicality. And if you seriously think that because a technology is old that we automatically know how to do then you're ignorant. There are lots of niche technologies that would have to be reverse engineered to figure out how it was done in the past. You can't just suddenly recreate the 1990s. It's not that simple man.
>>11504837I'm aware of things like the old Saturn Rockets that NASA used are now lost (The plans are written down, but a lot of it was written by hand and not all specifics were documented), it just pains me to think this applies to electronics more simplistic than what we have today. We're mass producing modern RAM chips in bulk, but making something similar to the NES's 4kb of RAM would apparently take a factory specifically created to make it due to the levels of tolerances it needs.I almost think it would be worth it to come up with chip designs for old machines that could be replicated outside of these settings, even if they're not wholly identical in form, only in function. At least then despite the march of technology we'd still have the capability to produce something like what we used to have without relying on the corporate world to provide.
>>11504850These old chips have their own instruction code, they use outdated various standards that no one is really familiar with anymore, they have all sorts of quirks, etc. It's nowhere near as simplistic as your simple mind is making it out to be. You are so far from reality. Not to mention that's not even getting into the actual infrasture to make it, the cost involved, the various industries it requires. Look you just don't get. It's obviously beyond your IQ and experience. You can make an emulator because it's software mimicking behavior but to reproduce the actual hardware and other physical portions of the product is entirely different. You're too dumb for this conversation and I mean that in the nicest possible way.
>>11504859Well if you think I'm incorrect, provide some evidence. All I'm hearing right now is that it can't be done despite it having been done in the past. I'm really not seeing any reason we can't replicate the physical design of old chips, especially because we still have surviving examples today. Hell, Ricoh is still manufacturing 6502 processors even if they're not identical to their predecessors.
>>11503986Must-Plays:>Halo>Halo 2>Fuzion Frenzy>Battlefront>Red Dead Revolver>Knights Of The Old Republic>CounterStrike>Dark Legacy
>>11504870>provide some evidence.It isn't being done. Now fuck yourself retard.
>>11504624>buy bulk copies of Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and all sorts of other games for a few dollars each.You can already do this. Repros from China. But I guess you want them literally almost for free rather than the $10-15 they cost. Not realistic, bud.
>>11504875Typical, get lost anon, you are worthless to this conversation.
>>11499387>How true is this? Is it really true that this was the average person's opinion until the mass AVGN brainwashing?I can't tell if this is a bot or an indian.
>>11501924>An estimated 118.69 million units of the Game Boy and its successor, the Game Boy Color (released in 1998), have been sold worldwide, making them the fourth-best-selling system ever
This is not exclusive to vidya. Electronics as a whole did not get a vintage or antique bump until relatively recently. the nature of electronics makes it so new models are functionally better , more convenient, and often integrated or designed with other developing tech. Changes in other consumer goods like clothes,furniture, or cars even were more stylistic than anything else. Also, like many anons in here have said, many people sold their old games to buy new games. Video games are toys and parents pretty regularly get rid of old toys. This shit was getting rid of no matter what, so people were happy to get whatever they could for old games.
>>114993872012-2014 game prices for certain consoles I can give you a reference ofgenesis was about 1/3 of the price it is now save for a few rarities, genesis is still reasonable. saturn was like 1/4 the pricei got a copy of Panzer 1/2 and it was like 50$ cib?snes I remember still being pretty chunky, but not as bad as it is today for sure, I remember getting games like ignition factor, kirby's dream course, and sim city for like 50$ together looseI ended up selling everything later on except some rarer genesis games, no regrets really I mean i could always emulate if I wanted to. I do remember at that time NES being ridiculous, or getting there, it's starting to fall down again finally.
>>11501359Lol get that real evidence out of here. Discussions on 4chan work on feelings and heresay.
>>11504879You don't have to prove a negative in an argument. You need to provide evidence that I can be done.
>>11500804Punch-out for $2.99 is a long way from 50 cents as the standard price.
>>11504850>>11504859>>11504870Not either anon, but im sure in the future we will have the capacity to reproduce some near perfect approximation of more common chips via a Chinese company or some smaller businesses. We already have examples of individual hobbyists making their own chips, give it maybe another decade or two and options will likely expand.Alternatively, im sure there will something like "programmable, digital" chips that can be customized take on the specific attributes and gateways of simpler chips, be it for a CPU or sound chip. I'm assuming stuff like Mister and those Analog consoles are already using some variation of those.
>>11504593>A lot of games you can't even play without an online connection which either isn't working anymore or in danger of cutting off. They're not worth collecting for playing because you can't.It's actually a rather small percentage of the whole of modern physical releases that are like that. Pretty sure its around 95%+ that still just function like normal games on older systems as far as ignoring internet shit and just playing the game.
>>11499387It was completely true. The second anything was a little old, even games from the beginning of the current generation, the price plummeted. Games from previous generations were pennies on the dollar. However, I do remember there were always a few games that would retain their value at retail stores. I remember Mario RPG still being like $50 in the early 2000s. Although it was still possible to find games at the flea market then so chances were you could find it for a buck over there.
>>11500767It was legitimately 50 cents a game once you got bulk deals. I remember my local gamestop selling loose PS1 games in a 10 for $5 dead.
>>11500767I got every game made for the Intellivision for like 25 cents each back in ~1988.
>>11499387It's true, you could get anything for next to nothing or free. I was given two N64s, bought a mint game boy in box with the original batteries for twelve quid, N64 games and peripherals cost hardly anything, there were bins of NES games, you could get a virtual boy for 80 quid. PS1 games were ten for a tenner. People would just give you pokemon carts and stacks of cards. Imports could be got at cost. You could have gotten Ataris, electronic games etc. for literally nothing for years before that.The single event that changed this was the Wii and the subsequent mainstreaming of nostalgia, anyone saying different is mistaken. Nintendo was seen as dead by normies and retro nostalgia did not exist in the mainstream. If you actually had retro nostalgia it was amazing and has been ruined. I knew Nintendo was going to make a comeback but didn't realise the impact it would have or I would have filled a storage unit with stuff.
>>11505292>heresay
I didn't have any local game stores near me, so I had ebay prices to work with. On Ebay, with shipping and handling, I remember that most cartridge based games were usually around $5-10, gameboy games were often under $5, CD games were also usually under $5. Sega Saturn was always high, with most games being $30-40. I remember Saturn Bomberman was $80 online, and I complained about it and never got it, when now I would kill so many rabbis in a video game to buy Saturn Bomberman for that price again. But in person, if you could find a flea market, I remember them being dirt cheap. Usually $1 a piece. Unfortunately I was a kid at that time and didn't have a bank account to buy things online. I could only ever periodically convince my parents to buy something and I would give them $20 I saved up from mowing the lawn. I couldn't do this a lot. But I could get a decent amount of gameboy games for just $20. God damn, I wish I was 10 years older during the glory days.
