/vr/ - Retro Games

is anything in life worth it...

Collect if you like them and enjoy owning them. I collect games because I like owning the real deal, and am always on the look out and buy truly unique things like prototypes, or trying to find my favorite games in great condition. Collecting purely as a potential investment at this point is risky, especially since that seems to be hot now and stupid shit like VGA grading is starting to take hold, resellers trying to snatched stuff up, and the wide use of eBay for price setting.

>>1409825

>the wide use of eBay for price setting.

I have a "retro game" store near me that does exactly this. They have no prices on their games, they just look up the most believable one on ebay and that's what they try and charge you

>>1409815
Yes, but if budgets are an issue, I'd like to suggest any combination of:

-Visiting Japan for any Japanese anything that's unrelated to Genesis or Dreamcast games released elsewhere. Anything Nintendo and Sony is gouged to hell and back these days and you'll find people on this board who will defend highway robbery like charging $20 for Super Mario Bros. to the death.

-Using the usual online shopping avenues for Genesis, Dreamcast, and Atari games because of how inexplicably cheap they can be with a few notable exceptions like Snatcher on Sega CD, Castlevania Bloodlines on Genesis, or Doom on Atari Jaguar.

You also need to be wary of collecting fads. I remember on the nintendoage forum where some people were getting stupidly interested and excited over one of those non - game GBA video cartridges, as far as I can tell simply because it was OMG THE RAREZ. I doubt any of them gave a crap about watching some show on their GBAs.

>>1409851
>tfw the thrift store had a bunch of those for $1 but i didnt care enough

>>1409815
Collecting is a sign of dormant mental illness.

>>1409854
I think it was the Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper force Go! one that had some of them so riled up.

PS1 and up hardly feels retro enough to collect.

Me and my roommate ditched most of our retro stuff too.

Just focused on building a all purpose emulator/mame cabinet.

Turns out it's a lot more work than I thought.

>>1409815
kinda, it depends upon the system and why you're doing it. Collecting anything for the money is the dumbest idea ever. In fact the only thing I can think of that doesn't have price drops are guns, but if you live in a shithole then there's the risk they'll become illegal for you to own.
But if you just want to have a large pile of shit to show off, then yeah games are great for that. video games are one of those things that most people think of as being a fairly large investment. To the average person a shelf completely full of 2600 carts would seem like a purchase akin to buying a high-end sports or luxury car. but in reality you probably only dropped about $200 on all of it.
Like anything else you just have to play the market. Buy when its cheap, showcase, sell when its expensive, and buy back when it collapses. Right now I'd scrape up the last of the cheap PS2 games, and get ready for the DS and PS3/360 wave to hit. and if you haven't already, and dont mind recollecting later, I'd get rid of any SNES/NES/N64 stuff you may have. Just make sure to save your profits for when you buy it all back a year or two from now.

>>1409858
shitposting is a sign of being a huge faggot

>>1409887
>To the average person a shelf completely full of 2600 carts would seem like a purchase akin to buying a high-end sports or luxury car
You're fucking delusional.

atari

whole collection for a few hundo

playsation

mostly modest prices but some $50-80 RPGs, a few thousand for most games

nes

80% garbage, 20% rares and valuables

genesis 70% garbage 20% valubles 10% rares

xbox

complete garbage

dreamcast

doable on a budget, few rare games worth more than 30 buckaroos

saturn

the rich man's console, go JP or go home poorfag

SNES

hipster bullshit and sudden reinterest have driven prices up drastically, dont even bother. stupid mario games cost $20-30 a piece.

dreamcast and playstation is a good and affordable choice

Unless you're making money off of buying and selling old and rare games, collecting should be something you do for fun.

I collect JRPGs because I like to play them and there are a ton of good JRPGs on retro consoles.

I suggest you keep the games you like and the systems you actually use. I see people who collect multiples of systems and so many games they're jamming their shelves full of shit that it's a clusterfuck of stuff that they never even touch.

I've limited my collection size two a couple of large shelves. If It ever overflows beyond them, I have to consolidate what's actually worth keeping.

>>1409898
>Oh boy, time to be a retard!

get a Wii, soft mod it, get some controller adapters for the wiimote, connect it via composite to a crt. that's the cheapest way to get a semi authentic experience. the adapters can be expensive, and aren't really necessary. the classic controllers work well.

otherwise, get the consoles you like, and get flash carts. can be pricey, but in relation to getting a big collection they're a drop in the bucket.

they''re only worth collecting if you want to play them, or if you want to show off your collection.

>>1409815
Better question: was selling your entire retro collection worth it? How much did you get for the N64 set alone, like $100? A tangible piece of Japanese consumer technology that'll last virtually forever (N64s and their cartridges can take a LOT of drops/damage), versus a couple bags of weed?

>>1410113
>>they're only worth collecting if you want to play them.

This is the golden rule.

Now it would seem obvious to point that out, but some people y'know.

It depends on the style of game you like. I mean, there's plenty to like if you enjoy Wii games (and a lot are dirt cheap), and there's plenty of excellent games on the 360 (don't know about PS3 or new gen). I've grown fond of arcade-style games so I tend to gravitate towards platforms that indulge that sensibility.

Now, OP specifically asks "NES and before", and there it's a bit tricky. i'm partial to 16bit and above for anecdotal reasons (SNES first console), and while I like a lot of NES games, I think emulation and the Virtual Console gets you just about everything a curious fan would want to experience.

In short, I think a Wii, modded or not, holds the best bet in terms of a lot of retro gaming.

>>1409815

no it isnt, fuck it

I'm not really a hardcore collector, I'm mostly in it because "retro" games are what I grew up playing, and I have fond memories of them. Plus, I think it'd be cool one day to show your kids/grandkids your 50 year old NES or 40 year old PlayStation.

I only buy the games I REALLY love. Otherwise I emulate or play on a flashcart. Most of the games I own are N64 and GameBoy/Color games since I really both of them.

N64 in particular I think it's the best console for collecting. They're sturdy as fuck and so are the cartridges, also, you won't have much of a problem getting the 20 or so games that are essential for it

I just started to collect retro because I have never had the chance to own any as a kid and had a PC and GBA and an N64 that I never played till 5th grade when I was younger. I'm bonding a lot with my Sega Collection because I grew up with that Sega Smash pack and Sega PC ports. But at times, damn it was tougher to buy older games unless I use ebay or go to thrift stores because most vidya stores in my area are becoming reseller scums. I love all my video game consoles and usually one 3 out to play every month. But some games are expensive or systems not worth collecting at the moment (Sega CD) so I emulate them on my Wii and it still semi-gives me the same experience.

>>1409898
>saturn
>the rich man's console, go JP or go home poorfag
hue

What I hate about collectors is that they seem to enjoy collecting more than playing the games and end up with hundreds of untouched games. Seriously, fuck those guys.

>>1409837
mfw exact same thing at my lgs

if you actually play some of the games, maybe? I only collect from systems i've owned in the past, those systems being the NES, N64, Gameboy(+color), and Gamecube. I emulate otherwise.

It's worth it to regain a sense of what one could consider "normality" when you're growing up- something familiar from a bygone time when you didn't have many cares. If you're just collecting old shit for the sake of having it, what's the point?

>>1409815
I just emulate. The prices of NES keeps getting higher and higher and even more so for games for Amiga and MSX. Emulating isn't as satisfying, but if it's all you have, you won't notice.

>>1410353
Don Rosa's The Money Pit should be stickied as required reading for this board.

>>1410693
I can only find a Donald Duck comic and bad scans at that.
I have bad eyes, could you tell me the point of the story?

>>1410353
Indeed, I fell into that trap for a long time. I would look on recommended game lists, and then search ebay and amazon and such for low prices on any and all of them. Stuff I didn't even know if I'd like but was interested in, if I could get for 5 or 10 here and there, I'd just buy it. I got some good stuff, but I ended up also with things I didn't really like and even more stuff that I haven't even played.

Nowadays I've become stubborn about not buying games as much as possible, and only playing what I have. It's been a good experience, because I'm not only getting to know and enjoy more the games that I have, but I'm also further defining my tastes to be better than just 'whatever the internet recommends', and I'm saving money by not going after tons of games all the time.

>>1409846
I don't think anyone here would defend selling Super Mario Bros. for 20 bucks.

On that note, importing JP games on NES and SNES is often much cheaper than buying their US equivalents, and (especially for SNES) it's easy to play the JP games on US systems.

>>1410709
It's a Donal Duck comic. I'll take a shot.

Basically Donald works at Scrooge's Money bin, for a pittance of course. His work includes cleaning and airing out the huge vault of money. Donald realizes that since the money stored in the Bin is the money Scrooge amassed personally on his voyages when he was younger, there's quite a lot of old currency, which of course is valuable to collectors. Donald asks Scrooge if he can hand-pick the currency he receives as payment, and Scrooge agrees, since he goes by the value printed on the coins: each one is a personal memory and memento from his youth, and he values them according to that, instead of charts drawn by peddlers buying and selling and buying and selling them again to gain a profit.

Donald starts making a profit cherry-picking the rarest ones, but gets greedy and realises that since the Bin is filled from bottom up, the oldest and hence rarest are at the bottom.
Donald and his nephews start building mine shafts down into the dephts of the money in search of rarest loot, and use a vacuum to send them to the surface. A shaft then collapses while Donald is in the process of this. Donald announces through the vacuum that he can't move and Huey, Louie and Dewey start panicking and yelling at Scrooge to save their uncle, but Scrooge explains there's cubic acres of money to searcg he'll soon run out of air even if he isn't. Donald then uses the vacuum to send an old coin to the surface, which Scrooge recoqnizes and is then able to pinpoint Donald's exact whereabouts. Scrooge and the nephews then reiterate how Donald was saved because of the personal relationship Scrooge has with his money and values it by his own relationship to it instead of how others perceive it. He also mocks the money collectors who don't enjoy the money by not carolling in it and sealing it away and never enjoying it themselves, only swapping it back and forth.

>>1410792
I'm not sure I explained it well. It was written explicitly as a jab to comic book collectors who buy comics sealed into plastic never to open and read them.

>>1410772
Oh man, I had this exact same experience. I looked for recommendations just for the sake of building a collection or adding games to my backlog. This were the dark days of my gaming career. Since then I pirate everything made before 2000 and buy actual games really rarely. Now it's great, I actually enjoy games and try to complete them if it isn't too tedious.

It was not playing games that was bad for but actually being around games, being oversaturated by my favorite hobby. Nowadays I take it for what it is, just a hobby, just a game. I myself dislike when people say "it's just a game" because I value games a little more than that, but in the end it's true. There is nothing wrong with that though.

>>1410792
Scrooge is overpowered as fuck.

>>1410819
plus he was basically Kenshiro in his Klondike days according to Don Rosa.

>>1409896
>litteral WALL of games
>dumbfuck McShithead walkes into room
>"Woah Anon, look at all these GAEMS!!!1!"
>"I bet this cost a lot"
>"they're so old they've got to be worth millions!"
>L@@K RARE WOW
pic related.

people flip shit when they find out that I've got not one, not two, but eight 2600's, none of which are used since I've got a 7800.
Best part is that I only had to pay for one of them, and it cost me $5.
>tfw I only wanted one
>I'm being burried alive in atari's

>>1410047
How so? It's pretty accurate to me whether or not his writing is retarded.

>>1409815
Are you rich ?

>>1409858
Hunter gather insticts bra

>>1411074
I hope this is a joke.

>>1411081
I know beta's like yourself find it hard to believe
buy alphas like me go out hunting for what we want weather its game or ladies

>>1411091
>implying I'm not omega

>>1410238
OP here, thank you. My first console was a SNES as well, which is where my collection really started. I collected nes back in the day but I felt no real sentimental value for it. I probably will go the wii route as from what I hear it's a pretty good option
>>1410113
Thanks for the advice, that's probably what I'll end up doing.

>>1411073
Im in High school and have a job, so kinda. I don't have bills, but I put aside a certain percentage to what-the-fuck-ever-future-shit. After all is said and done I get around 100$ a month.

>>1411367
So you can buy about 5 snes games a month if you buy from ebay