/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.2455612]

Check out nearly any given game on pricecharting and their graphs will pretty much look like this. What is it about 2013 that made the retro market just absolutely explode?

[Anonymous No.2455627]

>>2455612
One thing and one thing only, Youtube review/LP channels like AVGN, Classic Game Room, Jontron, and everyone else I see namechecked here and on /v/.

Obviously there is genuine demand from "real" collectors but the market is also now flooded with buyers who want to own whatever their favorite e-celeb was playing. Even dumb shit like that Wally Bear anti-drug game. It's crazy and there's no sign of it stopping any time soon.

[Anonymous No.2455628]

tl;dr A combination of the 90s kid thing starting and streamed runs like Let's Plays.

[Anonymous No.2455641]

>>2455627
I dunno man. Many of those e-celebs have been around for way longer than just 2 years. And man,y like AVGN, hit their peak before 2013 as well. Surely there must be some other factors we haven't mentioned yet.

[Anonymous No.2455657]

I remember when pic used to go for about 8-10.00 loose, and that was when I thought the the "retro game market" was at a peak (that uptick in 2009). At the time, I came into about 50 sealed copies of Turbo Duo games, which included 30 copies Lords of Thunder, 10 Darkwings, 5 Dragon Slayers, 5 Ninja Spirit. Paid 1500.00 (the seller was selling them as a lot or nothing. Wouldn't break them up, so I was going to keep a copy of each and sell off the rest on eBay). Maybe cleared a 100.00, if that.

That would be a 5K-7K lot now. Just crazy.

[Anonymous No.2455660]

/vr/ started in March 2013.

[Anonymous No.2455672]

>>2455660
We're to blame :O

[Anonymous No.2455679]

>>2455672
For select few games, I think that absolutely is the case. I'd like to think I was pretty well versed in Genesis games, but I hadn't heard of it until /vr/. I was thinking about buying it a year and a half ago or so but it was too expensive, and now, well, it's about doubly more expensive than it was before.

[Anonymous No.2455683]

>>2455679
Somehow I totally deleted the "Crusader of Centy, for example" sentence. Whoops.

[Anonymous No.2455685]

>>2455627
>One thing and one thing only, Youtube review/LP channels like AVGN, Classic Game Room, Jontron, and everyone else I see namechecked here and on /v/.
But all these guys were already famous before 2013, and if you look at the chart, the prices weren't fluctuating much until that year.

Are you just one of these autists who hate 'e-celebs' so much they blame them for absolutely everything bad that happened to vidya?

[Anonymous No.2455824]

>>2455657
to be fair, Metal Storm is pretty damn rare. I've never seen a copy out in the wild, and I've been looking for over a decade.

[Anonymous No.2455863]

It wasn't anything like AVGN, since he's been around since forever.

I'd say the spike was due to the increase in retro gaming LP channels. Specifically game grumps and stuff like that.

[Anonymous No.2455867]

>>2455679
I really doubt this board has any impact on the retro gaming market, even when you factor in crossposters from other boards this place has very little traffic. The big factor in my eyes that caused the price hike was the rise in retro gaming review channels, 2013 seemed to be when guys like Jontron who used to get around 200,000 view per video quickly boomed to averaging nearly a million views per video. Shit's gotten so ridiculous I'm constantly seeing new retro reviewers I've never even heard of getting views up in the 900,000 range popping up in my recommendation box.

[Anonymous No.2455969]

Just did some narrowed down search in Google with that timeline.
It's very very likely the cause of the RetroN. In beginning of 2013 the RetroN 4 was out and then shortly after the 5 announced. With those two it finally got quite alot of global press attention. Because it was then a "very solid" console which "does it all".
So many people got that shitty plastic thing which uses less space instead of all the original consoles, but ofcourse they got the games, which pushed the prices.
Mytery solved. Now let's please all ban/delete all future emuhardware threads/advertisementthreads. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.2455981]

>>2455867
Another thing is how many people on this board outright hate collectors and anybody who doesn't pirate.
The creation of the board itself is a result of the retro boom. It did fit very nicely with the graph though.

[Anonymous No.2455991]

>>2455969
>So many people got that shitty plastic thing which uses less space instead of all the original consoles, but ofcourse they got the games, which pushed the prices
More like the resellers pushed their prices up to assfuck all these 30+ years old couples who had just bought the Retron and had no clue about the prices on the market .

[Anonymous No.2455993]

>>2455991
Yes, that's (sadly) the logic consequence of that, too.

[Anonymous No.2456005]

I thinks Let's Play videos like PedoPhile became popular around 2013.

Also, you can obviously blame early angry/retro reviews on youtube long before that.

AVGN basically awakened a giant collectors market worth hundreds of thousands to a new audience.

[Anonymous No.2456018]

Been saying this for a long damn time. Bit disconcerting since people seem to always blame ecelebs and "muh nostalgia". Probably just kids.

1. 2013 is when Ebay lowered the BiN fees to be the same as auction and LESS than auction if you were a store. They also allowed you to sell more. With this update you can list BiNs for free and after the free listing limit (same as the auctions limit) they cost same as an auction.

2. There's also price charting resources now. Something pretty unique to game collecting. Some other hobbies have it too but nowhere near like pricecharting that we use for video games.

3. The rise of the eceleb. Eceleb opinions suddenly took off around this time. This is akin to Donald Kaufman and toy collectors. In an age with mass media any kind of $ talk is talked about a lot. If Kaufman had a new toy that he was seeking out and that info got out you bet your ass every fucking reseller added $100s if not $1000s to the price tag of that item. This same thing happens to video games. It may not raise the price but it gets people talking about games they otherwise wouldn't.

4. I wanted to include this. It's iffy if it really effects anything but ya... FUCKING god damn auction and flea market TV/youtube shows that show people finding gold mines every weekend. This brought so many motherfuckers into flea markets and garage sales.


All that caused artificial prices because the consumer no longer set the price, the seller set the price. Not only did the seller set the price now but he/she did so with no chance of loss. The seller had the tools to look up the price. The amount of risk involved was dropped dramatically. The ability to cash in on hype has never been easier or with out less risk. And to end. This system will never let the prices drop that much unless interest dramatically decreases.

[Anonymous No.2456123]

This is some hardcore Bill Kurtis investigative journalism going on in this thread. I like it.

[Anonymous No.2456176]

Another thing that was probably a contributing factor is the continuning exposure of the "nerd" persona to the mainstream and a steady shift from nerdiness being something to be avoided to something you want to have, at least to some degree.

With more people desiring to be "nerdy" to some degree, they would go and seek out easy ways to do so without actually doing a lot of research. So, what's nerdy? Video games! Retro video games, to be precise, back from the "good old days" - can't forget the "hipster" subculture moving more into the mainstream as well.

Then you add in factors like >>2456018 pointed out, and you've got a large amount of stupid people being exposed to retro video games as something that is either cool or something where money is to be made.

So we've got people out there looking for something, and not actually doing a lot of research about it. This is a goldmine waiting to happen for the actually smart businessmen, and businessmen being businessmen, they got right in on that shit.

And it should only get worse as parts of the actually smart retro community move on to emulation and flash carts, no longer wanting to deal with the shitty situation we've got going, which only leaves an even larger percentage of stupid people overshadowing the smart people.

The only winning move is not to play.

[Anonymous No.2456207]

>>2456176
Forgot something.
5. I didn't talk about shill bidding and buying. this only works because of the zero risk of BiNs.

It happens so many times where you see someone obvious with no feedback buying some $700 game just to make it look like that game is selling at that price. Also with much cheaper games.

One example that I personally noticed is Dreamland 3's price. That was a $50 game last year. it's now a $75 to $100 game. That doesn't fucking happen that quick with a game that only averages a few sales a month unless it's influenced artificially.

[Anonymous No.2456208]

>>2456176
Or just not buy unless you get a deal. It may take time but hell man, I got a copy of thunderforce iii for 5$ mint condition cib online the other day, got it today and exactly what I wanted.

[Anonymous No.2456212]

>>2456208
I still get deals on ebay. They're just few and far between. And the bots make it tough.
I think that anon meant don't pay the prices. But people will anyway...

[Anonymous No.2456227]

>>2456207

Yeah, the retro game market really is a minor businessman's dream, because it's so easily manipulated if you've got a bit of stock in it and time available. The fact that major price-checking sites mostly work off of online sales and that there's no actual checking whether an "online sale" actually occurred between two people or if it just was one guy selling to himself means that given enough effort, you can pretty much make anything happen.

>>2456212

>I think that anon meant don't pay the prices.

Yep, not playing the game of the businessmen, not not playing the game of retro game collecting. It's still possible without getting involved in the price-gouging "fun", but it's getting harder and harder to do.

[Anonymous No.2456229]

meh, i refuse to pay anything over 15$ for a game unless it's uncommon or rare.

[Anonymous No.2456287]

>>2456229
I take it you don't buy many, if any video games anymore.

[Anonymous No.2456292]

>>2456287
I get away with it actually, I still buy quite a few
I think it's cause I collect for sega though

[Anonymous No.2456297]

>>2456229
$15 is what I'd pay if a game is a year or two old. The older they get the less I'm willing to spend.

[Anonymous No.2456306]

>>2456297
meh, works for me.

[Anonymous No.2456316]

>>2455627
i agree with this anon, sure avgn existed before but 2013 was when pewdiepie and minecraft let`s plays became a thing

[Anonymous No.2456363]

>>2456287
Using pricecharting, and rounding down, this is what all these sports games with no repeats comes out too. See, deals are still around if you care for games you don't have.

[Anonymous No.2456518]

>>2455627
Internet reviewers can certainly be blamed in massive spikes in select games. Like Game Grumps are certainly directly responsible in the rise of prices for Metalstorm, Shatterhand, and even Gooftroop, but that doesn't explain the doubling or more in price for the hundreds of games they haven't covered which started in 2013. That alone is proof that multiple factors are at play.

I'm concerned what damage the upcoming Pixels movie might cause. Like it or, but the fact that Adam Sandler is involve makes it THE most mainstream movie about video games ever made.

[Anonymous No.2456552]

>>2456208
That's what I do. I have SNES/N64/Saturn flashcarts but I'm a hoarder (massive vinyl collection too), so I just pick up deals when I see, which is rarely. The flashcarts mean I don't need to buy stuff until I find it at a price I'm happy with.

[Anonymous No.2456582]

>>2455612
I want to say Indie Game the movie, but it seems kinda silly since it was a movie crying about being indie. Assuming the average game took a year to make then the spike makes sense.

[Anonymous No.2456595]

>>2455612
Miley Cyrus released an album in 2013. It made people remind that everything was better in the 80/90s and here we are now.

[Anonymous No.2456601]

>>2456595
like this if you hate justin bieber

[Anonymous No.2457001]

>>2456018
>This brought so many motherfuckers into flea markets and garage sales.

It also resulted in the people selling at those to list their stuff at ebay prices. It's even happening at a lot of thrift stores too now.

[Anonymous No.2457016]

>>2456518
>but the fact that Adam Sandler is involve makes it THE most mainstream movie about video games ever made.
Except, you know...

[Anonymous No.2457023]

>>2457016
>Wreck-it-Ralph.jpg
that's not his name..

[Anonymous No.2457228]

One thing I never see mentioned in these threads is the rise of auto-pricing and listing software. I use one called Monsoon at my job, selling records and CDs on Ebay and Amazon, but it can be used for video games or anything really. The advantage of these programs is that it automates everything for you; all you have to do is print packing slips and shipping labels once a day. The disadvantage is that the pricing isn't perfect and goes by current asking/BIN prices unless you have rules in places (for example, set a ceiling of 90% under the highest price for that item).

This leads to a lot of crazy prices because sellers using this software aren't fine tuning their pricing algorithms and are getting sales anyways, so the average listing tends to creep up across the board. A lot of times you'll look up random items on Amazon or Ebay and think "they're crazy for asking that price", but a human didn't even look at that or correct it. The other problem is that other sellers look at these prices as guidelines, whether they're completed listing or not. It's been shown that many people will pay inflated prices, and so we have a cycle of: incorrectly overpriced items -> become other sellers' baseline -> sells anyways.

All in a hobby market that is popular and has perceived rarity. With the other factors people have mentioned, it's pretty much a perfect storm.

[Anonymous No.2457298]

Smartest thing to do is invest in a good flashcart collection and wait for the bandwagon fags to move onto the next hip fad

[Anonymous No.2457313]

The release of 8th game systems, they knew gaming was doomed after that, so they decided to play old games instead.

[Anonymous No.2457334]

>>2456601
goddamn i remember when every video on youtube had that as the top comment

[Anonymous No.2457721]

>>2457334
>He reads youtube comments

[Anonymous No.2457756]

The lack of releases with distinctive quality in the last few years is definitely a factor, aside from probably Dark Souls, there hasn't been that much that's all that notable in terms of innovative design or a new plateau of expectations. The fact that everything new has sort of just leveled off and become unremarkable is what makes old things seem desirable. Going back through the evolution of the medium allows you to appreciate more novel and noteworthy experiences. Compound that with the rather high price tag on each new generation of consoles and PC hardware, and it becomes a competitively desirable alternative to the hit or miss of buying newer titles.

That's probably what's going on, and you can also chalk it up to 20 years being about the amount of time for someone to gain access to disposable income that they can spend reliving something from their childhood.

[Anonymous No.2457801]

>>2455612
2013 was simply when things started to really catch on. Though Youtube certainly had a part to play, it's really just that there are now far more people trying to collect.

It's a rolling ball, people see there's profit to be made in selling old games. So they go out and buy everything they can. But they can't sell it again at the same price they just paid for it or the whole exercise is a wash. So they raise the prices a little and try to resell them.

Then along comes the next person who has seen the trend of buying and collecting games. So they go out and buy everything they can. But they can't sell it again at the same price they just paid for it or the whole exercise is a wash. So they raise the prices a little and try to resell them.

Then along comes the next person who has seen the trend of buying and collecting games. So they go out and buy everything they can. But they can't sell it again at the same price they just paid for it or the whole exercise is a wash. So they raise the prices a little and try to resell them.

Then along comes the next person who has seen the trend of buying and collecting games. So they go out and buy everything they can. But they can't sell it again at the same price they just paid for it or the whole exercise is a wash. So they raise the prices a little and try to resell them.

And so it goes...

In a few years you guys will look back on the prices in 2015 and wish they were still that low.

[Anonymous No.2457804]

>>2457756
>aside from probably Dark Souls, there hasn't been that much that's all that notable in terms of innovative design

Making another King's Field and slapping a different name on it isn't really innovative either. There's very little new in those games, they became popular because they actually have some difficulty to them which comes across as novelty these days.

[Anonymous No.2457818]

>>2457801
Just like the spice trade of old, eh?
The expression "Dear as pepper." will be changed to "Dear as Bubble Bobble 2."

[Anonymous No.2457823]

>>2457804
There are more refined aspects to it like the online structure and the progressive development of the gameplay experience. The balancing, AI, and level design are honestly quite good in a lot of the game's areas.

Beyond that, the aesthetic is actually -amazing-, and it should be lauded even for it's ambiance and memorability alone.

[Anonymous No.2457834]

>>2457823
I didn't mean to imply it wasn't refined, of course it is, but it's essentially the same type of game From has been making for a long time. Which isn't to say it's bad.

For myself though, I hate the aesthetic of it. The unending dreariness is one of the reasons I don't like the games. Though that's not saying it's bad in any way. I'm glad that it exists and has as many fans as it does. For my tastes Monster Hunter is the perfect blend of high difficulty, silliness and cat puns. Great games for all!

[Anonymous No.2457850]

>>2457834
>Dark Souls
>dreary
it's like you don't even praise the sun

[Anonymous No.2457860]

>>2457850
Well, it's pretty freaking dreary compared to Meownster Hunter.

[Anonymous No.2457863]

>>2457756
>aside from probably Dark Souls, there hasn't been that much that's all that notable in terms of innovative design
Honestly the last console game I played that felt truly fresh and new was Katamari Damacy, which was, what, 8 years ago?

[Anonymous No.2457882]

>>2457863
Many people hate on it because it was so strange and had none of the action based gameplay that people expect, especially out of something that looks like a platformer. Also because it's lead creator is an incredibly annoying French Canadian douchebag.

But that said, Fez was one of the freshest, most unexpectedly wonderful games I've played in many years.

The general sentiment is true though. It's very hard to make something genuinely new, and all the harder to make something genuinely new and that people actually want to play.

[Anonymous No.2458668]

>>2457801

If that were the case, then it would have a steady rise, and not spikes in the prices.

An example would be that Castlevania IV that went from roughly 8 bucks loose back in '07 and remained steady at around that price until it jumped to twice the amount in January of '09, and then jumped again less than a year later to 25. The prices kept jumping over and over again in such short time spans as the decade progressed, which would seem to coincide with the youtuber boom we've been seeing.

Also as others have said, the prices can also be attributed to the fact that the 20 year effect has taken hold, and the gamers that were too young to afford the games that they wanted are now grown up with more expendable income.

I expect NES games prices and anything within it's generation to tank within the decade, followed by the 16 bit generation a few years after that, when those generations' income start to shift to other things.

[Anonymous No.2458936]

>>2455612
Did Al Gore get on a scissor-lift again?

[Anonymous No.2458969]

>>2456518
A movie about pacman coming to life and making fart jokes is not going to have a drastic effect on game prices.

[Anonymous No.2460235]

Interesting thread.

As has been said ITT, I too believe that the rise in price may be due to 2 things: LPers/critics and the new generation of gamers. There is a correlation between the price hike and the coming of age of this new generation. Kids born in the mid 90s were turning ~ 18≥ in 2013. So growing up they played 5th to current generation games.

The new gamer generation exhausted the products of their own generation of games and are entering a new market, the retro market, because of the influence from gaming culture hubs i.e. LPers/critics.

Since the product life of these old games has long since passed i.e. they're no longer produced and sold in a primary market, and are only traded in secondary markets, and thus their supply is fixed. The increase in demand has, as you'd expect, increased the price.

During the product life, e.g. the current generation of games, the price is set. As the product life comes to an end, e.g. 6th generation and ps3/xbox360, the price declines; the majority of consumers have already consumed the product, thus are not spending. They are spending on the newest product e.g. the current generation. Rinse and repeat. You can see this by looking at, for example, the ps3, xbox 360, and DS.

It would be helpful if there was more data to look at e.g. a larger time series with aggregate volume per year. That way we'd know if there's been greater demand and suppliers are just responding to the demand and opportunists are setting prices that other suppliers have listed, as has been mentioned ITT, precipitating a bubble.

[Anonymous No.2460748]

>>2457016
That is... probably the biggest factor. It even came out in November of 2012.

>Parents took their kids to see Wreck it Ralph
>Renewed nostalgia for the old games
>Want to share them with the kids
>Disposable income
>Not a lot of time to do price research
>Market flooded with buyers that can pay that much

[Anonymous No.2460752]

>>2460235
On the NES chart there, the growth already starts in 2011 - that's around when livestreaming started to grow with twitch.tv launching. LPers could be a factor, but those had already existed for a long time prior to livestreaming. Speedrunning has also grown massively since the advent of livestreaming, with GDQ events and big streamers pulling huge numbers and promoting largely retro vidya.

It's hard to speculate, but livestreaming becoming widespread seems like the biggest change that's happened in the last few years over anything else.

[Anonymous No.2460785]

>>2460748
Some extra thoughts:

This honestly reminds me ages ago when I played WoW as a teenager.

When AQ was released, there was a massive event where normally-used trade goods could be turned into NPCs for rewards. Not special drops or anything, normal trade goods. And it was repeatable.

So there was a massive influx of high level people buying the lower-level trade goods off the auction house. And while the supply wasn't fixed like this is, you still had:

>a flood of people interested in a market they had little reason to pursue previously
>said people having more buying power than the average of the previous market's consumers
>supply limited enough that anything at a lower price quickly gets snatched up, and possibly re-listed for higher
>the new buyers willing to accept extra cost to pay for convenience, though admittedly in a different form

[Anonymous No.2461392]

As unpopular as this might be... it has a lot to do with the various retron releases.

From Retron 3 and on, people could "re live" childhood without having to figure out how to get their old game system hooked to the TV, or figure out emulators.

If you look at release + 1-3 months after every retron push, you'll see the corelation.