To the OP:
Anything that goes up in value very rarely comes down.
In the videogame world it would take a discovery of new/old stock, possibly in a warehouse, as was the case with Circus Lido on the PCEngine. Once a much sought after rarety, but now fairly common as new.
Any hobby that involves some kind of collecting such as baseball cards, comic-books, videogames etc attracts
investors. People that have no interest in the subject matter but are willing to speculate large
sums of money accumulating 'stocks and shares' in these hobbies.
Sites like this one (and a few others I could name) provide invaluable information for these people, as can be seen by some of the posts/threads that some people (usually newbies??, such as myself) make.
When valuation sevices such as CGC for comic-books or VGA for videogames appear you can pretty
much guarantee it is too late.
Are you going to pay $5,000 for a VGA sealed copy of Magical Chase and open it to play?
The gulf between the less attractive (one would assume less rare) games and the premium titles will grow much further as time goes by, whether in top grade or not and as we have seen on ebay/yaj there is no shortage of people willing to pay these premiums.
Emulation, piracy or other means of playing these games will not make a dent in the desireability/value of a top title much the same as reprinting old comic-books has zero effect on theirs and people are much more educated about these values now due to press/tv exposure.
Luckily, for me, I have zero interest in TGX version games apart from one or two of the action rpg translations, but if I did and a copy of Magical Chase or any other 'premium' title popped up, on ebay or not, I would be very tempted to 'get in early' because this stuff just isn't going to be available to buy in 10 years or so.
Collectors are not going to re-circulate this stuff back into the community, but I suppose you could wait for them to die.
Posted by HardcoreOtakuI too have noticed a price drop in PC Engine prices from 5 years ago not sure I agree though that it's due to the everdrive or emulation.
US TG-16 games on the other hand seem to be constantly going up in price over the years, my guess is the print runs on the US stuff were much lower and the amount of TG-16 collectors have increased so it's a case of supply and demand.
I'm not sure where you are seeing this happen, even some of the cheaper sellers (jump2japan)
have raised their prices substantially over the last couple of years and prices for used games
appear to sell at what was the sealed level.
that's true, but more important is the musics. music is much more of a memory carrier than visuals are. if the VCS had awesome musics like f.e. a c64, I would be very much loving it for that alone, and certainly also would have lots of nostalgic memories.
This.... This is so incredibly true. I have the most connection with games who's music I love. I'll bet there are some games where I've listened the the music far more than I ever actually played the game. Ahh video game music how I love thee...
I couldn't agree with you two more! There is just something about 8 and 16-Bit chip generated and even some 32-bit synth that fills my belly with warm nostalgia. I was playing Rage Racer today and when you win a cup and progress to the next race there is a CG interlude with the coolest 32-Bit synth! It was the best kind of Japanese synth rock. I wish the whole game had music in that style.
Pitfall II has the best 2600 soundtrack, that's one I often hum/whistle/think about. I guess I have some sort of nostalgia connection with that game, but otherwise, not too much else for the old Atari.
and to end on a positive note:
I could not agree more, picking up a hardsid card for my pc and dloading acidplayer/hvsc
best move ever for those c64 sid tunes.