I love retro games, I always have. Despite my childhood being the 2010’s, I grew up with a gameboy color, and I would emulate GBA, GB, and even N64 games on my crappy android I had at the time.
Because of the power of emulation I was able to grow up with classics like Silent Hill, Megaman Zero, Pokemon Crystal, Metal Gear, so on and so forth. But when I turned 16, and I was able to get my first job, I became especially interested in collecting games, games that I actually like to play. But now that i’m older and I actually have financial responsibilities, and don’t even get me started on how the retro gaming market just continues to inflate, its getting to a point where its just not feasible for me to continue collecting.
Silent Hill 3 is literally my favorite horror game ever, and I will never be able to afford a copy, or even if I did have the money to spare I could never justify the absurd price. I will never own a legitimate copy of Megaman Legends, Pokemon Platinum, Rule of Rose, or so many of these games that I really do care about and want to be able to experience on authentic hardware.
But whats even more frustrating about it all to me are the types of collectors that want something specifically because it is rare. The type of people to buy a game and shove it in a plastic box on a shelf where it will collect dust and never be played or appreciated beyond it’s box art. It is so frustrating to me because collectors of games, as opposed to people who actually want to play and appreciate these games and make memories off them and share those experiences with their friends, are driving up the market values of games to unaffordability.
Anyways I think I am going to give up collecting games. I still have a large collection of PS2, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, MSDOS, and PS1 games, but I am done trying to get more. I might occasionally shell out a little bit on the occasional cheaper game that catches my eye, but trying to get a lot of my favorite titles is a sisiphusian endeavor.
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Welcome to being responsible and not just feeding hype wagons.
I bought an N64 with 4 controllers and 5 games for $5.00 about 10 years ago…the same setup is like $200 minimum now.
Hype on ‘retro gaming’ literally ruined it. I only emulate now. Currently building an arcade cabinet because it’s actually cheaper then caring about the look and for something to sit on a shelf and slowly collect dust.
Funny… I’m retro gaming for the cool cost of free by emulating them.
Doesn’t sound like it’s the retro gaming that’s an issue, but the physically collecting old games that are rarer and of course expensive as all get out.
I’d love to own a physical copy of Chrono Trigger but fuck if that’ll ever happen. That game is super rare, and easily can sell for THOUSANDS of dollars.
Near mint original copies sell for ~$2000. If you just want to legally play the game without emulating, go pick up the DS version for like $80. It’s pretty widely regarded as the best/most definitive version anyways.
I’ll play devil’s advocate here and say that collectors have just as much of a right to these games as anyone else does.
You say they only want them to look pretty, for the box art etc. but this ignores the same sentimental value that you yourself are looking for when you want to play the original games on the original hardware. You can emulate everything right down to the bugs and glitches of the original systems, but it doesn’t have the same feel to it as playing on the actual systems themselves, so you want some original hardware to achieve that. Nothing wrong here.
Similarly, someone that wants to appreciate the look and feel of the original games can easily print out a photo or poster of the covers, make replicas of the consoles etc that look exactly the same as the originals - but they aren’t the originals, it doesn’t feel the same looking at a picture of cover as it does looking at the real thing, so they want some original hardware to achieve it. Don’t see anything wrong here either.
Not trying to say I can’t appreciate your frustration. I’m down to a single Guitar Hero guitar for my 360, and if it breaks or starts to die, it’s gonna be at least $100 to get a new one, and for something I pick up once or twice a month when the urge kicks in, it’d be hard to justify it. But I can’t be mad at the fact that there’s probably someone who has 3 of them permanently afixed to their wall as an art piece, because they’re getting as much “use” out of it as I am, maybe more since they can look at and appreciate it every day vs my routine of using it for 3 days then burying it in the entertainment center.
It should also be noted that playing on authentic hardware is an inherently destructive action. Parts wear out–especially on hardware with disc drives or fans–discs get scratched, cartridge contacts corrode, etc. On top of all this, goods get destroyed or lost in transit all the time even in the collector market. All of this is driving prices up.
If one wants to have an authentic experience, they still can, but they had better be prepared to pay a premium for it. People are already compromising on displays since CRTs are rare and/or cumbersome, and there are other compromise options like MiSTers and repro carts that aren’t just emulating on your home PC.
It’s a shame that people like you don’t have a way to enjoy the classics as we did back in those days. I wish there was an answer for you, but aside from emulators there really isn’t.
Flash carts? Or, for disc-based consoles, any of the ways of loading games onto those consoles. (ODEs, hard drives, expansion ports, memory card slots…)
Lots of exciting things in the emulation scene these days!
Emulators are the answer. Collecting is becoming completely divorced from playing, and for some platforms it’s not a matter of becoming – it already is.
I have a pretty sizable retro game collection myself, both consoles and games to play on them, but I take it as a point of pride that everything I have is playable and sometimes I do play it. Nothing I own is just there to hang on the wall. Some of it is theoretically valuable, although I certainly don’t have anything sealed or graded, nor do I want to.
I think there is a particular kind of value in something that can actually be used. I feel the same about some of the other crap I collect, in particular pens and knives.
