All Your Console Favorites, New In The Boxes!

[blainelocklair]

Good memory! I remember when SFII for the Genny was $59.99. They had to get their extra $10 in on that one. Still sold like crazy during the 90s fighting game craze. There were definitely a few games that cost more than the average $49.99 NES games of the time. Thanks for refreshing my memory on the SFII expecially.

 

I just think it's interesting that something like SMB3 sold for $49.99 in 1992 and Super Mario Party for Switch sells for the same price. I'd imagine that along with the reduced production costs, insluding lack of printed instructions, they can also cut costs when they sell them digitally, server costs not withstanding. Nothing like that back in '92! Of course, there was PlayCable, but you didn't own the games like you do when you buy a digital copy. I still buy the carts or discs. I guess as an old-schooler, the idea of having the physical media makes the purchase seem more valuable. Plus, you can't trade in a digical copy (yet), and if my son decides to trade anything in (he doesn't, hoarder), there's an option to do that in today's market.

 

What marvels me even more than the bizarre economics of physical media games is the pricing of mobile download games. For example, RBI Baseball for Switch is 29.99 and $4.99 for iOS. I can play it on the go or stream it to my Apple TV with my bluetooth controller. I can even install it on every iOS devive owned by my family members. Amazing. The mobile expderience for some games isn't the same (Madden, for example), but remarkable that they can offer them for such a good value. I'm sure the pay to play and in-app purchase models help with that, but some games are just straight-up priced, cheap, and very good. The times, they do chenge.

 

Anyway, didn't mean to take the nostalgia of the photos off-track. Just remembered selling tons of games for similar prices to today's games and thought it was interesting that they haven't changed a whole heck of a lot for 25 years.

Edited October 9, 2018 by blainelocklair

[DJ Clae]

Just wanted to say I love this thread. Thank you. I haunted Babbages and the like with my brothers a lot as a kid. We would save our allowance money, and later PT job money, every month or so to go to the mall in the city.

 

I bought one of those Genesises with Sonic back in the day. It wasn't our first Genesis. My younger brother got a launch model for xmas that we convinced him to sell later (regret).

[atarilovesyou]

Just for giggles, I paid $110 plus tax CDN in the summer of 1990 for NES Final Fantasy. It was very much dependent on the game. I can't believe that's what I paid, lol. Some were less, but nothing I ever saw was higher than that. For another 20 bucks you could get a control deck! And I bought it at a small box store. Not even sure which.

[jaybird3rd]

Speaking of the Genesis and memories of retail of the past, I remember going to my local Ames—a department store chain in the northeastern US, long since gone out of business—and seeing a pallet of new Sega Genesis 3 consoles on the sales floor, new in the box, marked down to $11 each. This would have been in the summer of 2000. I think I picked up three of them, and at the register they actually scanned at $9 each. I've kicked myself ever since that I didn't fill my car with them while I had the chance!

[+Black_Tiger]

Canadian prices I either paid or saw in stores bitd:

 

Final Fantasy II $100

Breath of Fire $90

Breath of Fire II $120

Final Fantasy III $130

Chrono Trigger $130

Earthbound $100

Super Mario RPG $150+

Lufia II $100+

Radiant Silvergun $70 -stacks of them at every EB

Phantasy Star IV $130

Mega Man 6 $70+ -at Zellers same time as PSIV

 

 

My family was also mail ordering full price Intellivision games after the NES launched.

Edited October 11, 2018 by Black_Tiger

[derFunkenstein]

Zellers is a funny name to me because it's an ages-old mental hospital in my area.