spacecadet

Not generally against necrobumping but in this case I'd say enough has probably changed in 12 years to warrant a new thread. Obviously supply and demand is going to change over that time, and consequently prices.

Modern gaming started with the NES. We're in the post-modern era right now, where everything's just a parody of stuff that came before it.

There's no "bubble". These sorts of threads come up literally every year or so. I've been here off and on for more than 20 years so I'm speaking from experience. There's always a group of people that think prices are destined to come down at some point. It never happens. It's just not how it works. There aren't more vintage games being made. Yes, there are *new* games being made in the vintage style, including some actual vintage games in new packaging. And that's great - I buy those, as do a lot of other people. I also buy stuff like Everdrive cartridges that let me use SD cards in old consoles. But that's not going to deter or change the habits of collectors who want the real original stuff. Because it's not just about playing the games when you're a collector. If you collect salt and pepper shakers (and I'm pretty sure I've used this exact analogy in a similar thread a few years ago), you're not buying them to actually put salt and pepper on your food. You're buying them to put on a shelf. There is nothing wrong with that, despite what some people here would argue. There are a million ways to play Atari 2600 games these days, for example, from the 2600+ to the GameStation Pro to PC emulation to whatever else... you can't argue that you *have to* buy the real original cartridges just to play them. It is 100% ok to just collect them and stare at them on a shelf if that's what makes you feel good. Same is true for every system. And there's no reason you can't do both anyway; buy a game mainly to display on a shelf but maybe you take it out once in a while and play it. That's basically what I do with most of my physical games. But I don't own them *just* to play. Yes, I have a copy of Radiant Silvergun (mentioned earlier in this thread) that I paid close to $200 for at the time. I like seeing it sitting there. But I've played the disc too. Not that there's really any reason for me to do so given modern technology, but I have, just for the experience. Original games only ever dwindle in supply as those who don't care about them sell them and those who really want them buy them up. The latter group just keeps them; they don't continue changing hands. At some point, usually in that first transaction, they end up with the person who's going to keep that game forever. So that's one fewer copy out there in circulation. Meanwhile, the hobby overall only ever gets bigger. When I started "collecting" (I didn't call it that at the time) for systems I knew as a kid back in 1998 or so, it was still the case that most people were just throwing this stuff away and nobody really wanted it. I got some crazy deals in those days and of course, a lot of us remember when O'Shea was selling NIB Atari 2600 games for 80 cents a piece. But every year, more and more people seem to rediscover the games of their youth, and even appreciate them more now as modern games have kind of veered off into something almost unrecognizable at this point ("games as a service", "free to play" nonsense and all that). So more buyers and less supply equals higher prices. Simple as that. It's only ever going to get worse as any given system ages further. Best advice if your goal is to save money and maximize your collection is to find the systems that are cheapest right now and stock up. That usually means the most popular systems that are a generation or two old, where people are still dumping their collections, nostalgia hasn't yet kicked in and supply is still plentiful. The PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, PS Vita and 3DS are all good systems to collect for right now. But it won't last. They'll go up in price just like everything else, and the cycle will continue.

People drop off and come back periodically. Nobody asked when I was gone for like 3 years

Is there proof of any of these numbers, and do any of them actually mean much anyway? I wrote games for the Apple II, those "count" as much as any homebrew would for a console, even though the only distribution done was me passing around disks to my friends and some people dialing in to my AE. There were no doubt many thousands of those available for every computer, but the Apple II was not only easy to program for but it was actually taught in schools to a larger degree than other computers, so it would surprise me if there *weren't* more small, individual games written for the Apple II than other computers at the time. That said, I'm sure that most popular computers had in the tens of thousands of games written for them. And that is my basic point; games were just a lot simpler and easier for one individual to program in those days. Getting back to the Apple II, I have a USB stick full of games that's nowhere near complete and it has 7,768 files on it. Those are only retail released games and a few productivity programs (though I left most out; probably 7,000 of those are retail games). So 20,000 total actually sounds low to me.

I *kind of* grew up with the original Atari VCS, though the first console I owned was an Intellivision. But my cousins had a VCS and I actually played that before my Intellivision, and most of my friends had VCS's too. So whenever a popular new game would come out, I'd be over at their house playing it. Once I got older, the first console I ever "retrobought" was a Sears Video Arcade, a heavy sixer that's listed in the database here but that I've since sold during a purge. At one point, I somehow had ended up with like five different VCS/2600 variants, so I whittled that down to just my standard four switch Atari VCS. It's not the most interesting model but it is the one I most remember from my childhood, and mine is mostly complete in the box whereas most of the others I had were not. Most of my friends had four switch systems, although my cousins had a six switch. I've also bought a couple more modern VCS recreations over the years... I bought the original Atari Flashback, which I thought was super cool at that time because that wasn't yet a common thing. Then later I bought the AtGames handheld that I actually thought was great but I guess the sound was off, which I didn't even notice. But I remember Ben Heck or whatever making a prototype handheld VCS a couple years before and it was this giant, unwieldy thing, and then here comes this Nintendo DS-sized handheld that takes SD cards. It was a portable 2600! I was happy with it at the time. Again, it was the first time we'd seen something like that. So I guess I gravitate towards VCS/2600 stuff that's new or different in some way. The thing about the 2600+ is that it plays real carts with real controllers with HDMI output, but it also looks like a real VCS/2600, just smaller (but not "mini"). I've always wanted a way to play 2600 stuff through HDMI but I don't want to mod my original system or play something where I'm having to download games and put them on an SD card... I feel like that's been done many times now. It's the fact that it looks and feels authentic but is just updated... that feels "new" to me in terms of the design of the product, in that it's not trying to be *totally* modern, but it is only in the ways that matter to someone like me. I really have to say that the way it looks and feels, while a reason I bought it in the first place, are even better in real life than what I thought I'd get from the pictures. I actually leave that little dust cover thing that came on it in the box on top of it all the time because I want to protect it. I think it is just so, so cool looking. They did a fantastic job with it and just making it look like and feel like a slightly shrunken down VCS. It looks like it could have really come out in the 70's, which is actually a new thing for the 2020's. It seems really hard for a lot of these companies making retro hardware to really embrace the retro, down to small details like the actual texture of the plastic or the pattern on the woodgrain. (Most "mini" consoles are missing these details, or just get them wrong.) I don't want the exact same thing as the original hardware, but there's a balance and a fine line and the 2600+ is just perfectly straddling that line for me. I guess I could sum that up by saying it feels like a real console, not like a glorified emulation machine. (I know that's really what it is, but it feels like more.)

I bought a Jaguar new when they were being closed out for $35. I had it for maybe a decade and a half and, like all the systems I own, I made myself pretty familiar with the games available, their prices and the general consensus on what was worth picking up. But I never actually got around to getting much for it. In fact I think I had maybe 3 or 4 games at the time I sold it; one of them was Atari Karts, so that's something. (It is one of the better games on the system, and one of the more sought after.) I also had Tempest 2000, but I got that for the Sega Saturn about the same time so it wasn't keeping me tied to the Jaguar. I let it go during one of my periodic purges of systems and games that I've decided I'm just not really into. I do sometimes regret that with certain systems and I'm 50/50 on the Jaguar. Maybe if I'd gotten more for mine, I'd feel better about it; it was still CIB with all packaging/plastic intact and basically no wear (I used it like four times) and I got well below what systems in that condition were going for even at the time. So it's always nagged me a little that it probably was more valuable for me to keep it... I mean even my less-favored systems still have *some* value to me, even just as curiosities or sentimental items. (I do remember Atari struggling to keep sales pace with Sony, Sega and Nintendo, and I was rooting for them even though I had a Genesis and then a PlayStation... my Saturn I picked up on closeout around the same time as the Jag, and I got more into that.) OTOH, I do not have room for an unlimited number of systems and sometimes I have to remind myself of that fact. I really only have room for the systems I actively collect for and play. I guess to get to the point, I bought a system originally not because I thought the games on it would be so great or anything, but because I knew it was Atari's last "real" modern system (I know they're releasing a lot of stuff now and that's great, but they obviously don't have a PS5 or Switch competitor out there). I tried collecting games for it that other people thought were interesting and that were in my price range, but there wasn't a lot there. So I sold it on. Hopefully whoever has it now is getting more enjoyment from it, has kept it in the same condition I sold it to them in and realizes what a good deal they got given today's prices.

One guy used to be able to develop a computer game, whereas even in the NES era it would take a team of people. Plus by the NES era, licensing was really required. (Atari tried to require this, but it obviously didn't work in the end or we wouldn't right now be talking about Microsoft acquiring Activision.) Nintendo and others eventually figured out a way to at least control third parties with the "seal of quality" and similar. btw you didn't mention earlier computer sales numbers, which is just as telling. The Apple II, for example, had more than 20,000 games released for it. The fact is most of those were small games developed by individuals; think stuff like "Lemonade Stand". But it goes to show how far the numbers actually fell even by the time of the Atari ST. It wasn't *just* the licensing thing, it was also just the ease of development and the expectations people had for games as hardware improved. It became more and more difficult for individuals to develop successful games on their own over time, despite the occasional one-off like Tetris. Combine that with licensing for consoles and the reason for the drop in numbers is more obvious.

I recently bought a Retrotink 5X Pro and the first cable upgrade I bought to go with it was a SCART cable for the Genesis. At the same time, I got my first Everdrive, the X5 for the Genesis. Together, they've meant I've been having tons of fun playing both the games I remember owning when the system was current (many of which I do also have the real cartridges for) but also a lot of games I've always wanted to try but either haven't been able to justify the cost of or just haven't gotten around to buying... stuff like Mutang League Football and Hockey, Comix Zone, and various shmups. I also do weirdly find myself still gravitating towards sports games on the Genesis, which I don't do for any other system. I think the Genesis was the peak of that genre, when sports games were just realistic enough but still pretty arcadey. The SCART cable is great and only cost me about $9; it's almost *too* sharp. I do notice the jail bars and dithering that the Genesis does a lot more than I ever did using composite on a CRT, although if I want that blurrier look I can always still just switch over to composite again. Overall I'll take the sharpness.

I just bought a 5X Pro myself... I *very briefly* considered the 4K because it does seem like a "buy once, cry once" type of purchase. It does seem to do everything I'd ever want or need. But it's just too expensive. Even $325 (the current price) for the 5X Pro is hard to really justify, but $750 for a scaler I feel like is taking this hobby a bit out of the range of where I want it to be... I am very much enjoying my 5X Pro, though. And I don't doubt that the 4K is a great device.

That is the "Apple PC 5.25" Drive" for Mac. Here you go: https://wiki.preterhuman.net/Apple_PC_5.25_Drive That's a pretty nice example, but it's probably not all that useful today unless you've got a specific need for it.

I wasn't talking about total sales, I was talking about the system being artificially hard to get. The only thing I mentioned about sales was that while Sony's selling every system they make, they *could* be selling a lot more if the system was actually available, and nobody counted on this chip shortage or these bots. Even the link you posted says that bots are a big part of the sales numbers, and the global chip shortage is well known. For a while I was trying to get a system every time it'd be restocked, and it was physically impossible for humans to be buying them as fast as what I saw literally every single time. In most cases, I never even got an "add to cart" button before the stock listing changed from "available at whatever time" to "sold out", despite continuous page refreshing. A lot of those scalped systems are sitting on Ebay, Amazon, Wal-Mart's marketplace and other web sites at inflated prices right now. Obviously scalpers need to be selling *some* of them or they have no financial incentive to keep buying them, but without those scalpers in the mix I'll bet it would be a lot easier for a normal person to get a system. And while it wouldn't be good for Sony, part of me does hope that somewhere, some scalper has a warehouse of 50,000 PS5's that they bought at MSRP thinking they could double the price and is getting no takers. That would be justice. I guess. I guess it depends on what you want out of video games. I know some people want what amounts to a stand-in for reality, with everything interactive and everything open world. I really only want that for hardcore simulators, which aren't generally a game console thing anyway. (I will say that I recently got the newest Densha De Go for PS4, which has a VR mode that's extremely sim-like, and it is pretty unbelievable in that mode.) For most games, though, I'd take fun over realism, and those aren't the same thing and aren't even necessarily linked. I only care if I can do something in a game if it actually is part of the game mechanic. It also still just sounds like you're asking for "more"... a lot of those types of things are already in games like Red Dead Redemption 2. You can't cook on some random stove, but the amount of totally tangential stuff you can do in that game is already kind of too much for me, because it's hard to even know what matters and what doesn't. Some things do affect how people treat you going forward, but other things are just time-wasters. It's a little too close to real life in that way, and I ended up just not doing any of the extra stuff anymore and then just giving up on it after probably 100 hours in the game and feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere. But it sounds like you're wishing for a game like that, only with even more interactive elements. I'm sure that's totally possible on a system like the PS5, but I wouldn't really consider that a "next gen" experience, because it's just more of the same stuff. Don't get me wrong, though - better graphics and performance are good things, but I just wish there was more that was unique to these systems vs. the PC. I mean the Switch is definitely unique, and it has games unique to it too; they're just not usually games that appeal to me. I miss Sega! I want a Sega Switch.

Yeah I think "next generation experiences" are pretty much not happening anymore. What you're looking for is something akin to the leap from 2D to 3D or even SD to HD and that is just not a thing that occurs every generation. The closest thing is VR and at this point I feel like if you're not already into that, you're probably one of those people who's actively resisting it, so there's no point really even talking about it. The best you're probably going to get from this gen is going to be better graphics and frame rates. It's akin to upgrading your graphics card and CPU on your PC. Hate to say it but I'm starting to think this gen might be the last of the traditional game consoles... which some have been predicting for decades, but it's feeling like the day might finally be here. If both modern consoles are basically just walled gardens running non-exclusive games using PC hardware, why not just keep a desktop PC that you can upgrade as you wish and run those same games? I feel like MS is seeing the writing on the wall with trying to turn Xbox into a service rather than a specific hardware platform. Sony seems to want to keep making traditional consoles but they're just not doing a great job of it right now. (Even ignoring the chip shortage that's not really their fault, the whole PS5 design is just kind of lackluster and generic, and of course we're already talking about the lack of exclusives that they've had for every other PS launch.) It's definitely the least exciting new console generation I can remember, and it's ironic that both systems are so hard to get. But that's just artificial because of the global chip shortage brought on by the pandemic.

Well a lot of things are weird over the past year, so I'm willing to cut them a little slack. But I've definitely noticed this myself and it's one reason I've basically stopped looking for a PS5. I managed to get an Xbox Series X already, but I haven't bought a single game for it - I'm using it as a media box. Like my Xbox One S before it, it is my main media player on my TV. But I don't know of any games I really need for it. Games these days take a long time to develop so this is probably just me talking out my ass, but I'll bet that at least the lack of *announced* exclusives so far is partly due to the fact that nobody can buy either of these machines. I mean every single system that gets put out there gets sold, but I have to think the total sales are well below where Sony, MS and the game developers would want them to be. They're certainly less than they *could* be. So absent some sweetheart deal from Sony or MS, why would a developer decide to make an exclusive game for these systems right now? It does make me again lament the days when consoles were basically just platforms for the console manufacturers' games, though. That was the entire reason for their existence. I guess Nintendo is still continuing that, but they're just not really my thing (though I do own two Switches) and I wish they had a real competitor. Sony and MS seem content to just dump a piece of hardware out there and say "you guys figure it out." Sony does have a couple of Final Fantasy exclusives coming, so I do want a system for those.

I just got mine today. Box 1 also arrived for me several days after box 2, and there was no scan in between the FedEx label being created and it being delivered. Hopefully it's just still on the way to you. I think it's pretty cool for what it is. It does not take the place of a real mechanical pinball table, but then it's both a fraction of the price of most pinball tables these days (not counting those needing major repairs), and it lets you play multiple tables. What it does, I think it does well. I do have some nits I could pick but overall I'm happy with my purchase. What I like: * Big play area - I don't have a real pinball machine but it *seems* basically as big as those I've played on in the past. * Obviously a lot of care went into making the cabinet feel authentic. It does not feel much different from playing on a real pinball table other than the sensations of heavy metal balls physically contacting various parts of the playfield. I even enjoy the fake coin door and wish my ALU had that. * The cabinet itself seems pretty well built. The legs are actually thicker than some real pinball tables I've used. * The artwork is a big improvement over the ALU (though I can't help but notice the focus on the women from the original artwork...). * The buttons are a lot more leaf spring-like... I haven't checked to see what they actually are, but they're much lighter and less clicky than those in the ALU. (I like the ALU's buttons for an arcade cabinet, but I also like that AtGames has changed them for a pinball machine.) * Ball physics seem pretty accurate. * Good variety in included tables, and a decent number of them. Multiple eras are represented. Some tables are super old-school, while others are quite modern and multi-leveled. Nitpicks: * Supposedly there's haptic feedback, but either it's not working on my table or I was just expecting too much from it. I don't feel anything when I hit the flippers or when the ball does basically anything. I've looked for a setting for this and can't find it either - someone tell me if I'm just missing it. I did see in the latest firmware that it specifically mentioned improvements to haptic feedback, so I know it's supposed to be there. * The interface is really confusing. There are a lot of buttons for a pinball table, and some of them do different things depending on the situation. For example, the "back" button (or "rewind" as I think it's actually called) can actually be a back button, or it can be a *select* button depending on the menu! This is maddening, and totally opposite behavior. It takes me forever, and multiple tries, to do simple navigation around the various menus. Also, why are the flipper buttons "reversed" by default according to the settings menu? Wouldn't the factory default setting, whatever it is, be the normal setting? There are so many weird things like that. I feel like I'm going to have to go through all the settings and just flip them to figure out what they do, because most of them make no sense. * Some of the graphics are a little cartoony and make it a little hard to suspend disbelief. Rescue 911, for example, has a real plastic helicopter that swoops in when you do certain things. It looks almost hand-drawn on the Legends Pinball. I don't know if this is a limitation of the graphics hardware or just some unrefined textures or lighting effects, but it does occasionally make it painfully obvious that I'm just playing a video game, not real pinball. * I've gotten mostly used to it now, but when I first turned on my machine I felt like the frame rate was a little too low and it was causing some eye strain. The actual game speed is fine, but when the ball's traveling really fast, I can see it jumping in between frames. I know it's supposed to be 60fps but sometimes I have a hard time believing that - I can't normally discern individual frames at 60fps. I also do *occasionally* see frame skips, but that's something different and doesn't happen often. * I'd love a bigger screen than 15.6" for the back glass, but I can live with that for the price. I know it would drive it up to have something bigger. Those are my thoughts so far. I *am* definitely having fun with the machine and I'm sure I will continue to do so into the future. I'm still getting to know all the tables and picking out my favorites.