Skippy B. Coyote

There's been a lot of talk around here (especially lately) about how older systems and games have been getting more and more expensive over the last half a dozen or so years, sometimes absurdly so. It makes me curious where the retro market is going to go in the future, and whether the recent upward trend in price will be sustainable over the coming years or if a crash is imminent. What do you guys and gals think? Do you think prices will continue to rise indefinitely? Will they plateau at some point and create a stable market value for retro systems and games for the foreseeable future? Or do you anticipate a crash coming that will cause systems and games to plummet back down to their former values? I'm really curious to know what you think the future holds for the financial aspect of our hobby.

Don't forget the lack of Homebrew Channel support. You can't play Doom on a Wii Mini, and any version of a system that can play Doom is inherently better than one that cannot.

Man, I sure wish I could find a Geneis for $20! I've been looking for a model 1 in nice shape (no scratching on the top and such) for a while now and I can't even find beat up ones that look like someone dropped a stack of bricks on them for less than $40, online or locally. Sadly I get the impression that a lot of stuff that seems crazy in price is really just worth more these days.

Really impressive statistic keeping Goldenband! The mid-year charts were a lot of fun to read through, and they gave me a few ideas for games that I played earlier this year that I should go back and revisit before long.

Woohoo! The day has finally come that the Game Boy has taken #1 on the system chart! And not to worry about Jack Nicklaus Golf not quite reaching 1,000 minutes yet, I'll definitely be playing it a bit more next week. I think it's also safe to expect that there will be a lot more Game Boy time in my future this summer, since I forgot to mention it in my last post but Shaun over at GameBoyMods UK just started building a custom original Game Boy with an olive green backlight and bivert chip for me yesterday. With any luck it should arrive in mail in 2 or 3 weeks, and I know once it gets here I'm going to go full on Game Boy crazy for at least a month or two.

I agree completely! Unfortunately my budget isn't such that I can collect physical media for all the systems I like though, so over time I've ended up splitting my systems into two categories: Systems that I just enjoy playing and systems that have a strong personal sentimental value to me. For the systems that I just find fun to play I either play the games on original hardware with flash carts or emulate them on my Wii, but for the small handful of systems that I truly love I collect physical copies of the games I want to play. For me it creates a nice happy medium of being able to enjoy collecting lots of games for the systems that are really special to me, while still being able to enjoy playing games for a wide variety of other consoles without breaking the bank.

I'd say absolutely go for it and pick it up. The only complaint I could really make about it is that sometimes the computer opponents can take a long time (20 seconds or so) to decide what they're going to do if they end up in a tough spot like in the rough behind a tree, but it's still kind of amazing that there's a full featured 3D golf game for the Game Boy with real courses to play on and computer AI opponents. The club selection and swinging mechanics are all very sensible too, and if you've played any of the Tiger Woods games for the PlayStation 2 you'll feel right at home with Jack Nicklaus Golf. The only feature it's really missing is the ability to put top spin or back spin on the ball, but in all other respects it's a proper golf game and definitely the best that the Game Boy has to offer.

First off, happy Independence Day to all the Americans here! That said, here's my household's statistics for the week. Ineligible The House of the Dead: Overkill (Nintendo Wii) - 54 minutes Game Boy Jack Nicklaus Golf - 950 minutes Paperboy - 6 minutes Quarth - 31 minutes Wild Snake - 11 minutes Xenon 2: Megablast - 151 minutes Game Boy Color Hexcite: The Shapes of Victory - 34 minutes Hot Wheels: Stunt Track Driver - 75 minutes Paperboy - 4 minutes Sabrina the Animated Series: Zapped! - 23 minutes PlayStation Dino Crisis - 187 minutes Total Play Time This Week 1,526 minutes (25 hours 26 minutes) [1,472 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Game Boy: 1,149 minutes PlayStation: 187 minutes Game Boy Color: 136 minutes Nintendo Wii: 54 minutes This week was another one of those weeks where I spent a fair bit of time testing out Game Boy and Game Boy Color games that I've yet to acquire via emulation on the Wii, then headed out to a local game store to see if I could find copies of the games that I enjoyed the most. There were a few stinkers here and there, like the completely uninspired Tetris clone Wild Snake (which somehow has an inexplicably high rating on GameFAQs.com), but I also stumbled on some really surprisingly good games like Sabrina the Animated Series: Zapped! You wouldn't think a licensed game with the Sabrina name on it would be at all worth playing for anyone, especially an adult male, but it turns out that the game was made by the same design and development team at WayForward who made Shantae; and it employs the same graphics and sound engine as well as the similarly excellently crafted gameplay that Shantae is so well known for. With all those factors working for it, it turns out that Sabrina the Animated Series: Zapped! for the Game Boy Color is actually a darn fine game for players of any age or gender. Letting the number speak for themselves though, the big gaming highlight of the week for me this week was clearly Jack Nicklaus Golf for the Game Boy! I ended up logging nearly 1,000 minutes in this phenomenal golf game and I think that at this point I can safely say that it is my second favorite handheld golf game, second only to Mario Golf: Advance Tour for the Game Boy Advance. I'm utterly puzzled as to why this game never seems to come up on anyone's list of recommended Game Boy/Color games, because it's by far the most intricate, well designed, and full featured golf game on the original Game Boy and in many ways superior to Mario Golf for the Game Boy Color. There are four different 18 hole courses to play, three of which are accurate pseudo-3D recreations of real life golf courses, and you have the option to play Stroke or Skins play against a large assortment of computer opponents of varying skill levels; playing against as many as 3 other opponents per game. The game gives you just the right amount of information necessary to estimate your shots, and everything about the game just seems way ahead of it's time. If you're into golf games and you own a Game Boy/Pocket/Color then definitely see if you can track down a copy of Jack Nicklaus Golf. I assure you that you won't be disappointed! As far as the misses' gaming time for the week goes, she actually didn't get in a whole lot of gaming this week. She sat down to play a little Dino Crisis on a couple occasions, but for the most part she was pretty preoccupied with real life summer activities this week. That's alright though, it is a great time of year to be getting out and doing things and I think I made up for her lack of gaming time pretty well with my time in Jack Nicklaus Golf. As far as what next week has in store, I think it's pretty safe to expect that the misses will continue playing through Dino Crisis and I think I'm going to take the time to revisit Mario Golf for the Game Boy Color. I remember it being a pretty enjoyable game when I last played it way back when, and I'll be curious to see how it stacks up to my recent favorite Jack Nicklaus Golf for the Game Boy. That's all for this week! Happy holidays and try not to lose any fingers!

I'm very aware of EverDrives and other flash carts like the Harmony cart, and I really like them for systems that I don't actively collect for (the NES, Genesis, Atari 2600 in my case). But for me the Game Boy/Color are really special systems with a lot of sentimental value, so I like to collect original cartridges for them. I still plan on picking up an EverDrive GB at some point, just for the convenience of having all my games with me when traveling and such, but the GB/GBC are definitely some of the few systems that I like to collect original cartridges for.

For me it's $50 a month, unless I sell something that I've grown tired of for some extra cash or convince the misses to pitch in on a game or system that she might have fun with too. It's not much, but at this point I'm mostly collecting Game Boy and Game Boy Color games and they usually run $2 to $8 each, so I can still pick up a good number of games each month.

The Wii Hand Cannon, DS Lite, and R4 Card have all been sold!

I'm one of those people who only collects for a few systems, and for those systems I only collect games that have received positive critical reception and that I think I would enjoy playing. I've been collecting actively for about 4 years now, and I've still got a good decade or two to go before I'll be able to acquire all the games that I want to own for the systems that I collect for. To be specific, here's how many games I'm still looking for on the systems that I'm collecting for. Game Boy/Color: 275 Game Boy Advance: 70 Nintendo DS/DSi/3DS: 108 Nintendo Wii: 65 Total: 518 games That's where I'm at right now with how many games I'm still looking to pick up for the systems that I'm focused on collecting for, though I think the number for the Game Boy Advance will grow by at least 15 or 20 games before I'm done collecting since I haven't really researched too deeply into the system's hidden gems catalog yet. And when I do eventually finish off the Wii wants list I know I'm going to start working on a GameCube collection, which would add another 60'ish games to the list. So figure that there's probably around 600 games left to go before I'm completely finished collecting. I'm not in any rush on it though. Right now I'm just working on my Game Boy/Color library and picking up 4 or 5 games a month. There are a couple rare and hard to find games that I'm really actively looking for on eBay (and still waiting for good deals on them to come along) but for the most part I just pick up games from my wants list as I stumble on them at local game stores. If I happen to come across a game I want for the other systems I'm collecting for I might pick it up if the price is right, but for the most part I'm just working on the GB/GBC library right now; and doing it slowly ebough that I make sure to take the time to fully play through every game I buy. There will be no unplayed games in my collection.

Very cool story! It was especially interesting to me because even though I live in Minnesota now I actually grew up and spend the first 18 years of my life living in Omaha, and I ended up getting a lot of Genesis games as well as my first original PlayStation system from Nebraska Furniture Mart. There's a decent chance that I may have bought (or at least begged my parents until they bought) some of the merchandise your dad ordered way back when.

It's funny you mention game designers exploring a new medium as part of what draws you to the VCS and some of the 80's computers, because I think I could say the same about why I'm so fond of the Game Boy and collecting for it. When the Game Boy came out game designers already had a good idea of what made arcade and home console games interesting and compelling to play, but no one really knew what a portable game that could be taken with you anywhere and played on the go was supposed to be like. It was the wild west for handheld gaming back in '89 and the early 90's, and game designers tried all sorts of odd and unusual ideas for what could be done to provide entertainment on the go via an 8-bit monochrome system with just a few buttons and a D-Pad. It was completely new territory, and I think that alone resulted in some wonderfully artistic explorations of the medium that you wouldn't see today. Many of which are still just as enjoyable to fill travel time with now as they were back in '89. But these days it is a very different world for handheld gaming, and one that's sadly flooded with knockoff after knockoff game that require you to be connected to the internet and a company's server to play them. There are still occasional works of artistic brilliance that pop up now and then on Nintendo and Sony's current handhelds, but that sense of limitless possibility in the exploration of a new entertainment medium is definitely something that just isn't there anymore. I'm not really complaining though, since there are still literally hundreds of quality Game Boy games out there that I can hunt down and enjoy for a few dollars each.

$25 is definitely a good price if the label is in nice shape. When I got my copy of H.E.R.O. last year (which I sadly ended up selling along with the rest of my Atari 2600 collection around Christmas) I ended up having to hunt for a good 3 or 4 months to find one in decent shape for $30. It's getting to be a pretty pricey game these days.

Very informative! I'd be curious to know how all that data would translate into practical expected lifespans for the game carts that use this technology (Nintendo DS, 3DS, PS Vita, and any others I might have missed). Does this mean that soon many original DS carts, which are 12 years or so old at this point, will no longer work? Or does it just mean that the save data on the cart will need to be booted up at least once a decade to keep the game working? That's the part that I was a little confused on.

Another awesome hidden gems video! I swear that whenever you make one of these videos I always feel the need to run out to my favorite local game store and scour the bargain bin for new treasures immediately after watching it. It was also nice that you took a few minutes to talk about the whole price issue and the way that the videos of popular retro gaming YouTubers such as yourself might affect the prices of games. It really is a double edged sword, because it's always great to help others discover good games to play and collect that they might have never found out about if it wasn't for videos like yours; but on the other hand when a popular YouTuber helps their audience discover good games the demand for those games always goes up, which inevitably raises the prices they sell for. It's a total catch 22, since you're definitely doing a good thing by introducing people to mostly unknown games that are worth playing, but doing so invariably makes those games become more expensive and difficult to collect. And in truth, the only people who don't care about prices are the people who make so much money that they don't have to care. For poor folks like me and many others though price is a huge deal, and often makes the difference between whether or not a game or system is worth collecting. So, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. If you don't talk about the undiscovered good games out there then they might end up just getting lost to the ages of time and never get played by nearly as many people as they deserve to be, but if you do talk about them then there's a decent chance that the newly created demand for them will push their price out of the realm of affordability for people who would like to play them. It's something that simultaneously helps and hurts the hobby, but I wouldn't tell you to stop making hidden gems videos over it. Personally I just keep my fingers crossed that none of the hidden gems that I want and have yet to acquire end up becoming the next Shantae.

What a neat coincidence, I was just playing Quarth on the Game Boy yesterday... though I only lasted about half an hour before the game got too fast for me to keep up with. Xenon 2: Megablast (Game Boy) Quarth (Game Boy) Jack Nicklaus Golf (Game Boy)

Hey there everyone! It's mid summer and I've been itching to rearrange my console gaming center a bit, so I decided to put a few things up for sale to help fund the project. This is only my fourth sales thread here on AtariAge, so to give you a reference for my reliability as a seller, you can see all the feedback I've received from selling games and related accessories on eBay over the last half a dozen or so years here: http://www.ebay.com/usr/hanz0d0g Before we get down to business, here's the usual info: All prices listed below are firm and do not include shipping costs. Shipping costs to anywhere in the United States will be calculated by based on zip code and package size/weight. All items will be shipped via USPS and delivery confirmation will be included so that you can track the package. International shipping is available upon request and will be calculated based on location. Payment is accepted via PayPal only, and all sales are on a "first come first serve" basis. In other words, the first person to PM me about an item gets it! There are usually a couple of things I am willing to accept in trade for the items I have for sale, and as far as trades go here's what I am currently in the market for: Items I Am Accepting In Trade Nothing at this time That's it for trades I'm willing to accept, so now on to the stuff I've got for sale/trade! Sony Stuff Nyko Super Cobra Light Gun for Original PlayStation (Awesome light gun with force feedback, LED lighting, & auto-fire/reload options. Works with both Justifier and GunCon games! Works perfectly.) - $15 That's everything! Thank you for taking the time to view my sales thread and you are interested in buying or trading for any items just shoot me a PM about it! Additional pictures of any items are always available upon request.

I'd say pass on it, unless you're a completionist collector and want to have one of every Wii model. For me it just comes down to the lack of Homebrew Channel and GameCube support, both of which are big selling points of the original Wii. Being able to emulate nearly every game for every 8-bit and 16-bit system perfectly via the Homebrew Channel really opens up a lot of options and literally thousands more games that can be enjoyed on the Wii, and the GameCube has a pretty sizable library of quality games to play as well, so I think it's worth paying a little extra for an original model Wii that will have that functionality.

Right on! I have an AGS-101 SP as well and the screen quality is beautiful. It's just perfect for GBA games and makes GB/GBC games good looking and easy to play indoors in low light, even if it does oversaturate the colors in GBC games a little. I usually use a slightly customized Game Boy Color with the original un-illuminated screen for playing GB and GBC games though, since I like the larger screen size and the ability to play it outdoors under natural light (which is where I do most of my handheld gaming, on smoke breaks) without the screen washing out and becoming difficult to see like a backlit screen would, but the AGS-101 model SP is definitely a great way to enjoy the entire Game Boy line of games indoors.

It's been about a month and a half since I last updated my list for this thread, and I've got a quite a few games to add! 30. Sonic Blast (Sega Master System) It's laggy and a little clunky, but it's still Sonic! A fun game that took me most of a morning to play through, since some of the puzzles in the game took quite a while to figure out, but it was definitely worth playing. Even with the notorious SMS lag it was still a really enjoyable little adventure with challenging bosses and great graphics for an 8-bit system. 31. Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Master System) Another Sonic game on the Master System, this one really took me by surprise. While it does look and sound like Sonic the gameplay is more akin to a Super Mario game, and by that I mean rather than focus on speed it's more about tricky precision platforming. I think it took me a good 4 or 5 tries before I was able to beat it, but I think it was gaming time well spent. The first Sonic the Hedgehog for the SMS is a very different game than the first Sonic for the Genesis, but both are quite good in their own right. I do like the Genesis version better, but I'll probably still play through this one again at some point. 32. The House of the Dead III (Nintendo Wii) I had beaten The House of the Dead 2 on the House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return compilation for the Wii several times in the past, but it wasn't until just last month that I managed to conquer the third game in the series. I could make it to the final boss without much difficulty, but the speed and precision required to finish off the last boss was just too much for my wrist and trigger finger to handle before hand cramps eventually lost me the battle. Last month though I was able to power through the hand cramps and put the nail in the coffin on this one, and I have to say that it was an extremely satisfying experience doing so! I had been wanting to beat The House of the Dead III for a really long time and I'm very happy to have finally done it! 33. Orcs & Elves (Nintendo DS) A real hidden gem of the DS library! After what an abysmal experience I had trying to play (or rather, figure out how to play) the critically acclaimed The Dark Spire for the DS I wasn't expecting much from Id Software's take on the first person dungeon crawling genre, but man was I ever pleasantly surprised! Orcs & Elves is everything that I wished The Dark Spire was and I couldn't recommend it more highly. It's fast paced and chalked full of action, has a great high fantasy story with lots of humorous dialog, and the gameplay mechanics and controls are all thoroughly explained as you go along; making the whole experience very approachable for people such as myself who aren't generally into RPGs. This is just an all around wonderful game that I'm sure I will go back to play through many times over! 34. The House of the Dead: Overkill (Nintendo Wii) June was a good month for shooting zombies with light guns this year, and The House of the Dead: Overkill was a phenomenal take on the genre. From the campy B-movie story line to the extreme amounts of profanity and adult content, this game just oozed style in the best kind of way. The shooting action was fantastic too, so if you're in the market for a very adult oriented light gun game then this is definitely one to pick up. I think I beat it at least 4 times on both regular and Directors Cut mode until I had unlocked everything there was to unlock, because that's just how good of a game it is. 35. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (Nintendo Wii) More zombie annihilating light gun action! I've always a been a huge fan of the Resident Evil series all the way back to the first game on the original PlayStation, and with my love of light gun shooters you can probably imagine how much I enjoyed this game. It was another one of those "Play through it half a dozen times until you've unlocked everything" sort of experiences for me, and I feel like every minute of it was gaming time well spent. It's games like this that really make me love the Wii. 36. Dead Space: Extraction (Nintendo Wii) Saving the best light gun shooter in the Wii for last, next up is Dead Space: Extraction! I don't think any other light gun game on any system has ever come even remotely close to matching the depth of the story and gameplay in this one, and those looking for a truly deep, immersive, and downright terrifying light gun gaming experience absolutely owe it to themselves to play Dead Space: Extraction. Also, while I generally prefer to play light gun games on the Wii using either a Nyko Perfect Shot (or two of them, in the case of House of the Dead: Overkill's "Dual Wield" mode) or the CTA Sure Shot Shotgun this happens to be one of the few light gun games for the Wii that I think is best played with the official Nintendo Wii Zapper accessory. A lot of the gameplay mechanics and on-screen cues are designed with the Zapper in mind, making Dead Space: Extraction without a doubt the best game to make use of Nintendo's official Wii Zapper accessory; and possibly the finest light gun game ever created for any system period. 37. Metroid II: Return of Samus (Game Boy) I was laid out sick for the better part of a week not long ago, and I decided to use the downtime to revisit an old favorite game on the Game Boy. Metroid II is just one of those "must own" titles for the original Game Boy and without a doubt one of the best adventure and exploration based games on the system. At this point I've played through it enough times that I don't even need to make or reference a map anymore, but it's still just as fun as ever to spent half a dozen or more hours wandering the dark and mysterious catacombs of SR388. The environments are varied and interesting to look at, as are the enemies and power up selections (especially when played on the Game Boy Color, since the custom color palette programmed into the system for Metroid II really spruces up the visuals). The additions of a save battery to save your game at checkpoints along the way and health & missile refill stations fix pretty much everything that made the original Metroid on the NES often frustrating, making the Game Boy sequel just a wonderful gaming experience through and through. And believe it or not, 25 years after the game's initial release the original save game battery in my cartridge still works just fine! That's some serious staying power. 38. Xenon 2: Megablast (Game Boy) The last one for now! I had been wanting to get my hands on a nice condition copy of Xenon 2 for a reasonable price for a good year or two, so when one finally popped up on eBay last week I snagged it faster than you can say "Sold!" As luck would have it, the game was well worth the wait and I ended up spending all morning today playing it until I was able to beat the game on Easy mode. It's just an all around fantastic shoot 'em up, with great graphics, loads of 8-bit charm, and a really unique upgrade system that adds a lot of strategy and challenge to the game. It took me a good 5 or 6 tries before I was able to beat the game, largely because that's how many tries it took me to find the right strategy for which weapons and power ups to buy from the shop that you can visit after each boss and sub-boss. Getting to choose your own upgrading path gives the game a great deal of variety and allows not only for every player to choose the equipment that best suits their own individual play style, but it also gives the game a great deal of variety and replayability; since you can experiment with different weapon loadouts every time you play. All in all I think Xenon 2 is just a fantastic game and a definite "must own" title for any Game Boy owner who is a fan of vertical scrolling spaceship shooters.