On collecting retro games
Unfortunately, I do enjoy video games. Particularly old ones. About 10 years ago when I was in college, I started getting more into actually buying old games and hardware to play instead of just using emulators. I would take my meager college IT helpdesk paychecks to That's Entertainment in beautiful Worcester MA to check the shelves and grab anything I could afford and caught my eye. Mostly it was old fighting games or any multiplayer stuff for the GameCube to play with my roommates. Being on a tight budget made me really have to put thought into what I was buying, and I was able to build a small but quality collection of games.
Fast forward 10 years later to 2024 and the retro game market has exploded due to YouTubers with ulterior motives, price speculators, and every single millennial my age having access to adult money and trying to buy back their childhood. I still enjoy collecting, but as demand and prices have skyrocketed, I buy much less frequently and generally tend to skew more toward cheaper games that really fit my tastes.
To give an example of how crazy prices have become, a friend of mine recently bought a Sega Dreamcast at a convention for around 100 bucks. I bought one on eBay 10 years ago for $25. Games that are extremely common but high in demand are currently asking for ludicrous prices, the two worst offenders I can think of being SILENT HILL 2 and POKEMON anything going for 100 dollars minimum. I personally think we're in a bubble and prices will eventually crash, but that might be a few years out, if at all.
Anyway, on a more positive note I wanted to use this post to show some of my favorite games in my collection and the stories behind them.
WE (REALLY) LOVE KATAMARI
I've always been into weird and offbeat games, Katamari being no exception. I remember seeing the box for WE LOVE KATAMARI on a shelf at Gamestop as a kid and being immediately intrigued. I got it as a Christmas gift that year and played the hell out of it, bringing it over to friends' houses and making them play it too only for most of them to be confused and lose interest after a couple rounds.
Keita Takahashi, the creator and lead artist on the series, was a guest at PAX East 2018, showing off his latest game at the time WATTAM. One evening, he mentioned on Twitter he'd be at the booth the next day signing anything brought to him - the weirder the better. Boring as hell me wanted my childhood copy of Katamari signed, but I was staying in Boston at a friends place and didn't have it with me. I ended up calling my roommate at the time who was exhibiting the next day and described to him what the case looked like over the phone so he could grab it and give it to me. He pulled through and I got my copy sketched on and signed. One of these days I'll frame it but for now, this is probably my most treasured game.
STUFF I GOT IN JAPAN
In the fall of 2023, my friends and I spent an incredible two and a half weeks in Japan. I did want to do some shopping for games, since due to region locking and language barriers, Japanese versions of games are generally much cheaper than American copies for certain titles. Plus there's tons of stuff that never gets localized too. I got some cool games in a couple different cities:
YOKOHAMA
Our first city on the trip was Yokohama, and we did a little shopping at one of the bigger malls our first night there. I forget the name of the hobby shop we stopped in, but I was able to snag some PS1 games: the iconic R4: RIDGE RACER TYPE 4, I.Q. FINAL (the sequel to the underrated INTELLIGENT QUBE that never got a US release), and OMEGA BOOST - a shmup from the developers of GRAN TURISMO. I also grabbed SUPER DONKEY KONG GB for my shiny new Analogue Pocket that had arrived a day after I left on my trip and was waiting for me 5000 miles away. Also that day, we had stopped at a Yodobashi Camera and I picked up a copy of DODONPACHI RESURRECTION for the Switch. The copy on display was just the game, but when I brought it to the register to check out, it was actually for a premium version that came with a soundtrack and clear file which was very cool.
NAGANO
Generally, the prices on games are better the farther away you are from Tokyo. That proved to be extremely true when I did some shopping in Nagano. I had plans to meet a friend who lives there for dinner after she was done with work, so I had an afternoon to kill in the city. My first stop was HardOff, a popular chain of junk stores, and dug through shelves and boxes of old games. I ended up buying the most here, as the majority of their collection was 500 yen or less. Highlights include PARAPARA PARADISE, a dance game similar to DDR but with your hands and lots of Y2K flair, the original TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT for 100 yen(!!!), and both SHENMUE and the preview disc WHAT'S SHENMUE for about 900 yen together (!!!!!!!).
Down the road was BookOff, so I made a quick stop in there as well. The selection was a lot smaller, but arguably a lot better. I grabbed BEATMANIA IIDX 9TH STYLE, STREET FIGHTER ZERO 3 (the Japanese version has a bunch of features the American version does not) and the one I was most excited to play, KING'S FIELD III (think a PS1 predecessor to Dark Souls). At this point, my suitcase was starting to really fill up so I had to slow down haha.
AKIHABARA, TOKYO
Buying retro games in Tokyo, particularly Akihabara, is not a fun time. The really popular stores like Super Potato are overrun and picked clean by tourists, and the vast majority of stores are going by American eBay pricing these days which is generally not worth it! We had been spending a lot of time in Akihabara visiting arcades, and on one of our last days I popped into a couple of the larger game stores out of curiosity. The retro sections were barren and what was left either I had zero interest in or was simply too expensive. What ended up being worth it though was PS4 games. They had a large selection with a lot of JP exclusive games that were reasonably priced! I left with two - A CERTAIN MAGICAL VIRTUAL-ON, the latest in a series Sega refuses to localize because they hate me specifically, and probably my favorite buy from the whole trip: the M2 Shottriggers port of KYUKYOKU TIGER HELI. I'm a big shmup enjoyer and was hoping to find physical discs of any of the Shottriggers series and found this one on the last day of our trip. I had never heard of it before but it quickly became one of my favorite shmups and will always have a fun memory of my trip to Japan every time I play it.
MORE SHMUPS?
As previously mentioned I LOVE shoot-em-up games, otherwise known as shmups, stgs or bullet hell games depending on who you ask. Am I good at them? Hell no. Are they fun to play? Absolutely. These types of games are pretty niche and generally for enthusiasts, which means they are not very popular in the States. Older shmups (like my personal favorite G DARIUS) can cost a pretty penny, but thankfully many classic shmups have been being re-released both on Steam and modern consoles.
I like buying physical when I can, and thankfully importing games from Japan is super easy these days thanks to Amazon, so I've amassed a decent shmup collection on both retro and modern consoles. Some of my personal favorites are the DARIUS and RAY'Z collections on PS4, and the newest addition to my library - the collector's editon of DODONPACHI: BLISSFUL DEATH RE:INCARNATION for the PS4 as well.
THE UNIQUE HELL OF NINTENDO GAMES
You may have noticed that in this post I think I've named one Nintendo game so far. Nintendo games are generally the most sought after by collectors for some reason. Nostalgia? Most likely. Nintendo games generally hold their value for the most part and are always in demand. It's a sellers market for sure. But I'm not a huge Nintendo fan to be honest. We were primarily a PlayStation house growing up and apart from a handful of GameCube games I owned and loved like SUPER SMASH BROS. MELEE and PAPER MARIO: THE THOUSAND YEAR DOOR, most of the games I found to be the most memorable came from other systems.
I recently downloaded the GAMEYE app as I've been starting to sell off some of my collection and wanted to see what was actually worth getting rid of. To my surprise, a handful of Nintendo games I own are worth a kind of insane amount of money.
The most valuable video game I own is a complete in-box copy of POKEMON SOULSILVER for the Nintendo DS. I did really enjoy Pokemon as a kid, but by the time I was a teenager I had lost interest and sold off all the games I had and my Game Boy (which as I browse eBay now, I learned was a big mistake). Pokemon started having a resurgence in popularity when I was in high school, so I started buying the games again and soon found myself battling and trading with friends in band class. The DS games were solid for the most part, SOULSILVER being my favorite one. It came with this pedometer accessory that could level your Pokemon passively as you walked, and as a cross country runner in high school, it got a lot of mileage.
GAMEYE prices my copy of SOULSILVER at around 250 dollars, which is kind of insane for a game that sold millions of copies. Other Pokemon games I own for the DS are all over $100. I don't understand how these super popular games that have millions of copies floating around can be that expensive.
The most expensive just-a-case-and-disc-and-manual game I own is CHIBI-ROBO for the GameCube. GAMEYE also prices this around $200 as well. CHIBI-ROBO is a unique game about a tiny robot that does house chores and tries to solve a domestic dispute within the family that bought him. It's also a very okay game. This was a birthday present one year that I held on to for some reason, despite never finishing it. With how easy it is to emulate Nintendo games these days, I'm not sure where the interest lies in paying hundreds of dollars for it. I like to blame YouTubers for this so I'm going to assume its YouTubers.
I don't think buying video games for rarity or value is worth your time or money when emulation is so easy and GOOD nowadays. Nintendo games are the worst offenders of this. I've wanted to rebuy a handful of Game Boy and GameCube games I sold off as a kid but have been put off by the prices every time. I know this seems sacrilegious to say on a blog post about retro game collecting, and everyone has their own notion of value, but I personally cannot see myself spending more than $100 on a single video game. Treating something like a video game as a speculative investment I feel defeats the purpose of having it.
WHERE TO START/WHERE THE GOOD STUFF IS
If you're interested in collecting video games I strongly recommend focusing on PlayStation consoles, specifically the PS1 and PS2. These are my favorite to collect for by far; there's TONS of games out there in every conceivable genre so you're bound to find something you like and most importantly, they're affordable! A lot of the best PS2 games will run you around $20. PS1 can get a little dicier since they're older (and the real niche stuff will set you back a bit) but are still mostly affordable.
Maybe it's because I'm biased but something about the PS1 and PS2 generation is just so charming to me. Back when really unique and different games would actually be released on discs and there was a lot less risk in releasing something wild and crazy.
In terms of actually buying games... eBay is alright. Local retro stores are the way to go for the most part (you can tell if they're marking up pretty quickly). Occasionally you do find deals still at yard sales and flea markets. Most people dealing retro games these days are "I know what I have" type sellers so just be careful you aren't getting too overpriced. Last time I visited the MIT SwapFest I asked a vendor about a copy of DAYTONA USA 2001 for Dreamcast and when I saw him pulling up sold eBay listings on his phone I booked it. LMAO
Happy hunting! I love to see what retro games people are into so definitely let me know if you find anything cool out in the wild.