The Collectors Market

[Dark Edea]

Earthworm Jim 3D has been the king of crazy box lust. $100 offers for a box with a torn flap, heavy wear and sticker damage. It’s not even a game worth getting nostalgic over.

I'll give you 15 bucks and a 20 dollar Nintendo eShop card.

 

[L50LasPak]

Japanese Saturn stuff was really cheap. Guardian Heroes and Burning Rangers were very common and cheap to find.

The Saturn was immensely popular in Japan but infamously bombed in America. Another reason I don't want to let go of my Saturn stuff is how much of a pain in the ass it was to find in the first place.

the original Xbox doesn't even have any hidden gems that haven't had some form of a rerelease aside from specifically Jet Set Radio Future

Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge instantly comes to mind but that's about it. That game never getting a re-release sucks, it looks like the IP is still stuck in limbo for the forseeable future.

 

[Raiken]

The Saturn was immensely popular in Japan but infamously bombed in America. Another reason I don't want to let go of my Saturn stuff is how much of a pain in the ass it was to find in the first place.

Is the saturn not well known for disc rot?

 

[Judge Dredd]

the original Xbox doesn't even have any hidden gems that haven't had some form of a rerelease aside from specifically Jet Set Radio Future

Are you saying Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions, Tau Fang: Fist of the Lotus, Dead or Alive: Xtreme Vollyball, and Unreal Championship weren't gems? I'd have to agree for the two I have played.

Thinking about it, many of the Xbox's classic games that haven't been re-released were best know for their online modes, and the servers have long since shut down and wouldn't hold up today. Mech Assault springs to mind.

Hey now, OG Xbox games were shooting up last I checked. Granted, that was over a year ago and its possible that Gamepass and online re-releases (that aren't even 40 dollar remasters!) killed that surge.

Wouldn't surprise me. When making some posts I went looking at prices to post them, only to find some of them have either plummeted in price, or were never that expensive to begin with. Guardian Heroes and the Nights games are sub £100, though Burning Rangers and Panzer Dragoon Saga are still well into triple digits.

Conker: Live & Reloaded is nice too.

Did that not get re-released in Rare Replay?

 

[TaimuRadiu]

Rarest thing I own is a Saturn Floppy Disk Drive. They usually go for $300-$500 even on Yahoo Japan because you need the power supply and the floppy disk operator software to use it. Well, some hacker made a thing called "PseudoSaturn," which runs from the Saturn cart port via a flashed Action Replay and enables running backups, provided you do the swap trick exactly once to flash it.

I got mine for $30 because it had no power supply and no operating software, and there's homebrew software for it. The power plug? Takes a Model 2 SEGA Genesis mains adapter, which you can get pretty much anywhere.

Better than losing my saves due to the watch battery in the Saturn dying.

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

Did that not get re-released in Rare Replay?

Rare Replay has the original Conker's Bad Fur Day.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Rare Replay has the original Conker's Bad Fur Day.

Did they at least rework the shooting controls to use dual analogs?

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

Did they at least rework the shooting controls to use dual analogs?

lol no

 

[whatever I feel like]

Are you saying Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions, Tau Fang: Fist of the Lotus, Dead or Alive: Xtreme Vollyball, and Unreal Championship weren't gems? I'd have to agree for the two I have played.Wouldn't surprise me. When making some posts I went looking at prices to post them, only to find some of them have either plummeted in price, or were never that expensive to begin with. Guardian Heroes and the Nights games are sub £100, though Burning Rangers and Panzer Dragoon Saga are still well into triple digits.

Just checked pricecharting.... Guardian Heroes had a long slide where it lost 40 percent of its value over the course of 2017, then held steady at 60-70 dollars for two years. It got a bounce with Covid, like everything else, and is now returning to normal, like everything else.

Nights is a little bumpier but had a similar tale, peaking at around thirty dollars in 2016/early 2017, then having a slower, steadier decline to around 16 to 17 in early 2020. Then Covid hit but its already declined back down to 20.

Burning Rangers has a generally similar trajectory to GH, just for three or more times the price.

For what its worth, I remember Christmas season 2016 being the end of SNES prices going upwards too. They then had a decline, but only a very slight one, and had held steady there all the way up until Covid. Its people aging out of the hobby, being priced out of it or saying fuck it and going the flash cart/emulator route. Now Gamecube and Wii on the other hand, up and up and up.

Important Warning: For Nights especially, that price is getting low enough that the fact that pc does not count shipping prices is going to start having a significant effect on whether it actually underestimates game prices. Those people buying Nights for 16 were almost certainly paying 20 or more when you factor in having it mailed to them.

 

[Gingervitis]

After how Wii only sold due to wii sports and the wii-u, that was 3 lackluster consoles in a row that never regained the glory that the n64 enjoyed.

The numbers disagree

 

[whatever I feel like]

Oh boy, the Wii debate again.

People should just agree that the Wii sold incredibly well, that it had loads of terrible shovelware, that Nintendo did not increase first party output on it, despite making lots of money, that Nintendo targeted their first party games at the casual audience, dumbing them down (Sakurai, at least, has admitted this with Smash) and that the last three/four years of the Wii's life had a relatively dire release schedule.

You are both right. The Wii sold well and was unsatisfying to "hardcore fans"/ the "core audience"/"Nintendo loyalists"/AAA gamers.

 

[Judge Dredd]

And to add to that. The Wii sold well, but the games didn't. Look at the Wii's heavy hitters and it's either first party Nintendo, or gimmick crap for the casuals. Looking at the wikipedia page of best selling Wii games, the top selling games that isn't either of those things are Resident Evil 4 (a GameCube port), Epic Mickey (debatable), and Monster Hunter.

This is shown by the collectors, with the most expensive games being things like the Wii exercise bike. Unlike other consoles, I don't think I've seen a Wii collector try and say the more expensive games are hidden gems. It's always "to finish the collection". In that way it's refreshingly honest.

Takes a Model 2 SEGA Genesis mains adapter, which you can get pretty much anywhere.

It's weird how the MegaDrive/Genesis was widely compatible with everything from Atari's to Plug and Play TV games. It's like the Swiss army knife of controllers/power cables.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Just to compare, for those who have forgotten. The Wii came out in late 2006 and trundled on until 2012. They did release similar amounts of games in both half's of the system's life but, unfortunately for the second half, a lot of that was misfires like Other M, Skyward Sword, NSMB, etc. Look at the ratio of hits to misses in the lists I am providing below. Not to editorialize too much, but that second half has a whole lot of misses and things like the rainfall games, which just leave fans feeling cold due to Nintendo's poor treatment of them.


Nintendo's releases in 06 to 08 minus Gamecube ports, minigames, trash and games that did not come to NA:

Animal Crossing
Battalion Wars II
Endless Ocean
Excite Truck
Mario Kart
Mario Strikers
Mario Sluggers
Metroid Prime 3
Pokemon Battle Rev
Galaxy 1
Super Paper Mario
Brawl

And here are the 09, 10, 11 and 12 games:

DKCR
Endless Ocean 2
Excitebots
Kirby Epic Yarn
Kirby RTD
Skyward Sword
Other M
New Super Mario Bros.
Punch Out!!
Galaxy 2
Rhythm Heaven
Sin and Punishment
Pandora's Tower (in 2013, long after the Wii was dead, being published by XSeed)
Last Story
Xenoblade


Or, to put it in a more extreme fashion, in the two years leading up to the Wii U's launch, Nintendo published the following in NA:

Skyward Sword (makes the cutoff by two days)
Fortune Street (minigames)
Rhythm Heaven Fever
PokePark 2 (bad game, minigames)
Mario Party 9 (bad game, minigames)
Xenoblade Chronicles
Pikmin 2 (GCN rerelease)
The Last Story
Kirby Collection (rereleases)

Just to compare, Sony's 2020 first party lineup runs laps around that. TLOU II and Ghosts released within a month of each other.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Just to compare, Sony's 2020 first party lineup runs laps around that. TLOU II and Ghosts released within a month of each other.

This is kind of why Nintendo's reputation went to shit after the n64. They had no Rareware to supplement their first party releases like they had with the NES(yes Rare made games for the NES under a different name), SNES, and n64. Basically what Sony is doing with it's game studios is what Nintendo used to do for their first three consoles. Nintendo has not gotten a major studio under it's belt in a long long ass time.

People will cite stuff for e-shop digital titles but those are not at the forefront of the system and don't compare to studios like Insomniac in terms of size and output. Microsoft has purchased more studios than nintendo at this point with bethesda's whole group being the most recent.

Oh but we're getting a theme park which is just as good as a gorillion major game releases because it spreads awareness of the switch and the gospel of Miyamoto and you can also buy plushies.

 

[whatever I feel like]

This is kind of why Nintendo's reputation went to shit after the n64. They had no Rareware to supplement their first party releases like they had with the NES(yes Rare made games for the NES under a different name), SNES, and n64. Basically what Sony is doing with it's game studios is what Nintendo used to do for their first three consoles. Nintendo has not gotten a major studio under it's belt in a long long ass time.

People will cite stuff for e-shop digital titles but those are not at the forefront of the system and don't compare to studios like Insomniac in terms of size and output. Microsoft has purchased more studios than nintendo at this point.

Well, Monolith Soft (who ARE on my list with Xeno) and Next Level (also in there with Punchout!!) came in at around that time. And something like half of Nintendo's output is second and third party collabs. I'm sure we could have a long, engaging talk on Nintendo posting internal "bounties" on game types, on why they do not want to buy and add additional internal studios, on them not releasing enough titles, their stance towards violence/shooters, etc. But thats sort of off topic. Suffice it to say that when they do release lots of titles, such as 2017/18, fans end up the winners, but Nintendo is hesitant to be like that all the time.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Well, Monolith Soft (who ARE on my list with Xeno) and Next Level (also in there with Punchout!!) came in at around that time. And something like half of Nintendo's output is second and third party collabs. I'm sure we could have a long, engaging talk on Nintendo posting internal "bounties" on game types, on why they do not want to buy and add additional internal studios, on them not releasing enough titles, their stance towards violence/shooters, etc. But thats sort of off topic. Suffice it to say that when they do release lots of titles, such as 2017/18, fans end up the winners, but Nintendo is hesitant to be like that all the time.

Monolithsoft was a small studio when it was original made and later purchased. But Xenoblade also isn't heavily pushed by Nintendo itself. They've sidelined it when in reality it should be the same level like Fire Emblem or Zelda.

They seem real hesitant to go full on into promoting Monolithsoft's games. Even the Xenoblade re-release was ignored.

The CE books for both Xenoblade 1 remaster and Xenoblade 2 were really well done. Xenoblade X's art book Art of Mira is worth tracking down and that's one of the best Game art books to exist and is on par with Bioshock 2's art book.

 

[whatever I feel like]

I dunno, they've pumped out XB 2, Torna and the remaster in only 4 years, plus X for Wii U and the original in the Switch's later years. Thats three games, a remake and an expansion in ten years, there aren't many other Nintendo franchises that can claim that. Plus the team has been helping out on other things. That might not be Rare's N64 output but no one puts out games at that pace anymore, its just not possible.

Nintendo actually does a lot of third party collabs, right now they have projects/series going on with Platinum (Bayonetta), synSophia (Style Savvy), Jupiter (Picross), Kuju (Art Academy), Koei Tecmo (Warriors), Sega (those shitty Olympics games, which Sega self-publish but Nintendo gets a cut from), Arika (Dr. Mario), Spike Chunsoft (Mystery Dungeon), Square (various collabs and IP shares), alphadream (now bankrupt), Bandai Namco (Snap currently, but also lots of other stuff), Ubisoft (same as Bandai) and Genius Sonority (extremely shit Pokemon spinoffs). They also have groups which are technically third party, even if they only work on Nintendo projects, like HAL, Next Level, Intelligent Systems, Camelot, Grezzo, Sora, Gamefreak, Creatures, Ambrella, etc.

Its a deliberate choice by Nintendo not to absorb those companies, though it looks like they've made an effort to at least get them all as physically close to Nintendo HQ in Kyoto as possible. I'm not sure if that is for liability issues (have fun with your bankruptcy, alphadream, thanks for taking on all of the risk with those games,) or to keep quality higher or what but Nintendo is generally speaking the size it wants to be.


Ugh, its been four months.... time to update my big autism chart on which publishers own which studios and what they are working on.

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

I miss when Genius Sonority was good. Turning the vast majority of spin-offs into mobile games just further cemented the decline of Pokémon.

 

[Pissmaster]

Did they at least rework the shooting controls to use dual analogs?

All the N64 games on Rare Replay are either glorified roms or the Xbox 360 remasters

And it’s confusing that they didn’t include Conker L&R, considering they included Grabbed by the Ghoulies. I guess they didn’t wanna bother taking out Conker’s online stuff. It’s even one of those few original games that works on Xbox One

 

[L50LasPak]

Is the saturn not well known for disc rot?

Of the many, many issues I've had with mine, that is thankfully not one of them. I haven't even heard of that actually.

Closest thing I can think of is that there's an outer ring engraved into the edge of every Saturn disc that is a primitive form of copy protection for the CDs. If that ring got scratched up enough the console would assume the disc was pirated, but I think that was pretty rare.