Lion Heart
Banned
20 years later and we're back to those prices.
Ayyyyy
Meh, just buy during E3s sale. We have it pretty good.
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A look at the Canadian Toys-R-Us Christmas catalogue for 1995
- Thread starter Phediuk
- Start date
Meh, just buy during E3s sale. We have it pretty good.
Nope. A $50 game in 2000, the year of the PS2's launch, would cost $69 in 2016 dollars. In 2005 dollars, the year the 360 launched, a $50 game is $60 in 2016 dollars. So AAA game prices have remained pretty much the same for over a decade now.
Azure Phoenix
Member
Yeesh, Batman Forever for SNES was almost as expensive as a Mega Drive 2 with a copy of Columns. You can't tell me the cost of making cartridges was that high if you can get a system and old game for the price of a new game.
Seeing this pricing is foreign to me since I never bought a brand new game until the late PS1 era.
Seeing this pricing is foreign to me since I never bought a brand new game until the late PS1 era.
ShooterMcGavin
Member
Edit - Ahh, reading is a special skill. These are Canadian prices.
Theanine3D
Member
Those prices...
I'm glad I was a kid at the time and my parents were the ones footing the bill for all my SNES games. Yikes!
I'm glad I was a kid at the time and my parents were the ones footing the bill for all my SNES games. Yikes!
To Far Away Times
Member
$95 for a video game in 1995.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
A few years later I spent close to $120 after tax for a new copy of Conker's Bad Fur Day N64. I remember thinking, this game better be worth it. It was....beach alone got me $120 worth of play time.
Yeah I remember a local Canadian Tire having a glass case for PS1 games when I was younger.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
No wonder why rentals were so popular back then. Yeesh. And I thought only JRPGs reached those prices. At least w/ a lot of those games they had extra space on the carts for the graphics and sound.
The only other games topping those prices new was the Virtua Fighter cart for Genesis ($100). I can imagine certain cart games costing even more new then, especially if they were imports.
Or was the seller just ripping people off?
I was thinking as such. Honestly feel sorry for those guys. Government's gotta pay for the free health care somehow I guess :/
The only other games topping those prices new was the Virtua Fighter cart for Genesis ($100). I can imagine certain cart games costing even more new then, especially if they were imports.
Why are PS1 and Saturn so damn expensive? Canadian prices? I remember them going for $299 and $399 at launch, respectively, and I don't a single game bundle would push them up that much.
Or was the seller just ripping people off?
I was thinking as such. Honestly feel sorry for those guys. Government's gotta pay for the free health care somehow I guess :/
IceDoesntHelp
Banned
59.99 USD is now 75.32 CDN.
So happy. Cheaper games come back to me.
So happy. Cheaper games come back to me.
You people are terrible. Absolutely terrible. I would never in my youth beat up my parents.
You beat up parents when they're old and need to go to the crooked old folks home, everyone knows that.
Sheesh.
HueyFreeman
Banned
Particularly given that's about 140 dollars adjusted.
SDCowboy
Member
It's weird, I started gaming in the 16bit era and I seriously don't remember the prices being that crazy. I recall most games I bought being around $30-50. Maybe when I was a kid I always just went past the super expensive ones. Who knows. lol
Edit: just noticed that was a Canadian ad. Never mind.
Edit: just noticed that was a Canadian ad. Never mind.
Apologies for dragging things back in time another twenty years, but video game prices have always been expensive, even going back to the dawn of the console era. Here's a page from the 1977 Sears Christmas catalog:
(Larger versions available here: Page 1 plus Page 2 showing off the awesome game screens in full color.)
The Sears branded version of the Atari 2600 was $180, with most games going for $20 - which, in today's currency, would be a bit over $700 for the console and just shy of $80 for the games. (This is in USD, so presumably prices were even more horrific in Canada.) Your $80 got you the hottest AAA games of the era, like Video Olympics (with hot Quadra-Pong action) and Blackjack.
The best thing to come down the pike in ages for game prices was being able to publish games on an optical disc (CD, DVD, Blu-ray) instead of having to add more memory to a cartridge. Let's try not to imagine what Uncharted 4 for the SNES would cost...
FnordChan
(Larger versions available here: Page 1 plus Page 2 showing off the awesome game screens in full color.)
The Sears branded version of the Atari 2600 was $180, with most games going for $20 - which, in today's currency, would be a bit over $700 for the console and just shy of $80 for the games. (This is in USD, so presumably prices were even more horrific in Canada.) Your $80 got you the hottest AAA games of the era, like Video Olympics (with hot Quadra-Pong action) and Blackjack.
The best thing to come down the pike in ages for game prices was being able to publish games on an optical disc (CD, DVD, Blu-ray) instead of having to add more memory to a cartridge. Let's try not to imagine what Uncharted 4 for the SNES would cost...
FnordChan
SchrodingerC
Member
My brother and I did, and it was incredibly frustrating from what I remember. The first level's theme is forever burned into my mind thanks to that damn grappling gun.
Right here:
AFAIK, Sega's licensing fees were lower than Nintendo's, which made the Genesis more attractive to most Western developers (main exceptions: Rare, Lucasarts, Ocean, and Titus.) EA even had a special deal with Sega that allowed them to manufacture their own cartridges, hence their extremely prolific output.
MrCunningham
Member
I don't have to imagine it, I was there. I paid $120.00cad for Chrono Trigger new at retail, and $100.00cad for Super Street Fighter 2 on the SNES.
It was ridiculous that cartridges cost as much as the consoles themselves. $99.00 for that Genesis model II and $79.99 for The Adventures of Batman and Robin. This is the reason why I would buy a lot of my games second hand. At those prices, could you really blame me?
And I think I also gravitated more towards the Genesis than the SNES because Genesis games were on average $10-20cad cheaper than their SNES counterparts (well excluding stuff like Virtua Racing).
Saturn prices look reasonable in comparison (thanks to CDs), except for $500 for the console, which is lol.
Why are the sports games more costly than everything else? At first I thought that they might have been jacking up the price of that NHL game because of Canada.... but the golf game is pricey too. Is it because of he sports licenses?
But this on the other hand...
Wish I could find a more complete version of the Christmas catalogue. I did find this other page from around the same time, though.
$49.99 for NHL 95 on the SNES. EA knew their audiences. The NHL series was huge over here (Everyone I knew with a Genesis or SNES had at least one NHL game).
The Elite
BOSS
I bought a lot of my games from Canadian Tire since it wasn't too far from my house.
MrCunningham
Member
One of the reasons why EA was able to get a better deal because they were granted the rights to manufacture their own cartridges outside of Sega. Which is why almost all of EA's Sega carts looked like this:
EA wasn't the only licensed developer that could do this either. Accolade produced their own Genesis carts too.
Nintendo didn't allow third party publishers to manufacture their own cartridges, everything was channeled through them. This is one of the reasons why Nintendo's prices were just a little bit higher than Sega's.
Some third parties actually did manufacture their own carts for some games on the NES, like Acclaim. I have a few Acclaim games like Bart vs. the World that have "manufactured by Acclaim" stamped into the shell.
Not sure about in the SNES era.
you beat your parents many times?
Firestorm ZERO
Member
Yup. I paid $120 for Chrono Trigger as well back in the days. Also there wasn't any ebgames around that time. I went to various local stores to find it (found it at a K-Mart).
One of the reasons why EA was able to get a better deal because they were granted the rights to manufacture their own cartridges outside of Sega. Which is why almost all of EA's Sega carts looked like this:
EA wasn't the only licensed developer that could do this either. Accolade produced their own Genesis carts too.
Nintendo didn't allow third party publishers to manufacture their own cartridges, everything was channeled through them. This is one of the reasons why Nintendo's prices were just a little bit higher than Sega's.
dont forget that NoA was able to censor games as much as they wanted. hence the fucked up versions of mortal kombat or contra.
oh and there were some shmups where a giant penis is one of the enemies... those were replaced in the west.
I used to LAVISH at a SNES + DKC combo article they add in one of their catalogues. Man, good old times.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Like a fucking minefield for us kids/teens and our parents at that time.
One of the reasons why EA was able to get a better deal because they were granted the rights to manufacture their own cartridges outside of Sega. Which is why almost all of EA's Sega carts looked like this:
EA wasn't the only licensed developer that could do this either. Accolade produced their own Genesis carts too.
Nintendo didn't allow third party publishers to manufacture their own cartridges, everything was channeled through them. This is one of the reasons why Nintendo's prices were just a little bit higher than Sega's.
And it was from fucking blackmail too.
EA, you always been so cheeky.
MrCunningham
Member
Well there definitely were third party manufactured NES games. But because of the debacle around Tengen discovering how to bypass the Nintendo NES10 lockout chip through leaked information, Nintendo tightened their grip around SNES cartridge manufacturing and did not allow any other third party manufacturer to produce SNES cartridges. There was only ever one unlicensed game produced SNES which was Super 3D Noah`s Ark. And that game required a second SNES cartridge to bypass the security lock out.
Thanks to Tengen, Nintendo became tight lipped with their cartridge lockout protocols, and they didn't want the schematics on how it worked to be leaked through a third party manufacturer. Nintendo was hellbent on keeping unlicensed software off of their SNES.
This is a different thing altogether. Nintendo moderated the content of all officially licensed third party games up to 1994. From there they handed over duties to the ERSB.
KyanMehwulfe
Member
$95 CAD what a steal... I remember the top games were sometimes $99.99 at K-Mart lol. Chrono Trigger was, I shit you not, $129.99 pre-ordered at Microplay (kinda a small Canadian EB Games I guess). Not sure why when it was still just $99.99 at Zellers.
But actually, those prices were a big reason why I basically only played RPGs on SNES... If I was going to get a $100 game twice a year for my birthday or Christmas, it sure as heck needed to have a potential 100-200 hours of playtime/replay for me.
I remember first time I saw PS1 games at Costco... $59.99 for Ridge Racer of Toshinden... holy shit, a eureka moment? I can get TWO games for my birthday?! Fuck you Nintendo, Playstation here I come. (Well, in truth it was 100% me following Squaresoft and Final Fantasy VII but the CD price difference was nice.)
But actually, those prices were a big reason why I basically only played RPGs on SNES... If I was going to get a $100 game twice a year for my birthday or Christmas, it sure as heck needed to have a potential 100-200 hours of playtime/replay for me.
I remember first time I saw PS1 games at Costco... $59.99 for Ridge Racer of Toshinden... holy shit, a eureka moment? I can get TWO games for my birthday?! Fuck you Nintendo, Playstation here I come. (Well, in truth it was 100% me following Squaresoft and Final Fantasy VII but the CD price difference was nice.)
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Those prices are nuts!
MrCunningham
Member
Yup. I remember when Nintendo did their 'Players Choice' line up for the SNES and Game Boy:
These were your typical "classics" re-releases. Nintendo sold Players Choice SNES games at prices between $49.99 to $69.99 Canadian, which were considered to be a good deal back them. The Game Boy players choice titles were like $29.99 to $39.99 Canadian, or something.
UltimaWeapon
Member
One of my most standout childhood memories was when my dad lost his job. My dad is a really handy guy when it comes to construction, so his friends paid him to do some renovations until he got back on his feet. He would go to CT to buy materials, and I would go with him and just hang out in the video game section while he bought what he needed. He saved up a bunch of Canadian Tire money to buy me Sonic & Knuckles for Genesis. I was a lucky kid.