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[VGEsoterica]

It's really no surprise that retro game prices are going up. Outside of the recent auctions for sealed NES and Nintendo 64 games (which I swear are just money laundering activities in disguise....2 million for a copy of Mario?!?! Yeah that's gotta be something shady) everything else that used to be relatively cheap has been going up. I mean in the last year my Saturn collection has gone up 2 to 4x in value just sitting on it's shelf.

Cue Cannon Spike. It's an awesome game from Psiyko and Capcom that I owned in high school and played the ever loving shit out of with my friends. Good times, fun game...a real win/win situation. Like 12 years ago I decided I shouldn't have traded it in so I picked a copy up on eBay for something like $50. All good!

Today? Original copies in DECENT condition are selling for $400+...for a game you can beat in under fifteen minutes. I get it's rare but damn...it is just NOT worth that price. It's not even WORTH $100.

Which means that unless you a) are going for a full set or b) bought one forever ago like me...you just won't ever end up owning a copy.

Which got me thinking...what other games are awesome but wholly NOT worth their current asking price? Like I'd love to own an original US copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga but that is never happening lol

 

[VGEsoterica]

if you don't know what Cannon Spike is...works really well on GDEMU...just saying

 

[nush]

(which I swear are just money laundering activities in disguise....2 million for a copy of Mario?!?! Yeah that's gotta be something shady)

No shit!

Exposing FRAUD And DECEPTION In The Retro Video Game Market

www.neogaf.com

 

[KAL2006]

I don't get this complaining about retro games ornhard to get hold of a game. If the Devs don't make it easy to buy a game on the latest system just pirate the damn thing. Emulation has gone so far these days you are not restricted to using your PC, you have emulators on phones, smart TVs, tablets and etc. Even a fridge has a emulator.

 

[VGEsoterica]

No shit!

Exposing FRAUD And DECEPTION In The Retro Video Game Market

www.neogaf.com

I saw that in my queue and haven't watched it yet. Glad someone did something on it though

 

[Shut0wen]

It's really no surprise that retro game prices are going up. Outside of the recent auctions for sealed NES and Nintendo 64 games (which I swear are just money laundering activities in disguise....2 million for a copy of Mario?!?! Yeah that's gotta be something shady) everything else that used to be relatively cheap has been going up. I mean in the last year my Saturn collection has gone up 2 to 4x in value just sitting on it's shelf.

Cue Cannon Spike. It's an awesome game from Psiyko and Capcom that I owned in high school and played the ever loving shit out of with my friends. Good times, fun game...a real win/win situation. Like 12 years ago I decided I shouldn't have traded it in so I picked a copy up on eBay for something like $50. All good!

Today? Original copies in DECENT condition are selling for $400+...for a game you can beat in under fifteen minutes. I get it's rare but damn...it is just NOT worth that price. It's not even WORTH $100.

Which means that unless you a) are going for a full set or b) bought one forever ago like me...you just won't ever end up owning a copy.

Which got me thinking...what other games are awesome but wholly NOT worth their current asking price? Like I'd love to own an original US copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga but that is never happening lol

One of my all time fav dreamcast games, my dad still has it to this day, i loved playing as megaman bur yeah price of things is mental, i always find the craziest ones are pokemon games, pokemon emerald has sold almost 7 million copys and the only ones you seen on ebay go for £100 and more! Wii games are also seeing a huge increase, especially wii sport which has went uo by £15 out of no where but it came with a wii that sold pver 100 million copys

 

[infinitys_7th]

if you don't know what Cannon Spike is...works really well on GDEMU...just saying

This reminds me of Sin & Punishment for some reason. Probably the shooting+melee slash combo.

 

[VGEsoterica]

One of my all time fav dreamcast games, my dad still has it to this day, i loved playing as megaman bur yeah price of things is mental, i always find the craziest ones are pokemon games, pokemon emerald has sold almost 7 million copys and the only ones you seen on ebay go for £100 and more! Wii games are also seeing a huge increase, especially wii sport which has went uo by £15 out of no where but it came with a wii that sold pver 100 million copys

none of the prices make any sense any more. I had to reinsure my stuff twice in the last year due to the increases in the market

 

[shoplifter]

Please remove this posting as I want to sell my copy of Cannon Spike in the near future.


Seriously though, I agree with you. It's probably not *worth* the money as a game, but IMO the character roster makes it an anomaly that people want. It's solid enough, but nothing special on it's own.

 

[MrA]

One of my all time fav dreamcast games, my dad still has it to this day, i loved playing as megaman bur yeah price of things is mental, i always find the craziest ones are pokemon games, pokemon emerald has sold almost 7 million copys and the only ones you seen on ebay go for £100 and more! Wii games are also seeing a huge increase, especially wii sport which has went uo by £15 out of no where but it came with a wii that sold pver 100 million copys

yeah pokemon is way too much, I actually sold a sealed copy of pokemon black 2 for 500 dollars, yet the game was a million-seller

personally, I don't care how the market goes, as I collect old games because I like them, not due to value, though I have to say if the bubble bursts, it will be fun to see the speculators dumping their stock after driving up the prices (though I doubt the days of dirt-cheap game prices will ever come back, too many people collect games because they actually like them for that to happen again)

 

[SF Kosmo]

Canon Spike is dope but not one of my favorite Psikyo shooters.

It is amazing how many of these old shmups and fighters on DC sell for crazy money. I have a ton of them that are worth $100+. Not Canon Spike, but Mars Matrix, Border Down LE, Gunbird 2, GigaWing 1+2, Project Justice... I'm not even a big collector I'm just a gamer with niche taste for stuff that became rare.

 

[VGEsoterica]

Canon Spike is dope but not one of my favorite Psikyo shooters.

It is amazing how many of these old shmups and fighters on DC sell for crazy money. I have a ton of them that are worth $100+. Not Canon Spike, but Mars Matrix, Border Down LE, Gunbird 2, GigaWing 1+2, Project Justice... I'm not even a big collector I'm just a gamer with niche taste for stuff that became rare.

Psikyo always made unique things though thats for sure

 

[Mr Rawnch]

Super happy I found my copy of Cannon Spike. Despite it having a few scratches -- it still runs like a champ! I agree that the game isn't worth a fraction of the second-hand prices. It's simply silly how many gamers that hated Sega are having this revisionist history of the library. I feel like most of it is trolling to help justify the absurd asking prices. Really, there's nothing stopping Psikyo from asking Capcom to renew the character license to re-release the game for $19.99. Even if they did a Switch physical copy, the game would probably retail for $30.

A long list of games that aren't worth their asking price:

• Radiant Silver Gun - Saturn
• Ibara - PS2
• Gun-Nac - NES
• Trouble Shooter - Genesis
• GaiaSeed - PS1
• Space Megaforce - SNES

Most of these games were poorly advertised, were just 'ok', or low-number productions. The blatant scalping is why I have no problem with quality reproductions.

...and people can see me in the parking lot if they have a problem with it. It kills me how some folks sleep better at night if M2 or Limited Run Games decides to take a two-year development to revitalize a dead franchise that bootleggers can do in a few months.

 

[Mr Rawnch]

Canon Spike is dope but not one of my favorite Psikyo shooters.

It is amazing how many of these old shmups and fighters on DC sell for crazy money. I have a ton of them that are worth $100+. Not Canon Spike, but Mars Matrix, Border Down LE, Gunbird 2, GigaWing 1+2, Project Justice... I'm not even a big collector I'm just a gamer with niche taste for stuff that became rare.

Half of these companies have gone belly up or there's no way to find the developers. Even if you had the former -- it's not uncommon to see how many are missing programming code. What makes developers like M2 so good is they have to piece together multiple emulation sources sometimes for older games.

Are the trademarks and copyrights even valid anymore for some of these old IP's?

 

[Manji Uzuki]

Yes it's a great game but definitely not worth the price, like in most of the retro expensive games. In the end they are expensive only because of the "collectors" value.

If you only want to play it, emulation is totally viable specially now that Dreamcast emulation works really well even with non powerful hardware like the Raspberry Pi.

I like having my old physical games and from time to time I buy some retro stuff if the price is good, but in general the market has gone nuts

 

[StateofMajora]

I’m so glad I’ve mostly finished my retro collection already.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Half of these companies have gone belly up or there's no way to find the developers. Even if you had the former -- it's not uncommon to see how many are missing programming code. What makes developers like M2 so good is they have to piece together multiple emulation sources sometimes for older games.

Are the trademarks and copyrights even valid anymore for some of these old IP's?

Yeah generally when these companies go belly up, the companies roll their IP into a holding company, or a smaller dev. In Psikyo's case, that's Zerodiv. In Compile's case it was Compile Heart, for Westone it was LAT, etc.

Though most of the games I mentioned are just Capcom IP, and obviously Capcom is still around.

Emulation doesn't require any particular source code, but emulation can be a technically demanding method when we get to newer hardware like Dreamcast (especially on a system like Switch that is very CPU limited). It can also limit the sorts of changes and enhancements you can make, or at least complicate them.

Occasionally games do get lost in limbo, usually small games caught up in big mergers to where ownership becomes genuinely unclear. The Neverhood and Skullmonkeys will probably never get a re-release because no one is really sure who owns it and the legal costs to sort it out probably aren't worth it to those companies. But these little Japanese devs aren't usually like that.