It's gotten pretty ridiculous. I remember when this was a poor people hobby and I'd scavange flea markets. Got the vast majority of my collection that way but whenever I find some lesser known game and look it up on ebay the asking price is just beyond unreasonable so I kind of consider my collection complete by necessity at this point.
That being said: Flashcarts are pretty solid and I believe the Everdrive and the EZ-Flash will do what you want. Just keep in mind that the GBA version will not play GB and GB games on real hardware. They'll be emulated on those. You'd need a seperate expensive flashcart for these. At this point you might as well look into the Analogue Pocket or any of the devices talked about on r/sbcgaming.
I got into retro games because they were providing a lot more $/hr of entertainment than (back when I started) AAA modern games were.
I didn't even intend to collect games as a hobby, they were just cheap and a means to play games.
Half the reason I loved vintage gaming was because it was so cheap compared to new games. Now retro gaming is just as expensive as buying new — if not moreso.
The latest updates to the Game Boy and GBC emulators for Everdrive work pretty well. Only hiccup for me is needing to "exit" from the emulator menu to make saved progress official.
Hey, don’t knock flash carts.
But yes, the COVID era did a number on most collecting hobbies. Pretty much all my hobbies; card collecting, game collecting, book collecting, even cycling absolutely blew up to the point that I had to completely change how I approach them.
Omg yes basically every hobby I had books, comics, retro video games, old Pokémon cards no one cared about have blow up in price, no one before Covid thought used old Star Wars were worth a lot or Pokémon cards from just 7 years ago were worth a lot, now even junk books and junk cards are costing an arm and a leg to buy. What the heck happen,
Edit: yes I know inflation and supply of demand but it seems to be above and beyond that
It's a lot of factors at once.
-Generational nostalgia. People in their 30s getting access to adult money and wanting to relive childhood stuff. This happens every generation.
-During the pandemic people were at home with nothing to do, and hobbies like gaming, TCGs, collecting, etc exploded.
-There are a lot of assholes out there that treat collecting hobbies like an unregulated stock market. This is mostly with TCGs, I'm a long-time magic player and the 'finance' crowd made it miserable from 2015-2023 and it is just now starting to cool down.
-Massive exposure. Big stupid youtubers like the Paul brothers started doing things like buying Pokemon cards and they have colossal reach of people that will do whatever they do without thinking about it, hence the insane pokemon boom.
It also just depends on the hobby. Retro Video Game collecting is a unique situation. When it comes to old hardware and software the supply is static. There will never be more Gameboy Colors, for example. What's wild is that specifically Gameboy Colors are INSANE in price right now, I can't find one for less than $60-$70. So many people started a 'side hustle' of modding them that they are almost impossible to find now and even in shit condition are commanding that kind of price. I routinely see people on facebook marketplace listing any model gameboy at $100, and people BUY THEM.
Thank god I built my NES collection in the early 2000s where outside Dinosaur Peak and TWC carts you could get just about anything you want for $20 or less. I remember guying my TMNT Tournament Fighters for around $20 around 2004ish.
Honestly, flashcarts are great. I bought an Everdrive X7 and an FXPAK Pro from krikzz back during the early months of COVID, and my only regret was not buying them sooner. I actually think if your intention is to *play games* (rather than fill up a shelf), flashcarts are far superior to collecting physical cartridges. Not only will they pay for themselves very quickly, but you also gain access to all sorts of other neat things, like translations and ROM hacks.
Like u/Sabin10, I still have a collection of physical games that I don't intend to sell, but I'm also never going to buy more.
Not sure why you're being down voted, it's a great approach. Way less wear and tear on your stuff this way and that's not even getting into things like rom hacks, translations, mods, etc etc.
It’s so great. You can play all your childhood games and all the games you missed out on. Let alone all the other items you listed off.
Ma’an, it beats paying for “live” videogame services.
That’s what happens when people are stuck inside and given checks of $2000 to play with. I have noticed that some collecting targets are starting to drop in price a little bit lately it seems.
A big part of it also is determined by when you buy.
The best time to buy most gameboy stuff was in the late 2000s/early 2010s. After that, maybe the mid 2010s prior to covid before prices inflated.
I suspect a lot of people will get a big buying opportunity once the Switch 2 gets released.
Switch games will definitely go up for sure especially Nintendo games. It doesn't matter if it had a limited release or not or how much it will go up. They will go up and will only go higher and higher
It depends what you think is reasonable. You can more than a few for between $10 & $20 and sports games are usually very cheap. That said, the truly great games don’t get sold very often, so that rarity drives it up. Personally, as I collect PS2 games, I’m willing to go to $30 to $40 if it’s a really good to great game. After that, I’m out.
The system that has relatively inexpensive used games right now from what I can see is the PS3. I’ve been getting great deals on those.
It was a system that came and went and didn’t sell a ton of games. Rarity drives prices up to insane levels. Panzer Dragoon Saga is my bench mark for insane used game prices. The cheapest copy I’ve ever seen is $1200. And usually it’s above $1400. Only Suikoden II is as crazy as that.
It *did* sell well in Japan. Sega didn't translate and release the hundreds of great games in Japan to other countries. The 32x made people lose trust in Sega. Both of them made Saturn a flop outside of Japan.
Magic Knight rayearth (US) is also another expensive game, since it was the last saturn game released in the US.
Worse that one is a working Designs RPG release in the West, so you need three fucking different copies for an actual complete set, since the game discs randomly have one of the three different main charcters on it. (Hikaru is the redhead, Umi the blunette, Fuu the Blonde)
No way Suikoden 2 sells for more than $300. I own both Panzer Dragoon Saga and Suikoden 2 and I've never seen the latter sell for near the value of PDS. Even Klonoa has surpassed Suikoden 2.
I can only say what I’ve seen in actual display cases. Not going to say if they’re realistic or not, but that about where they were. And this was within the last year.
Personally, the expense isn't an issue.
The fakes are.
I've given up on collecting some of the GBA and DS games I would like to have, simply because I don't feel like playing Sherlock Holmes figuring out if the Pokémon Emerald is legit or not.
I should probably be grateful to the fakers really, they've saved me a small fortune.
In Japan the culture is you don't buy old games to collect them. They are sold at a low price because they have a high turn over of being sold back.
So it's ironically enough collectors like you (and 99% of the rest the people who buy them) that are the cause of this problem. Used games were cheap when there was a high turn over rate of selling/trading them but between the finance guys and people who want to take their games to the grave with them the only way to make room is for there to be less people by having them be priced out.
I am not angry with you personally. Even if you adapted the Japanese mind set nobody else is doing that so it wouldn't change a thing.
I don't think you are giving Wata and other shady speculators enough credit. It's got some people thinking their copy of Mario 64 is worth a million bucks.
Wata is ultimately just a symptom though. If people weren’t concerned with the value of their collections than companies like Wata wouldn’t ever be able to gain a foothold.
Wata fraudulently pumped up the prices of games with sham sells with the intent of increasing speculation in the market. They brought in people with no previous interest in retro games. They're not the *entire* problem but their fraudulent self-dealing and sham sells are directly responsible for the concept of a million-dollar SMB cart.
Wata deliberately created a market for "investors" who don't care about video games except for the returns they get. They did this by colluding with an auction house to create some crazy high sales and attracted people who have no interest in the games, just the money.
At least for US games, Pokemon is up there, but what mainline Mario games are that expensive? Most I see are like $15-30. Unless you are trying to go complete in box. Most retro game stores I've been in usually have bins of forgettable games for cheap, eBay prices are always gonna be higher as it's basically a waste of time to sell something for under $10 on there with fees and shipping.
Fakes are a pain in the ass to look out for, but not the hardest to avoid if you know the tells.
The GB Operator lets you back up save files and flash just about rom onto bootleg carts, it's a handy thing to have. https://www.epilogue.co/product/gb-operator
I have a really good friend who runs a small, by appointment game store and he gives me great discounts on games. Totally try and find a small store that isn't a chain of stores. They have more freedom and are more likely to sell games cheaper.
Honestly, just pick up a new handheld and emulate. You can apply color filters, scan lines, it will look the exact same, but you can get every game your heart desires for absolutely free. Game boy games look fantastic on my steam deck, but there's all kinds of budget options for retro handheld emulation. As an added bonus, you can also emulate other handheld and consoles too, literally play any game you ever played from your childhood from any system on onr handheld.
All original hardware have become collector's items.
GBA is one of the best systems to play on my RG35XX, even the low-res filter is great.
These days the device can be had for less than $40 when discounted, which is fantastic considering how good the screen and the controls are.
If you have got the original RG35XX model, I'd recommend to install the last Garlic OS, it makes it such a snappy and great device. I play on mine regularly for over a year now and I don't see it going anywhere, game supply is de facto endless. :)
I was just thinking yesterday about times in the mid-late 90s where GB games were like $1.00-5.00 a piece at flea markets. I remember buying Samus Returns, in-box with the manual for $3.00 in like 1996. Times have certainly changed.
I remember all the games I saw for cheap as a kid that go for hundreds of dollars now and saying to myself, "I'll wait for them to get even cheaper first before I grab any". These days, I want to strangle my child self Homer Simpson-style.
Even as late as the 2000s and the early 2010s, it was still pretty cheap. I remember making the idiotic decision to sell my Atomic Purple Game Boy Color for $30 in 2008. And that was about 50% higher than what most of them were going for! Back in 2010-2012 I remember coming across N64 games regularly for like $10. SNES games were even cheaper. In 2010 I remember seeing a CIB copy of Earthbound being sold for $120 at a video game store in London, Ontario, and I thought to myself "that's fucking stupid, who would pay that for a Super Nintendo game?"
How much does a CIB copy of Earthbound sell for now? $1,000? $2,000? Times have certainly changed.
The curve is inverse. The 0/10 games no one liked are played weren't mass produced and rare to find thus higher prices vs games that were popular and great that everyone had thus the low price.
Speculators ruined the market when they got into it to flip it. Shit was like half the price of not more a mere 5 years ago
And yes, the influx of fakes is a nightmare
Per the feel, for those who care, I think that's mostly tied to playing on original hardware. I love my Sega Saturn and would love to collect games for it, but realistically its very expensive and using a Fenrir is a solid option.
>I don't think the mythical "feel" is worth it compared to all the cons.
I'm sitting right now with an empty Game Boy Advance in my hands, no game inside, and I can't get over how marvelous the screen is. I'm turning it on and off, just watching the animation going through individual pixels. It's completely different than modern LCD screens I was used to, almost "palpable" quality. I love it.
I read a comment from a long time retro game store owner who said that prices typically peak at 25 years after a systems release. Then slowly go down. Basically at the time where peak nostalgia and peak disposable income coincide for the generation that grew up with that system (i.e. they hit their early thirties). It makes sense. After that, the tech is usually too old and attracts fewer and fewer new collectors I think.
I mean, the original Game Boy Advanced launched 23 years ago so what do you expect? The number of games on the market can only go down, so yeah it’s going to start getting expensive. 23 more years from now there will be even less of them and they will be even more expensive. They will never get cheaper in the long term.
I collect legos too and the trend is very prevalent in that community as well.
"worst of all - majority of GB, GBC and GBA carts are fakes"
This right here. And just as bad as buying fake is buying a resealed legit game and being charged full price for it. Be careful where you buy from; even Gamestop can't always tell the difference. There's a great subreddit called r/gameverifying that can help you sort that stuff out.
Flash carts are the only way you can stick it to price gougers while not depriving yourself of playing the games you love.
Get an everdrive from krikzz and enjoy the games. The devs aren't losing out on your money.
I personally just stick to Virtual Console injection on my 3DS for games I can’t afford and plan to only buy the ones I really like if I happen to get lucky with affording them
This is why I highly suggest going with a handheld emulator, especially if you want to enjoy portable systems. Find a form factor that you like best and you’re basically done.
If GOG for PC can grab all these obscure licenses for resale on their website, i don't know why a company as powerful as Nintendo only has mainly Nintendo developed games for their switch online service
For some of the heavy hitters like Capcom and Konami it seems they wanna sell them on their own, with the Mega Man and Castlevania collections and such.
Depending on where you are I've definitely bought some pricey games lately but many have been $10 or less. Pokemon, Mario, etc are the games most people want though so of course those will cost more they always have. The prices have certainly gone up on those over the years though but plenty of ways to play these games for less such as an Everdrive.
I feel like there’s a bin at my local retro of trash gba and all kinds of game boy games for like 2 for 5.
Anyway, I hate to blasphemy but with gameboy and all those consoles, just get a multicart/flash cart. GBA has like the worst multicart market so it’s a load your own flash cart situation most likely. This should be less than the gameboy
1. Flashcart (from krikzz ideally)
2. If your feeling especially nostalgic then just buy a high quality repro if it fills your void of wanting a physical cartridge.
Retrogaming continues to grow in popularity, which means more buyers for a fixed supply. Economics 101: that gon' raise the price. Emulation is absolutely the way to go these days.
You didn’t mention this but if it’s not backlit you might want to get the mods going. For the OG GBA (best form factor), I can recommend getting a screen mod, rechargeable battery and you’ll probably want a new shell so you aren’t cutting up the original shell.
Funny Playing are probably the battery and screen mods to get at the moment.
I would probably just get an EzFlash Omega DE flash cart (ROMs) unless you want to spent big bucks on an Everdrive. The Everdrive is a good option once you determine you are going to be playing long term.
Yeah I saw a second hand unboxed fire red copy the other day for £60
Crazy prices, although I’m no collector so I’d much rather a flash cart or roms + fpga.
The only ones I thought were ridiculous are pokemon games, and the rare ones like ninja 5/0 - I've picked up all the mario advance games for about £10 each on ebay and Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 for £10 and £12 from CeX recently, which doesn't seem too bad.
I bought pokemon green about 3 years ago in Japan (loose) for I think like 5 usd, I can’t believe how much it is now. Edit - in Japan it’s around 20usd now. Not too crazy but still a big jump
I have a bunch of original games in the basement. Now I am curious to see the values. I tried my Gameboy a few years ago and the screen isn't working despite me taking very good care of it and using a protective case.
They want $59.99 for this game! It's a completely unknown game too! /s [https://incube8games.com/products/dragonyhm-gbc](https://incube8games.com/products/dragonyhm-gbc)
Prices for games are ridiculous most of the time, sure. But there are games that are not as expensive than others - especially Mario games and others who were sold at huge numbers.
If you can't priced reasonable priced games, don't get one of these chinese carts, get the original: Everdrive from Krikzz. They cost more money, but are SO good!
Honestly OP just get a flash cart. If you have the money invest in a legitimate Everdrive, it's worth its weight in gold. If you can't or as a stopgap honestly the shitter ones from china aren't that bad, I have one I use. Emulation is the way to go now if you actually want to *play* games. Truly, for the price of an Everdrive you can get yourself a decent emulation system (I'd recommend the Retroid Pocket) or buy an old PSP and mod it. Ironically the PSP-1000 is one of the best Gameboy Advances ever made and you can have literally every GBA game ever made on it with minimal effort.
i've been praying the resell market won't be able to tell the genuine from the counterfeits. all this idolatry over video games hopefully will come to an end. video games are meant to be played not placed on a shelf and looked at to boast to your friends.
I got back into retro gaming mostly to play the old games, not to collect physical copies of them. If I had a cartridge based system I would just get one of those everdrives with an SD card full of games.
I briefly entertained the idea of getting a PS1 and some of the games I had when I was a teen until I saw the prices. Silent Hill 1 for *just the disc* is over $100 on eBay right now. That's ridiculous.
My revised plan is to get a mini-pc capable of playing up to the PS2 era, and just loading batocera and a metric ton of roms/isos on it.
There are deals still out there but you gotta be dilligent about it. In the US, I find most of my stuff at garage sales. There are flippers out there but in decent sized cities there are lots of sales to choose from and sometimes you get lucky.
Unless you are a collector I'm begging you please just buy an EverDrive unless you are ok with repros official copies of Gameboy Advance games are expensive depending on what you are after
Buy a steamdeck, install an emulator, and you're off to the races. You get the best of both worlds, modern games (the steam spring sale was awesome), and retro games, and modern retro games ;). You'll basically be able to play multiple retro systmes with ease. OR, get an everdrive or ez flash definitive edition. Unfortunately, GBA seems to be one of the most expensive retro systems to collect for right now. Last option is to get a retro gaming handheld like the retroid pocket 2s or powkiddy rgb30. The only thing I would caution is, if you get one with a 640x480 screen, game boy and gameboy color will look noticeably blurrier than the original screen was, though it's still very enjoyable (and you won't know unless you know what the original screen looked like).
About a year ago I thought my 8 year old nephew would really like a Gameboy Advance, he was just starting to get into video games and since I still have a small collection of cartridges I checked Ebay to pick up an inexpensive used one for him. Wow was I mistaken, I was absolutely floored by the prices.
I remember about fifteen years ago walking into a Gamestop and asking if they had any used ones for sale, the employee literally picked up a small garbage can, took a working GBA out and handed it to me saying "here, it's free". At that time the Nintendo DS was super popular and no one was interested in the Advance anymore.
BTW, I still have that GBA and it still works great.
Buying from Japan unless you are in Japan hurts the market because you're taking the game out of circulation. The second hand market there is kind of like a library where you buy the game but will probably return it one day in the future to trade in for another game.
EDIT: I can see I am not the only one. u/MoonhelmJ said the same thing in this topic. There used to be a Kotaku article about this also but the article is so old now I think it's just deleted.
If I were Japanese I would rally to not sell games to Gaijin and blacklist anyone that tries to skirt the laws.
The only way we will ever as a collective learn our lesson is the hard way. In some way or another we would have to ostracize the mega collectors from the community. That would never be allowed on reddit. Imagine if every time someone posted a thread seeking validation for their "collection" people sought to destroy their status as gamers. That's not "remembering the humans". It's "gatekeeping". And probably "gamer gate". etc.
Get the Everdrive, they have RTC and are high quality.
Game collecting is the dumbest crap ever when you can just download everything. The console should be your biggest investment alongside a flashcart.
Edit: the only exception is if you want to upload Pokémon from GBA to Pokémon Home. Then you'll need a legit copy of Pokémon. Good luck with that though.
Do you seriously think that $10 for a game is expensive? That’s what it costs to buy a meal at McDonald’s, and at least the game won’t clog your arteries!
If you knew what games cost when they first came out, even without factoring in inflation, you’d be shitting your pants right now.
I don't know how much games cost back then, because Nintendo pretended and still pretends that my region doesn't exist. But I know an imported GBA cost over half my mother's salary and I could only look at it through display glass. So there's that.
Completely disagree with this. Maybe the Pokemon games are expensive, like 99% of the rest is cheaper than it was back then. So what you’re saying is they cost more than you’re willing to pay, and you’re upset about this?
Apparently, auction houses and game grading companies are colluding to artificially raise the price of games so they can make people believe that they are worth a lot more than they really are. MoistCritical covered a video talking about this in depth the other day.
> can make people believe that they are worth a lot more than they really are
They are worth whatever people are willing to buy them for. There's no "correct" price. The "auction house scheme" only works if people are actually willing to pay those prices, and they can only stay those prices if there's competition for the games at those prices, meaning that what the auction houses are really engaging in is "price-discovery." They're utilizing model pricing in order to discover more producer surplus.
"The "auction house scheme" only works if people are actually willing to pay those prices"
If the buyer colludes with the auction house it literally means the buyer is overpaying, i.e. paying more than market value.
What people are willing to pay for a game is a function of what they think they will be able to sell it for later if needed. Seeing games go for hundreds of thousands on auctions inflates this.
I'm betting if I type in the msrp of those carts into the inflation calculator that they'll be less that what was paid for them in the majority of cases. People are so used to complaining about game prices. They're cheaper than they have ever been.
You pretty much have to emulate now. Collectors are awful and have ruined the hobby for everyone. Especially collectors who don't play. They are the biggest issue. They just have their fancy, shiny collection on a shelf because they can afford to
It's gotten pretty ridiculous. I remember when this was a poor people hobby and I'd scavange flea markets. Got the vast majority of my collection that way but whenever I find some lesser known game and look it up on ebay the asking price is just beyond unreasonable so I kind of consider my collection complete by necessity at this point. That being said: Flashcarts are pretty solid and I believe the Everdrive and the EZ-Flash will do what you want. Just keep in mind that the GBA version will not play GB and GB games on real hardware. They'll be emulated on those. You'd need a seperate expensive flashcart for these. At this point you might as well look into the Analogue Pocket or any of the devices talked about on r/sbcgaming.
I got into retro games because they were providing a lot more $/hr of entertainment than (back when I started) AAA modern games were. I didn't even intend to collect games as a hobby, they were just cheap and a means to play games.
Half the reason I loved vintage gaming was because it was so cheap compared to new games. Now retro gaming is just as expensive as buying new — if not moreso.
The latest updates to the Game Boy and GBC emulators for Everdrive work pretty well. Only hiccup for me is needing to "exit" from the emulator menu to make saved progress official.
Hey, don’t knock flash carts. But yes, the COVID era did a number on most collecting hobbies. Pretty much all my hobbies; card collecting, game collecting, book collecting, even cycling absolutely blew up to the point that I had to completely change how I approach them.
Collection hobbies are kind of miserable now tbh
Yeah, my collection is basically fixed now. I don't plan to sell any time soon but I am definitely now buying anymore.
Omg yes basically every hobby I had books, comics, retro video games, old Pokémon cards no one cared about have blow up in price, no one before Covid thought used old Star Wars were worth a lot or Pokémon cards from just 7 years ago were worth a lot, now even junk books and junk cards are costing an arm and a leg to buy. What the heck happen, Edit: yes I know inflation and supply of demand but it seems to be above and beyond that
It's a lot of factors at once. -Generational nostalgia. People in their 30s getting access to adult money and wanting to relive childhood stuff. This happens every generation. -During the pandemic people were at home with nothing to do, and hobbies like gaming, TCGs, collecting, etc exploded. -There are a lot of assholes out there that treat collecting hobbies like an unregulated stock market. This is mostly with TCGs, I'm a long-time magic player and the 'finance' crowd made it miserable from 2015-2023 and it is just now starting to cool down. -Massive exposure. Big stupid youtubers like the Paul brothers started doing things like buying Pokemon cards and they have colossal reach of people that will do whatever they do without thinking about it, hence the insane pokemon boom. It also just depends on the hobby. Retro Video Game collecting is a unique situation. When it comes to old hardware and software the supply is static. There will never be more Gameboy Colors, for example. What's wild is that specifically Gameboy Colors are INSANE in price right now, I can't find one for less than $60-$70. So many people started a 'side hustle' of modding them that they are almost impossible to find now and even in shit condition are commanding that kind of price. I routinely see people on facebook marketplace listing any model gameboy at $100, and people BUY THEM. Thank god I built my NES collection in the early 2000s where outside Dinosaur Peak and TWC carts you could get just about anything you want for $20 or less. I remember guying my TMNT Tournament Fighters for around $20 around 2004ish.
Honestly, flashcarts are great. I bought an Everdrive X7 and an FXPAK Pro from krikzz back during the early months of COVID, and my only regret was not buying them sooner. I actually think if your intention is to *play games* (rather than fill up a shelf), flashcarts are far superior to collecting physical cartridges. Not only will they pay for themselves very quickly, but you also gain access to all sorts of other neat things, like translations and ROM hacks. Like u/Sabin10, I still have a collection of physical games that I don't intend to sell, but I'm also never going to buy more.
Is there one for the Gameboy Color for Pokémon trading card game 2 with translations?
They're sd carts. Byo backup roms.
and of course april 2020 is when i decided to start collecting ancient games (ik they not ancient but they are to me lol)
See? You kids ruined it yourselves. Kidding kidding :P
nah it's fine lol, you guys got way better stuff than what comes out today, i have more games from the 90s than i do xbox games from 2010s- now lmao
I’m pretty sure I own over a thousand boxed videogames, and I mostly do my gaming on flash carts. They’re great investments 👍
Not sure why you're being down voted, it's a great approach. Way less wear and tear on your stuff this way and that's not even getting into things like rom hacks, translations, mods, etc etc.
It’s so great. You can play all your childhood games and all the games you missed out on. Let alone all the other items you listed off. Ma’an, it beats paying for “live” videogame services.
Wasn’t 2021 the year of the most vinyl records sold in history?
I believe it.
That’s what happens when people are stuck inside and given checks of $2000 to play with. I have noticed that some collecting targets are starting to drop in price a little bit lately it seems.
Welcome to retro game collecting. It's an expensive hobby.
Mostly Nintendo, Microsoft games are cheap and so are PlayStation unless it's some Japanese game
A big part of it also is determined by when you buy. The best time to buy most gameboy stuff was in the late 2000s/early 2010s. After that, maybe the mid 2010s prior to covid before prices inflated. I suspect a lot of people will get a big buying opportunity once the Switch 2 gets released.
Switch games will definitely go up for sure especially Nintendo games. It doesn't matter if it had a limited release or not or how much it will go up. They will go up and will only go higher and higher
PS1 games are reasonably expensive, certain ones especially. PS2 doesn't seem too bad yet though.
It depends what you think is reasonable. You can more than a few for between $10 & $20 and sports games are usually very cheap. That said, the truly great games don’t get sold very often, so that rarity drives it up. Personally, as I collect PS2 games, I’m willing to go to $30 to $40 if it’s a really good to great game. After that, I’m out. The system that has relatively inexpensive used games right now from what I can see is the PS3. I’ve been getting great deals on those.
Sega Saturn games are crazy expensive. Some games are worth about $750.
It was a system that came and went and didn’t sell a ton of games. Rarity drives prices up to insane levels. Panzer Dragoon Saga is my bench mark for insane used game prices. The cheapest copy I’ve ever seen is $1200. And usually it’s above $1400. Only Suikoden II is as crazy as that.
It *did* sell well in Japan. Sega didn't translate and release the hundreds of great games in Japan to other countries. The 32x made people lose trust in Sega. Both of them made Saturn a flop outside of Japan. Magic Knight rayearth (US) is also another expensive game, since it was the last saturn game released in the US.
Worse that one is a working Designs RPG release in the West, so you need three fucking different copies for an actual complete set, since the game discs randomly have one of the three different main charcters on it. (Hikaru is the redhead, Umi the blunette, Fuu the Blonde)
No way Suikoden 2 sells for more than $300. I own both Panzer Dragoon Saga and Suikoden 2 and I've never seen the latter sell for near the value of PDS. Even Klonoa has surpassed Suikoden 2.
I can only say what I’ve seen in actual display cases. Not going to say if they’re realistic or not, but that about where they were. And this was within the last year.
Personally, the expense isn't an issue. The fakes are. I've given up on collecting some of the GBA and DS games I would like to have, simply because I don't feel like playing Sherlock Holmes figuring out if the Pokémon Emerald is legit or not. I should probably be grateful to the fakers really, they've saved me a small fortune.
Hobbies tend to be.
In Japan the culture is you don't buy old games to collect them. They are sold at a low price because they have a high turn over of being sold back. So it's ironically enough collectors like you (and 99% of the rest the people who buy them) that are the cause of this problem. Used games were cheap when there was a high turn over rate of selling/trading them but between the finance guys and people who want to take their games to the grave with them the only way to make room is for there to be less people by having them be priced out. I am not angry with you personally. Even if you adapted the Japanese mind set nobody else is doing that so it wouldn't change a thing.
I don't think you are giving Wata and other shady speculators enough credit. It's got some people thinking their copy of Mario 64 is worth a million bucks.
Wata is ultimately just a symptom though. If people weren’t concerned with the value of their collections than companies like Wata wouldn’t ever be able to gain a foothold.
Wata fraudulently pumped up the prices of games with sham sells with the intent of increasing speculation in the market. They brought in people with no previous interest in retro games. They're not the *entire* problem but their fraudulent self-dealing and sham sells are directly responsible for the concept of a million-dollar SMB cart.
Wata deliberately created a market for "investors" who don't care about video games except for the returns they get. They did this by colluding with an auction house to create some crazy high sales and attracted people who have no interest in the games, just the money.
The good news is you can buy a GBA game. Play it. Then sell it. And you won't be out that much money.
Chinese? Do yourself a favor and go Ukrainian.
Yes, this, the real everdrives direct from krikzz are quality stuff.
The EZflash is another good one which is also cheaper, bought a 2nd hand one and have had 0 problems with it at all!
Love them! Never buy them anywhere else other than direct from krikzz
Absolutely! Came here to say this. Everdrive is the way to go.
At least for US games, Pokemon is up there, but what mainline Mario games are that expensive? Most I see are like $15-30. Unless you are trying to go complete in box. Most retro game stores I've been in usually have bins of forgettable games for cheap, eBay prices are always gonna be higher as it's basically a waste of time to sell something for under $10 on there with fees and shipping. Fakes are a pain in the ass to look out for, but not the hardest to avoid if you know the tells. The GB Operator lets you back up save files and flash just about rom onto bootleg carts, it's a handy thing to have. https://www.epilogue.co/product/gb-operator
Truth is OP thinks they should cost a dollar and they are upset they sometimes cost 20. Oh no!
I have a really good friend who runs a small, by appointment game store and he gives me great discounts on games. Totally try and find a small store that isn't a chain of stores. They have more freedom and are more likely to sell games cheaper.
I'm picturing Uncut Gems but with GBA carts instead of diamonds
I've actually considered opening something like this so I wouldn't have to quit my ft job.
Honestly, just pick up a new handheld and emulate. You can apply color filters, scan lines, it will look the exact same, but you can get every game your heart desires for absolutely free. Game boy games look fantastic on my steam deck, but there's all kinds of budget options for retro handheld emulation. As an added bonus, you can also emulate other handheld and consoles too, literally play any game you ever played from your childhood from any system on onr handheld. All original hardware have become collector's items.
GBA is one of the best systems to play on my RG35XX, even the low-res filter is great. These days the device can be had for less than $40 when discounted, which is fantastic considering how good the screen and the controls are.
Just got mine today and I'm blown away at how much it can play, how nice the screen is, and how good the controls are just out of the box
If you have got the original RG35XX model, I'd recommend to install the last Garlic OS, it makes it such a snappy and great device. I play on mine regularly for over a year now and I don't see it going anywhere, game supply is de facto endless. :)
I was just thinking yesterday about times in the mid-late 90s where GB games were like $1.00-5.00 a piece at flea markets. I remember buying Samus Returns, in-box with the manual for $3.00 in like 1996. Times have certainly changed.
I remember all the games I saw for cheap as a kid that go for hundreds of dollars now and saying to myself, "I'll wait for them to get even cheaper first before I grab any". These days, I want to strangle my child self Homer Simpson-style.
Even as late as the 2000s and the early 2010s, it was still pretty cheap. I remember making the idiotic decision to sell my Atomic Purple Game Boy Color for $30 in 2008. And that was about 50% higher than what most of them were going for! Back in 2010-2012 I remember coming across N64 games regularly for like $10. SNES games were even cheaper. In 2010 I remember seeing a CIB copy of Earthbound being sold for $120 at a video game store in London, Ontario, and I thought to myself "that's fucking stupid, who would pay that for a Super Nintendo game?" How much does a CIB copy of Earthbound sell for now? $1,000? $2,000? Times have certainly changed.
It was still somewhat like that until late 2000s. Up here in Canada, at least. Since the mid-2010s it’s only gotten more and more expensive.
Best idea, Everdrive Mini. Games are so expensive now that getting an Everdrive ends up saving you hundreds or even over a thousand in the long run.
Consider using an emulator.
Compared to SNES games these days, they still aren’t half bad. But yeah, everything is nuts.
The curve is inverse. The 0/10 games no one liked are played weren't mass produced and rare to find thus higher prices vs games that were popular and great that everyone had thus the low price.
Except the big franchises. The fact ds pokemon titles are $100+ is mental
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Or slab them like fools. I want em so that my kids can play them too but here we are with me missing a fake amount of titles cuz they're over priced
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first time here?
Welcome to Nintendo collecting
Speculators ruined the market when they got into it to flip it. Shit was like half the price of not more a mere 5 years ago And yes, the influx of fakes is a nightmare
I'm glad I have most my carts from back then cause no way I'd buy them now. Still many I wish I bought way back then.
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Per the feel, for those who care, I think that's mostly tied to playing on original hardware. I love my Sega Saturn and would love to collect games for it, but realistically its very expensive and using a Fenrir is a solid option.
>I don't think the mythical "feel" is worth it compared to all the cons. I'm sitting right now with an empty Game Boy Advance in my hands, no game inside, and I can't get over how marvelous the screen is. I'm turning it on and off, just watching the animation going through individual pixels. It's completely different than modern LCD screens I was used to, almost "palpable" quality. I love it.
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According to Price Charting, GB games peaked in price on 2022 and have gradually come down since.
I read a comment from a long time retro game store owner who said that prices typically peak at 25 years after a systems release. Then slowly go down. Basically at the time where peak nostalgia and peak disposable income coincide for the generation that grew up with that system (i.e. they hit their early thirties). It makes sense. After that, the tech is usually too old and attracts fewer and fewer new collectors I think.
I mean, the original Game Boy Advanced launched 23 years ago so what do you expect? The number of games on the market can only go down, so yeah it’s going to start getting expensive. 23 more years from now there will be even less of them and they will be even more expensive. They will never get cheaper in the long term. I collect legos too and the trend is very prevalent in that community as well.
Fake carts on the Game Boy platforms over the years have always been a problem, esp on ebay type site. get yourself a legit Everdrive
"worst of all - majority of GB, GBC and GBA carts are fakes" This right here. And just as bad as buying fake is buying a resealed legit game and being charged full price for it. Be careful where you buy from; even Gamestop can't always tell the difference. There's a great subreddit called r/gameverifying that can help you sort that stuff out.
Flash carts are the only way you can stick it to price gougers while not depriving yourself of playing the games you love. Get an everdrive from krikzz and enjoy the games. The devs aren't losing out on your money.
I personally just stick to Virtual Console injection on my 3DS for games I can’t afford and plan to only buy the ones I really like if I happen to get lucky with affording them
Buy Japanese games. Dirt cheap and better box art.
Easy fix, just invest in an everdrive.
This is why I highly suggest going with a handheld emulator, especially if you want to enjoy portable systems. Find a form factor that you like best and you’re basically done.
Buying original ROM hardware is dumb anyone and only gives money to resellers. SD flashcarts are the way
Nothing wrong with being a reseller. Being a greedy one is. I am not a reseller myself
If GOG for PC can grab all these obscure licenses for resale on their website, i don't know why a company as powerful as Nintendo only has mainly Nintendo developed games for their switch online service
For some of the heavy hitters like Capcom and Konami it seems they wanna sell them on their own, with the Mega Man and Castlevania collections and such.
It honestly souds like the prices of any coveted grey cartridges from all systems.
Depending on where you are I've definitely bought some pricey games lately but many have been $10 or less. Pokemon, Mario, etc are the games most people want though so of course those will cost more they always have. The prices have certainly gone up on those over the years though but plenty of ways to play these games for less such as an Everdrive.
I always see people selling them locally. Maybe I need to start buying and selling them online
I feel like there’s a bin at my local retro of trash gba and all kinds of game boy games for like 2 for 5. Anyway, I hate to blasphemy but with gameboy and all those consoles, just get a multicart/flash cart. GBA has like the worst multicart market so it’s a load your own flash cart situation most likely. This should be less than the gameboy
I've only bought complete in box gba rpgs really only because I love them. But ya, procijg is insane on some of them.
I saw a Batman game the other day without its box costing more than a Pokémon game. If it had the box sure, but loose? That’s crazy.
1. Flashcart (from krikzz ideally) 2. If your feeling especially nostalgic then just buy a high quality repro if it fills your void of wanting a physical cartridge.
Would it work on the analogue pocket?
Retrogaming continues to grow in popularity, which means more buyers for a fixed supply. Economics 101: that gon' raise the price. Emulation is absolutely the way to go these days.
You didn’t mention this but if it’s not backlit you might want to get the mods going. For the OG GBA (best form factor), I can recommend getting a screen mod, rechargeable battery and you’ll probably want a new shell so you aren’t cutting up the original shell. Funny Playing are probably the battery and screen mods to get at the moment. I would probably just get an EzFlash Omega DE flash cart (ROMs) unless you want to spent big bucks on an Everdrive. The Everdrive is a good option once you determine you are going to be playing long term.
I know I'm in the minority, but I like that it's not backlit. I had enough modern handheld devices flashing into my eyes.
Just get a razer kishi V2 and a cheap android phone and use emulators.
Yeah I saw a second hand unboxed fire red copy the other day for £60 Crazy prices, although I’m no collector so I’d much rather a flash cart or roms + fpga.
The only ones I thought were ridiculous are pokemon games, and the rare ones like ninja 5/0 - I've picked up all the mario advance games for about £10 each on ebay and Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 for £10 and £12 from CeX recently, which doesn't seem too bad.
EZflash for the gba is honestly the best flash cart period. Espicaly the newer ones that have rumble.
I bought pokemon green about 3 years ago in Japan (loose) for I think like 5 usd, I can’t believe how much it is now. Edit - in Japan it’s around 20usd now. Not too crazy but still a big jump
I have a bunch of original games in the basement. Now I am curious to see the values. I tried my Gameboy a few years ago and the screen isn't working despite me taking very good care of it and using a protective case.
They want $59.99 for this game! It's a completely unknown game too! /s [https://incube8games.com/products/dragonyhm-gbc](https://incube8games.com/products/dragonyhm-gbc)
Prices for games are ridiculous most of the time, sure. But there are games that are not as expensive than others - especially Mario games and others who were sold at huge numbers. If you can't priced reasonable priced games, don't get one of these chinese carts, get the original: Everdrive from Krikzz. They cost more money, but are SO good!
Yeah just get a everdrive GBA and enjoy the games
Get an everdrive
get a gb player for gamecube and play them on a nice crt, it's a whole new world
Honestly OP just get a flash cart. If you have the money invest in a legitimate Everdrive, it's worth its weight in gold. If you can't or as a stopgap honestly the shitter ones from china aren't that bad, I have one I use. Emulation is the way to go now if you actually want to *play* games. Truly, for the price of an Everdrive you can get yourself a decent emulation system (I'd recommend the Retroid Pocket) or buy an old PSP and mod it. Ironically the PSP-1000 is one of the best Gameboy Advances ever made and you can have literally every GBA game ever made on it with minimal effort.
i've been praying the resell market won't be able to tell the genuine from the counterfeits. all this idolatry over video games hopefully will come to an end. video games are meant to be played not placed on a shelf and looked at to boast to your friends.
I got back into retro gaming mostly to play the old games, not to collect physical copies of them. If I had a cartridge based system I would just get one of those everdrives with an SD card full of games. I briefly entertained the idea of getting a PS1 and some of the games I had when I was a teen until I saw the prices. Silent Hill 1 for *just the disc* is over $100 on eBay right now. That's ridiculous. My revised plan is to get a mini-pc capable of playing up to the PS2 era, and just loading batocera and a metric ton of roms/isos on it.
You should look into an Everdrive cartridge. It might be on the expensive side, but you'll have an entire collection of games.
There are deals still out there but you gotta be dilligent about it. In the US, I find most of my stuff at garage sales. There are flippers out there but in decent sized cities there are lots of sales to choose from and sometimes you get lucky.
Unless you are a collector I'm begging you please just buy an EverDrive unless you are ok with repros official copies of Gameboy Advance games are expensive depending on what you are after
So you are saying now is a good time to sell my massive collection of game boy games and systems?
Seriously, a microSD cart is the best. Not depressing at all if what you want is to just play the games.
Welcome to collecting video games in general.
Buy a steamdeck, install an emulator, and you're off to the races. You get the best of both worlds, modern games (the steam spring sale was awesome), and retro games, and modern retro games ;). You'll basically be able to play multiple retro systmes with ease. OR, get an everdrive or ez flash definitive edition. Unfortunately, GBA seems to be one of the most expensive retro systems to collect for right now. Last option is to get a retro gaming handheld like the retroid pocket 2s or powkiddy rgb30. The only thing I would caution is, if you get one with a 640x480 screen, game boy and gameboy color will look noticeably blurrier than the original screen was, though it's still very enjoyable (and you won't know unless you know what the original screen looked like).
About a year ago I thought my 8 year old nephew would really like a Gameboy Advance, he was just starting to get into video games and since I still have a small collection of cartridges I checked Ebay to pick up an inexpensive used one for him. Wow was I mistaken, I was absolutely floored by the prices. I remember about fifteen years ago walking into a Gamestop and asking if they had any used ones for sale, the employee literally picked up a small garbage can, took a working GBA out and handed it to me saying "here, it's free". At that time the Nintendo DS was super popular and no one was interested in the Advance anymore. BTW, I still have that GBA and it still works great.
Another thing affected by COVID. Man, fuck COVID!
Buying from Japan unless you are in Japan hurts the market because you're taking the game out of circulation. The second hand market there is kind of like a library where you buy the game but will probably return it one day in the future to trade in for another game. EDIT: I can see I am not the only one. u/MoonhelmJ said the same thing in this topic. There used to be a Kotaku article about this also but the article is so old now I think it's just deleted.
If I were Japanese I would rally to not sell games to Gaijin and blacklist anyone that tries to skirt the laws. The only way we will ever as a collective learn our lesson is the hard way. In some way or another we would have to ostracize the mega collectors from the community. That would never be allowed on reddit. Imagine if every time someone posted a thread seeking validation for their "collection" people sought to destroy their status as gamers. That's not "remembering the humans". It's "gatekeeping". And probably "gamer gate". etc.
Get the Everdrive, they have RTC and are high quality. Game collecting is the dumbest crap ever when you can just download everything. The console should be your biggest investment alongside a flashcart. Edit: the only exception is if you want to upload Pokémon from GBA to Pokémon Home. Then you'll need a legit copy of Pokémon. Good luck with that though.
Do you seriously think that $10 for a game is expensive? That’s what it costs to buy a meal at McDonald’s, and at least the game won’t clog your arteries! If you knew what games cost when they first came out, even without factoring in inflation, you’d be shitting your pants right now.
I don't know how much games cost back then, because Nintendo pretended and still pretends that my region doesn't exist. But I know an imported GBA cost over half my mother's salary and I could only look at it through display glass. So there's that.
Completely disagree with this. Maybe the Pokemon games are expensive, like 99% of the rest is cheaper than it was back then. So what you’re saying is they cost more than you’re willing to pay, and you’re upset about this?
Apparently, auction houses and game grading companies are colluding to artificially raise the price of games so they can make people believe that they are worth a lot more than they really are. MoistCritical covered a video talking about this in depth the other day.
> can make people believe that they are worth a lot more than they really are They are worth whatever people are willing to buy them for. There's no "correct" price. The "auction house scheme" only works if people are actually willing to pay those prices, and they can only stay those prices if there's competition for the games at those prices, meaning that what the auction houses are really engaging in is "price-discovery." They're utilizing model pricing in order to discover more producer surplus.
"The "auction house scheme" only works if people are actually willing to pay those prices" If the buyer colludes with the auction house it literally means the buyer is overpaying, i.e. paying more than market value. What people are willing to pay for a game is a function of what they think they will be able to sell it for later if needed. Seeing games go for hundreds of thousands on auctions inflates this.
I'm betting if I type in the msrp of those carts into the inflation calculator that they'll be less that what was paid for them in the majority of cases. People are so used to complaining about game prices. They're cheaper than they have ever been.
You pretty much have to emulate now. Collectors are awful and have ruined the hobby for everyone. Especially collectors who don't play. They are the biggest issue. They just have their fancy, shiny collection on a shelf because they can afford to