September 17th, 2008
Does a unique visual style make a game collectible?
The blog over at G-Mixer has a thought-provoking post titled “Videogames Aging Gracefully.” The premise is simple enough — games that employ a unique style tend to “hold up” better in time than those that only strive to look realistic (or for you picky art majors, naturalistic).
G-Mixer’s highlighted examples include Zelda: The Wind Waker, LucasArts’ Full Throttle, Out of this World, Street Fighter III, and Super Mario World.
Then something clicked for me: Pretty much all of these are also collectible titles.
It’s an easy concept, but has huge implications for game collecting, especially those (like me) who are speculatively collecting titles now that may become collectible later on. It goes a long way in explaining why the sports genre is virtually devoid of collectible games, except in the rare case of a visually unique title (Nintendo’s Punch-Out!!, EA’s Mutant League Football).
I shamefully admit that I’ve never heard of Out of this World, and after Wikipediaing it and checking its profile out on Mobygames, I’m stunned that such a unique art style could have been ported to the SNES and Genesis. What blows my mind even more is that this is from 1992. I’m definitely going to have to hunt down a copy and play it. (For the curious, the general consensus is that the SNES version is superior to the Genesis, primairly for the SNES’s bigger color palette.)
September 18th, 2008
Christopher Says :
vib ribbon? parappa? funny you mention the genesis, i was just here to ask about it
where’s the best place to go to get info on genesis games / collectability? I just got hold of a load and other than sonic 3d looking infinately better than all the others, I know next to nothing about them. Asterix & The Power Of The Gods isn’t even on VGPC, nothing on ebay (completed or otherwise), all i’ve found is someone saying it’s “not for everyone”. after what felt like 10 minutes of non skipable opening dialogue, i’d tend to agree with them 
September 18th, 2008
brian j. parker Says :
I think there are other reasons sports titles aren’t collectible: large print runs that are mostly dumped after one year, and an audience that values getting that year’s copy over “classic” gameplay.
The creator of Another World / Out Of This World (same game, different titles in different territories) has a “high-res” version available for download from his website. The easy availability probably makes this a poor choice for speculation, but it does make it easy to “hunt down a copy and play it”! It is not an enormously long game, so it’s definitely worth the time to experience a classic. (This being from before the time of “saves,” so you have to be able to play in one sitting.)
September 18th, 2008
Christopher Says :
heh… sports titles… the joys of trading fifa in for a grand total of £0.00… live n learn. I always assumed it was sports fans wanting an up to date representation of their game; why would anyone want fifa 2004 when 2008’s clubs and players and kits etc are all different? The downside of representing realism - it changes too quickly. Are there any other real life games that have gone a similar way? Buzz X Quiz would be my guess for lowest value genre in a few years.
September 21st, 2008
Christopher Says :
And guitar hero… down in value or up? I’m sure anything with modern songs would go down, but I think GH packs in enough classics to last a while. Anyway…
http://inaudible.co.uk/temp/hoard210908.jpg
This morning’s hoard for me (and I fogot to bring my price list with me, so went on instinct and memory…):
Toca Race Driver 2 X
)
Toca Race Driver 3 X
Driver 3 X
Driver Parallel Lines X
Halo X
Gran Turismo 4 PS2
Gran Turismo Concept 2002 PS2
F1 2003 PS2
Socom II PS2
Damon Hill F1 book (I was a big fan
All for $21. Loads of Damon Hill related stuff there too, would’ve got a nice wee car model but my aunt gave me the same one years ago…
Soul Calibut 2 Xbox - $1
Fahrenheit PS2 - $2 I sold an xbox version a while back and it went for a bit so…
GTA Lib City Stories - $2
Myst III - $1.50 (I figured it was either worth loads or owt. guess which it turned out to be? :p )
Resi Evil Outbreak File 2 - $1.50
Those lot I just went with instinct, most are worth very little, but never mind.
Dreamcast Keyboard, boxed and in pretty good cond - $1. Not worth much more than that after shipping, but I figured for 50p was worth it. Also had a dreamcast but no cables/controllers for $2, I passed as my cable soldering skills suck as I found out with ye olde RGBH+V > RGBs project…
Xbox crystal controller (minus breakaway cable, I have spares) and component breakout box (dunno if it does high def, I presume so) - $8. I tried to get it down but apparently they were poor
And a netgear DG834G ADSL2+ modem router, boxed with all accessories for $8. lord knows what state it’s in, but I figured so long as I could flash a modded firmware on I might get a hub out of it. If it’s working then the old rumour of netgears syncing better on UK lines will help me out as a) my current thomson keeps dropping from 6 Mbps to 3 Mbps for no reason, and b) I need a reason to bother going up there and changing it again as I only stuck the thomson in to replace an older thomson that was fine at the time and I figured the new one might be better and it’s not and I spent hours doing it and damn that attic is hot… Anyway, it’s about $40 on ebay, so good buy if it does work.
September 21st, 2008
Christopher Says :
I’m an idiot, you’d think with a simple 2x currency conversion I’d be ok
Fahrenheit - $4
GTA LCS - $4
Myst III PS2 - $3
Resi Evil Out 2 - $3
and that spelling mistake makes me wonder… Sole Halibut 2, best fish-em-up ever?!
September 21st, 2008
Christopher Says :
Forgot to mention, also saw Toe Jam & Earl boxed cartridge and Star Wars Rebel Assault boxed CD for the mega drive in with a big box of console + controllers + games; the guy was insistent on taking $100 for the lot and not selling anything seperately though. shame. but the Asterix Power Of The Gods cart i got a couple weeks ago has a few watchers on ebay, so maybe it is saught after after all…
September 28th, 2008
Christopher Says :
Another Sunday, another hoard. Sorry for taking over your comments like this
You know, the worst thing about this is, I have to ruddy test the damn things. No sleep til Tuesday then… At least this week was a week of multiples, and a week of new & sealed releases, so at least some stuff don’t need playing to death to make sure level X don’t skip…
http://inaudible.co.uk/temp/hoard280908.jpg
OK far right is the day job, so to speak; came as a bundle off eBay, ~$60, but the first time I’ve ever seen the GTA trilogy which goes for around $40 alone (twice as much as SA + Double Pack go for), I’m in two minds whether to hang on to it just incase it increases in price, I figure if any of the GTA series are gonna this will. Anyway, the rest…
Brand new 360 and PS3 games, a post on a UK deal site let those in the know know of a clearout by out biggest high street tech chain (kinds like best buy), a load going for between $10 and $20 (usual price $60 - $80). I grabbed anything I could exchange at a local store for more
so, Looney Tunes ACME Arsenal, MX vs ATV Untamed, SOF Payback, Blazing Angels, Overlord Raising Hell, Viking, and I’ve still got another store to raid 
Nothing struck me as going up in value, but… Beautiful Katamari 360 is currently $20. We Love Katamari for PS2 is currently min $40. If Beautiful goes the same way in a few years then… Also Bioshock tin 360 and Viva Piniata both $20 but non of them are currently worth any more than that.
So, the proper hoarding:
Buzz Big Quiz + Buzzers: $10 (plus free Samsung proprietary USB charging cable plus socket adapter - it got mixed up with the controller cable and no one noticed (inc me), but I do have a samsung camera I’m paranoid about losing said cable for so
)
Fear Effect 2 Retro Helix + Dino Crisis PS1 - $6 (i though DC was worth a bit, and FE looked, erm, thick…
)
Meta Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater (I was praying for it to be substance when I spotted it but I ain’t *that* lucky) - got one copy for $2 and another for $4.
Kingdom Hearts PS2 - $5
) $7.
GTA San Andreas PS2 - $2
Sonic Mega Colelction+ & Athens 2004 (my current fav, 3 copies so far, better bin this one before the hype dies
SW Battlefront 2 Promo Xbox - $6
).
Fable Lost Chapters - $6 (is Fable 2 out yet? the hype appears to have pushed the price up lately, just like it *will* do with BG&E
Street Fighter Aniversary Collection - $8, was $12, dude offered me $8 soon as I touched it, which is possibly a bad sign along with the small dent in the disc, so it’s either dead or I’m hoping <1.5GB which should avoid the dent… xbox don’t spread out data like PS2 discs do do they? Still, I can get it buffered on a venmill for $6, and it should still make ~$20.
Gladiator Sword Of Vengance - $2
2x paper wrapping - $2. So I needed something to pack my xboxes up in, and the next cheapest I’ve seen is $4 for same amount
Roller coaster tycoon 2 + expansion - $6. Yes I got ripped the hell off, but it’s for my sister again, she’s not so impressed with Theme Park World i feel, and the guy wouldn’t budge (tried 3 times) and I convinced myself it’d make a good christmas present. Ironically then went to my first ever actual “Yard Sale” today, first one I’ve ever seen in the UK *ever* (saw it advertised while on my daily half marathon jog… ok i lie. every other day…) anyway, same game $1. no expansion though. meh… least I ain’t testing that one :d
September 28th, 2008
gamehoarders.com Says :
Christopher– you got some solid titles there. I don’t know if any of them are rare in the UK, but the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for Xbox is going up in value in the US. The PS2 version just got reprinted, but I routinely sell Xbox copies for close to $50 (!).
October 6th, 2008
Christopher Says :
>> Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for Xbox
>> is going up in value in the US
ahh yes. was meant to get another copy with a bundle of games off ebay, took me 2 weeks to notice it wasn’t there by which time it was a little late. then surprisingly the next day there it was on a stall at a car boot, couldn’t believe my luck.
They go for between £20 and £25 shipped here ($40 - $50 like you said) but I’ve stuck mine up for £12.50 ($25) auction due to the damage. It does work on everything but my philips xbox drive (samsung, hitachi both fine) and i’m still in two minds as to whether to repair it for $4 and list it as perfect (hoping it’ll get a better price), or list it as almost perfect and pay for it to be repaired if a buyer has (or might have) issues with it, and hope it goes for no more than $4 off the regular price.
October 6th, 2008
Christopher Says :
Oh and ACME Arsenal just went for ~$60. Think I bought it for $10. Maybe I should raid high street stores for cheap new titles more often
Thank god for region free PS3 games too, I’m finally getting bids from foreigners again :d
October 19th, 2008
Christopher Says :
geez… worst. day. ever
got 1 game last week, same this week. last week was 60 seconds away from getting spyro for ps1 very cheap before it dissapeared. this week i miss out on a loada mx and outrun 2006 xbox games (all sell ~$10 each) for $1, just as i turn my back to check prices, and a guy takes away the lot. horrible boot sale place anyway, full of shop keepers picking up huge boxes of games and karting them off 30 seconds after they’ve been put out. and the other place has closed for the winter. and now even ebay’s against me, clicked to bid on a megadrive and the site hangs, only to come back to life to tell me “sorry this auction has ended” grrrrrrr….
so i currently have Mercenaries PS2 for $4 (hopefully makes about $10 still), and Buzz The Music Quizz for the same.
and even my last ebay bundle is falling to bits, one cd’s smashed to pieces, no breakaways for controllers, light gun with wires hanging out… why did i ever take up this as a hobby? At least I got to apply for the job with the last guy I collected stuff off. Gamecube *and* a potential pc repair gig. like it’ll happen…. still, free zelda. what’s the deal with orcarina of time anyway? it looks terrible…
October 26th, 2008
Christopher Says :
Un. Believeable. Hoarding. Weekend. Whod’a thought, a little bit of rain and it’s like every dealer in the world had evaporated, leaving me in a veritable sea of gaming related goodies. I even got there late. Wow…
http://inaudible.co.uk/temp/hoard261008.jpg
Firstly though, guess what I saw? Another World, aka. Out Of This World! Finally an OP related reply :d In with a load of old megadrive/genesis games they were selling as a bundle, asked about the games seperately and they wanted $14 for that and Alien 3. I daern’t ask what they wanted for the whole lot. I didn’t stay long. Yet, strangest thing, the whole stall had virtually my entire childhood in toys on there. Both the Mighty Max sets I had, a nigel mansel matchbox kit, Matchbox transformery things, seriously was like my life on a stall. Anyways…
Back row, the last of the mornings buys, a slimline silver PS2 with a few games for $40. Ok, quite a bit even here, but I’ve been trying to get a slim one for ~$30 for a while, my fat one a) is no good at reading burnt DVDS (*ahem*…) and b) I’m hoping the ethernet port with some hacking and FTP useage will help test disc readability. Controllers are pretty hacked up but anyways. And I’ve still not tested it but here’s hoping…
Knights 2, Fable, Republic Commando (xbox), all $4 each.
GTA SA, NFS U2, Colin 04 and True Crime LA (PS2) - $7 the lot. Only wanted the first 3 but the guy wouldn’t let me go without paying an extra $1 for the latter.
Cars & Dino Crisis 3 - $4 each. Outrun 2006 and Ratchet & Clank got down to $2 as they’re pretty scratched up and I’m gonna have to spend $4 on each getting resurfaced, still worth it though.
Wallace & Grommit $5 - wanted to pay $4 but they were nice and I needed change for the SW stuff above
Fable LC - $6
Simpsons H&R - $2
Raceway - $2 no idea what it’s worth but I had a huntch about american bidders liking drag racing, and it looked bad enough to be kinda rare…
Croc - $2. I learnt my lesson from last week and grabbed it as soon as I saw it. Lesson 2 is memorize prices, it’s only worth 50c :p
The other PS1 lot was a charity shop yesterday. My god, I’ve never run so quickly between a shop and a cellphone store, franticly hacking away on their iPhone display models to search eBay for prices, run back, buy some, run back, check prices, run back, etc etc… Anyway, I knew Hogs Of War was worth some, and the quality of the other stuff looked like someone who had good taste in gaming had just donated, so I had a huntch it’d all be worth loads.
Resi Evil 2
Resi Evil 3
Breath Of Fire IV
Hogs Of War
Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast, fwiw still searching for a console to buy that has both leads *and* controllers with it, I appear to only find one or the other these days).
All $4 each. I left Sonic Adventure 1, Soul Calibur + SouthPark Chef something (Dreamcast) and some fighty PS1 things (army men, toshinden, etc), no money in it, and my legs were tired.
Oh and I think my prices are a little off now. What with you yanks destroying our economy and all, our £’s worth nowt anymore. Still, great for exporting :d
October 26th, 2008
gamehoarders.com Says :
Wow… some really nice finds there, Christopher. I’ve been trying to collect games on the cheap for years and I STILL have not found a cheap copy of Breath of Fire IV. Dunno about the UK, but BOF IV, Hogs of War, Sonic Adventure 2, and OutRun 2006 are all pretty rare games here in the US. Well done.
I have not been to any yard sales in months, thus the lack of updates. The season is pretty much over for the year, unfortunately. I’ve been going to the pawn shops a lot, but I’ve mostly been finding out of print DVDs rather than games.
November 2nd, 2008
Christopher Says :
>> I STILL have not found a cheap copy of Breath of Fire IV.
heh… beginners luck
It’s doesn’t seem that great to play though. Opens with no where near the impressiveness of FF7 or 9, got bored kinda quick but I guess it grows?
Outrun’s pretty scratched and didn’t play on my xbox dead-laser philips drive, but was fine on others, doubt it’ll make much though. And none of it seems to make much over here, maybe $18 for BOF but I see they all make up to $50 on vgpc in the US
damn us lucky brits with too many copies of everything manufactured…
And don’t even ask about Street Figher. Oh dear…
>> The season is pretty much over for the year,
>> unfortunately.
that’s what i thought, my favourite car boot’s shut for the year and it keeps raining, but the one that’s still open used to be terrible but the rain seems to have driven off most people buying everything and it’s rich pickings now. Well, kinda. here’s what I got today…
http://inaudible.co.uk/temp/games/hoard021108.jpg
3 xbox games, asked $8 each, I’d normally leave for that except Mercenaries and Black make about that much each, so I offered $16 for 3 and got em. Touch wood I’ve got a load of games, controllers and gun turning up in a week, so long as they work I can stick the gun with Silent Scope and make a bit more
Eye Toy play - $3. I knew I should’ve picked up that eye toy camera last week
Aaand, the only thing to cheer me up in the freezing cold - EVERYTHING else… guess the price after the list… I don’t even know what half of it does but…
PSOne
Official and unofficial mem card.
Official controller.
RF and Composite leads (do they have same pinout as PS2? they look similar…)
Dance:UK for PS1, *and* was loving the fact it had the PS2 disc in too *g*
Dance:UK Wireless mic plus adapter thingies.
Dance:UK Sub and speakers.
Loadsa manuals (thank god, I might figure it out now…)
And various other wires and adapters.
wait for it…. 8 dollars! (well 5 pounds) best bargain ever. got my original PS1 plus Crash Bandicoot out the paper in the 90s for just < £200 (~$300). This so beats that. Cept… I’m gonna have to test it all… and i’m gonna look such a twa…
Anyway if you’re interested, my eBay About Me is at http://members.ebay.co.uk/aboutme/immortal-soon I usually stick up most things there, but if there’s anything anyone thinks I should keep back in my collection of all of Beyond Good & Evil (or even wants to make an offer, i’ll be lucky) then lemme know :).
Oh almost forgot. Spent yesterday evening doing this:
http://inaudible.co.uk/temp/games/trigger1.jpg
http://inaudible.co.uk/temp/games/trigger2.jpg
http://inaudible.co.uk/temp/games/trigger3.jpg
You can’t really see but the plastic clips had snapped off front of the right trigger (pic three is the left as normal). Stood looking at it for an hour trying to figure out how the hell i re-fabricate plastic, or glue a bar to it without gluing it to the base aswell. Eventually tried hammering a pin through the plastic above the snapped clips. 5 pins later, I decided a craft knife and a small hole was a better idea
Anyway, pin through, bend down along the edges, out through the holes, and a bit of pushing and pulling and re-setting springs and bending and cutting later… works perfectly 
I r teh quick-fix god 
November 5th, 2008
Christopher Says :
hmm… last post not here… either spam filtered or i forgot to hit submit or whatever… anyway.
mint copy of FF7 platinum, practically new other than case surface wear - sell or save? prices are at an all time low since 2006 according to VGPC, dunno what it’s like in the uk but… maybe wait until whenever the next FF is out?
November 11th, 2008
gamehoarders.com Says :
Christopher — Your comments got caught in the spam filter. I fished them out. Should be OK now…
As for selling FF7, the next opportune time to sell it would be when Advent Children comes out on Blu-ray, as that’ll be the last of the FF7 spinoffs (unless they announce something new).
Square Enix MUST re-release or remake FF7 at some point. The money would just be too easy not to. So keep that in mind, if you have any copies that you might be sitting on as an investment.
As for me, my copy has sentimental value and I’m pretty sure I would not part with it for any sane amount of money. But I do get other copies that I flip regularly.