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.)