5 ms·

"ROM sites are still a ubiquitous problem for 20 year old consoles. Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix made content easy to get. There's no equivalent for most

"ROM sites are still a ubiquitous problem for 20 year old consoles. Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix made content easy to get. There's no equivalent for most ROMs, so they're still widely pirated." The only example I can think of is Nintendo Online. You can play select NES and SNES games on the Switch with a N.O. subscription. I collect ROMs, I've got damned near 4Tb worth. I collect for two reasons: 1. Archiving 2. Most of the "good" vintage games carry ridiculous prices. Games that had over 10 million copies pressed going for $100+. Even if we assume 1 million were destroyed, that's still 9 million copies floating about. Not exactly rare or worth $100.

aidenn0 5y ago
I swapped my NES cart of Dragion Warrior IV with a friend for his copy of Dragon Warrior III in high school; it was supposed to be temporary but we both went off to college and never saw each other again. I looked into buying a copy of DW IV online and choked on the prices ($150 cart only). Apparently that game was a limited run though.
- dumpsterdiver 5y ago
  Yep, I recently bought Dragon Warrior 1, 2, and 3. I’ll buy 4 soon, but wow - it is not cheap. I play them on a Retron 5 which can play NES, SNES, GBA, Sega, and even Famicon cartridges. It also lets you set hot keys and toggle turbo mode. It’s pretty great.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    If it makes you feel any better it cost $100 in 2021 dollars new ($50 in 1990)...
    - dumpsterdiver 5y ago
      > If it makes you feel any better it cost $100 in 2021 dollars new ($50 in 1990)... That does actually make me feel better knowing that DW4 would cost $100 if it were "new" now. These days a sealed copy of DW4 graded at 7.0 will run you $1549. I'd be nervous paying anything less than $170 for a working cartridge alone right now. As a consumer of these things, I've thought many times how easy it would be for someone to just print off "original boxes and content" for these old games, and sell them as if they were mint. As someone who wants this kind of thing... please don't be afraid to charge premium prices for replicas! As long as you tell us it's a replica, and it's high quality - everyone wins. Once enough time passes, replicas and forgeries all just become history.
      - aidenn0 5y ago
        No clue if it's legit but there are NES cartidge replicas on alibaba: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001027903131.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001027903131.html
salamandersauce 5y ago
Game prices are part rarity, part demand. Pokémon games aren't rare, but they're always in demand so they always command decent prices. Plus even if millions of copies were sold the majority might not be English versions which are often most popular. Chrono Trigger for example sold millions in Japan and can easily be picked up for less than $20 in Japanese. US copies sold more like 500,000 and collectors outside the US are interested as well since English is much more of a common 1st or 2nd language than Japanese.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Almost all old games in Japan are dirt cheap; on the order of US$1-$2 for a typical loose SFC/N64/Game Boy cart if you don't go to the tourist traps in Akihabara. $20 is exceptionally expensive for a Japanese game.
asdff 5y ago
It's ridiculous that games like super smash bros are the same price whether you buy them new on a switch or used for a 25 year old n64. No clue why nintendo bothers ending production runs on games when they know people still buy sell and play 30 year old titles. They could just license the reruns to someone else to produce the cartriges and disks and make money hand over fist. It always seems like nintendo has blinders on and self sabotages with stuff like this all the time (nintendo online being a huge fail compared to something like xbox live which has been around for almost 20 years now). In my opinion they could easily overtake xbox and playstation marketshare just by being smarter with their IP and taking back this market that is currently totally owned by people on ebay and craigslist because of nintendo's short sightedness with their production runs.
- lobocinza 5y ago
  I don't think they can undertake Xbox/Playstation. Nintendo is a niche while Xbox/Playstation another. I guess they just want people to buy newer consoles and games, which make sense for them.
  - asdff 5y ago
    I don't think selling smash bros 64 again will hurt their nintendo switch sales very much.
    - mod50ack 5y ago
      They did this for a number of years on Wii/Wii U. You could buy Smash 64 from them for $10. It wasn't nearly as popular as their current games. Paper Mario 64 for $10 was sick, though. Loved it after having played TTYD.
- dTal 5y ago
  For that matter - why not sell N64-compatible consoles? You could make them incredibly cheaply now, and they're definitely still in demand. Are they scared of cannibalizing their "high end"?
mattl 5y ago
How are there 4TB of ROMs? Does that number include non ROM dumps like CD, DVD and BD games too?
- joemi 5y ago
  CD, DVD and BD are all ROMs too. In a computer (and therefore videogame console) sense, these all are technically called CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and BD-ROM.
  - mattl 5y ago
    I’d think of them as ISOs. But I can see why they’d be considered ROMs too.
    - Jetrel 5y ago
      Yeah. The storage medium changed so much, but the functional shipped object was still "a chunk of read-only memory containing the (probably) sole version of a game that got shipped to a market". I too tend to think of ROMs as strictly images of non-volatile chips, alone, but it's interesting that when we're in computer emulation territory, it's really only the size that's different; a CD iso feeds into a PS emulator pretty much the same way a rom file feels into a SNES emulator - it's just a document.
      - mattl 5y ago
        I guess it’s complicated by the notion of ROMs needed to boot machines like BIOS dumps and then software.
daemin 5y ago
I just saw this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLFEh7V18A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLFEh7V18A ) on why vintage video games cost so much money now. It's almost an hour long piece of effectively investigative journalism by someone in the speed running (and thus vintage gaming) community. The evidence presented does seem like a bubble, with scam/fraud properties.

aidenn0 5y ago

I swapped my NES cart of Dragion Warrior IV with a friend for his copy of Dragon Warrior III in high school; it was supposed to be temporary but we both went off to college and never saw each other again. I looked into buying a copy of DW IV online and choked on the prices ($150 cart only). Apparently that game was a limited run though.

dumpsterdiver 5y ago
Yep, I recently bought Dragon Warrior 1, 2, and 3. I’ll buy 4 soon, but wow - it is not cheap. I play them on a Retron 5 which can play NES, SNES, GBA, Sega, and even Famicon cartridges. It also lets you set hot keys and toggle turbo mode. It’s pretty great.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  If it makes you feel any better it cost $100 in 2021 dollars new ($50 in 1990)...
  - dumpsterdiver 5y ago
    > If it makes you feel any better it cost $100 in 2021 dollars new ($50 in 1990)... That does actually make me feel better knowing that DW4 would cost $100 if it were "new" now. These days a sealed copy of DW4 graded at 7.0 will run you $1549. I'd be nervous paying anything less than $170 for a working cartridge alone right now. As a consumer of these things, I've thought many times how easy it would be for someone to just print off "original boxes and content" for these old games, and sell them as if they were mint. As someone who wants this kind of thing... please don't be afraid to charge premium prices for replicas! As long as you tell us it's a replica, and it's high quality - everyone wins. Once enough time passes, replicas and forgeries all just become history.
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      No clue if it's legit but there are NES cartidge replicas on alibaba: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001027903131.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001027903131.html

salamandersauce 5y ago

Game prices are part rarity, part demand. Pokémon games aren't rare, but they're always in demand so they always command decent prices. Plus even if millions of copies were sold the majority might not be English versions which are often most popular. Chrono Trigger for example sold millions in Japan and can easily be picked up for less than $20 in Japanese. US copies sold more like 500,000 and collectors outside the US are interested as well since English is much more of a common 1st or 2nd language than Japanese.

AussieWog93 5y ago
Almost all old games in Japan are dirt cheap; on the order of US$1-$2 for a typical loose SFC/N64/Game Boy cart if you don't go to the tourist traps in Akihabara. $20 is exceptionally expensive for a Japanese game.

asdff 5y ago

It's ridiculous that games like super smash bros are the same price whether you buy them new on a switch or used for a 25 year old n64. No clue why nintendo bothers ending production runs on games when they know people still buy sell and play 30 year old titles. They could just license the reruns to someone else to produce the cartriges and disks and make money hand over fist. It always seems like nintendo has blinders on and self sabotages with stuff like this all the time (nintendo online being a huge fail compared to something like xbox live which has been around for almost 20 years now). In my opinion they could easily overtake xbox and playstation marketshare just by being smarter with their IP and taking back this market that is currently totally owned by people on ebay and craigslist because of nintendo's short sightedness with their production runs.

lobocinza 5y ago
I don't think they can undertake Xbox/Playstation. Nintendo is a niche while Xbox/Playstation another. I guess they just want people to buy newer consoles and games, which make sense for them.
- asdff 5y ago
  I don't think selling smash bros 64 again will hurt their nintendo switch sales very much.
  - mod50ack 5y ago
    They did this for a number of years on Wii/Wii U. You could buy Smash 64 from them for $10. It wasn't nearly as popular as their current games. Paper Mario 64 for $10 was sick, though. Loved it after having played TTYD.
dTal 5y ago
For that matter - why not sell N64-compatible consoles? You could make them incredibly cheaply now, and they're definitely still in demand. Are they scared of cannibalizing their "high end"?

mattl 5y ago

How are there 4TB of ROMs? Does that number include non ROM dumps like CD, DVD and BD games too?

joemi 5y ago
CD, DVD and BD are all ROMs too. In a computer (and therefore videogame console) sense, these all are technically called CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and BD-ROM.
- mattl 5y ago
  I’d think of them as ISOs. But I can see why they’d be considered ROMs too.
  - Jetrel 5y ago
    Yeah. The storage medium changed so much, but the functional shipped object was still "a chunk of read-only memory containing the (probably) sole version of a game that got shipped to a market". I too tend to think of ROMs as strictly images of non-volatile chips, alone, but it's interesting that when we're in computer emulation territory, it's really only the size that's different; a CD iso feeds into a PS emulator pretty much the same way a rom file feels into a SNES emulator - it's just a document.
    - mattl 5y ago
      I guess it’s complicated by the notion of ROMs needed to boot machines like BIOS dumps and then software.

daemin 5y ago

I just saw this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLFEh7V18A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLFEh7V18A ) on why vintage video games cost so much money now. It's almost an hour long piece of effectively investigative journalism by someone in the speed running (and thus vintage gaming) community. The evidence presented does seem like a bubble, with scam/fraud properties.