gimmepilotwings

Guilty as charged here too. I paid $14.99 a NIGHT to rent it. Baseball Stars 2 and Metal Gear 3 for me baby!

Hospitaller

I was basically a child of the 80s and I grew up on Atari (and occasionally when I would get bored with atari, Odyssey2). My parents actually had a 2600 before any of the kids had been born and we had a ton of games for it. Im not really sure how much they cost I wasnt old enough to really get that yet.

Ill always have fond memories of wandering down the videogame aisle at ToysRus where they had the pull-tickets. New games had a variety of different prices, which in retrospect is rather interesting. In an age with no internet and few magazines, many times the first place I saw a game was when it was for sale in that aisle. I remember NES games having a $39.99 barrier for the longest time - and Zelda 2 dared to be 42.99 when it (finally) came out and things went up from there.

when I did get a NES, and I swear I was the last kid I knew to get one, a big selling point for my mother was that Metroid and Kid Icarus were both on sale for like $25 each. I sure lucked out getting 2 outstanding titles right off the bat and its great games that built the NES.

since I was a working teenager in the SNES and Genesis years I didnt have many games. I think that was one of the real advantages of PS1...some AAA+ titles were coming out at 39.99 and I appreciated that.

bluntman72

I have always paid lots of money for video games. I remember buying the NEO GEO gold for I think $699 and I paid as much as $250 for a game (one of the Samurai Spirits, maybe number 4) but back when all we had was SNES having Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting and Samurai Spirits was great.

fujishig

I just remember not being able to afford Phantasy Star IV. I don't remember how much it was, but I do remember it being prohibitively expensive at the time.

BTW, I, too, miss the aisle of tags in TRU. In fact, I miss the old TRU setup altogether, and hate the newfangled design. But I digress.

I doubt we'll ever see a true tiered pricing structure for games. Even if a game costs less to make, why "bargain" price it and devalue your product in the eyes of the consumer? Better to get some suckers to buy it for full price then slash it if it doesn't sell well. Although the 20 dollar experiment that 2K sports did with their 2K5 editions surely boosted sales, it also kind of devalued their brand. I'm sure some thought that it was inferior to Madden just because it was so much cheaper. And when NBA 2K6 came out at double the price, it just seemed odd.

Of course, the truly sad thing about the state of gaming today is that the best sellers are not always the best games. Sure great games get buzz here and elsewhere on the internet, but most bestsellers rely on the strength of their license, and games that take a chance or that don't have the best marketing fail to do well.

I think EA could release Madden at 70 to 80 bucks and people would still buy it in droves. Same with Halo 3 or GTA. Maybe they'd have to add some peripheral or something, and there'd be some griping, but for some people, that's the only game they're going to buy for a few months anyway.

Goldblum

I think I paid $100 for Virtua Racing (with the "V" chip ) on the Genesis.

Th0r S1mpson

That wasn't nearly as cool at the version for the 32x though. Man, Sega owned me back then.

Xander

Yup. I remember paying $70-$80 for SNES games like Secret of Mana, FF3, Super Street Fighter. Back in the days of the TRU ticket packs. Good times.

fumanstan

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/151...headlines=true

Tarantino

I wonder if, with the prices in the 80's compared to the prices now, the cost of games will trend even lower in the coming years...

= J

Supermallet

It makes sense for companies to start all games at $50, considering how quickly prices drop, especially if you buy used games. The companies know they can only get people to pay $50 when the game is brand new, so they charge $50 for a bit, then lower the price so that everyone else buys it, too.

asianxcore

I forgot how much it was, but my parents bought me Earthbound for SNES when I was younger. I just remember it being really pricey.

fujishig

I don't think we can really say that game prices should have gone up because of time and inflation. There are not only the cost of media (which accounts for the hugely expensive cartridge games), as others have pointed out. There's also the fact that technology costs tend to trend down, and that although the average cost per game is down, people are buying more games in their collections than ever before, so sales are higher, and the perception of buying games is different now. I mean, now a lot of people own multiple systems, buy multiple games a month, etc.

Look at other forms of consumable media. CDs have not significantly gone up in price, and have actually gone down somewhat, even though costs have skyrocketed. DVDs have actually dropped dramatically in price from it's early days. As people get used to these prices, it's difficult for this trend to reverse. I'm interested in seeing if this 10 dollar increase lasts, especially past the point that the 360 is the "hot" machine, and people stop buying games just to have something to play on their launch system. The last time someone tried this that I remember, during the early GBA era, prices quickly went back down (I think most of the early non-nintendo GBA games retailed for 40... now the vast majority come out at 30, and even DS games hover around that price).

Noonan

I miss those days. It was always an exciting feeling bringing the ticket up to the counter to get the game after you paid for it. Maybe becuase back then I could only afford to buy a game about 1-2 times a year. I think Street Figher 2 for SNES was the most I paid for a game new. It sold for $79.99. That one was a combination birthday/Christmas present. I don't think I turned my SNES off for a week straight.

DJ_Longfellow

I never paid more than $50 for a videogame...and that was in my naive days. Now I RARELY pay full price....I even got my 360 games cheap.

dcswirl

Mommy and Daddy were paying those high prices

Randy Miller III

I've only paid more than $60 for three games, and two were imports:

- Final Fantasy III, SNES ($70)
- Shenmue II (European import, $70)
- Virtual Pro Wrestling II (Japan import, $80 w/converter)

On a related note, why can't game companies keep costs a little lower by doing away with instruction booklets? Pretty much all games these days have a built-in tutorial that makes the actual book useless.

Randy Miller III

Didn't that come in a big box with extra accessories and stuff, though?