Radio Shack's Crazy Retro Game Prices

[Tanooki]

I lost a lot of respect for Nintendo when Play it Loud debuted, some (enough) were so bad I'd just flip the channel or turn the TV off they were so offensive and/or idiotic. There's not a lot of tv shows or commercials that'll set me off to that extreme, but they managed it.

Earthbound does look terrible graphics wise against the Square stuff, but all said and done, it was intentional trying to look like some cute modern-ish era cartoon. I still love the combat background random graphics though with all the patterns and color morphing. For years I wished I could find someone to make all those into a windows active desktop or screen saver and with all the fanboys out there I"m surprised it wasn't.

[Jorpho]

Eh, Play It Loud was kind of obnoxious, but Sega was doing their Welcome to the Next Level / Theater of the Mind stuff at the same time, and that was almost as bad.

[FieryReign]

Was it Earthbound that had that stank-ass scratch n sniff ad in magazines? Made the entire mag reek. Great publicity for an overrated game.

[celerystalker]

Yes, Earthbound had that lousy "This game stinks" campaign that was stupid. Most ads at that time were terrible, really. Sega's Saturn promo tape they sent out was just awful, Play it Loud was idiotic, 3DO called everything else toys and had the balls to say its launch library was superior to both the SNES and Genesis... print ads were in a bad place pretty much across the board for consoles, as attempts at edginess ended up looking ridiculous. Makes for some laughs when going through old magazines, though.

[CelticJobber]

I remember passing by a stack of those over-sized Earthbound boxes at K-Mart when it was selling for like $5.00 around late 1997 as I chose to buy MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero instead ($64.99 on N64).

I love Earthbound now, not because of the hype, but because I've played through and enjoyed it. Though I usually hate most RPGs. And I wish I had bought every copy that day so I could've made a bundle on eBay.

I also remember seeing a stack of like 5 copies of Snatcher for Sega CD for $15 each at KB Toys around late 1995. I bought one, but had no idea it would become such a prized rarity.

[calgon]

Wow I'm more jealous of your snatcher pick up than anything else posted so far. It's been a decade now that I've been trying to hunt down a good condition CIB copy at a reasonable price and I've just been watching the cost go up and up. I may never be able to buy it.

[Gamevet]

I also remember seeing a stack of like 5 copies of Snatcher for Sega CD for $15 each at KB Toys around late 1995. I bought one, but had no idea it would become such a prized rarity.

What's sad is that I'd sold my copy of Snatcher to Gamefan Magazine's "Die Hard Game club" for $15. I pretty much traded in my whole Sega CD collection, so I could get an Action Replay and a $75 copy of the import version of Wing Arms for my Saturn. I didn't have anything to play on my Saturn that summer, so I went for what little amount of imports were available back in 1995.