Any rare PC games?

[roushimsx]

The PC collecting market is so silly weird. You know something is amiss when junk like Duke Nukem: Nuclear Winter moves for $50/disc only while gold like Duke Caribbean is lucky to hit that much complete.

Lots of neat little odds and ends that cost a pretty penny, though. I'd love to get my dick beaters on a complete copy of One Unit Whole Blood sometime. That's like, the ultimate Blood pack.

It's always kind of bummed me out that Looking Glass' best games get as ignored by collectors as they did by consumers back when they came out. You can pick up new/sealed copies of Terra Nova for as little as $10; it was easily their biggest flop (and a major reason why the studio died) and yet it's one of my favorite games from them. Incredibly innovative and the controls still work great.

[swlovinist]

PC games is almost the only given when I shop in thrift stores now. I have sold many PC games(C64 to present) to fund my console collection.

[norkusa]

Not really rare but the strangest ones I've seen are MVP 2005 Baseball and NASCAR 2003. Who would think 5 year old sports games would sell for $75+?

[phreakindee]

Ahh one of my few areas of expertise.

Most valuable pc games are valuable because they are well known but older. Sierra, Origin, Infocom all those go for large amount when complete boxed. Most cartridge games or booter disks from the 80s are rather "rare" but tend not to sell very high due to not being known.

Some notable games in demand:

FF
Blood expansions
Duke 3D boxes
Id software games
Sierra titles
Infocom complete sets
Old bethesda games

Some very hard to find games are those that were simply not big sellers, obviously. Some particularly elusive ones:

Boxed Commander Keen games full version
Maxis game expansions (Simcity expansions, etc)
SimHealth
Boxed b&n Epic Megagames games
Any handmade/ziplock bag games from the author/or mail order titles

So very very many games from the shareware days are nearly impossible to find full versions of, since they were not sold in stores... Probably thousands with only hundreds of copies made officially (piracy made full games even more rare, quite common to find bootlegs)

[NayusDante]

Boxed b&n Epic Megagames games

Hmmm. I have a ton of those, minus the catalogs. Didn't see a reason to keep 20+ back then.

[phreakindee]

@NayusDante:

The boxes are quite hard to find now, though some occassionally pop up on eBay for a reasonable amount. Jazz Jackrabbit is the hardest to find boxed it seems, with Jill of the Jungle second. I knew many people who had these back in the day, but they tossed the boxes and documentation, as everyone seemed to. They were just too bulky to keep around.

[Jorpho]

Ahh, here's what I was looking for.

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=102192
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60500
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25836
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19504
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16071

Too bad playinggamesinteractive.com seems to be no more. Fortunately you can still see their interesting list of high-priced rarities at archive.org . They're actually missing a few of the older ones, like Gord@k, Cassandra Galleries, and Alice: An Interactive Museum .

[NayusDante]

The B&N boxes are actually smaller than a typical 90s game box. I've got Kiloblaster 1-3, Overkill, Jill 2, Dare 2 Dream II, all four pinballs, Castle of the Winds I, Ken's Labyrinth (buggy), Electroman, Loader Larry, and a few others. They're all floppy disc.

They all have the same "Ready To GO" logo on them, and the same disclaimer on the back. "This product is family friendly and features no graphic violence..."
...always thought it was funny to see that on a game called "Overkill."

[Jorpho]

Boxed b&n Epic Megagames games

Eh? Ancients II, to pick one at random, doesn't even seem to be selling at $10, even if that is more than what a lot of other games might sell for.

[Gameguy]

The Neverhood seems to go for a good amount, even disc only copies.

Knights of Xentar is supposedly really rare according to the Wikipedia article about it, but I have no idea how much it's worth. I've never seen a copy for sale on ebay and I've been checking for a few years already. Does anyone know how much copies are worth?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Xentar

[Geddon_jt]

I would love to have a good resource for this.
I've had a lot of luck in the wild for nice old PC games lately. Specifically, I found the following:

Martian Memorandum (Tex Murphy 2) PC 3.5" (NEW/SEALED) I loved this game as a kid!
Under a Killing Moon PC CD-ROM with PANDORA DETECTIVE factory sealed inside (NEW/SEALED)
Dark Sun: Shattered Lands SSI (NEW/SEALED)
Ultima VII: The Black Gate PC 3.5" complete with EVERYTHING "PC Gamer Edition"

These are all games I loved years ago, so its cool to have nice complete or new copies of them. Any idea what these are worth? Anyone? Bueller?

[JLukas]

Knights of Xentar is supposedly really rare according to the Wikipedia article about it, but I have no idea how much it's worth. I've never seen a copy for sale on ebay and I've been checking for a few years already. Does anyone know how much copies are worth?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Xentar

There were a few listed earlier this year that went for around $25-40. The Amazon marketplace has some as well, but most are $50 for CD only.

[Blanka789]

Eh? Ancients II, to pick one at random, doesn't even seem to be selling at $10, even if that is more than what a lot of other games might sell for.

I have about 15 of these for sale, all different games. I posted them on ebay and couldn't get 10 cents for any of them besides Jazz Jackrabbit (which sold for $30 plus all 3 times I sold one). I've had them on DP for $1 apiece for awhile now and haven't sold any.

[Trebuken]

Wizardry VIII...

Been wanting this for awhile but it's more than I anticipated.

[Battlehork]

Not really rare but the strangest ones I've seen are MVP 2005 Baseball and NASCAR 2003. Who would think 5 year old sports games would sell for $75+?

MVP 2005 Baseball was the last baseball game (other than management sims) made for PC before EA lost the license to 2K, until 2K put MLB 2K9 on the PC this season. NASCAR 2003 was the last Papyrus game before they lost the NASCAR license to EA, and EA's NASCAR games aren't as good.

[tom]

Mortimer (Mac)

[roushimsx]

MVP 2005 Baseball was the last baseball game (other than management sims) made for PC before EA lost the license to 2K, until 2K put MLB 2K9 on the PC this season. NASCAR 2003 was the last Papyrus game before they lost the NASCAR license to EA, and EA's NASCAR games aren't as good.

Those fans of NASCAR 2003 ought to move over to iRacing.com already! David Kaemmer is tha man.

[norkusa]

What's up with these old Power Mac games selling for so much? Especially when there's a PC version of the same title? You'd think they sell for less since Macs don't support anything pre-OSX any longer and the PC version would be more convenient.


BTW, a few others titles to look out for are cd-rom versions of Star Control 1 + 2 and Infocom Lost Treasures vol's 1 & 2. Sold one of the Star Controls last year for $60 and sold one of the Infocom's a couple years ago to someone on Atari Age for $100 (complete with all manuals and extras).

[Sonicwolf]

and the PC version would be more convenient.

Not if you have VistAIDS...

it makes it basically impossible to play many older games.

[phreakindee]

In my experience, the Mac versions of these games are more because they were indeed in much less demand and are extremely hard to find. And now that Apple products are in style, many new fans are discovering the older systems and games, which drives cost way up.

For instance, a complete copy of Full Throttle Power PC native I've seen go for over $70, but there's no way I'd pay that. I found a sealed box for $4, you just have to really look around for these old PC games. Another example is Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior for Mac. Both of these can go for enormous amounts for whatever reason, usually over $70 boxed, but I found these both at a Goodwill for $3 each and a box of Shadow Warrior I also got from a Mac forum member