Which games were sold out and unavailable for a significant amount of time?

[Kid Ice]

I was writing about Virtua Tennis for the Dreamcast yesterday and I wrote that it is only one of only two games I can remember being sold out for a period of months (the other was Gran Turismo 2). Surely there must have been a number of other games that were unavailable for a while but none came to my mind.

Can you remember a mainstream title that was sold out and unavailable for over a month or so? Not counting limited editions, homebrews, etc. or pack in games like Wii Sports.

[Emperor Megas]

IIRC, Nintendo artificially inflated the demand for Super Mario Bros. 3 by limited the available stock.

[Clownzilla]

IIRC, Nintendo artificially inflated the demand for Super Mario Bros. 3 by limited the available stock.

Something they still do today...

[Gameguy]

The original Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk come to mind.

[CrazyGamesDude]

The original Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk come to mind.

Speaking of DS games, a little while ago the game 999: 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors was sold out and hard to find, and then I think a second wave became available after a while.

[bangtango]

Wasn't NES Zelda II: The Adventure of Link unavailable off and on the first few months it was out because of some so-called "chip shortage"?

[Aussie2B]

Yeah, I've heard talk of the Zelda II "chip shortage" as well, but I have no confirmation of it myself. I've also heard people say that Super Mario Bros. 2 was affected too.

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

Mario 3 was very hard to come by for a couple of months after release. Stores would still get them in, but in very limited stock. One of the greatest gaming moments in my life was when I arrived at Toy R US (or was it Children's Palace?) right when a truck arrived, and among the things on that truck were the bright yellow packages of Super Mario 3. I was finally able to pick one up.

I remember some Dreamcast games selling out at launch, but I don't remember any long-term shortages.

In today's world, with how easy it is to print a disc, I think shortages are a thing of the past. The only thing I could think of that would limit the supply of a game is the lack of shelf space. Target seems to have a lot of games crammed into thier small cases. Of course, you can order any game you want on E-bay.

[j_factor]

Panzer Dragoon Saga was presold out, and as I recall it took a good month for a second shipment to come in. Even then, it was never exactly plentiful.

[Steve W]

Mario 3 was very hard to come by for a couple of months after release. Stores would still get them in, but in very limited stock. One of the greatest gaming moments in my life was when I arrived at Toy R US (or was it Children's Palace?) right when a truck arrived, and among the things on that truck were the bright yellow packages of Super Mario 3. I was finally able to pick one up.

Of course, Nintendo had warehouses in Japan full of North American versions of Super Mario 3 ready to be shipped, but they instead decided to price gouge the US public by limiting stocks and overcharging for the game, resulting in a Senate investigation which concluded that Nintendo had broken the law. Nintendo got out of it by publicly apologizing and sending out $5 coupons to people who had sent in their registration cards. That was the tipping point where I decided to stop buying NES games and Nintendo consoles. That and the other anti-competition things they were doing, like forcing stores to stop carrying Atari and Sega systems under threat of having their Christmas shipments cut in half, made me give up on them. It wasn't until the GameCube came along that I bothered with another one of their consoles.

[Greg2600]

The list is very long from Nintendo for sure.

[Bojay1997]

Of course, Nintendo had warehouses in Japan full of North American versions of Super Mario 3 ready to be shipped, but they instead decided to price gouge the US public by limiting stocks and overcharging for the game, resulting in a Senate investigation which concluded that Nintendo had broken the law. Nintendo got out of it by publicly apologizing and sending out $5 coupons to people who had sent in their registration cards. That was the tipping point where I decided to stop buying NES games and Nintendo consoles. That and the other anti-competition things they were doing, like forcing stores to stop carrying Atari and Sega systems under threat of having their Christmas shipments cut in half, made me give up on them. It wasn't until the GameCube came along that I bothered with another one of their consoles.

Did this really happen? I never heard about any Senate investigation or any intentional supply constriction, at least not anything that could ever be proved. The only government action I'm aware of against Nintendo was an EU investigation and fine for preventing retailers from importing games for resale from EU countries where the cost was lower.

[The 1 2 P]

I remember looking for copies of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for the Ds shortly after it came out and being unable to find them anywhere. They eventually did a second printing but that didn't arrive for several weeks after it initially sold out.

[c0ldb33r]

Super Mario all stars for wii

[The 1 2 P]

Super Mario all stars for wii

Nope.


Not counting limited editions

[Bratwurst]

Did this really happen? I never heard about any Senate investigation or any intentional supply constriction, at least not anything that could ever be proved. The only government action I'm aware of against Nintendo was an EU investigation and fine for preventing retailers from importing games for resale from EU countries where the cost was lower.

http://www.davis.ca/en/blog/Video-Game-Law/1991/01/01/NINTENDO-ANTITRUST-SETTLEMENT-UPHELD

[klausien]

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was hard to find for a while until they did the Greatest Hits reprint.

[dbiersdorf]

Definitely Pokemon Red/Blue about two months after they launched and their popularity starting hitting huge numbers. I remember my Mom had an incredibly difficult time locating me a copy for my birthday.

[TonyTheTiger]

Didn't Disgaea become somewhat hard to come by for a while before all the reprints?

[fairyland]

Yeah, I've heard talk of the Zelda II "chip shortage" as well, but I have no confirmation of it myself. I've also heard people say that Super Mario Bros. 2 was affected too.

I remember being told this by the store clerk at K-mart at the time and that's why Zelda 2 was some $60 dollars, which was $10 to $20 more than the average NES game. I think it was more about getting a higher price for the game as it never really seemed rare our out of stock back then.

[NoahsMyBro]

My recollection is that there was a racing game - either MSR2 or Tokyo Extreme Racing 2 - that was out of print for awhile, but was re-released later after unmet demand appeared.

[Zama]

Hyperdimension Neptunia comes to mind recently :)

[Scissors]

Definitely Pokemon Red/Blue about two months after they launched and their popularity starting hitting huge numbers. I remember my Mom had an incredibly difficult time locating me a copy for my birthday.

I think they may have been hard to find in some places immediately after their release. I remember going to EB the day they came out and was laughed at for trying to buy a copy without pre-ordering. I was told that they probably wouldn't have copies again for several months (unless I was already on their waiting list). I then went to the KB Toys in the same mall, where they had a bunch of both versions. I doubt they lasted very long though.


Also, didn't The World Ends With You become hard to find fairly quickly?

[classicb]

Tecmo Super Bowl 2 Special Edition was also sold out. I wrote about it back in 2005 for Sega-16

http://www.sega-16.com/review_page.php?id=873&title=Tecmo%20Super%20Bowl%20II:%20Special%20Editi on

[Koa Zo]

Panzer Dragoon Saga was presold out, and as I recall it took a good month for a second shipment to come in. Even then, it was never exactly plentiful.

The first print run sold out quick. It certainly wasn't "presold out" maybe locally where you were, but not nationally.
It was quite some time before stores had it in stock again, and during that time the rumor from Babbages and EB clerks was that only 5000 copies were made and that no more would be available.

It may not have been "plentiful" but that was par for the course considering the system was all but dead in many people's eyes. Yet Toys R Us stores had Panzer Dragoon Saga available for months and months (even a year?) after the second run turned up, and for months it was even marked down to $19.99 before all Saturn merchandise disappeared from retail.


The game that came to my mind in relation to the thread topic is Phantasy Star II
It was released in the U.S. in February of 1990.
I scoured the stores for weeks, then eventually called the 1-800 Sega number and they confirmed it was released but also that they were having trouble meeting demand.
On one trip to the local Electronics Boutique I had my hard earned money burning a hole in my pocket. Much to my disappointment they still didn't have PSII in stock, but a game called Thunder Force III caught my eye. My life would never be the same...

[InsaneDavid]

Rez.

Remember all the talk how it had been banned and that's why you couldn't find a copy?

[bangtango]

I don't blame Nintendo.

Claiming to have cartridge shortages that don't really exist, like Nintendo used to do, is a better way of doing business than manufacturing so many carts that they end up in a landfill.

[Greg2600]

Usually games are fairly easy to get components to manufacture, so there aren't much in terms of limits. Moreso with consoles. I can attest that Zelda II was probably the most notable one I remember back then. It was so bad that a friends' parents bought one from who knows where, and it turned out to be the French Canada version. The manual was in French, though I think the game was in English but it might have been French.

I don't think Nintendo held back quantities on the dock so much as their policy was to only sell X number of games to each retailer as it was. So the popular games sold out much faster, since they were almost always in lower quantities. In order to replenish, the retailers usually were forced into buying say 20 units of Zelda II and 10 units of garbage like Fester's Quest or Foxanadu. That left Nintendo with very little inventory of any of the games. I believe that practice, as well as the forced exclusivity with developers, is what led to the anti-trust case rather than simply "sitting" on carts in a warehouse.

[j_factor]

The first print run sold out quick. It certainly wasn't "presold out" maybe locally where you were, but not nationally.
It was quite some time before stores had it in stock again, and during that time the rumor from Babbages and EB clerks was that only 5000 copies were made and that no more would be available.

It may not have been "plentiful" but that was par for the course considering the system was all but dead in many people's eyes. Yet Toys R Us stores had Panzer Dragoon Saga available for months and months (even a year?) after the second run turned up, and for months it was even marked down to $19.99 before all Saturn merchandise disappeared from retail.

That's not how I remember it. I preordered it and when I went to pick it up, the guy said that I was lucky, because they didn't receive enough copies of the game to fulfill all their preorders. I don't recall ever seeing it at a discount anywhere, and I did shop at TRU back then. The second run seemed to sell out pretty quick.

Of course, the system was pretty dead, but PDS seemed harder to come by than any of the other late Saturn games, including Shining Force III. I got rid of my Saturn at the end of that year and PDS was already in demand.

[Aussie2B]

Usually games are fairly easy to get components to manufacture, so there aren't much in terms of limits. Moreso with consoles. I can attest that Zelda II was probably the most notable one I remember back then. It was so bad that a friends' parents bought one from who knows where, and it turned out to be the French Canada version. The manual was in French, though I think the game was in English but it might have been French.

I don't think Nintendo held back quantities on the dock so much as their policy was to only sell X number of games to each retailer as it was. So the popular games sold out much faster, since they were almost always in lower quantities. In order to replenish, the retailers usually were forced into buying say 20 units of Zelda II and 10 units of garbage like Fester's Quest or Foxanadu. That left Nintendo with very little inventory of any of the games. I believe that practice, as well as the forced exclusivity with developers, is what led to the anti-trust case rather than simply "sitting" on carts in a warehouse.

Garbage like Faxanadu? You make me a sad panda.

I've also heard that Zelda II was readily available in Canada while stores were getting limited amounts in the US. Something was definitely fishy about the situation. Oh, and the Canadian version simply has an English/French manual and the game is exactly the same, as is the case with almost all Canadian releases.

[Baloo]

What about:

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 for Xbox and PS2? I heard they lost the rights midway through production, causing the game to stop being made?

Tetris DS: Heard the same thing for this one, Tetris was licensed to Nintendo then they lost it to I think Activision?

NCAA Basketball 2k3 for Gamecube - Also stopped in the middle of production by SEGA after the whole line was shut down.

[DragonmasterDan]

That's not how I remember it. I preordered it and when I went to pick it up, the guy said that I was lucky, because they didn't receive enough copies of the game to fulfill all their preorders. I don't recall ever seeing it at a discount anywhere, and I did shop at TRU back then. The second run seemed to sell out pretty quick.

Of course, the system was pretty dead, but PDS seemed harder to come by than any of the other late Saturn games, including Shining Force III. I got rid of my Saturn at the end of that year and PDS was already in demand.

I was on the reverse side of that. Around 2 months before it came out (March of 98) I preordered it at a Babbages. When it came out they apparently had 15 preorders and received a single digit number of copies and I was one of the unfortunate folks who didn't get one. At that time I spent a lot of time on the Sega-Net.com forums and lots of other people had the same problem. Less than a week later I wandered into Toys R us who had put out their stock of both PDS and House of the Dead for Saturn. I snatched up both of them.

There were more than two runs of the game printed. I saw the game show up new in EBs and Babbages around July, then disappear and restock then several times after. At a certain point they quit running out and the restocks quit happening. And a year later I still saw copies in stores, sometimes as cheap as 29.99.

[Koa Zo]

That's not how I remember it. I preordered it and when I went to pick it up, the guy said that I was lucky, because they didn't receive enough copies of the game to fulfill all their preorders. I don't recall ever seeing it at a discount anywhere, and I did shop at TRU back then. The second run seemed to sell out pretty quick.

So that was a regional issue then.
I personally saw discounted clearance copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga for sale in more than a few Toys R Us stores.

[Bojay1997]

I was on the reverse side of that. Around 2 months before it came out (March of 98) I preordered it at a Babbages. When it came out they apparently had 15 preorders and received a single digit number of copies and I was one of the unfortunate folks who didn't get one. At that time I spent a lot of time on the Sega-Net.com forums and lots of other people had the same problem. Less than a week later I wandered into Toys R us who had put out their stock of both PDS and House of the Dead for Saturn. I snatched up both of them.

There were more than two runs of the game printed. I saw the game show up new in EBs and Babbages around July, then disappear and restock then several times after. At a certain point they quit running out and the restocks quit happening. And a year later I still saw copies in stores, sometimes as cheap as 29.99.

I can confirm this from the Southern California perspective. I pre-ordered PDS, and the other handful of final Sega first party Saturn games (HOTD, Burning Rangers) and my local EB in a fairly large mall only got my copies in and one extra of HOTD. Toys R Us did finally get copies of PDS later, as did that EB and it took them a while to finally sell them.

[bangtango]

To me, there is a difference between a game that only had 5000-6000 copies produced and was hard to find compared to a game that was hard to find but managed to get produced in the hundreds of thousands or millions.

I'm assuming Kid_Ice was getting at the latter?

It isn't much different than comparing theatrical runs for two movies that only ran for one weekend, in which one movie only made it into 200 theaters to begin with for that one weekend and a second movie made it into 5000 theaters but flopped so badly it was pulled before the second week.

People had trouble finding PDS and the Gamecube basketball game from Sega but that is mostly on account of Sega assuming those games wouldn't have enough demand to meet a larger supply.

Meanwhile, impatient people were actually importing stuff like Zelda II and Super Mario 3, which eventually sold millions of copies, from Japan in the late 80's on account of having trouble getting it in the states AFTER the supposed release date.