Radio Shack's Crazy Retro Game Prices

[Nz17]

Might just be the place near me, but I walked into a Radio Shack and saw:

N64, no game, no controller, no box, no inserts, no manual, might not have even included A/V cables nor power supply (none was in the display case nor mentioned on the price card)
$100

Common Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, loose (no boxes, no manuals, no inserts)
$35

That is asinine.

[Jorpho]

Is Radio Shack in the used game business now?

[FieryReign]

Some of the Radio Shacks near me are closing up shop. Probably a good thing because their prices on everything are ridiculous, even the simplest of cables. Not to mention them trying to shove batteries down your throat if you do buy something. Even had a guy try to push an expensive warranty on me for a $10 pair of headphones.

[celerystalker]

Yeah, I wasn't aware they were trying to get into that market. Sounds like they have no idea how.

[celerystalker]

Sorry, phone double posted.

[JSoup]

Is Radio Shack in the used game business now?

No, they're in the going 'out of business' business now.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/255034573/RadioShack-store-closures

[Nz17]

The place near here is an independent business which is a combination of a franchised Radio Shack and an Ace Hardware. The "Dirk Labrum Company" is what it's called, and it has been here for decades and my guess is that it isn't going out of business any time soon even if the Radio Shack corporation is bankrupt and goes completely belly up.

[The 1 2 P]

Most of the Radio Shacks near me have closed over the last year. But the one's that are still open(and the ones that have closed) never carried any retro games.

[Tanooki]

I've yet to see one of there stores close up in my area yet and I can think of at least 3-4 of them within a few miles of each other or so.

Those prices are disgusting.

I saw the same today, but at place in Indiana called Buy Backs. They had like a $20 sticker on a Space Invaders SNES cart. $50 on Pokemon Fire Red(has 2 copies, wonder why.) The only stuff under $5 was mismarks or sports crap no one wants. Even the stuff known to be turds was at least $10. I found one mismark I took advantage of and I've never bought there before as they always were high, just never like 2-3x over ebay high before. I got Duke Nukem Advance for $3. They mismarked it as Duke Nukem Forever XBOX on the sticker and I hoped they wouldn't notice it on there and left quickly with it. The game ranges like $15-25~ pre-shipped on ebay for the cart only.

I asked them about the prices in a nice way asking if they used ebay or amazon like half price, they said they don't price them, their main office does it in their computer and they just run the stickers so it's a nationally terrible store I guess.

[Steve W]

The thing is, Radio Shack used to be into the retro gaming business in the early '90s. They had a bunch of stock of new Intellivision and Atari games (probably bought the backstock after INTV closed its doors and bought a bunch of old Atari stock after they got out of the 8-bit console market) that you'd order out of a catalog inside one of their stores. I think I ordered a game or two and a spare Intellivision II controller. I guess it wasn't a success, so they closed that down in a few years. Looks like they're trying something similar again, although not with new product.

[wizardofwor1975]

RadioShack out here in California has pretty much gone belly up. At least 191 RadioShack stores in California will be closing in 2015.

http://retailindustry.about.com/od/storeclosingsandopenings/fl/Which-Radio-Shack-Store-California-City-Locations-Are-Closing-in-2015.htm

[Edmond Dantes]

Radio Shack isn' in the used games business, but I think some radio shacks (particularly the less-visited stores) have backstock from back when these things were new. One near me still had Nintendo 64 memory cards as recently as three years ago, and I bought one because I needed it and this way I was assured it was a first-party brand and not some off brand (you can pretty much only find 3rd party online).

But yeah, that's my theory--its some old stock these Shacks somehow held onto for years and never sold.

[Nz17]

Then let me debunk your theory, Edmond Dantes, because I know this store well (it's the only one in the area) and they didn't have this used game stuff until a few years ago (less than five). The owner heard from someone about how high eBay prices can get on retro stuff so he bought up a few NES games and hardware and put them on sale for crazy prices. These prices were made even crazier looking by the fact that a few doors down in the same building you can get $5-$8 NES and SNES games from a pawn shop running out of there. I laughed and balked at the prices with my mom back then when we left the store finding the prices to be asinine, but I guess people eventually bought them, making it worthwhile for him to keep going online to buy bulk lots or snatching up sets at Salt Lake City thrift/flea markets because he has a lot more stock on sale these days than back then.

By the way, he is selling the gold-colored Legend of Zelda NES games for more than the regular NES games and gray cart Zeldas because they are "more rare and special"... despite the real-world fact that the gray ones are less common than the golden ones but they all contain the same games.

Also, I used to rent NES games from this place back-in-the-day when NES games were still new, and these aren't those either, because not only is he selling GB & GBC games which weren't ever rented there, but all of these games lack the Radio Shack rental stickers which you would expect to see.

For what it is worth, he is also selling recently manufactured, generic third-party SNES controllers in box for $21 or $22 apiece. Out of all the game stuff which he has for sale, these are the best deal... and they lead me to believe that he is, indeed, not selling the consoles with controllers included despite the high prices of the consoles.

[tpugmire]

What store is this? I ask because I live in Utah as well.

[Gameguy]

Then let me debunk your theory, Edmond Dantes, because I know this store well (it's the only one in the area) and they didn't have this used game stuff until a few years ago (less than five). The owner heard from someone about how high eBay prices can get on retro stuff so he bought up a few NES games and hardware and put them on sale for crazy prices.
So this is less of a Radio Shack thing and just a random thing one franchise owner decided to do on his own? If so it's more or less the same if a franchise owner decided to sell stolen computers or crack out of the back room.

[Nz17]

@tpugmire
It is the sole Radio Shack in Vernal, Utah, the one located near the Jiffy Pawn Shop.

@Gameguy
More or less. ;)

@Edmond Dantes
By the way, I sincerely believe your N64 memory card story. I've seen that sort of thing in stores before, "ancient" electronics still lurking about years after their prime. I've seen old N64 memory paks at Radio Shack during the PS2/3 era, old GBA games at K-Mart during the 3DS era, and old PS1 games at Wal*Mart during the PS3 era.

[fergojisan]

@Edmond Dantes
By the way, I sincerely believe your N64 memory card story. I've seen that sort of thing in stores before, "ancient" electronics still lurking about years after their prime. I've seen old N64 memory paks at Radio Shack during the PS2/3 era, old GBA games at K-Mart during the 3DS era, and old PS1 games at Wal*Mart during the PS3 era.

I found Activision's Boxing for the 2600 in a Toys r Us in 1995. $5.99!

[Tanooki]

Hah nice. I vaguely recall things like this, maybe 10 years after the fact stuff. I remember back west the Toys R Us very late into the SNES era probably creeping up on the N64 and Virtual Boy they still had some NES stuff for sale. They threw it all sloppy and rough all over this couple of shelves at the end of the isle ( not end cap ) and it was a field of goodies. Sadly I had the NES games I wanted, but they had brand new NES Advantage joysticks (a few or so) for $4.99 so I snapped that up. They hadn't made those things since like the like-NES era as those had the earlier 'action set' box look with that white lettering print and bluish/black background with the stars on it. Mind you it's far less nuts seeing it there than a Radio Shack but still, way late. I think they found old stuff in the back somewhere beyond when they were garbage selling the top loaders for like $20 new on a pallet to get rid of the things.

[Steve W]

I used to love hitting the bargain video game racks at Toys R' Us. I got my first Intellivision around 1987 and picked up heaps of $1.99 games like Utopia and Star Strike new. They had a bunch of Vectrex games that I didn't get because I had never seen the console in person and didn't think I would ever have one of my own (man, do I regret not picking those games up). I also remember loads of Commodore 64 Electronic Arts games. Around 1992 I also remember many, many copies of the final Intellivision release, Stadium Mud Buggies, all with those day-glo red markdown stickers on them.

[Atarileaf]

Not exactly the same thing, but around 1992 my wife and I walked into a Radio Shack and they were clearing out everything to do with the Tandy Color Computer for a buck each. I bought it all. No actual computers or hardware but I bought a big cardboard box full of disk and cart software all still sealed. Wish I still had that stuff, coco stuff is going for insane prices lately, especially coco 3's

[BlastProcessing402]

Yeah, all the RS stores near me closed in the past year, but when I was on vacation I was shocked to still see one open in that town. The guy running the place said all the corporate owned stores closed, and it was franchised stores that were still open. So this is some random guy doing some random shit in his personal store.

[AdamAnt316]

Yeah, the franchise stores tend to do things differently. Locally, we have a store called "Electronics Plus (http://www.electronicsplus.com)" which used to be a Radio Shack franchisee back in the '70s and '80s (before there were any corporate-run stores in the local area, I think). The guy who runs it does so as Radio Shack once was, with walls lined with resistors capacitors, transistors, ICs, antennas, etc. and not a cell phone in sight. ;) He has some leftover Radio Shack/Archer-branded parts, but the vast majority of what he sells are NTE, Philmore, and Jim-Pak. Always nice to walk in there and catch a glimpse of what Radio Shack used to be like back in the "good ol' days". :)

[Edmond Dantes]

Hah nice. I vaguely recall things like this, maybe 10 years after the fact stuff. I remember back west the Toys R Us very late into the SNES era probably creeping up on the N64 and Virtual Boy they still had some NES stuff for sale.

I remember for a long time, EVERY STORE had Startropics and Zoda's Revenge, sealed, for $3. I bought both. Now I wish I had picked up extras as well.

I still have those copies, though they've been opened and played (by me).

[Tanooki]

I don't blame you, I remember that. I just never saw the attraction to the games so I ignored them. :) Years later I got them, still didn't enjoy them so they didn't last long and I still had the NP mag that laid out most of the first one so it wasn't a frustration problem as I just didn't care for the design. No one ever thinks, well this crap is just old left overs who will ever want this?! Especially the stuff post-system replacement in generations past. These days it's like acceptable to leave your last system out a few years, but before it was like a year of support, maybe some dribble from the third parties and that was it. Now look at what those 1992-94 NES games are worth and the 1995 and after SNES has some doozies in there too. Late N64 has it too if you look as a few loose like Conker, Super Bowling, Clayfighter, but really the complete stuff like Indiana Jones which was a late bloomer into the $100+ area.

[Gamevet]

I had a sealed copy of Conker's Bad Fur Day that I had a hard time selling 10 years ago. Now that game is worth more than I'd ever imagined it would be.

I remember when Gamestop had brand new copies of The Secret of Evermore selling for $5, and the official strategy guide selling for $1. I don't know why I didn't jump on those deals.

[Niku-Sama]

hindsight is what now?

we've all been there. if ida known i'd have picked up the many many mega man x, x2, x3 copies I saw for sub $5 new when they were trying to blow out stock when I was a kid

[Tanooki]

Well it's normal. People tend to not keep a system once it dies off, even if death comes after the replacement. Sure that $5 game looks nice, but now you have the new Super system and it cost more money as do having games to play it, so you sell off the old crap or trade it, or you put it away and ignore even the $5 games because your budget puts you to buying the new stuff anyway. I fell into that last part, I never got rid of the old stuff, but I stopped buying it. The 1991-94 NES games I have didn't get bought until like 1995-2000~ and the same mostly with SNES and Gameboy too to a lesser degree since it held on longer before GBC popped up.

[SparTonberry]

hindsight is what now?

we've all been there. if ida known i'd have picked up the many many mega man x, x2, x3 copies I saw for sub $5 new when they were trying to blow out stock when I was a kid

Why have I never seen some of these insane prices people speak of?

[celerystalker]

Why have I never seen some of these insane prices people speak of?

They were definitely there. Stacks of Earthbound at Wal-Mart for $15, copies of Guardian Heroes at Toys R Us for $5, Super Mario RPG and those Mega Man X's for $15... late '90s clearance sections were awesome. I cleaned up on Saturn and SNES games.

[Tanooki]

I remember those, especially the dumpster pricing on Earthbound when Nintendo caved and gave up on it. They dropped like a rock and still took some effort to get rid of. Despite all the fanboy love over the series, actual gamers, not rose tinted fanboy net hype, clearly showed a total disinterest in that mediocre game. I can't speak much to it, I own it, but damn I paid $2 this last go around, and the last time was a trade in, and the original CIB in the mid-upper 90s was $20 and it was immaculate. All said in actual cash I've yet to pay up on it. :) (...And I wouldn't.)

I suppose we could have been smarter if we had the spare dough (I didn't) and bought up a bunch and just stuffed them in a closet. I mean $5 isn't much and eventually stuff tends to at some rate climb in value when childhood memories are attached, even in the 80s/90s it was the case with comics/cards getting wrecked.

[kupomogli]

Aside from a few that have already been mentioned, another expensive game I remember seeing was Suikoden 2 for $20. Atleast 10 or 20 of them in the Walmart case when my cousin purchased a copy. Since first playing Final Fantasy 4 on the SNES, I've been an RPG fan so already picked it up and many others during that gen. I blame popular games like Final Fantasy for killing off many great series because people ignored pretty much evreything that didn't have a certain label on it mostly.

[Tanooki]

That's a good point FF probably did play a good hand in suppressing various games from coming here let alone coming out at all. I'm sure it did no help with Dragon Quest. In a way FF and it's fanboys are a good parody of Nintendo and theirs. Blindly buying up only their stuff, praising it to no end, then buying little to nothing else which drives away competition.

[SparTonberry]

Despite all the fanboy love over the series, actual gamers, not rose tinted fanboy net hype, clearly showed a total disinterest in that mediocre game.
Turns out those years I spent as a child enjoying the game before the hype were a fraud and I was in fact, not a gamer. :(

[Gamevet]

They were definitely there. Stacks of Earthbound at Wal-Mart for $15, copies of Guardian Heroes at Toys R Us for $5, Super Mario RPG and those Mega Man X's for $15... late '90s clearance sections were awesome. I cleaned up on Saturn and SNES games.

Yeah!

I was buying Saturn games for $9 a piece from Best Buy in the summer of 98. I believe Guardian Heroes and Mega Man x4 were amongst the dozen or so games I'd bought.

[Tanooki]

Turns out those years I spent as a child enjoying the game before the hype were a fraud and I was in fact, not a gamer. :(

Well was it your first in the series? A lot of people look up to that mediocre FF7 because as a kid/teen it was their first real (if not completely) exposure to an RPG, and the hype machine Sony created around it in all forms of media was insane. That's where that comment lies, but obviously some people either will just like it regardless if they have good or bad taste in games. It's like me saying Attack of the Killer Tomatoes if the worst movie ever, yet some people love it.

[calgon]

Crazy stories.

I'm sure I've shared this on here before but I remember walking into a KB toy store in 98/99 and seeing mega man 6, TMNT 3 and I want to say battletoads for $5.99. I had them in my hands and decided instead to buy metal gear solid for psx instead thinking those games, those prices, and that store would surely stick around for a few more years. Welp.

New Englanders here probably can attest to the weirdness of FYE, a primarily music and movies store that dabbled in games in the late 90s and still even now, somehow, has weird retro stock show up every now and then. I bought a sealed copy of um jammer lammy from them two years ago, still with its 19.99 price tag. They still had gameboy color games retailing at their original price, when I was there as well. There was and still is zero rhyme or reason to their inventory and layout. It's usually the older stores still in malls that have the best treasures.

[SparTonberry]

Well was it your first in the series? A lot of people look up to that mediocre FF7 because as a kid/teen it was their first real (if not completely) exposure to an RPG, and the hype machine Sony created around it in all forms of media was insane. That's where that comment lies, but obviously some people either will just like it regardless if they have good or bad taste in games. It's like me saying Attack of the Killer Tomatoes if the worst movie ever, yet some people love it.

I think the original translation of FF4 was the first RPG I played. I think EarthBound might have been the second. That or FFMQ.
I'll give it that FF4 was the only FF I've played with no character customization, kind of a series feature (well aside from MQ but that shouldn't really be counted because it was meant to be like a tutorial RPG :D ). But its story was better than most RPGs out at the time and the battle system was pretty innovative then.

[Tanooki]

FF4 I still think story wise and structure was the best of the series of titles. It maybe on the shorter side (20hrs~) but it had more genuine emotion, good elements to keep you engaged, no detracting of playing a 1000 battles to learn cure or buying an overpriced book to do it, and set skills for each player who stayed with you or would come and go as the whole thing unfolded. I've gone back to that one more than any of the others by far. Earthbound I'm moderate on, don't hate it, don't love it, but do like the quirk value enough to keep it as it's just weird. I do like the unique avoidance of the deathblow killing an enemy off before you hit zero.

[celerystalker]

Earthbound has been my favorite game since it first came out. I play through it at least once a year. It just resonated with me. Still, it totally was a commercial failure here, but at the time, the big criticism was that the graphics didn't push any limits at a time when Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox, and Earthworm Jim were really stretching expectations on the system.

[SparTonberry]

Also RPGs weren't very mainstream until FF7, and also Nintendo's (almost-literally) shitty advertising.
(it was the "Play It Loud!" era when at least 80% of NoA's ads were gross or toilet humor. I wonder how many of the 9-14 year olds they were targeting would now look at them and facepalm)
The DKC "Not on CD-ROM or any 32X adapters!" being one of the few decent ones.

[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.