iam8bit's $100 Aladdin Legacy Cartridge for Genesis and The Lion King Legacy Cartridge for SNES

[Nz17]

It seems iam8bit is publishing $100 16-bit cartridges.


Nighthawk Interactive and iam8bit have announced that Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King will be getting special editions, some of which will include playable SNES and SEGA Genesis cartridges.

Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King will be released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on October 29, 2019, for $29.99 USD, but Switch and/or retro fans will have something else to look forward to in the future.

Nighthawk has introduced Retro Editions for the Nintendo Switch that features either Clamshell Style (Genesis) or Boxed with Tray (SNES) classic console-style packaging. These premium editions also include an exclusive poster and a retro-style manual. They both will be released on December 10, 2019, for $49.99 USD.

iam8bit is going one step further and will be offering the Aladdin Legacy Cartridge for Genesis and The Lion King Legacy Cartridge for SNES. Each fully playable cartridge is a limited edition of 4,500, and features "lovingly restored artwork by Jango Snow Art & Design." These cartridges are sold separately and are priced at $99.99 USD and will ship in early 2020.

Pre-orders for both the Retro Retail Editions and iam8bit Legacy Cartridges will begin on Thursday, October 24, 2019, and 10am PT/1pm ET/6pm BST on BestBuy.com and iam8bit.com, respectively.

There will be various versions of the iam8bit Legacy Cartridges as well, with Aladdin purchasers randomly receiving either Translucent Ruby Red or Rare Purple Gem Glow-in-the-Dark (1 in 8 odds for an ultra-limited cartridge.) and The Lion King purchasers randomly receiving either Opaque Mufasa Marigold or Ultra Limited Translucent Serengeti Sunrise Glow-in-the-Dark (1 in 8 odds for the rare cartridge.)

Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King will, as previously mentioned, be released next week and will bring forward these classic titles with multiple game versions, an all-new "Final Cut" version of Aladdin, 1080p graphics, In-Game Rewind, Interactive Watch Mode, Save Feature, Museum Feature, Soundtrack, and much more.

Source: https://in.ign.com/disney-classic-games-aladdin-and-the-lion-king/140851/news/disneys-aladdin-and-the-lion-king-get-special-editions-with-playable-cartridges

[Aussie2B]

$99.99 each? This kind of stuff is just getting ridiculous, in my opinion. These games aren't even that great to begin with, and they're dirt common and cheap on the secondhand market. I feel like these kinds of releases only exist to take advantage of ultra-rich collectors who will spend any sum of money to get a full set for whichever systems they're collecting for, including all variants and homebrews and such. We're in an age where a "full set" is an unending goal, which compulsive buyers are happy about because they'll never hit an end point and then not have anything left to buy.

[Emperor Megas]

These games aren't even that great to begin withAladdin for Genesis is awesome, but those pricey are goofy af.

[jb143]

That's actually not too far off from original price. My copy of Lion King still has the original price tag of $69.99. Inflation calculator says that's $121 in 2019 dollars. And that was mass produced. These are a limited run where expensive tooling and manufacturing (among other) costs won't get absorbed across huge production numbers.

Definitely made to be a collector's item...for a certain subset of collectors. And I'm definitely not one. Just trying to put the costs into perspective.

[gbpxl]

Waste of money

[jb143]

Waste of money

Yeah, I was justifying the cost... lest people think it only costs them a dollar to make these.

I can't say what the justification for purchasing them would be.

[gbpxl]

Rich NintendoAge users with more money than they know what to do with. And yeah inflation, sure, except a $120 price tag for a 16 Mb game in 1993 made a lot of sense. $100 for a 16 Mb game in 2019? Not so much!

[Tron 2.0]

Funny how,iam8bit likes to price gouge for very two common games that on the second hand market don't go for much at all.Beside the fact that aladdin and the lion king are being released again in a collection at a cheaper price.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDddZFwbSU

[jb143]

...price gouge...

See...that's exactly the thing I was trying to point out. The only way they could hope to make a worthwhile profit on something like this would be to sell them for $100. It's not like factories are still manufacturing SNES games.

Everything else you said is completely valid. I really don't know who the market is...other than what gbpxl said. They must think they can sell at least 4500 though. About the ONLY thing that makes sense to me is the cost.

[jperryss]

Rich NintendoAge users with more money than they know what to do with. And yeah inflation, sure, except a $120 price tag for a 16 Mb game in 1993 made a lot of sense. $100 for a 16 Mb game in 2019? Not so much!

Remember when they did this with plain old SF2, not even Turbo or SSF2? $100 for the cart, and now (2 years later) eBay shows sold listings for $60-80. Great investment.

[Aussie2B]

If Limited Run Games, who certainly aren't known for cutting gamers an unusually good deal, can do re-releases of Star Wars games on NES, Game Boy, and N64 priced at 40-50 bucks, then I don't think these games have to be $100 to turn a profit. Star Wars is every bit of a big IP as Aladdin and Lion King, and they're all owned by Disney, so I can't imagine Disney is asking for a much bigger chuck of the profits with the iam8bit releases than with the Star Wars releases. And since these aren't fully official, none of them are paying Nintendo's licensing fees as was the case with the original releases of these games. I would venture to guess they could drop the price to $75 each and still turn a tidy profit, but why bother when ultra-rich collectors will ensure they'll sell out even at $100 each?

[Bratwurst]

These cost a dollar or two to make a piece, at the most. I'm exaggerating yeah but the molds for the cartridge shells plus the circuit board designs already exist throughout manufacturing channels in China.

[Spartacus]

Funny how,iam8bit likes to price gouge for very two common games that on the second hand market don't go for much at all.Beside the fact that aladdin and the lion king are being released again in a collection at a cheaper price.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDddZFwbSU

Until I watched the video I never realized that the Aladdin and The Lion King collection on the PS4, Xbox One and Switch has multiple game versions for each title. Hell, that's a pretty good deal for $30, even if the games aren't that great to begin with.
I'm not sure if the cartridge editions have multiple game versions. If not and since I already have the originals, I wouldn't be interested even at half that price. Though I do think they did a nice job with them.
There's a 1 in 8 chance of getting an Ultra Limited Magic Carpet Purple Glow-in-the-Dark Cartridge or an Ultra Limited Translucent Serengeti Sunrise Glow-in-the-Dark Cartridge. That's not gonna happen if you settle for finding a used cart on Ebay.

[Tron 2.0]

See...that's exactly the thing I was trying to point out. The only way they could hope to make a worthwhile profit on something like this would be to sell them for $100. It's not like factories are still manufacturing SNES games.

Everything else you said is completely valid. I really don't know who the market is...other than what gbpxl said. They must think they can sell at least 4500 though. About the ONLY thing that makes sense to me is the cost.
They did the same for megaman 2 and megaman x i think it's greed pure and simple.I assume,iambit isn't interested in the average consumer there just looking to take adventage of collectors nothing more err should say collectards :p

[Tron 2.0]

Until I watched the video I never realized that the Aladdin and The Lion King collection on the PS4, Xbox One and Switch has multiple game versions for each title. Hell, that's a pretty good deal for $30, even if the games aren't that great to begin with.
I'm not sure if the cartridge editions have multiple game versions. If not and since I already have the originals, I wouldn't be interested even at half that price. Though I do think they did a nice job with them.
There's a 1 in 8 chance of getting an Ultra Limited Magic Carpet Purple Glow-in-the-Dark Cartridge or an Ultra Limited Translucent Serengeti Sunrise Glow-in-the-Dark Cartridge. That's not gonna happen if you settle for finding a used cart on Ebay.
Pretty much when iambit does a reprint i get a laugh.At least when retrobit does one it's at a more reasonanle price.

[Gameguy]

That's actually not too far off from original price. My copy of Lion King still has the original price tag of $69.99. Inflation calculator says that's $121 in 2019 dollars. And that was mass produced. These are a limited run where expensive tooling and manufacturing (among other) costs won't get absorbed across huge production numbers.
Part of the original price when the games first came out was to pay for the development cost. These were among the best selling games for those consoles, the development costs have been fully paid for 20-25 years ago. Manufacturing costs are the cheapest part of a selling price. These aren't newly developed games, they're just rereleases so they should be cheaper.

I would assume that this company would just pay an existing manufacturer to make these cartridges for them, rather than start manufacturing everything themselves. Plenty of companies are having cartridges manufactured for various releases, just look to Super Fighter Team or Watermelon Games as some examples. Their games aren't even priced as high as this rerelease when they're both limited and needing to cover development costs too.

If we justified prices solely based on inflation then computers today would be so expensive only the five richest kings of Europe could afford them. That's not how pricing technology works.

[mailman187666]

I've only ever ordered from I am8bit once, and the item never showed in the mail (although it could have been stolen or an error in with USPS). I tried to e-mail them about it and never got a response, so I will no longer order from them. That was for Hyper Light Drifter. I'm certainly not going to spend $100 for a common game to not show up in my mailbox.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

It would be worth $100... if you got five of them for that price.

[ScourDX]

After the hype for Street Fighter II and later Megaman version, I would think the company would reduce the price. Sadly this is just a glorified license repro

[megasdkirby]

These releases, as with LRG's Star Wars rereleases, are just intended to gouge fans and collectors and take them for complete suckers. And sadly, its working.

I heavily criticized LRG with all of their Star Wars releases, yet there were...umm..."special people" who still defend them and got the game.

At least with their last release, they were (probably still are) sitting on remaining inventory.

And the CE versions of their repros are complete trash and very expensive. Well, pretty much all CEs from LRG is.