Why is Snow Brothers for NES so rare?

[spman]

Has anyone ever figured out what the story is behind Snow Brothers being so rare and valuable on the NES? Just about every other game in that category are either games that were late releases in 1992, '93, and '94, or games with odd backstories like Stadium Events, but Snow Brothers doesn't fit into either of those categories. It was an arcade port, released by Capcom, who was a top tier developer in those days, and it came out in 1991 when the NES was still going strong. Did it just not sell very well? I know Tengen released a port for Genesis in 1993, so maybe Capcom lost the licensing rights to the game shortly after it was released, and it ended up with a limited print run as a result?

It's also not as though Snow Brothers has just recently shot up in price either, I've been collecting NES games forever, and even in the days of Funcoland, Snow Brothers was always a high priced title compared to the rest of the games on the console. It just seems like a peculiar title to be so rare and expensive.

[Leo_A]

Most of Capcom's NES library were ports of at least semi successful arcade games or licensed games.

I really doubt this Toaplan game did very well at the arcade (If KLOV is any indication, people aren't picking these things up, keeping them intact, or restoring original cabints back to this game after being converted to something else back in the day since virtually everything that exists are simply just the boards).

So it doesn't shock me that a home port went mostly ignored.

[Greg2600]

Snow Brothers is really expensive on the Genesis as well. It's a good, very fun game. Probably just didn't make many of them, but Capcom has several NES games in low qty (Duck Tales 2 is another).

[spman]

Snow Brothers is really expensive on the Genesis as well. It's a good, very fun game. Probably just didn't make many of them, but Capcom has several NES games in low qty (Duck Tales 2 is another).

Most of Capcom's rarities (ie: Megaman V, Rescue Rangers 2, Ducktales 2) can be explained as being late releases, which had low print runs due to the fact that the NES was on its last legs at the time of their release.

[SparTonberry]

Well, it was made by Toaplan, who I don't think was a very popular developer until years after their demise (the All Your Base craze around 2000 almost certainly increased their name recognition). And the staff split into at least four different companies, which I imagine could create ownership issues for their older games.
I know if any of their games have since been rereleased.

I'd imagine the Mega Drive version to be rare because it was only released in Japan, where the MD was the least popular console of its generation.

Mega Man V seemed like a game that was more expensive than rare. Maybe the PAL version is rarer because it was one the last releases, but the NTSC version seems to be more pricey than rare. It was like a $20-25 game (just a bit more than 1 or 6, the other higher value NES MM games) until a couple years ago (that's what I can remember paying for it, and that was a fairly typical list price).

[snes_collector]

The Funcoland pricing is probably why the game as always been priced a little higher on the used market than most other NES titles. Bubble Bobble Part 2 was always priced expensive there as well, and as a result was also more expensive than the average NES title, even before the collecting scene took off.

But there definitely isn't a ton of copies of this floating around, its one you never even see people reporting on finding. Like others have said, the Megadrive version is pretty tough to find and expensive as well.

[wiggyx]

Most of Capcom's rarities (ie: Megaman V, Rescue Rangers 2, Ducktales 2) can be explained as being late releases, which had low print runs due to the fact that the NES was on its last legs at the time of their release.

This wasn't really a late release.

[Parodius Duh!]

Snow Brothers is really expensive on the Genesis as well. It's a good, very fun game. Probably just didn't make many of them, but Capcom has several NES games in low qty (Duck Tales 2 is another).

It was only released for Mega Drive in Japan. Theres no Genesis port or Euro release.




The Famicom version of Snow Bros is pretty rare/desirable and regularly sells for $60+ cart only