Are cheap repro's going to change everything?

[homerhomer]

Just noticed that Gamestop.com is selling MUSHA for like $150 and at the same time there's cheap Chinese repro's for less than $6 over at Aliexpress, there's 947 pieces left.

What do you guys think of all this? Is it the end of game collecting? If I buy from Aliexpress, will I be selling my soul to the devil?

[Tanooki]

No it's not the end, and in that thread I did, same site type in 64 bit game card, you'll fine that amusing I'm sure too. N64 bootlegs, 4 of them, 3 a deal over the legit price but still too high. It's going to change things, but it's not going to ruin them. Those who want the real stuff will have to be ready more so to be more picky, do some returns, and check stuff out really well if possible in person, ask the right questions. Those who don't care or can't tell the difference will end up with a cheap knockoff that performs the same so they likely won't ever realize it or won't care as they save a bunch. I definitely don't hate it, not really in love with it, but I like having the choice of that over just loading up roms on an emulator or a copier cart. It'll piss some off, it'll make some people happy as all get out. Everyone is unique as will be there response.

[theclaw]

"Honest" low priced bootlegs made from original parts have their upsides.
They put more copies of a game in circulation, discouraging people from supporting shadier or destructive forms of fake.

[celerystalker]

This sort of thing doesn't lower the cost of rare or expensive games. Rather, they simply force sellers to open games and post pictures of the pcbs when selling, and buyers to have to research which boards were used in which game and print run. It's been happening on the Neo Geo market for a long time now. Nothing gets cheaper. It all just becomes a bigger pain in the ass and breeds paranoia.

[sfchakan]

That paranoia makes people much more leery when presented with the possibility of paying $150+ for what could be a fake game. I'm sure it will slow down sales in the long run, but wonder if it will pull the price down with it.

We can only hope.

[Tanooki]

Celery you're dead on right, but you know, I have to ask... is being paranoid a bad thing? I never saw bootleg games (other than obvious asian pirates and multicarts) up until I started flea shopping and doing my 4yr run at NA either. But as they started to pop up more, and the quality went from trash to excellent I saw both the good and bad reactions of people to it. In the end, personally I think it's great! We need more paranoia.

For so long people were playing it like it was small town 1950s america where you trust always blindly as that one general store would never rip you off. If people are going to create a system where games get puffed up to bloated prices where making high quality like for like looking external copies with internal boards that last and are well made is a result the paranoia is deserved but also very warranted. Had the system not got all hipster and scalper hot increasingly so in the last five years it would be a radically different picture now, stuff like the n64 dupes, the near perfect GBA copies, and the rest wouldn't be a thing and everyone wouldn't need a game bit unless they needed to really clean or service a cart or system.

Think of it this way, with that N64 bootleg I brought up, in particular Bomberman 64 Second Attack. 2010 that game was a $30-35 title average(so less was easily done and 12mo ago was still $50) and currently it sells 5 years later at $135-145 average priced. The bootleg which is indistinguishable on the outside is $67 from aliexpress. Even if we were to assume that 1/2 the price of that game were parts, manufacturing and assembly it's still a $35~ game for the pirate company to make. They wouldn't even bother. The stuff you'd see bootlegged would only be the mostly obscenely popular junk like Pokemon games where they make little on it due to parts and process, but because they can flip so many the cash is there. Here's one cinemassacre ruined -- Hagane, 2010 it was a $35 game, now it's $450~. Run Saber SNES went from a $5 to $50 game after being in a video in 2012 along side Hagane.


Odds are it may suppress but I doubt it'll drive down the expensive games much. It could lessen the desire for them, but those who just want to blow $100 or $1000 on a legit game will still do it, this won't dissuade them. But for those who want a single physical cart on a system and can't or don't want to pay $100 or $1000 for it would be happy to blow $20-50 on a solid copy. They get what they need, and the collector gets what they want too with less people fishing in the same pond. The only hang up (or not) would be the paranoia wanting to see the board before buying which if someone is blowing 3 to 4 figures on a game, they damn well should be doing it anyways. You don't buy a car without a test drive, and sure they're far more expensive and useful than a game but it's the principle of the matter. You know?

The way I look at it is how I look at off the rack clone consoles now. Sure you could pay $50 for a resold beat up NES system, or you could blow the same that also runs SNES and Genesis or less for a single and lots of people buy them as they keep popping up in more retail spaces. There's a market there. It's not like the Retrons and Retrobits or even crappy Yobos have harmed the value of a legit old system, they have a place, just along side of clone carts.

[SparTonberry]

You don't buy a car without a test drive, and sure they're far more expensive and useful than a game but it's the principle of the matter. You know?

The principle is that buy a ***** VIDEO GAME shouldn't be like buying a car.

[eatenbygrues]

I may be incorrect, but I feel like rampant reproductions have kept GBA prices surprisingly low. If you look at the multi-year trend for loose GBA games: http://videogames.pricecharting.com/...e?sort-by=name it has dropped by quite a bit. Granted handhelds are never as popular as their big brothers, but it is a Nintendo platform. GBA might actually be the cheapest nintendo platform to collect for.

The comparison to the Neo Geo scene is apt, but the biggest difference I feel is that scarcity is a very real thing in the Neo Geo scene, where as in the SNES scene I feel it has a lot more to do with perception.

EDIT: Also more importantly the Neo Geo scene is predominantly hardcore collectors. People don't accidentally buy an AES. The SNES scene is of course much more casual (Which is why things like Cinemassacre videos cause prices to skyrocket). I think causal collectors are much more vulnerable to repro carts.

[Tanooki]

GBA probably is but the GB and GBC are fairly tiny too if you don't get into the boxes, then it gets personal. :P it's why I do those these days and have gone after a few famicom titles too as very few of those are up much at all. Even stuff like Bonk is a $20-25 game on famicom vs 300 on NES for the same experience. GBA piracy is rampant but it's more targeted to those games that run like $30 and more, and the pirates the last year have been of such quality it's impossible to know without opening them up pretty much and even then they're not even using crap parts and weak batteries either now too. It will to a point under cut some of the prices, but not a huge impact as much as the stigma of handheld gaming isn't console gaming does to it.

[The 1 2 P]

I doubt it for the reasons already mentioned. There will always be people like myself who want the originals in their collection. And when the originals are expensive I'll just wait around for a good deal.

[Gameguy]

The fake Genesis carts listed in the first post look different compared to real copies, Musha is using the wrong casing. If it's easy to tell that the games are fake I wouldn't care that much. It's still cheap garbage but it's easy to avoid. I don't think fakes will destroy the collectability of real copies, people will always want real ones for their collection.

As for GBA games, most are cheap because most games are horrible garbage and it's not old enough to be really nostalgic. Once real nostalgia kicks as it gets older, cheap games will start to spike. As it is there are a bunch of specific titles that are already expensive.