Ugh.
A few days ago, after three weeks of bidding and losing many times over, I finally "won" a Super Metroid cartridge, along with another Super Nintendo (SNES) game called Maui Mallard: Cold Shadow. The lot of games was purchased at about $9 per game including shipping, though my primary aim was to get Super Metroid.
Now, a large part of me tells me that I overpaid for both games, though I have found that the secondary market for used games for the Genesis, SNES, NES, and other vintage game systems. I mean, $9 for a 16-year-old cartridge?! To put it into context, I was losing bids on Super Metroid, even when I reached bids of $18.50. I'm sure many out there could relate to this: I would wait, and wait, and wait until I had only a few minutes left, and then someone would swoop in and "snipe" the item with a superior bid. Because I restricted myself to $18, I always lost. But, finally (with some grace, I think), I won two games with a Best Offer bid of $15, plus $3 for shipping. In the end, it was the best deal I could get for one of the most highly-touted video games ever, and with another game included.
So, why are old pieces of plastic with 72-pin mini-circuit boards and dying back-up batteries worth so much? Well, there's the "collecting" explanation -- that is, there are collectors out there who are willing to, say, spend $1 million on the first appearance of Superman (for example). In this way, it stands to reason that vintage games would be subject to the same trend of collecting. Then, there's the "gameplay" explanation -- that is, some hard-core gamers claim that the old games were the best and the newer games are too easy. However, if you step back and compare SNES or Genesis games with Wii or PS3 games, you'd be hard-pressed to unequivocally say that Super Mario World is better in every way than Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii; it really ends up being a matter of opinion colored by nostalgia. Oh, and then there's the "I'm cheap" explanation -- basically, because someone has the old console, he or she believes that the old console is enough for having fun. I belong to that category, though I am also affected by nostalgia.
In my opinion, the "simple" answer is a combination of the three aforementioned explanations, though many would contend that one could simply buy a Wii and spend $5 to $8 on each old game. But, this leads me to a fourth explanation: there is something reassuring about holding and handling the actual cartridge versus possessing the game file on a hard drive. This is really why cartridges are preferable to having ROMs -- ROMs are usually, in varying degrees, faulty ports of old games to files that can be run on a computer. Anyway, old cartridges are just cool -- that's the simplest explanation I can devise.
Oh, and acquiring ROMs from a third-party is illegal. Regardless of what any of us think of that, it is the reality of ROMs. Personally, I think it's silly that copyrights haven't expired on old games, especially ones that require us to spend unreasonable amounts of money to acquire. However, opinions do not trump law. After all, aren't we charged with obeying the laws of our government except when laws violate God's word?
Okay, I'm getting pedantic here. Bottom line: cartridges are cool, but are they cool enough to justify a $40 price tag (that's how much Chrono Trigger costs on eBay)?
