GameCube games being like US Sega Saturn levels of expensive is extremely weird to me because I bought the bulk of my physical GCN library when the console died and everyone, individual or business, was willing to part with most of these as soon as possible for as cheap as they could.
I wonder if GameCube games coming to Switch 2 will lower the prices but somehow I doubt it. Nintendo collectors are a different breed
Time + low sales = $$$ The best time to buy an unpopular system is when companies just need to clear there stockpile of unsold units as fast as possible. I feel like that time has been far gone now with prices raising even on current gen hardware :/
Nintendo is a popular name so the foolproof methods of speculating on collectibles dictates that they must be priced the highest.
yeah, agreed more than half my gamecube shelf came from circling town when gamestop was dumping them for dirt cheap - think the most pricey one was a manual-less path of radiance for like $20 see also: my ps2, DS etc shelves. pennies on the dollar for some of this gold
The biggest two GameCube games I missed out on before prices went coocoo bananas were Ikaruga and Cubivore which never really were cheap. I am mostly satisfied with my GC collection; there's maybe fifteen or twenty games I wouldn't mind getting but can live without.
I did manage to find a used copy of Ikaruga during that era for not wacky prices but I recall the window of opportunity for that being particularly small. Cubivore on the other hand...I did end up paying a bit more than MSRP back in the day for it. Which, considering today's price, I got lucky.
I paid $30 for a copy of Ikaruga from a store, got it home and found out it didn't work. They didn't have any more copies so I swapped it for Resident Evil 2 and the store gave me such a hard time over them selling me a bad game that,I never went there again.
I got Ika when it came out but then managed to lose it and a few of my other Cube games :/
The Japanese imports are a great way to— Oh wait……….
*cries in American*
Yeah, it's weird to me too as GCs and the games were so ubiquitous and cheap. Especially the silver GCs. I still associate those in my head with cheapness.
I bought my GC back when they had the ridiculous US deal of $99 USD plus you get a Zelda compilation with Zelda 1, 2, OoT, and Majora's Mask. Also silver (or I think they advertised it as "Platinum" on the packaging). Still have it.
Some people have reserves of gold or silver to protect themselves against economic crashes. Me? A pristine copy of Path of Radiance and two copies of Twilight Princess GC 💰
I bought a copy of Devil's Third for the Wii U because I preordered it and then forgot I preordered it and when it arrived I was like, uh, maybe this might be worth something someday maybe? Investing in Devil's Third Futures.
Boy was that a fortuitous preorder hahaha.
I picked up a copy of Kirby Air Ride for my shelf to replace my old non-working GameStop copy back right after Air Riders was announced and average prices have shot up $20-$30 since then. It’s freaking nuts.
Saturn was cheap for a while too. I got one around 1999 and nobody wanted that stuff except maybe for some of the rarer RPGs. It’s always the consoles that people don’t buy which end up being expensive. Jag now is crazy.
Just like with the Saturn, there's only so many of even the best-selling games
I remember several years ago seeing individual GameCube games being sold for $100 each.
Nostalgia (especially for Nintendo) is one hell of a drug
This was me in 2000 with pretty much every console prior to PS1/N64/Saturn. I was getting brand new unopened Super Famicom games and NES rarities for, by today's standards, chump change. My boxed PAL copy of Ufouria was only $17.
Makes me wonder where this enthusiasm and energy for the vidya lunchbox was during its actual life cycle. You know it's true. People were dunking on the Cube when it was new. I haven't forgotten.
This reminds me of how a bunch of animated movies from the early 2000s have cult followings now. Like, Treasure Planet and Road to El Dorado were not hits in their day, but people talk about them like they're classics. It's probably for the same reason, too.
No kidding. That said I suppose it's nice that stuff like Treasure Planet and the GameCube are getting a Renaissance. At least stuff like that is getting the attention they deserved, even if it was decades after the fact. It does make me wish that stuff was more appreciated in its era, though.
they were all in grade school
My theory as to why GC games have gotten so expensive is that the Wii being fully backwards compatible with GC titles has retroactively made demand for GC games way higher across the board.
Honestly doesn’t feel *that* different to the Saturn to me either; I bought my Saturn refurbished for $50 during the EB Games clearout
I bought F-Zero GX and Eternal Darkness for like $5 a pop back when the console was still active, because apparently those didn't sell well enough and weren't popular enough for a brief period, and now they're what, $80 to $100 a pop? What?
I own copies of Custom Robo and Path of Radiance. Same case.
My GCN library should not be as expensive as my US Saturn library. And honestly neither should probably be expensive. Owning these things fucks up my perception of value or whatever because these are not investments to me. They're things I bought cheap and enjoy.
That's because you actually buy games cause you like games and not because you wanna play trading but with a market that's more manipulative
That weird era after RE4 but before Twilight Princess was great for me. Picked up the majority of my Gamecube collection then, including stuff like Fire Emblem & Lost Kingdoms 2, and every game was like $15 or less. I got Go Go Hypergrind and Chaos Field at a Gamestop for $3 each lol
That sounds like the era I picked up a lot of my stuff. I was browsing a local retro game store the other day and they had Pokemon Box for $2000. And it didn't have the outer box to hold it and the included GCN-GBA link cable. And I thought "I bought that on the online store for $40 I think."
And I still have it. I feel like I should be selling it. Apparently that store did eventually sell it to somebody.
Yeah, I was too young to take advantage of Saturn clearance sales so I guess getting the Gamecube library for cheap is my age group's version of that. And I get wanting a complete collection but holy shit Pokemon Box is not worth it at that price. It was barely worth it at MSRP
Yeah, most of the price felt like you were buying the accessories (the link cable and the included memory card) and there's this software that lets you hold more Pokemon I guess It's a neat tool but definitely not worth the asking price now. Even then it was only worth it for Pokemon super fans.