Retro game stuff talk

obsidianspider

@flyingtomahawk US games go for a lot more because most people don’t know how to read Japanese. If I could I’d totally be buying the Japanese versions of games.

celly

@obsidianspider you and me both. Like @FlyingTomahawk was saying, the Japanese releases are usually a fraction of the price. Plus there are a lot of games I really wish I could understand that never got a US release or in English.

ruckage

@flyingtomahawk
I guess a game is worth what people are willing to pay for it. I normally check sold listings on ebay to get a realistic idea of how much items are worth, some people list items with unrealistically high prices but no one ever buys them so they aren't worth the asking price.

@obsidianspider
The Centry game is know as Soleil in Europe, and the price it sells for ranges from £40 - £80. There is a copy for sale in Germany at the moment for £26.93. Not sure if you can select English as a language option though in the German version.

FlyingTomahawk

@ruckage
So a game gets his current value on the price sold.
So let's say you and me are gonna raise a price for let's say Game A. So I put Game A on eBay or somewhere where it gets a lot of attention for a ridiculous price. Then you as my friend purchase that item. (but don't really pay me) I then cancel the deal on eBay or even pay the eBay fee just to keep the price high. Then from that day on that game has such value because it was sold for that high price. Right? We could even repeat that procedure a few more times with fake accounts.
I know I am overthinking it but it just boggles my mind to think in a time where cheating is normal as drinking water. I have seen auctions go higher in price because the seller asked 1-2 friends to place fake bids.
When I go around the Japanese game stores I can see some still have the same rare games for the same ridiculous price for the past 10 years! So that would mean that THAT game should actually loose its value since it hasn't been sold for such high price for the past 10 years. Or not?

IMO that is all stupid price policy. I understand if there is a game only printed/made 10-50 pieces world wide and they are rare because there are simply not many around but seeing a $300+ game over 10 times within 1 year sold by different stores does smell not right to me.

edmaul69

does this count as one of the greatest rare games to have gotten for free?

alt text

lilbud

@edmaul69 Now who'd you kill to get your hands on a CIB Panic Restaurant?!?

Or is it a repro?

edmaul69

@lilbud it is real. My mom bought it for $6 at a local game store in the 90’s. I removed the price sticker that was on the front of the box.

edmaul69

I thought the sealed tengen tetris i sold for $500 was awesome. The last boxed version of panic restaurant sold for $1350 and that was cheaper than the other ones that sold.

Clyde

@obsidianspider @celly Well, you both could learn Japanese, some people do such things for their hobby. (I'm dead serious here.) It would also open other Japanese media to you, like mangas, animes and real movies. And it would give you enormous street credibility among nerds. ;)

It would take some time and thus be more of another hobby itself, but it's certainly doable and may be worth the effort. Who knows, it may even help you in your professional life, as language skills tend to do.

FlyingTomahawk

@edmaul69

https://www.ebay.com/p/Panic-Restaurant-Nintendo-Entertainment-System-1992/5890?iid=282802608121

obsidianspider

@clyde I actually do want to do this. Aside from DuoLingo (which I have messed with a bit), do you have any suggestions for learning Japanese? It's proving much more difficult for me to learn than picking up other languages that use a roman alphabet.

Unfortunately immersion (moving to Japan for a while) is not an option. If I did that @FlyingTomahawk would see me on the news poor and surrounded by broken games from Hard-Off.

obsidianspider

I just won an eBay auction fairly cheaply for a "parts only" DMG that I bought solely for the purpose of modding. (I already have a mostly-stock one - lens was replaced with a glass one by the prior owner.)

These things were generally built like tanks so I'm thinking it's probably just corroded battery connections. If I can get it working, how do you think I should customize it? Pics would be helpful.

I'm thinking:

Backlight (not sure of color)
Bivert
Custom case/lens/buttons? (not sure of colors?)
Conversion to use LiPo battery and micro USB charging

What else?

Here are the pictures from the auction:

Clyde

@obsidianspider Thanks for mentioning DuoLingo. Embarrassingly, I didn't know it although it started in late 2011, more than six years ago. Since I'm also considering to learn at least one other foreign language in my life (next to English, my native tongue is German), I'll definitely look into it.

Alas, I can't give you much advice for learning Japanese. However, here in Germany, language exchanges are a common way for two people to learn each other's language. There are online services to bring them together, you could search the web for them.

Writing about it lets my own motivation flare up again. So, thanks for the push. :)

obsidianspider

While looking for modded game boys, my search brought me across this…

ruckage

@flyingtomahawk said in Retro game stuff talk:

@ruckage
So a game gets his current value on the price sold.
So let's say you and me are gonna raise a price for let's say Game A. So I put Game A on eBay or somewhere where it gets a lot of attention for a ridiculous price. Then you as my friend purchase that item. (but don't really pay me) I then cancel the deal on eBay or even pay the eBay fee just to keep the price high. Then from that day on that game has such value because it was sold for that high price. Right? We could even repeat that procedure a few more times with fake accounts.
I know I am overthinking it but it just boggles my mind to think in a time where cheating is normal as drinking water. I have seen auctions go higher in price because the seller asked 1-2 friends to place fake bids.
When I go around the Japanese game stores I can see some still have the same rare games for the same ridiculous price for the past 10 years! So that would mean that THAT game should actually loose its value since it hasn't been sold for such high price for the past 10 years. Or not?

IMO that is all stupid price policy. I understand if there is a game only printed/made 10-50 pieces world wide and they are rare because there are simply not many around but seeing a $300+ game over 10 times within 1 year sold by different stores does smell not right to me.

Anything is really only worth what people are prepared to pay for it. Viewing sold listings on ebay - though not perfect - gives a good indication (if you look at completed listings instead you'll often see much higher prices but they go unsold).

People can rig listing by placing false bids but if they sell then they either are sold to the false bidder (which isn't really a sale) or a genuine bidder was willing to pay the high price. Unless an item is really rare there will be several listings so you get a more accurate idea of actual value as you can see an average.
Definitely, if an item is on sale for months or even years at a high price and no one buys it then I totally agree it's not worth that price but some people just refuse to lower prices for some reason.

It's also subjective, everyone values things differently. Personally I would never pay large amounts of money for a game.

As a very recent example I just bought a controller for my PC engine. In the UK they are pretty scarce but on average they sell for around £25. There haven't been many listed recently but there is a seller in Germany who consistently lists them for £50 which is really expensive (I could import one from Japan with taxes and get it cheaper.) The thing is they never sell so aren't worth £50, he just keeps re-listing the same item.
A UK seller listed his controller and I guess tried to slightly undercut the German sellers price so had a Buy it Now of £49 - I put in an offer of £25 which was refused. No one bought it so he reduced to £39. Again no one bought it so he lowered it to £29. At this point I put in another offer of £26 and he accepted so I got it for the going rate and more importantly the price I was willing to pay.

Here's a photo of my controller as it's pretty relevant to this thread, it's in nice condition and came with the box so I got a good deal I think, I've opened it up and surprisingly the membranes are all in really good condition as well with no splits.

0_1521293618477_pipd8 controller.jpg

edmaul69

@flyingtomahawk yeah that is outrageous. Even if it is sealed/new

obsidianspider

I never had a NES as a kid. We went right from my parents' Atari 2600 to Super Nintendo. When I was in college I got a NES in trade from a guy for fixing his computer. I played it a while and then the red light would blink constantly and games wouldn't load. I tried fixing the connector by re-bending the pins, but it didn't work. Then it sat in a box for a number of years.

This past Fall I got the NES autographed by James Rolfe but it was still inoperable.

Today on my lunch break I finally got around to replacing the 72-pin connector, and thankfully that was all it needed. I've heard that on some the NES10 lockout chip fails and you have to bypass it.

Some games with a slightly thicker PCB (Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt) are really difficult to remove, but all play correctly, and most of the time I'll probably be using my Famicom anyway.

0_1521579235903_Screen Shot 2018-03-20 at 4.40.22 PM.png

space cadet

On the lock out chip it can by disabled by snipping one of its leads. Can't remember on top of my head though!

obsidianspider

@space-cadet Thankfully that wasn't necessary, but if it breaks in the future I'll know what to do! :)

FlyingTomahawk

Does anyone heard of fake Japanese MegaDrive games? Or so called repros?
I was just looking at an auction site here in Japan and I see 2 titles, Vampire Killer and Battlemania which would easy go for ￥40000-60000 each starting at 1 Yen or 1600 Yen for the other and one more day to go and no bidders at all. Which is very strange. Usually you have people fighting and over bidding each other for such titles.

The product description says it is a foreign version. Which would indicate fake or other Asian country besides Japan. So I read of people accidentally buying those "fake" games and it would be most painful if you paid hundreds of dollars to get it only to find out it is a cheap fake.