Retro Scams: Authenticating Early Nintendo Systems and Games | Hacker News Reader

Retro Scams: Authenticating Early Nintendo Systems and Games

zdziarski.com

40 pointsjzdziarski23 comments

“it’s hard to justify any real value for a US copy of Super Mario Bros, no matter how old or sealed it is, as it’s just a newer copy of the same game.”

This point is lingered on for a while and I don’t get it. Nothing about pricing collectibles is a rational assessment of utility: value is essentially a function of rarity, desirability, and condition. Obviously, in this case, the US versions score higher on “desirability” for US collectors, because the whole point of buying the things is for the sentiment. You can, after all, emulate the games in a million different ways.

I collect civil war stuff, and we have a similar ‘paradox’. Confederate relics score low on “condition”, because the confederacy had worse iron. Yet, confederate relics fetch very high prices. Why? Because they score high on “desirability”: many of the few people who are VERY interested in the civil war are (unfortunately) very sympathetic to Confederates.

I absolutely agree with the statement above, but there is context that I think is worth discussing (maybe in part because I can't internalise it properly :P)

I think for older collectors, it was due in large part to a very weird shift in recent years, epitomised by THAT copy of Super Mario Bros selling for so much.

Traditionally, high priced games were what you described, a combination of rare, desired (maybe not so much for play reasons) and condition. Examples of this were Stadium Events, NES Championships and to a much lesser degree Uforia (which was released only in certain PAL markets)

But the SMB copy was weird. It went to outlandish lengths to justify its "rarity". Sticker sealed with hanging tab not punched out. But other than those relatively minor factors (Opinion, I know), it was entirely unspectacular. Worse still it was an example of a highly published and distributed game, it is somewhat easy to obtain a decent condition boxed copy of SMB for a good (Sub $100) price and (at a guess) to get GREAT condition, it probably wouldn't have gone for much more than $200, just due to the commonality of it.

Game collectors struggled with this paradigmatic shift moment and how to internalise it, most of us (myself included) were somewhat worried it was the sign of non-collector money coming to drive up the prices massively. This happened recently with Pokemon cards to such an extent that Target in the U.S stopped stocking them because man-babies were fighting over it.

I can understand where the author is coming from in the piece. When taken in to account everything, it is functionally wrong, but if you scope it down to people who collect for collecting sake, then it holds true but its a denial of existence to a second segment of people that now exist in game collecting (For better or worse depending on what side of the sale you're on). But it is also fantastically reductionist even for a collector to make that statement. Age isn't the single factor that makes a game's desirability go up. As you've correctly pointed out, Rarity, conditional and personal desirability. (I recently really REALLY wanted a copy of Faxanadu, nothing special, but I paid more than most probably would of because of that).

But its really hard to properly contextualize what happened since the moment that copy of SMB sold for so much. It's not really well understood or even finished having its impact on collecting.

This is great context that I didn’t fully understand until your comment. Thanks!

Agreed, the post would be much better if it stuck to the facts (and had a few more pictures!), as opposed to the chest-thumping rants about how the author is superior to "dumb Americans" for paying a mere $1,200 for copy of Zelda they're never going to play, instead of $800,000.

Scroll down to get bullets of what to watch out for.

Maybe let's not spend thousands of dollars for outdated gaming systems?

I'd spend $2k on an outdated painting from Rembrandt if someone offered me one at that price, but that's just me.

I am sure Rembrandt didn't print them at a factory by thousands.

Rembrandt, like most of the "old masters" in art, ran a studio that employed many painters. He put his name on a lot of things he didn't paint entirely by himself. It's not quite the same as printing, but the idea that he was essentially running a factory isn't entirely wrong.

Well, it's true. If you never buy anything you never get scammed. And I find the emulated experience is just as good these days on top of it. But assuming you are going to start shelling out you should be able to know what you're buying.

I mean why spend money on anything not directly related to food, shelter, and health? Why spend extra to have aesthetically pleasing shelter rather than concrete blocks?

People buy what they want to buy. You criticize this and I’ll criticize that.

Spending money on stuff that's valuable in itself is positive-sum. Spending money on stuff whose value is scarcity is zero-sum at best.

And what of spending money on stuff just because you enjoy collecting? From my limited knowledge, it seems like most buyers are motivated by that to at least some extent.

If it's something you enjoy collecting on its merit, go ahead. If it's something you enjoy collecting because it's rare, that speaks to a subtly unhealthy motivation of wanting to have something that other people don't have. Put it this way: if other people doing well in your hobby makes you sad rather than happy, it's not a good hobby.

The issue with trying to pump prices is that it creates a speculative market that drives most buyers out of the market. We see a similar situation in the PS5 space where demand still outstrips supply and scalpers are wildly profitable.

Do you complain about price or systems? Recent subscription gaming SaaSS have negative value even.

Overall hype about it. Emulators play the games just fine.

If you use a Mister board you get to play on actual hardware (via a FPGA) with modern comforts like USB controllers and HDMI.

Or, of course, you can use a SNAC adapter and use real controllers - and some mister consoles come with SCART or other graphics outputs.

FPGA is really just emulation with a lower latency though. It isn't 'actual hardware' in the sense that 'actual' would mean 'original' or even 'identical to the original', it's just a software-defined-hardware implementation instead of a purely software one.

Emulation is great today, in some ways even superior to the original. It is, unfortunately, not 100% perfect for some systems yet though and while it has mechanisms to deal with the inevitable extra latency it is always there.

Then there's the Everdrive and various ODEs which are a huge boon to the hobby, not only allowing arbitrary games to be played without original media but also removing a common point of failure with the latter. Sadly these are not 100% either, but they're close.

Honestly, for my money, the only reason to own real physical original games these days is sentiment or bragging rights. Somehow owning a boxed and sealed copy of any ultracommon game just doesn't strike me as scratching either itch regardless of condition.

I got bitten by a fake SNES Classic off of ebay a few years back. I was super excited to play Super Mario RPG on the real thing, only to find out that it was running with all sorts of glitches due to how the clone device had been designed, to the point where it was unusable. I suppose it's a pretty good scam since the thing goes for $200+ these days and I'm guessing it's some kind of a low powered android device on the inside.

Haven't quite figured out how to play those old classics again.

I've got an SNES from when I was a kid in the 90s, but it's not in great shape I don't think. I'll dig it out and see if it works in two weeks (I'm moving) if you email me (in profile). If it does, I could part with it for shipping cost and a trade of some other thing you have that you don't want, maybe. I think I've lost the TV adapters though, so I can't be sure it will work or not. I have a few games too, not sure which ones. I'm not too into classic games, everytime I play them I get really bored.

I think the best option is to use a Mister FPGA. The SNES core works flawlessly.

https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/MiSTer

MiSTer FPGA is great, and I love it. But I would recommend it mostly to people willing to spend several hundreds to be able to play with higher fidelity and less input lags than emulation. It's almost the perfect solution (you can even play on CRT and OG controllers), but I tend to think it's mostly for passionate people.

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