Hyundai Comboy (Korean NES) games

[Monkeygift | 4]

Some rare stuff available in a shop in Seoul. Although all that is over 1K. The Sonic I think goes for like 2200$.

Anything "cartridge" in Korea is now very rare and/or super pricey, probably beyond prices any foreigner's willing to pay.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Monkeygift

[TheGameDisplay | 55]

I have a small collection of Korean items. I always liked how the label wraps around the top on the NES Comboy games. I don't think Solomon's Key has been posted yet.  It's been really cool seeing everyone else's Korean items!

[fcgamer | 4,723]

18 hours ago, Monkeygift said:

Some rare stuff available in a shop in Seoul. Although all that is over 1K. The Sonic I think goes for like 2200$.

Anything "cartridge" in Korean is now very rare and/or super pricey, probably beyond prices any foreigner's willing to pay.

That doesn't make it rare though. Likely these are just priced to primarily be display / trophy / showcase pieces, again a technique with which I'm very familiar.

 

[BlackVega | 583]

On 4/6/2023 at 2:12 AM, fcgamer said:

A few years back during NA era there were a lot of Korean N64 DK Racing being sold, new dead stock, same with some of the NES games.

#KoreanGamesArentAsRareAsPeopleClaim

Try to say that again in the next 5-10 years

[Monkeygift | 4]

11 hours ago, fcgamer said:

That doesn't make it rare though. Likely these are just priced to primarily be display / trophy / showcase pieces, again a technique with which I'm very familiar.

 

That shop I go to (which is a gaming coffee shop also. Really cool place) has very fair prices for everything I've purchased. But trust me on that, anything on cartridge that was released prior to 2000 here in Korea is now insanely rare as the generation that grew up with that are now making good money and are going nuts hunting this stuff down.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

2 hours ago, Monkeygift said:

That shop I go to (which is a gaming coffee shop also. Really cool place) has very fair prices for everything I've purchased. But trust me on that, anything on cartridge that was released prior to 2000 here in Korea is now insanely rare as the generation that grew up with that are now making good money and are going nuts hunting this stuff down.

That doesn't mean it's rare, rather the scene is underground and the players have deep pockets to get the items they are wishing.

Actually that sounds pretty normal the whole world round.

[cyberguile | 4]

On 4/6/2023 at 2:12 AM, fcgamer said:

A few years back during NA era there were a lot of Korean N64 DK Racing being sold, new dead stock, same with some of the NES games.

#KoreanGamesArentAsRareAsPeopleClaim

No.
They are even rarer as people claim.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqgLx1IjyM6/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Since sanford came back to the US, I've talked a lot with korean collectors.

The market there has COMPLETELY drought. There is almost absolutely nothing left there because japanese collectors and people like me bought everything before 2010 when no one locally gave a s*

Its so rare in south korea now... than when I have the luck to buy something every now and then outside korea that I already have a copy of it, I sell it to one of my korean collector friends for a huge profit lol

 

Another interesting fact I learned from local collectors is that back in the 90s, for the sega games, most people would buy the japanese version of a game they wanted. And would go for the korean samsung version only if they couldn't find the japanese version.
Why ? Because the japanese version looked awesome while the korean one looked dirty lol

Edited September 1, 2023 by cyberguile

[fcgamer | 4,723]

1 hour ago, cyberguile said:

No.
They are even rarer as people claim.

Actually, you just proved what I have been saying, all along, in your post. Thanks for that, it's great having a confirmation that Korean games are not as rare as collectors make them out to be, rather it is just a supply and demand situation.

Quote

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqgLx1IjyM6/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Look there at all of those beautiful games in mint condition. Ask yourself where they ended up when they were sold? So we can confirm at least this amount of copies for each game above, that went to collectors' hands. Sure, 75 - 100 pieces for some of the games, sometimes 25 - 50, is it a lot? Well, yes and no, but it's quite a large number to be going to collectors, and there are tons of items out there having fewer copies known to exist. 

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The market there has COMPLETELY drought. There is almost absolutely nothing left there because japanese collectors and people like me bought everything before 2010 when no one locally gave a s*

Yeah, this sounds very familiar, as you are talking to someone who did the same thing in Taiwan around 2011-2014. I went up and down the island and stripped it of items, whilst building strong connections and and large collection. As you said yourself, no one locally gave a shit, and for those who did, they only gave a shit because they thought I was a fool buying all of this stuff.

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Its so rare in south korea now... than when I have the luck to buy something every now and then outside korea that I already have a copy of it, I sell it to one of my korean collector friends for a huge profit lol

This is the situation regarding the Super A'can and moreso, the software for it. It's incredibly difficult to find locally, and there's likely more software known to be outside of Taiwan than on the island itself. Regarding selling for a huge profit and all that crap, well I'm not into collecting to take advantage of my friends, and besides that, most locals here still don't care about the Super A'can as the nostalgia boom here seems to be driven more by fashion than by national pride.

Quote

Another interesting fact I learned from local collectors is that back in the 90s, for the sega games, most people would buy the japanese version of a game they wanted. And would go for the korean samsung version only if they couldn't find the japanese version.

Why ? Because the japanese version looked awesome while the korean one looked dirty lol

Not surprising, similar situation with locals here due to a perception that the Japanese versions were inherently better.

--

With everything that you yourself said, as well as the pictures posted, demonstrates what I have been saying all along.

Korean games are not as rare as people claim, rather by now the lion's share of the games are in the hands of (foreign) collectors.

This leads to a supply and demand issue, where of course the Korean collectors want these games, likely out of either a sense of nostalgia or nation pride. When one looks at some other regions around the world, one will see a similar situation emerging, no I'm not going to mention specific regions or local companies as I don't enjoy creating competition for myself, but by now it's happening many places.

Some foreign collectors want/wanted these games for the exoticness, bragging rights, "looks kewel, bro" factor, or whatever.

At the end of the day though, it's just about collectors now setting prices and holding onto large swathes of their collection / extras in secrecy, in an attempt to maintain the high prices. It's a similar situation with the 72-pin NES Sachen games; while certain original prints with certain box designs may be rare, the rest of the set isn't - people were literally importing them brand new in complete sets and selling them around 2002 to 2004 or so and the sets were once again going straight into collectors' hands. In fact, there was a lot of weird stuff from back then where that happened - Game King, Super Mario Land 3 Special for the Game Boy Color, Redant's rerelease of the Game Axe, etc.

Finally, as I have personally seen from the parallel situation of Taiwan, even today there are occasionally still good finds and items to be found, as people die off, basements get cleaned, and long-forgotten village shops in the mountains get rediscovered. Korea is definitely in a similar state, and those who try to claim otherwise are just trying to promote a narrative to maintain the prices.  

[fcgamer | 4,723]

[DK | 260]

@fcgamer I think a lot of people equate scarcity to rarity.

If something is difficult to find for sale in any form, regardless of how many copies exist in private, then it is considered 'rare'.

That isn't the technical definition of 'rare', but you could certainly say "It is rare to see a Korean Zelda II for sale" and that wouldn't be an incorrect statement.

So are Korean games SUPER RARE? - No, but is it currently very difficult to obtain more than a handful of titles? - Absolutely - and that is why people who collect them call them rare when they should be calling them scarce. 

 

[Ankos | 441]

28 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

At the end of the day though, it's just about collectors now setting prices and holding onto large swathes of their collection / extras in secrecy, in an attempt to maintain the high prices. It's a similar situation with the 72-pin NES Sachen games; while certain original prints with certain box designs may be rare, the rest of the set isn't - people were literally importing them brand new in complete sets and selling them around 2002 to 2004 or so and the sets were once again going straight into collectors' hands. In fact, there was a lot of weird stuff from back then where that happened - Game King, Super Mario Land 3 Special for the Game Boy Color, Redant's rerelease of the Game Axe, etc.

Is Game King stuff hard to find in Taiwan? In Mainland China it is extremely plentiful and not particularly valued. Aside from Game King III games that is. Same with LTPS Handy Game stuff

[fcgamer | 4,723]

2 minutes ago, DK said:

@fcgamer I think a lot of people equate scarcity to rarity.

If something is difficult to find for sale in any form, regardless of how many copies exist in private, then it is considered 'rare'.

That isn't the technical definition of 'rare', but you could certainly say "It is rare to see a Korean Zelda II for sale" and that wouldn't be an incorrect statement.

So are Korean games SUPER RARE? - No, but is it currently very difficult to obtain more than a handful of titles? - Absolutely - and that is why people who collect them call them rare when they should be calling them scarce. 

 

To get into this sort of collecting, one needs to make connections with other collectors. I am sure that the group is tight-knit, and somewhat inaccessible to foreigners, especially westerners, though if one speaks Korean or something then barriers start to come down.

People are not going to be letting go of their games at this point, with prices set at four figures or whatever. We have seen this plenty of times with expensive games in the States and what not - after a point, it's about trying to trade for something of "equal" value or trying to trade "up", as what can one do with that 1k? Suppose the next one goes to a desperate buyer for $10k next week?

Factors as this also play into the situation here.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

2 minutes ago, Ankos said:

Is Game King stuff hard to find in Taiwan? In Mainland China it is extremely plentiful and not particularly valued. Aside from Game King III games that is. Same with LTPS Handy Game stuff

The machines themselves were easy to find around 2011 - 2015 or so; after that time, it seems as though all the shops had some agreement to send unsold stock back to the manufacturer, or something, as it all disappeared at the same time. The cartridges themselves were never particularly easy to find; however, it was more or less marketed here in the way that a Tiger LCD handheld would have been marketed, so it wasn't really sold in many actual game stores, seemingly.

My point with the Game King is that it was another item that has a story like this. Early 2000s, some guy found one online and said something akin to "Hey guys, I found this interesting knock-off thing called the Game King. The cartridges look like Game Boy cartridges, but the games look like NES games converted to Atari graphics. Here's a link, you can buy the set of games and the machine for only $100" And so tons of collectors did just that, ordered the machine and the games. I don't think the entire catalogue was available, maybe just the single carts; however, once again, plenty of old school collectors ordered sets of these, maybe played it once or twice, and then shelved it. 

[Ankos | 441]

17 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

The machines themselves were easy to find around 2011 - 2015 or so; after that time, it seems as though all the shops had some agreement to send unsold stock back to the manufacturer, or something, as it all disappeared at the same time. The cartridges themselves were never particularly easy to find; however, it was more or less marketed here in the way that a Tiger LCD handheld would have been marketed, so it wasn't really sold in many actual game stores, seemingly.

My point with the Game King is that it was another item that has a story like this. Early 2000s, some guy found one online and said something akin to "Hey guys, I found this interesting knock-off thing called the Game King. The cartridges look like Game Boy cartridges, but the games look like NES games converted to Atari graphics. Here's a link, you can buy the set of games and the machine for only $100" And so tons of collectors did just that, ordered the machine and the games. I don't think the entire catalogue was available, maybe just the single carts; however, once again, plenty of old school collectors ordered sets of these, maybe played it once or twice, and then shelved it. 

Ah. I see. I've noticed more of that happening with Gameboy stuff from Mainland China as of late

[fcgamer | 4,723]

9 minutes ago, Ankos said:

Ah. I see. I've noticed more of that happening with Gameboy stuff from Mainland China as of late

New Game Boy releases?

[Ankos | 441]

4 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

New Game Boy releases?

Not new releases, I was more of referencing people buying up carts and shelving them. Lots of it getting scooped up for cheap and then disappearing into the background. What this seemed to have affected the most was Waixing GBC stuff. Some collectors from Mainland China were telling me about how a pretty considerable chunk of their library kinda just vanished one day, and now there are a whole bunch of games that they know exist because they used to be decently available, but nobody can find anymore. One seller which seemed to have a very large supply of a few CIB Waixing releases I noticed was starting to run out, so I guess the process is ongoing, but most of it happened before I started collecting the stuff. I feel that other stuff has experienced some of this, but Waixing GBC stuff is the most affected to my knowledge

[fcgamer | 4,723]

@Ankos Thanks for the explanation, yeah that makes a lot of sense.

But yeah bringing it back to the issue at hand of Korean games, having been involved in a similar situation and knowing and following trends globally across different communities, that's why I always call bullshit regarding the omg Korean rares narrative, as it really is nothing more than a select small group of people trying to protect their investments or profits.

[cyberguile | 4]

What you don't seem to understand is that some of the pictures I posted were basically... all the current available stock for those games. When the seller that found the Dr Marios started selling them, no one in korea had a copy of the game.

On 9/1/2023 at 5:38 PM, fcgamer said:

Except that outside of the few games for which dead stock have been found in the early 2000s (the NES games I posted, contra hardcops and battlemania 2 for the megadrive, diddy kong racing for the n64, yoshi's island for the snes) everything else is just a no no since I've been looking for them in... 2004 to do this:

https://www.guardiana.net/MDG-Database/Search/?search_value=&search_field=T&take_items[]=0&take_items[]=2&take_items[]=1&take_items[]=3&take_items2=0&platform=MD&region=7&year=&players2=&cover=

There is a LOT of stuff that are a "less than 5 known copies in CIB condition". 

And we are not talking about obscure bizarre stuff, we are talking about retail stuff. Which is completely insane.

My understanding from all the talk with korean collectors is basically that almost everything ended in the trash bin at one point in the 90s AND that many people there were buying Xin1 cartridges because they were so widely available and such a cheaper way to play AND many people would go for the japanese version that were objectively infinitely superior quality (you really need to get a korean megadrive game in your hands to understand what I'm talking about there)

Edited September 3, 2023 by cyberguile

[Ankos | 441]

9 hours ago, cyberguile said:

My understanding from all the talk with korean collectors is basically that almost everything ended in the trash bin at one point in the 90s AND that many people there were buying Xin1 cartridges because they were so widely available and such a cheaper way to play AND many people would go for the japanese version that were objectively infinitely superior quality (you really need to get a korean megadrive game in your hands to understand what I'm talking about there)

I feel like that may be true for a couple games, but for a lot of them it feels like they don't have that low of numbers. I remember seeing copies of a Korean Bomberman compilation for Gameboy on eBay for pretty low prices a few years ago, but its price seems to have spiked and it seems to have gotten a lot harder to find. The notion that Korean games are rare and valuable in general has become so prevalent to the point that even the games that aren't that rare manage to dry up anyways because so many people think they are special. I'm not an expert on Korean games though, I'm just going off of what I've personally seen

[fcgamer | 4,723]

9 hours ago, cyberguile said:

What you don't seem to understand is that some of the pictures I posted were basically... all the current available stock for those games. When the seller that found the Dr Marios started selling them, no one in korea had a copy of the game.

What you don't seem to understand though is that with each post you make, it keeps digging you "in the hole", so-to-speak, further proving that these games aren't as rare as what you and a handful of others (who all just happen to own the stock) claim them to be. 

Quote

Except that outside of the few games for which dead stock have been found in the early 2000s (the NES games I posted, contra hardcops and battlemania 2 for the megadrive, diddy kong racing for the n64, yoshi's island for the snes) everything else is just a no no since I've been looking for them in... 2004 to do this:

Yeah, and what is your point here? I have been looking for a copy of Sachen's Tasac for years, since 2011. That being said, I'm not shouting from the rooftops that it is OMG rare, despite the fact that I have seen very few in the collections of collectors, and never saw it for sale once myself. 

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There is a LOT of stuff that are a "less than 5 known copies in CIB condition". 

I've got TONS of games with boxes where it is 1:1 known boxes known to exist. Ball Story for example. Then again, I'm not so arrogant as to believe that there aren't a lot more out there waiting to be discovered, though.

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And we are not talking about obscure bizarre stuff, we are talking about retail stuff. Which is completely insane.

Yeah, I think everyone here is talking about retail items...

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My understanding from all the talk with korean collectors is basically that almost everything ended in the trash bin at one point in the 90s

Okay.

Quote

AND that many people there were buying Xin1 cartridges because they were so widely available and such a cheaper way to play

So people were buying fakes predominantly as opposed to the real stuff.

Quote

AND many people would go for the japanese version that were objectively infinitely superior quality (you really need to get a korean megadrive game in your hands to understand what I'm talking about there)

And if people weren't buying the fakes, they were buying the legitimate Japanese versions.

Okay, that sounds good, which brings us back to this point, which you said yourself:

Quote

My understanding from all the talk with korean collectors is basically that almost everything ended in the trash bin at one point in the 90s

So if the above statement is correct, the games that predominantly ended up in the garbage bin should be Xin1 cartridges and Japanese versions, right? You said yourself that the average bloke was buying this crap, and that it ended up trashed, right? Or are you suggesting that shopkeepers were literally throwing their unsold Korean games stock into the garbage bins? I don't know about you, but the N64 bombed in Taiwan, for example, which shows in how any old stock is priced to this day. Are you really suggesting that Korean shopkeepers were throwing way tens of thousands of dollars of unsold goods just a few years after they were produced?! Sorry, I call bullshit on that, and this is a situation that you yourself are claiming, as proven by what you had stated above.

In my opinion, you and other Korean game collectors are probably going at things the wrong way. It's likely that the official games were not popular because they were expensive to purchase, and if the Korean versions were seen to be of a low quality compared to the Japanese parallel imported ones, then those that did have the means likely decided to go Japanese over Korean. I'd reckon if you went sniffing into some Korean diasporas in the States a lot more of these Korean version games would turn up, and likely a large portion of owners have no idea of the "rarity" or "value" as the boxes sit in their basements untouched and dusty. You can thank me later for the tip. ;)