The Cinemassacre effect is still a thing...

[scaryice | 579]

9 hours ago, andrew244 said:

I'd say Cinemassacre in general. IIRC Hagane, while rare, was dirt cheap until Mike did the SNES Hidden Gems vid on the channel 

Edit: Yep just checked, game was like $89 before "Top 10 Obscure SNES Gems by Mike Matei", jumped to $285 almost overnight.

 

That is false, the game was already going for $215 loose at the time. Just checked the old NA thread where I documented the prices. It had already gone up a lot before that.

Edited December 21, 2019 by scaryice

[scaryice | 579]

Updated look at those SNES hidden gems:

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by scaryice

[T-Pac | 7,513]

13 hours ago, The Strangest said:

Not saying anyone here is doing this, but I don’t really fault these YouTube gaming celebs for talking about games they like and bringing awareness. Part of what I love about this hobby is my ability to talk about it and share with others. The price climbing is just an unfortunate side effect.

Well said - I was exposed to many of my favorite games through YouTube videos, so I guess it's not so bad that I had to pay more for them due to 'hidden gem' hype.

-CasualCart

[Sumez | 2,930]

Lol, that's an interesting definition of "hidden gems".
Well, I guess to some people anything other than Mario and Zelda are hidden.

Hagane has really been expensive for ages. I bought mine a long time ago, and bought the Japanese one because it was the only one I could find cheap even then.

[acromite53 | 337]

On 12/20/2019 at 10:36 AM, RH said:

Interesting enough, MJR dropped a video this morning but it was a bit different than others I've watched.  It was a traditional Games for system X you might want to check out" video for the 3DS but, this time, he pointed out games he liked, games he wanted to play and games he couldn't get into but asked others what they thought.  He also panned over a lot of titles and was like "these are good so let's talk about a few", so there were probably 30-40 titles shown or mentioned in the video.

Is that the one titled "Get these games CHEAP while you can" ? I havent watched the video yet but I'm glad you say it's a better format. I see he's still going for that bs angle with the title which I hate.

This guy has had a big impact in prices. You can see the price spikes right when his videos come out. I will say it gets on my nerves.

[BreaKBeatZ | 136]

26 minutes ago, acromite53 said:

Is that the one titled "Get these games CHEAP while you can" ? I havent watched the video yet but I'm glad you say it's a better format. I see he's still going for that bs angle with the title which I hate.

This guy has had a big impact in prices. You can see the price spikes right when his videos come out. I will say it gets on my nerves.

What bothers me most is how he pretends like he doesn't care or know how much his collection is worth and the only thing that matters to him is sentimental value. He makes his living because these games are collectable and expensive. It's also obvious that he doesn't actually play many games.

[austin532 | 467]

Hidden Gem videos is MJR's bread and butter. It's what people know him for. He thinks people are picking on him and that he is just "bringing awareness" to unknown games. That's cool and all but some people watch his videos and then buy up all of the games mentioned in the video. Then they jack up the price so now that $20 game is now $100. Most of the games eventually come back down after the hype but some continue to stay expensive. Samurai Western for example.

So yes, he definitely has an impact on the market. Whether he's doing it on purpose or not I don't know but as they say "there is no such thing as bad publicity".

[Tanooki | 4,929]

Having felt bad about it for years and getting hot over it at the old site I know my feelings were pretty well clear.  Having more time to think on it into now though,  I'm not even sure it's really fair to blame the youtuber or the service in general because if they didn't do it some one else would.  The entire problem is that having a huge base is only good to cause a short term spike, remember when Guardian Legend got the treatment but then it was like what months later it regressed basically nearly back to normal.  That would be the base that took interest, but what factor perhaps got left out?  The non-gamer business types who jumped in to make a buck, same ones who went nuts for 1000 dollar beanie babies you couldn't even give away now, or the insanity of buying up boxes of baseball cards and comics in the early 90s to take them to your own shop and upsell them individually for like 300% or worse a piece.  The same jerk factor has been there since before the internet was a thing.  So it's really not the videos, they seem to be more like spikes than sustaining on their own, it's those people who pop up opening up their dkoldies, their sosagames, hillbilly, pedrogames and the rest doing shady stuff both as stealth shill bidders and sellers on separate accounts that sustain it.

But hey it's kind of been on the wall for awhile, look at the general prices on many NES and SNES games in 2019 vs 2018 and back through this decade.  I think people have in general felt enough is enough.  I recall stuff like TMNT4 being like $60-70, Super Metroid at $50, both can be had now for like $20 on ebay.  Many of those many thousands of copies into the millions pressed games people were going but WHY about on prices seem to have slipped.  I doubt if cinemassacre revisited these things they'd shoot back up like nuts, at best a spike really.

[buttheadrulesagain | 41]

On 12/20/2019 at 5:38 PM, Estil said:

I don't get it either.  I mean the second SNES is a major downgrade compared to the original...after all, the first one has S-video, the second one does not.   I for one am very grateful they had the foresight to include S-video compatibility back in 1991...after all back then how many US televisions could take S-video in those days?  And trust me, you want S-video instead of composite (red/white/yellow) for SNES, you really do.

When modded for RGB (including an extra mod to clean the image) it gives the sharpest image of all models. I can tell the difference on my PVM.

[austin532 | 467]

That dithering though...

[buttheadrulesagain | 41]

7 hours ago, austin532 said:

That dithering though...

I think it's a very small price to pay for the vivid colors, sharpness, and less visual artifacts (like color bleeding) that can be enjoyed with RGB.

[austin532 | 467]

It just looks off to me on some games where it was clearly meant to blend two colors together. For PS2, GC, and XBOX, yeah RGB/Component all the way but for 8-bit and 16 bit, I tend to favor composite.

[buttheadrulesagain | 41]

7 hours ago, austin532 said:

It just looks off to me on some games where it was clearly meant to blend two colors together. For PS2, GC, and XBOX, yeah RGB/Component all the way but for 8-bit and 16 bit, I tend to favor composite.

On the other hand, I can no longer stand composite  . Even on the monitor, it really looks inferior to me compared to RGB. I do not miss it at all. I think the RGB  image is like looking at a nicely print magazine. Dithering doesn't even bother me in PS1 games, like Silent Hill (where it is noticeable on the whole screen). I see it there, but the benefits are so big that it is just a minor nuisance.

Edited December 22, 2019 by buttheadrulesagain

[austin532 | 467]

Well, PS1 is the king of dithering LOL. A lot of it is unnecessary and can be disabled. By the 5th gen, composite starts to show it's flaws so I usually stick with s-video.

[Estil | 1,261]

2 hours ago, buttheadrulesagain said:

When modded for RGB (including an extra mod to clean the image) it gives the sharpest image of all models. I can tell the difference on my PVM.

My retro gaming monitor (20" Emerson CRT) only takes S-video/composite though.

[buttheadrulesagain | 41]

On 12/22/2019 at 12:41 AM, Estil said:

My retro gaming monitor (20" Emerson CRT) only takes S-video/composite though.

I don't know if this difference applies to composite and SVideo, but check this out. https://www.retrorgb.com/snesversioncompare.html

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

I've found several new games from YouTube "hidden gems" videos. I guess the price increase is a side effect of them actually being good games that people don't commonly own as much as anything, so if a fraction of the audience all starts buying the same game all at once it's going to go up, especially if its uncommon to begin with. I guess that's still better than trying a new game only to find out that its awful.

[austin532 | 467]

2 hours ago, buttheadrulesagain said:

I don't know if this difference applies to composite and SVideo, but check this out. https://www.retrorgb.com/snesversioncompare.html

IMO, it does. Even with composite I can see a slight difference in sharpness with the 1chips.

[DarkTone | 984]

Good thing hes doing newer games now. 

[Strange | 1,700]

I’m not gonna lie, I cashed out on Samurai Western when it spiked. I got it for 25 cents at a yard sale when I was in college, and the prize spike came when I was in graduate school and needed money. Off to eBay it went.