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List: "That one game that's more common than the system itself" List


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On 12/27/2019 at 7:38 PM, nrslam said:

Mario's Tennis for the Virtual Boy, Donkey Kong & DKjr for Colecovision, Pac-man for Atar 5200, Pole Position II for Atari 7800.  In fact, given the high failure rates for a lot of old machines, you could name just about any pack-in game from back then.

I'm not very familiar with these systems (other than the VB) if anyone else wants to add some commentary, debate this or agree with it, please respond and I'll update my list accordingly.  I do see a TON of 7800 Pole Positions, so I think I'll add that one to the list too.  I can't speak for the other titles though.

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58 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Dragon Warrior, being a US exclusive, feels like a way too coveted game to make a "super commons" list IMO.

I've wanted a CIB copy for quite a while, and it's not easy to find.

Man, I see this game CIB on eBay constantly and it usually goes for less than $50. I'd be happy to shoot you a PM the next time I see a good one.

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4 hours ago, Sumez said:

Dragon Warrior, being a US exclusive, feels like a way too coveted game to make a "super commons" list IMO.

I've wanted a CIB copy for quite a while, and it's not easy to find.

For various games, I think the commonality of cart-only vs. CIB vs. Sealed can fluctuate greatly.  For instance, games that didn't sell well but hit the bargain bin quickly might be rare over all, but finding sealed copies might be easier than other common games because people might have been more apt to buy the game but didn't open it because it was $5.

I know the story with Dragon Warrior.  For some reason Nintendo/Enix gave it away, which is crazy to me.  I'd love to have some insider details on that decision.  That said, it meant that the game probably didn't sell well and no doubt 99.9% of all kids that got it in the mail immediately opened it up out of sheer excitement.  Of course, I also think this is why it's not hard to find a very-nice copy of Dragon Warrior.  I'm sure some kids LOVED it, while others didn't like it and moved it to the back of the NES pile, never to be touched again because that was they day they learned they didn't like JRPGs.

But, I still think it's an extremely common came with, probably, a lower percent of sealed, or maybe CIB copies, compared to the whole lot that's available.  Regardless of how you look at those factors though, it's still a very common game.

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On 1/2/2020 at 1:10 PM, Inzoreno said:

I can't comment as a collector, but I worked for a retro re-seller store for several years and from my anecdotal experience I can definitely say that SM64 was much harder to come by than the system. For most of my time we had a steady flow of 64 consoles come through our store, but at no point did we ever have a large quantity of SM64 on hand. I don't know why, but many of the small collections lacked that game when they arrived at the store. I would definitely say that probably one of the Maddens better fits this category than SM64. 

I doubt that the Maddens on N64 are more common than the Mario 64. Just that Mario 64 is a classic and buyers are likely to keep it as memento than the Maddens.

From my experience with Pal Australian versions, Star Wars Episode I Racer is probably the most common, followed by Mario 64.

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Not more common than the consoles obviously, but what the hell is up with Body Harvest for N64? There's gotta be a story.

Pretty much every time I see someone selling lots of N64 games, Body Harvest is among it. Usually boxed too.
You'd think it was an immensely popular game that sold a ton of copies, but honestly I never even heard about the game back in the heyday of the console. In fact I never noticed it at all until I started seeing it appearing in all of those listings.
Apparently it's made by DMA Design too, which could explain some hype about the game - they've always been good about that. But I've never witnessed any hype myself.

Did someone just unload a truck of them for bargain prices causing everyone who couldn't afford the typical new price of an N64 game (which to be fair, was outrageous) to pick one up?

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Is this local, or online being sold across the nation, or something like that?

I've found that for certain common games, they can seem to have areas of concentration.  I'm sure there's some mathematics formula proving this too.  This also doesn't appear to be consistently true, for extended periods of time.

For instance, around here I have 4 retro game shops I frequent.  Early when I started collecting (back in 2016 and 2017) every shop had stacks of Extreme-G.  I mean, it was by far the most common game and in my area, anyone basically had a pick of probably 20 to maybe as many as 30 copies to pick one in their desired condition.  It was unbelievably common.

Now, Extreme-G is a common game, but what I found when I searched is that it's not much more common than many other titles in the same bracket.  It's just that some how, around where I live, a lot of people traded them in to the various shops around her and as such, they ended up setting on the shelves a long time.

Today, you will find one, maybe two copies and any given shop.  I probably have access to a total of 4-5 of them.  I still consider that common, but not as much as it was a few years ago.

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