What percentage of NES carts do you think have been thrown away/destroyed?

[Robot_Ninjutsu | 122]

At this point? I'd say at least 60%

"This is old"

"This isn't worth much"

Both are big time justifications for throwing away stuff.

 

[DefaultGen | 5,575]

Definitely over half. Everyone had a shelf of VHS tapes in the 80s, who has any now except some hoarders who don’t clean out their attics and your local Goodwill who has one shelf for the entire city? Old, no longer easily playable media is trash to most people, especially in a time before any video games had a hint of collectibility. I’m sure a much, much bigger percentage of PS3 games live on. 

[Tulpa | 3,583]

13 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

Old, no longer easily playable media is trash to most people, especially in a time before any video games had a hint of collectibility.

I think that's the thing a lot of people overlook. Sure, someone could go on eBay today and see that Shatterhand is worth $80, but twenty-five years ago when it was worth a buck or so at Funcoland? And that's if people even bothered to go to Funcoland and look at the price sheet.

[Robot_Ninjutsu | 122]

I really miss being able to find games for a buck or two.

This makes me wonder about DVD movies, like the 350 billion copies of "The Matrix" that were released back in 1999.

[Orab Games | 97]

I know for a fact that Goodwill would toss boxes of cartridge games and consoles in the 90s. My uncle worked for a garbage company and got me a lot of Atari games that way as a kid.

I feel far more may have been tossed by retailers and warehouses than by consumers.

[phart010 | 1,719]

6 hours ago, Orab Games said:

I feel far more may have been tossed by retailers and warehouses than by consumers.

If that’s the case then maybe unbroken seals have preserved some of the games in the landfill. One day some of these games might be found.

Much like we might unearth an ancient Egyptian or ancient Roman toy and play with it, maybe people thousands of years from now might power up an NES and some games from the landfill and play a little Mario

Edited May 26, 2021 by phart010

[chuppy44 | 56]

Even as a fairly knowledgeable retro gamer, I myself threw a copy of Krion Conquest in the trashcan back in my teen years because I wasn't aware that 99% of the time non-working NES games just need to be cleaned (rather than blown on). That sort of thing is probably still going on to this day.

[elprincipe | 143]

I was thinking 15-20% and voted that way before reading the responses. There are a lot of pretty convincing arguments it's a lot higher than that. I'm sure I'm biased by being one of those people who didn't throw away things like games, like most of us here I'd imagine. No doubt plenty of parents threw out John's old vidya-games when he went to college, or when they couldn't sell them at a yard sale.