ExplodedHamster

Picked up Shining Force for the first time in many years. One of my favorite games of all-time, but it's tough to sledge through with little kids lol. I made it to chapter 2, though! Shining Force III (all three scenarios) took me nearly 18 months with one kid, now I have two, so let's see how it goes...

Hmmmm... Wellll, my ego says I should answer the question, but my wallet thinks otherwise... What to do, what to do... Ok, fine. Barbie. NES, Genesis, Game Gear, NeoGeo, you name it. All Barbie, all the time.

The original Megaman did on the manuals for the oval versions, but I think that was to denote it added the seizure warning. The boxes didn’t have them on the flaps, though.

One of my favorite games as a kid, and increasingly difficult to find:

Yeah, I'm just wondering why like they didn't think Rev-A Tyson was gonna be the last, for example. Or on Megaman.

Ended at like 10AM on a weekday, which didn’t help him.

How could any company ever know if something is a final revision, though? I saw this auction, and also thought you did well. Sorry this person did this. Coincidentally, I insta-BIN'd a different Tyson like 2 weeks ago and same exactly thing happened. Then a week later, same seller messaged me and asked if I was still interested lol. He similarly got negged.

You also can’t for a while, as WATA does not have Genny cart only cases, at least not for now.

Third party stuff is unaffected, so Nintendo must have been involved somehow...and I’m not quite sure why, at least as it pertains to older stuff. The number of Mario 3s available went from 175 or so to 25ish. So the approved sellers list as of now is pretty short.

Sure, but we’re 15-20 years into this hobby, if people only care now about a first print Zelda and not before, for example, I’d think it’s actually BECAUSE of the WATA effect. In that case, it’s not like people were actually harmed; in fact, WATA would have piqued their curiosity and contributed to their excitement about games. The other rare items have been going up forever anyway.

The rapid rate of price hikes is nothing more than a rush of well off people competing and/or speculating, if it’s even fair to call it speculation at this point. The articles are a combination of sellers and the companies involved reaching out to promote everything, which is mutually beneficial. That’s normal and smart business practice. Rarity is also a somewhat relative term, because when you have a population of 10 sealed SMB, for example, sitting on Ebay, which has taken years to accrue, and all of a sudden 20 new serious buyers come in, availability changes incredibly quickly. This happens in pretty much every hobby as it makes the turn into “collectible.” These discussions similarly happen across hobby communities, most recently MtG and comics. And sneakers, as Jone pointed out. I’m not even quite sure what the theory is here. If the accusation is the auction houses are inflating prices, how are they making money? In that case they are paying way above market. The only way is to get legit buyers to come in and pay high prices. Otherwise, nobody is profiting, and the model will quickly collapse.

“Increasingly suspect fashion?” Because WATA, which has a business agreement with HA, advertises them and vice versa? Because people who are re-defining the market have different wants than you, and others, did? Because video games are now being pedigreed the same way collections in other collectibles are? That’s your evidence? Try and paint it as you not criticizing Deniz and Kenneth all you want, but you’re all but calling their business and their business partners scammers and frauds. There’s no other way to parse it, try as you might. I mean one of your main points of evidence was WATA advertising for HA...how else can that be read?

Kind of true, but the main target here has been sealed games, which the “average game collector” never really cared about to begin with. The other stuff has been around for decades, either in abundance or rare and popular enough it’s been priced out of the average gamer’s range for years. As of now, at least, a large majority of the market has been unaffected by WATA.

Ehhhhh, NA was bordering on dying before GC ever came in. NA had a handful of threads related to WATA in the forum itself, so I don’t really see WATA as being the catalyst for the slowdown there at all. People just weren’t discussing other things anymore to begin with. Can only have the same debate so many times, plus people have kids, use Social Media instead, etc. This forum is already a massive upgrade from what NA has been for years, mainly because it’s mobile-friendly.

I agree, the feedback thing is a good add. But I’m not really sure about the whole WATA vs not WATA debate in general, because there’s is still plenty of place in both pools. There’s no need for mudslinging because if you’re anti-WATA, great, it really shouldn’t impact you much. If you’re pro-WATA, great, do your WATA thing. We’re really just back at the “games are meant to be played” debate. People arguing for the sake of arguing. I guess that’s kinda what message boards are for, to be fair...

There’s nothing deceitful about this man, it’s simple supply and demand. Halpern and especially WATA aren’t forcing people to pay what they are for these games. Halpern being on the board is out in the open and not abnormal or shady at all from a business perspective, either. The point is to work together and model something that benefits both businesses. In the end, they’ve managed to market themselves into the high-end collectibles community, which has an ungodly amount of money being thrown around. If you look at the money thrown around in coins, stamps, comics, etc., then it’s pretty easy to accept a hard to find cult classic title like Killer Tomatoes is a four-figure game. The market has been defined within a certain limit for so long that people simply cannot seem to wrap their heads around it changing so rapidly. As I’ve been saying since January, forget the past 10-20 years and place video games in the context of true “collectibles” now. The values will make more sense, and appear low compare to others, if anything. Video games lag behind Magic the Gathering at this point, for instance...

More like a DOUBLE dm <winkyfaceemoji>

nt