Retro video game prices, like those of Nintendo's GameCube and SNES, have risen dramatically since March 2020 - by $100 or more for certain games. The price jumps point to an increasing number of retro game collectors amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as social distancing draws people into nostalgia and online shopping.
Since gaming often starts as a childhood hobby, many adult gamers eventually feel a yearning for the games and systems they played as kids. Retro gaming forms a core part of the larger community, with popular YouTube channels and forums dedicated to specific systems or brands. Lots of retro gamers use emulators to play old games, but there's a certain charm to playing them on original hardware, which is where collecting comes in.
Even at the best of times, game collecting can be an expensive hobby, with particularly sought-after, used titles going for twice as much as their original, new prices (or more). And in recent months, these prices have risen even higher, more than doubling the cost of certain loose game copies at the beginning of the year. It's a phenomenon obviously tied to COVID-19, but also to gaming companies' poor job making old games accessible.
How Retro Game Value Is Rising Amid Quarantines & Social Distancing
In March 2020, outcry for a Thousand-Year Door remake. But other games have seen similar boosts, like loose copies of the notoriously rare Earthbound, which sold for an average of $167.36 USD in March and are now selling for an average of $286.13 USD. Consoles have followed suit, as loose Nintendo 64 systems charted at $35.23 USD in March and $88.50 USD in July.
Of course, individual game and system prices vary, but Price Charting reports nearly every pre-seventh-generation console (i.e. PS2 and earlier) has seen a sharp uptick in pricing for its average game and system sales since March 2020. This is the same time most of the world began taking serious action to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing many to give up their usual hobbies outside the home. In a time of uncertainty, loneliness, and boredom, it's no wonder the retro game market has seen such a boom: These old, virtual worlds can provide people with a nostalgic and immersive comfort other media types can't.
But alongside the increase in demand, pricing has also likely been affected by supply. Sony and Nintendo - the two console manufacturers still in business that produced systems and games during the in-demand era - do not have reliable ways for current-gen gamers to enjoy their old catalogs. Besides the one-off NES, SNES, and PlayStation Classic systems (which are now collector's items in their own right), fans only have access to Nintendo Switch Online's limited library of NES and SNES games. Virtual Console ended with the Wii U, and Sony's able PSOne Classics line never carried over from PS3 to PS4. Without these options, quarantine-weary fans hoping to obtain legitimate copies of old games have no choice but to buy them off the ever-more-expensive retro market.
