Sega Megadrive game prices new

imitation

I was talking a friend last night about how console games in ireland in the early to mid 90s were serious money, I believe I saw with a friend a new copy of jungle strike that cost like 100 punts in 93/94, but thats a very fuzzy memory. My buddy counterted that may have been the cost with the game. Naturally we had one of those pointless discussions where neither of us had any proof. Was I miles off the mark, or was I maybe thinking of SNES games ?

Myrddin

Can't imagine Jungle Strike fetching £100? Stranger things have happened though. I remember Snes & MD new stuff was priced usually between £45/£60...with only stuff like the ltd edition of SF2T fetching in excess

CiDeRmAn

Nope, Megadrive games, as well as Snes, we're around the 40/50 mark with a selection more expensive, so Virtua Racing was 60.
These were rrp so there would have been examples of shops undercutting that price and, unfortunately, shops overpriced as well.

imitation

I forgot to mention it was xtravision, which has a high markup. But to be honest it might be my exaggerated memory. Still though, even 60 punts was huge money, in the all important currency of pints it must have been 30-40 pints.

o1s1n

The most expensive Megadrive game I saw back in the day was Virtua Racing at £85 in Quinnsworth.

Everything else always came in under £50, usually £45 or thereabouts.

By the way, gotta love how the £ symbol just needs a press of Shift, whereas the € is a ctrl + alt. Even keyboards know it's not a currency which is going to last

CiDeRmAn

I seem to remember Zelda OoT being pricey, still sold out though.
The 3DO was more than £400 as well, back in 94, very expensive indeed, but The Need For Speed and Road Rash were worth it!

Steve X2

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I seem to remember Zelda OoT being pricey, still sold out though.
The 3DO was more than £400 as well, back in 94, very expensive indeed, but The Need For Speed and Road Rash were worth it!

I remember heading up to the "big city" from all the way down in Kildare with my bro to pickup the 3DO and NFS back in '94.
Cant believe we spent that much on a console, still not sure where we got the money from.

o1s1n

That comes out at €507.89 :eek:

And that's not bringing things like inflation into it either, or the fact that the country was pretty broke back then.

£60 in 93 was the equivalent of about €120 today adjusted for inflation. It was ferocious what we were paying for games. I remember the average SNES game was £40-45 but I got most of mine for £20 if I waited until 6 months or a year after release.

Steve X2

I starting working when I was about 15 in the local hotel to feed my gadget and game needs(free unrestricted access to the connected over 21's nightclub was also a pretty big perk when you're 15).
My brother was working there as well so I think we saved up a bit for the lovely 3DO.
I still have that original 3DO as well and its in minty condition

the groutch

I remember alot of Saturn games being £59.99 on release, and most of the megadrive ones I bought were either £44.99 or £39.99

CiDeRmAn

I was the venerable age of 22 and working as a Staff Nurse in St. Ita's by then, which is where I still am now!
Well, not right now, I do get to go home now and again!
But I put the few bob together, sold me Megadrive and a bunch of games and got myself a PAL 3DO, a few months later swapped it with the shop, lovely Gamesworld in the back of Chapters on Abbey St, and never looked back, well not til the following year and the PS at any rate!

OwaynOTT

I never paid for anything until my N64. Got nes, gameboy and Snes as hand me downs
Wish I wasn't paying for the stuff now either! Anyone want to feel charitable?

Does that make sense?

Retr0gamer

The games with bigger rom sizes usually had a premium on them, stuff like Streets of Rage 2 and the street fighter games. Also battery back up games cost a lot more as well with Phantasy Star 4 being very expensive with both a large rom size and battery back up.

Professey Chin

I remember Street Fighter 2 CE was 60 or 65

Doctor DooM

If an MD game was absolutely exceptional for some reason- like extra rom on the cart- it could reach 65.

I bought an American copy of SF2 SCE for 85.


There's no way Jungle Strike hit 100.

Mr.Saturn

Doctor DooM wrote: »

There's no way Jungle Strike hit 100.

In fairness, with the way Adverts has been recently............

Doctor DooM

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I bought an American copy of SF2 SCE for 85....There's no way Jungle Strike hit 100.

I have to agree, I don't think i remember any game ever retailing for £100. That would have been close to €130 in the new money, not counting for inflation. Bearing in mind that back in the early to mid 90's the minimum wage was around £2.00 to £2.50 an hour, so you would have been talking about close to a weeks pay for a lot of families back then. I doubt many in ireland would have ever paid that much, but the top end games weren't too far off it.

I remember getting a limited edition steelbox version of Street Fighter 2 Turbo Hyper Fighting for christmas the year it came out. That game was a 20 or 24 mb cart i think, which at the time was top spec for the SNES, and was top of everybody's want list so it was one of the most expensive games on the console. If i remember right it cost £80 for the steelbox version with the regular cardboard boxed one costing £70 Irish.

Some games like Super Street Fighter 2 which came out a bit later and was the first game to run in full 256 colours cost a similar amount i think, but that was as pricey as i remember them getting (I got that one as an NTSC US import with a convertor, before the interweb was invented when "sending away" for stuff was still a big hassle). Tales of Phantasia and Star ocean both eventually used 48mb which was the largest size cart the SNES ever got but that was late in the life of the console, and I've no idea if those games even sold here, never mind how much they cost.

Ordinary SNES and megadrive games generally sold for £35 to £50 new. I paid £45 for super mario world (in HMV in Henry Street in Dublin i think) and was happy with getting it a fiver cheaper than it was everywhere else. A new release normally was £50 unless it was something special, and would go down after a while depending on the title and popularity. Any SNES game with the "Super FX" chip in it (an early on-cartridge RISC based graphics coprocessor chip that handled polygons and took some of the load off the main system processor like a modern graphics card does nowadays) would cost more. There were only a handful of titles that used it. Starfox was one of the first, and cost about £60 if i remember correctly. Yoshi's island used it's successor (the cleverly named "Super FX 2" chip) but i never bought that, so i've no idea what it cost. It's still on my "must complete" list for the SNES.

Jesus though, when you think of the state of Ireland back before the tiger, and how little cash was around then, we were paying serious money for little 8 and 16mb games that you can get for nothing now, and probably a good chunk of it was VAT and the usual 30% markup on anything an Irish retailer imports and sells here. Ripoff ireland is nothing new.:(

the groutch

But that's what made you appreciate them even more.
When I was growing up a single game could be my whole birthday present, maybe 2 for Xmas if they were older titles.
Otherwise I'd have to save pocket money and buy jointly with my brother.
Also there wasn't much of a 2nd hand market, and trade-ins weren't as big a thing, so what you paid was pretty much what it was costing you, unlikely nowadays where you play and then sell/trade and it's only cost you a tenner odd.
In the end a fair chunk of my gaming in the early 90s was done via rentals.

the groutch

the groutch wrote: »

...there wasn't much of a 2nd hand market, and trade-ins weren't as big a thing, so what you paid was pretty much what it was costing you...In the end a fair chunk of my gaming in the early 90s was done via rentals.

I bought new or got them as presents, but the golden rule was replay value. You didn't get to build up much of a collection of titles because of the cost, and getting a game was rare, so the ones you did, you had to get lots of play time out of.

Now with the easy accessibility of all those games, i'm enjoying getting to play a lot of the titles i never got a look at back then.

Doctor DooM

No second hand market?

You lads clearly hadn't discovered the yellow and black video shop on Marlboro St. They were a god send as a kid, I picked up many MD games for 15 pounds or so. My collection tripled when I found it.

It also did awesome hard to find videos, when I was going through my wrestling phase I picked up loads of ECW stuff.

That was later in the life cycle though.

Doctor DooM

Doctor DooM wrote: »

No second hand market?

You lads clearly hadn't discovered the yellow and black video shop on Marlboro St. They were a god send as a kid, I picked up many MD games for 15 pounds or so. My collection tripled when I found it...

There was one under the railway bridge down in abbey street too. Closed down long ago though. I picked up some spare pads there, and a multitap 4 player adaptor for super bomber man on SNES.

There probably was a second hand market, it was just harder to find back then with no interweb around. My "network" back then was about 4 other lads in school that owned a Super Nintendo. Everybody else had Segas. The "SNES poshies", they used to call us. Bastards!!

Kids can be so cruel...sniff

Doctor DooM

Deleted User wrote: »

There was one under the railway bridge down in abbey street too. Closed down long ago though. I picked up some spare pads there, and a multitap 4 player adaptor for super bomber man on SNES.

There probably was a second hand market, it was just harder to find back then with no interweb around. My "network" back then was about 4 other lads in school that owned a Super Nintendo. Everybody else had Segas. The "SNES poshies", they used to call us. Bastards!!

Kids can be so cruel...sniff

SNES owners were posh that shop on Marlboro St was amazing, picked up a load of Genesis games there, including ones you'd never get here (somehow the had a copy of Kabuki for MD, not exactly a common game). Wonder where they got them from.

Retr0gamer

Electronics Boutique/Game got in on the 2nd hand game sales very late in the 16bit era, the PS1 and Saturn were nearly out then. I remember picking up Thunderforce 4 and Castlevania Bloodlines second hand in the Dawson street shop and them offering me 3 pounds for ghouls n'ghosts and telling them to go **** themselves. Before that the second hand stores were all independent stores.

Mr.Saturn

There was also the original Chapter's on Abbey St, before they moved across the road, and long before the emigration to Parnell St.

imitation

Guess I was miles off with the £100 then, musta been the male "I caught a fish this big" gene kicking in.

Still though, It looks my parents made a cute decision by getting an amiga instead, I derived my fair share of fun off demo disks and freebies that came with computer magazines that my cousin loaned me.

the groutch

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Electronics Boutique/Game got in on the 2nd hand game sales very late in the 16bit era, the PS1 and Saturn were nearly out then. I remember picking up Thunderforce 4 and Castlevania Bloodlines second hand in the Dawson street shop and them offering me 3 pounds for ghouls n'ghosts and telling them to go **** themselves. Before that the second hand stores were all independent stores.

I remember trading in my Megadrive and about 20 games there to get a Saturn on or very near release date
only had one game for it for the first about month, Athlete Kings (aka Decathlete in the arcades).
don't know how I didnt break the controller with all that button bashing.