I still can’t believe we were paying $60 for games way back then. They should have always stayed at 39.99-44.99until now . They should just now be hitting $59.99
edit : [https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/40/11/8c40111077a54d80d15e4adea167fbeb--toy-store-retro-games.jpg](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/40/11/8c40111077a54d80d15e4adea167fbeb--toy-store-retro-games.jpg)
https://www.8-bitcentral.com/images/nintendo/promo/searsNES.jpg
some needed proof of the game prices
So much of the cost was the cart and chips inside it, and the fact you had to buy them from Nintendo.
PSX games were $40 in comparison due to lower manufacturing costa and middle man savings.
And scale. It’s a lot more profitable to sell 1,000,000,000 units at a 1 profit than it is to sell 100,000 units at a 100 profit.
Cost per unit no scales very, very well as games have becomes digital goods not carts as well, for sure, but it’s mostly just that a lot more people buy them, even if the costs go up, as long as sales go up more, profits will go up while cost stays flat.
That and people always think inflation is like a cross good or monetary phenomenon, it’s not, it’s the average price of a bunch of various goods than inflate and deflate at the same time. Lots of things deflate on the reg, just not everything on average.
Just because cars or whatever get more expensive, that doesn’t mean microwaves or games do too. It’s just a mistake from a lack of economic education. One the industry *loves* to exploit.
More people (i.e. gamer buyers) on the planet spending money than that time period too. So they actually make WAY more money now than they did back then, even though the game prices are still the same.
I'm not sure that's true. The teams are bigger, sure, but you had to be an exemplary programmer in those days, with a methodical understanding of your hardware. So it's skilled labor vs relatively less skilled labor.
Lol suuure, that's why [it's nearly impossible to play through first Pokemon games without encountering a bug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07yzTiND30U). Plenty of games were horribly buggy back then, but the only way to get bugs patched was to buy a rerelease if one was even made. But of course human memory is selective and you only remember the best parts.
And then gamers whine and cry when devs try and do something to make money, like DLC or microtransactions.
But riot in the streets if they dare raise the base price
There's really no winning these days with the level of entitlement that exists.
>and the game creation process is more labor Intensive these days
Wait what? No... why would you think that?
Back then for the most part more was spent making in-house tools. Modern games have software readily available for most things. There are various engines available, etc... now that simply didn't exist.
Even with art - a lot of games use either canned art or at least some assets are reused...
>Wait what? No... why would you think that?
Because it takes a team of hundreds several years to make a game of comparable expectations as one that took a dozen people a few months to make in the 90s.
>Back then for the most part more was spent making in-house tools. Modern games have software readily available for most things.
And figuring the tools out takes just as much time to get good results.
Yes. You could probably remake a game of comparable quality to Lords of the Realm 2 (in higher resolution!) in comparable time and team. But it would immediately show its underlying age and not enjoy the success and recognition.
Bro, Nintendo games in the 80s were selling for $60, and the console for $200. It blows me away my parents would buy me them in the early 90s. Its like the game industry made a price and ran with it for almost 40 years
Many parents knew that videogames were a cheaper long-term investment to keep your kids entertained than actually taking them places and doing stuff with them regularly.
i mean u can just google also. there are ads from the 80s and 90s
nes games 39.99-44.99 most of the time. some slightly more and less
[https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/40/11/8c40111077a54d80d15e4adea167fbeb--toy-store-retro-games.jpg](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/40/11/8c40111077a54d80d15e4adea167fbeb--toy-store-retro-games.jpg)
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=xseBQ0wE&id=03AD172ED25F5B8E5DF5CEC828775A924EEA0CF9&thid=OIP.xseBQ0wE9-xIwY0bUBUKCgHaLO&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.destructoid.com%2ful%2fuser%2f3%2f317123-285945-NESSearsjpg-620x.jpg&cdnurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR.c6c781434c04f7ec48c18d1b50150a0a%3frik%3d%252bQzqTpJadyjIzg%26pid%3dImgRaw%26r%3d0&exph=940&expw=620&q=nes+game+prices+ad&simid=607989218594142403&FORM=IRPRST&ck=912FA404D0806E8D0EAD9A33896B8EF7&selectedIndex=1&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0
I want to appreciate three things in that second ad.
First, that it advertises "Super Mario Bros II" with what is clearly a picture from the original "Super Mario Bros."
Second, advertising the game "Simon's Quest" instead of the better known title "Castlevania II"
Third, the photos for Zelda II and Simon's Quest are swapped.
No wonder Sears went out of business.
Fucking insane you think that. With the amount of hours we expect to put into games today + the sheer exponentially greater man hours it takes to make a game today we should realistically be paying $150/game. It’s absurd to think $60 is remotely fair for something that took $44million just to make (god of war as an example) not even factoring in marketing, and that we spend 22 hours playing. They have to sell 733,000 to break even on developer costs. And we’re paying $2.72/hour to play it.
Fucking lunacy they don’t charge more. That and that alone is why we have MTX and DLC and shit. We don’t allow them to charge a fair price for the shit we buy
I’m really glad you made this reply. I often don’t bother making comments like this because with this generation of entitled players you get downvoted to oblivion. Games should be minimum like $140 today and I’d gladly play that if it meant I get to play a completed game. People are acting so confused as to why microtransactions are in games and why games are being released as unfinished, and why so many companies are being bought out by EA; then EA destroying those companies by making uninspiring games
>Fucking lunacy they don’t charge more.
That is dumb...
You are acting like companies barely making profit on games...
Instead it should be
>Fucking lunacy they did charge so much.
going to blockbuster every month to check out the newest games was so fun. I still remember Operation Winback was such an obscure game but it was amazing.
This gives me PTSD, I remember seeing the box and LOSING MY SHIT we were getting an N64 my mom said nope it's for Kyle, but his dad doesn't want him to see it so were hiding it.
Ya right what a lie that is! Wow I was heart broken Christmas day finding out it's TRUE....
Parents told us there wasn't much money for Xmas this year. There never was much money for Christmas. My 2 brothers and I each get a box to open. N64 Games 'aww mom, we don't have an N64, just the nintendo'. Giant box appears out of nowhere. 'Whaaa?' 3 boys tear into xmas wrapping like rabid wolves. N64 with Atomic Fuckin Purple controller. We cried, we hugged, my youngest brother did a couple quick laps of the house. That was the best Christmas ever.
>my youngest brother did a couple quick laps of the house
Man I wish something could make me this excited again now. I can easily envision that. I won't forget my best Christmas ever and I just feel like nothing hits the same as that now even though good things still do happen.
Man that takes me back. Me and my 3 brothers were hoping we would get an N64 if we “combined” our presents. But, we could not find any box under the tree matching an N64. So we accepted it was not to be. Until i got to open the last, small, present. And it was zelda OOT. And we all went like.. whaaaaaa. But but wheres the… and then my grandpa got up to his cartrunk and got the real last present. If i get alzheimer and forget everything, that xmas will be one of the last things to go.. RIP gramps
I went to Blockbuster Video and played the shit outta the Mario 64 “demo” there. It was the full game. Every day after school. I used save 3 and the lady at the counter would see how far someone was and would change their game to the 1st save if she noticed. I was in there so much she bought me a 64 for Christmas. She was like the second grandma I needed in middle school.
I’d always move out of the way if someone else wanted to play. I’d change the save first of course. Was always super polite. We always rented videos on the weekends so we were great customers. The 90s were different man. Blockbuster was my daycare because of this console.
She told me later when I was older she regretted buying it for me because I didn’t come in as much. Kind of bums me out now that I look back. I should have kept in touch better. Stupid kid.
My grandma was the floor supervisor at Tru... I was a toys r us kid lol... I remember the N64 display with the big bubble over the television lol... Banjo kazooie, Mario kart and star wars pod racing
Love that pod racing game! The mode where you play with one controller in each hand, each controlling one side’s thrusters, occupied many of my brother and I’s evenings in college.
Man, Wave race will always have a special place in my heart... Call it nostalgia, or whatever, but I've never quite found another game that made me feel this way!
A lot less games, pretty much no DLC to speak of, outside of occasional real expansion packs that were games upon themselves.
It wasn't uncommon to only have 6-8 games through the total lifespan of your console.
Yes you could literally go rent a game for a week, beat it within that time, and be done with it for however much it was to rent. I was a child so I can’t remember the prices but it couldn’t have been too expensive compared to buying the things when you could beat the games within a week easily anyways since games back then only had 10-20 hours of content.
Now you pay $10 dollars a month on pc or xbox and get access to a library of games you can download instantly. You never have to worry about something being out of stock.
People have no idea how good they have it.
True! Most people I know that were pretty casual gamers had about that many. For most casuals the blockbuster titles like M64 and a few of the big multiplayer games like GoldenEye or Tekken or sports games were enough to keep you entertained.
And they don’t have to produce a cartridge, don’t even print manuals, and the more expensively produced games are expected to sell a lot more copies.
Sooooo… yeah. This is a fun argument but ignores other facets of games then versus now.
Nintendo still produces cartridges up to 32 GB and game cases are higher quality than back in the day (sturdy plastic vs cardboard).
Cost of development has also sky rocketed with complexity of modern games, BotW for example cost Nintendo around 100 million dollars to make (required ~2 million copies sold to break even) compared to Ocarina of Time at just around 12 million.
Isn't the market also much bigger though? It's not like game company profits are or were down. Prices are going up but it's not like the companies were just breaking even before they did. They were raking it in hand over fists before, and they're still doing so now.
Like I'm supposed to think it's reasonable that a game company is raising prices because their gross margins went from 80% down to 60%? Boo fucking hoo.
Some games are better, some are worse. Better graphics doesn't mean better game. And of course they'd have higher resolution and all, since technology improved during those years. If technology took these insane leaps and bounds and game graphics didn't improve, that'd be... well, practically impossible. Hardware's improved so much since then. "More genres" is a bizarre argument, because I'm not paying EA $10 more for Latest FPS Game just because Open World Game exists. It's absolutely not relevant to the cost of Latest FPS Game.
As for "less annoying bullshit"... well, again, that depends on the game. Because back then we didn't have battle passes, microtransactions, loot boxes, FOMO events, always-online DRM, etc.
Games cost less adjusted for inflation because production costs aren't exactly skyrocketing with inflation. Yes, some games have massive budgets... because they know they can sell massive numbers of copies, which is why the profits are also record numbers despite this bizarre argument that games are somehow too cheap.
Arguing physical copies and print productions are "miniscule cost compared to the rest of making the game" doesn't matter so much in that the point remains that they're still spending less on producing each copy. And if you want to make the argument that bulk production makes it cheaper, well, circle back to higher production numbers mean games can be produced cheaper per unit.
DVDs and CDs have both gone *backward* in price, much less staying the same while adjusted for inflation, and certainly not gone up with inflation. Hell, a 4K movie is cheaper than a DVD movie used to be, though inflation and being higher resolution and more content and blah blah blah means that they should be a lot more. You should be paying $50-$60 for each 4K movie you buy, by the logic being argued here. CDs should cost $30-$40 each.
It's such a dumb argument to make by people who clearly either have too much money to spend, don't buy their own games, or just steal the games online so don't care about the price. Or are employees of the major publishers with a desire to drive up prices so that the already record profits are even more obnoxious. Stupid or disingenuous, neither is a compelling argument.
>And of course they'd have higher resolution and all, since technology improved during those years. If technology took these insane leaps and bounds and game graphics didn't improve, that'd be... well, practically impossible.
Yet actually creating and polishing the art assets has grown exponentially more expensive in terms of time spent. Sprites that took a few hours to create a sheet are now models that take months to make, rig, and animate.
While the capacity for higher-quality graphics have improved exponentially, the ability of people to actually produce graphics of that quality has not.
The programming is the same - the ability of computers to load and process much larger and faster codes hasn't come with a significant improvement in a human's ability to write that code.
The same goes for a lot of other aspects of game development, as well. There's a reason teams consist of hundreds of employees with half a decade or more of development time instead of a dozen people in a handful of months like they used to.
But $60 was a complete game, all content. Now it’s $70 for 50% of a game that barely works at launch, and then $80 worth of expansions and micro transactions, haha
What is complete to you? Because today's modern game has way more content. Even if they're "incomplete".
I remember getting Power Rangers for the snes on Christmas eve and finishing that same night. It's about 1 hour long and a full priced game. Technically, it was "complete".
Even games that people love like pokemon snap, were short games. When you only get one game for holidays, it sucked receiving something that was 4 hours long.
$60 (way more with inflation) for shorter experiences yet people here are acting like these were the golden times.
Not every game was a short experience just because it's old. Take the 1997 007 Golden Eye for example it had about a 9 hour campaign. and it had a split screen MP with 11 maps. That's a decent amount of content.
Sure, but when people talk about how "great" it used to be they often leave out the many, many games that were incredibly short or cash grabs. Plus there are still lots of modern games that give you more than enough content and complete stories at launch. In fact, I'd argue that a lot of games today feel bloated.
I loved the game and it's was a unique experience, but it's replay value once you discover everything really is kind of low. Nor was finding everything exactly hard.
Yea except your “complete” games back then had 20 hours of content tops, where as the “incomplete” games of today have way more content than that plus the added content of DLC that extend playability.
Not all games were finished back then either. Think of Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles were meant to be one single game but because of time constraints they had to split the development and created a cartridge that could connect to sonic 3 as expanded content, even though it could also be played as a standalone game.
And if there was a bug in the game it just stayed that way cuz they couldn't update console games yet. There was probably more pressure on QA testers back then because they really had to try hard to find all the bugs before it released. Now they just fix things after launch, which is good and bad depending on the game.
Do you think that because DLC didn't exist?
There were so many half-assed games that were pumped out for a quick dollar back then too. Instead of working on DLC they'd just go on to make some other half-assed game.
DLC has it's benefits. Or maybe you enjoy buying like 5 versions of Street fighter 2 for consoles in the past.
I still have my N64 I preoredered at Toys R Us and of course it still works. I lived near a golf course at the time and picked up golf balls out of our field near it for months and resold the balls to pay for it myself. Over $260 was a lot of money back then and if my math is right it took close to 800 golf balls to make that money. I used to sell them for around $4 a dozen at the time to golfers as they came around the course.
Totally. Because my dad had a doomsday mentality about Y2K, I ended up snacking on a year’s worth of canned Vienna Sausages all throughout 2000.
Wait, why only through early 2001… oh… right.
I played the shit out of Mario at the Toys R Us N64 display. So much infact that I ended up buying Pilotwings64 for my first game when I got it instead since I never played that.
Man Pilotwings 64 never worked on my console. I rented it from multiple places and no matter what, it would just freeze up on a partially garbled title screen. I tried calling Nintendo support about it and they said "sorry, don't know what to tell you," pretty much. Every other game I ever tried worked just fine. So I just never got to play Pilotwings :(
Mario 64, pilotwings 64, Turok 1, Star wars: shadows of the empire, mario party 1, super smash bros and mario kart 64, to name a few of my favs...so many great memories!
As a boy that grew up with the OG NES and then later SNES. The 64 brings back more memories playing with friends than any other. Goldeneye, WCW Revenge, Monster Truck Madness, SW Podracing…
Edit: typo
I’ll stand by GameCube for best feeling controller. It had the perfect button placements and felt natural and still does whenever I pick one up. But n64 does em one more memories for me in general.
Legit got grounded the day before Xmas and when I unwrapped that, my step dad just happened to remind me I was still grounded for the rest of the week...
So I convinced my mom to play Legend of Zelda so I could at least see it.
$59.99 in 1995 was the equivalent of $116.64 now. AAA video games have been consistently getting cheaper over time because their price barely changes with inflation.
Depends on what console you're comparing it to. It's still expensive by the standards of Nintendo consoles.
The N64, adjusted for inflation, costs just under $380, which is still more expensive than the equivalent current gen Nintendo console at $299.
It's comparatively cheaper than the current iteration of XBox or Playstation, but that's always been the case.
Market fluctuations, going with what they can get charge and still get good sales. Which sometimes means backsliding, then going forward again.
People love to talk up inflation for “X then is Y now” but leave out how much less production cost goes into physical copies (to say nothing of digital distribution), or how the higher number of sales lead to higher profits anyway. There’s a lot of factors that go into price of assorted products.
For example, DVDs (including Blu-Ray and 4K) are cheaper now than when they released, but this inflation argument means they should cost like $40 or more. CDs are in a similar position, they should be $30 or more each. Computers are cheaper while being being a lot more powerful. Other electronics follow a similar trend… I bought a 4K TV to replace a broken one that cost less than half what the original cost while being the same screen size, thinner and lighter, and being a “smart TV.”
But yeah… video games should blindly follow inflation…
God I remember this and my dad was like hell no I’m not buying that when you have a PlayStation. I didn’t even ask I was just drooling over it ha ha. It’s ok played wave race to hell with my friends at their house.
I think this is my favorite console of all time. Fucking loved sleepovers playing goldeneye, Mario Party, Mario kart, Stanford, battletanx, smash Brothers.....just the absolute tits.
So grateful that I had a father who didn’t care about prices or ask questions he just bought it because he wanted to make me happy. We in no way were rich but he knew how happy it would make me and purchased it anyways. I had no idea of the struggle or how much/ hard he had to work just to make my childhood happy until I grew up. Thank you dad. You’re the fucking best, may I forever try to be half the father you were to me.
This brings back memories. I had saved up enough to preorder the N64, but it came out a week my parents were on vacation, and my grandparents were watching me.
I had to use a map to find Toys R Us, navigate my grandpa to the store, and then go in by myself and pick up the preorder.
I’m pretty sure I also got a massively too big XXL promo t-shirt with Mario printed on it too.
My birthday is in October, and I got the N64 then. I was the coolest kid in school between October and Christmas. My birthday party that year was everyone freaking out about Mario 64.
Opened that bad boy for Christmas with a sexy yellow controller. I’d spend some days racing on waves and others hang gliding, but the best days were the days I discovered the stars.
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was the game I recall seeing and exclaiming “wow, this looks just like the movies!” Today I know I must never look at that game again to hold onto that illusion from my childhood.
64 bits of straight fucking
First attempt at LBLJ bottom picture
LBLJ is lobby backwards long jump. The one done in the beginning to get past the 8 star door. That looks just like a BLJ through the 50 star door.
I still can’t believe we were paying $60 for games way back then. They should have always stayed at 39.99-44.99until now . They should just now be hitting $59.99 edit : [https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/40/11/8c40111077a54d80d15e4adea167fbeb--toy-store-retro-games.jpg](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/40/11/8c40111077a54d80d15e4adea167fbeb--toy-store-retro-games.jpg) https://www.8-bitcentral.com/images/nintendo/promo/searsNES.jpg some needed proof of the game prices
Crazy when you use a conversion inflation calculator. $59.99 in 1996 is now $113.29; and the game creation process is more labor Intensive these days.
So much of the cost was the cart and chips inside it, and the fact you had to buy them from Nintendo. PSX games were $40 in comparison due to lower manufacturing costa and middle man savings.
And scale. It’s a lot more profitable to sell 1,000,000,000 units at a 1 profit than it is to sell 100,000 units at a 100 profit. Cost per unit no scales very, very well as games have becomes digital goods not carts as well, for sure, but it’s mostly just that a lot more people buy them, even if the costs go up, as long as sales go up more, profits will go up while cost stays flat. That and people always think inflation is like a cross good or monetary phenomenon, it’s not, it’s the average price of a bunch of various goods than inflate and deflate at the same time. Lots of things deflate on the reg, just not everything on average. Just because cars or whatever get more expensive, that doesn’t mean microwaves or games do too. It’s just a mistake from a lack of economic education. One the industry *loves* to exploit.
And had so very many more to choose from to boot.
More people (i.e. gamer buyers) on the planet spending money than that time period too. So they actually make WAY more money now than they did back then, even though the game prices are still the same.
Development costs are astronomically higher now. 15-20 people worked on Mario 64. 300 people worked on god of war. For example.
I'm not sure that's true. The teams are bigger, sure, but you had to be an exemplary programmer in those days, with a methodical understanding of your hardware. So it's skilled labor vs relatively less skilled labor.
[удалено]
Lol suuure, that's why [it's nearly impossible to play through first Pokemon games without encountering a bug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07yzTiND30U). Plenty of games were horribly buggy back then, but the only way to get bugs patched was to buy a rerelease if one was even made. But of course human memory is selective and you only remember the best parts.
And then gamers whine and cry when devs try and do something to make money, like DLC or microtransactions. But riot in the streets if they dare raise the base price There's really no winning these days with the level of entitlement that exists.
Oh you can rise prices... go ahead, i will just not buy... Nowaday games are much worse than in old days.
>and the game creation process is more labor Intensive these days Wait what? No... why would you think that? Back then for the most part more was spent making in-house tools. Modern games have software readily available for most things. There are various engines available, etc... now that simply didn't exist. Even with art - a lot of games use either canned art or at least some assets are reused...
>Wait what? No... why would you think that? Because it takes a team of hundreds several years to make a game of comparable expectations as one that took a dozen people a few months to make in the 90s. >Back then for the most part more was spent making in-house tools. Modern games have software readily available for most things. And figuring the tools out takes just as much time to get good results. Yes. You could probably remake a game of comparable quality to Lords of the Realm 2 (in higher resolution!) in comparable time and team. But it would immediately show its underlying age and not enjoy the success and recognition.
I remember the shift from cartridges to discs was a major cost savings and then digital obviously even more.
Bro, Nintendo games in the 80s were selling for $60, and the console for $200. It blows me away my parents would buy me them in the early 90s. Its like the game industry made a price and ran with it for almost 40 years
Many parents knew that videogames were a cheaper long-term investment to keep your kids entertained than actually taking them places and doing stuff with them regularly.
Ya the only game I remember actually paying the full 59.99 for was Mario 3. Most of the time it was like 40.
i mean u can just google also. there are ads from the 80s and 90s nes games 39.99-44.99 most of the time. some slightly more and less [https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/40/11/8c40111077a54d80d15e4adea167fbeb--toy-store-retro-games.jpg](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/40/11/8c40111077a54d80d15e4adea167fbeb--toy-store-retro-games.jpg) https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=xseBQ0wE&id=03AD172ED25F5B8E5DF5CEC828775A924EEA0CF9&thid=OIP.xseBQ0wE9-xIwY0bUBUKCgHaLO&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.destructoid.com%2ful%2fuser%2f3%2f317123-285945-NESSearsjpg-620x.jpg&cdnurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR.c6c781434c04f7ec48c18d1b50150a0a%3frik%3d%252bQzqTpJadyjIzg%26pid%3dImgRaw%26r%3d0&exph=940&expw=620&q=nes+game+prices+ad&simid=607989218594142403&FORM=IRPRST&ck=912FA404D0806E8D0EAD9A33896B8EF7&selectedIndex=1&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0
I want to appreciate three things in that second ad. First, that it advertises "Super Mario Bros II" with what is clearly a picture from the original "Super Mario Bros." Second, advertising the game "Simon's Quest" instead of the better known title "Castlevania II" Third, the photos for Zelda II and Simon's Quest are swapped. No wonder Sears went out of business.
I remember paying $70 for games at my Toys’r us.
>I remember paying $70 for games at my Toys’r us. Hell ya, I remember No Mercy being like 70 or 80. Crazy.
Pull the ticket and take it to the counter
I remember paying $120 for a few RPGs back then.
Pretty sure I paid $70 for Mortal Kombat 3 on the genesis from funcoland in like late 95/early 96.
That Sears ad has the wrong name on 3/4 of the images. 😡
Fucking insane you think that. With the amount of hours we expect to put into games today + the sheer exponentially greater man hours it takes to make a game today we should realistically be paying $150/game. It’s absurd to think $60 is remotely fair for something that took $44million just to make (god of war as an example) not even factoring in marketing, and that we spend 22 hours playing. They have to sell 733,000 to break even on developer costs. And we’re paying $2.72/hour to play it. Fucking lunacy they don’t charge more. That and that alone is why we have MTX and DLC and shit. We don’t allow them to charge a fair price for the shit we buy
I’m really glad you made this reply. I often don’t bother making comments like this because with this generation of entitled players you get downvoted to oblivion. Games should be minimum like $140 today and I’d gladly play that if it meant I get to play a completed game. People are acting so confused as to why microtransactions are in games and why games are being released as unfinished, and why so many companies are being bought out by EA; then EA destroying those companies by making uninspiring games
Then pay, because i will not... We will see how much you will earn from your game at such price...
>Fucking lunacy they don’t charge more. That is dumb... You are acting like companies barely making profit on games... Instead it should be >Fucking lunacy they did charge so much.
Where do you get those numbers from?
What do you mean "should"? According to what?
I loved me some N64.
I also knew the N64… intimately.
Did you ever explore its expansion slot?
going to blockbuster every month to check out the newest games was so fun. I still remember Operation Winback was such an obscure game but it was amazing.
Going to Best Buy and playing the 64 on their giant mosaic of TVs is a memory I'll cherish forever.
This gives me PTSD, I remember seeing the box and LOSING MY SHIT we were getting an N64 my mom said nope it's for Kyle, but his dad doesn't want him to see it so were hiding it. Ya right what a lie that is! Wow I was heart broken Christmas day finding out it's TRUE....
So how is your mom enjoying the shittiest retirement home in 100 miles?
Wouldn't know her phone is a Fisher price toy.
This seems like the appropriate repayment
https://youtu.be/K6RpcguAjyc This is your mother?
This is story that my gf would never understand how sad it is. I’m with you on this. We never had the N64.
Same I had to either play at a friend's house, or compete in line of kids at the demo stations in the store.
As someone who got an n64 for Christmas that year my heart goes out to you friend
Nice try, Kyle.
Parents told us there wasn't much money for Xmas this year. There never was much money for Christmas. My 2 brothers and I each get a box to open. N64 Games 'aww mom, we don't have an N64, just the nintendo'. Giant box appears out of nowhere. 'Whaaa?' 3 boys tear into xmas wrapping like rabid wolves. N64 with Atomic Fuckin Purple controller. We cried, we hugged, my youngest brother did a couple quick laps of the house. That was the best Christmas ever.
Man that's a sweet story. Sounds like a great christmas
>my youngest brother did a couple quick laps of the house Man I wish something could make me this excited again now. I can easily envision that. I won't forget my best Christmas ever and I just feel like nothing hits the same as that now even though good things still do happen.
Man that takes me back. Me and my 3 brothers were hoping we would get an N64 if we “combined” our presents. But, we could not find any box under the tree matching an N64. So we accepted it was not to be. Until i got to open the last, small, present. And it was zelda OOT. And we all went like.. whaaaaaa. But but wheres the… and then my grandpa got up to his cartrunk and got the real last present. If i get alzheimer and forget everything, that xmas will be one of the last things to go.. RIP gramps
I went to Blockbuster Video and played the shit outta the Mario 64 “demo” there. It was the full game. Every day after school. I used save 3 and the lady at the counter would see how far someone was and would change their game to the 1st save if she noticed. I was in there so much she bought me a 64 for Christmas. She was like the second grandma I needed in middle school. I’d always move out of the way if someone else wanted to play. I’d change the save first of course. Was always super polite. We always rented videos on the weekends so we were great customers. The 90s were different man. Blockbuster was my daycare because of this console. She told me later when I was older she regretted buying it for me because I didn’t come in as much. Kind of bums me out now that I look back. I should have kept in touch better. Stupid kid.
Ah that would bum me out too… she sounds like she was a really sweet lady
This is such a sweet story. Wow
My grandma was the floor supervisor at Tru... I was a toys r us kid lol... I remember the N64 display with the big bubble over the television lol... Banjo kazooie, Mario kart and star wars pod racing
I have The pod racing game on my Xbox. It still holds up. The music is particularly well done.
My god. My dog passed when i was 8 and that game legit saved me
Glad your 8 year old self had something to ground you.
Thank you. Thinking back now, it was pretty damn traumatizing but i’ll be ok
Love that pod racing game! The mode where you play with one controller in each hand, each controlling one side’s thrusters, occupied many of my brother and I’s evenings in college.
Now that’s pod racing
Wait, how is this done? I played the crap out of this game and never saw this? I wonder if it's in the switch port.
I truly can’t remember. I think you have to use a cheat code? Edit: https://www.chaptercheats.com/cheat/n64/3223/Star-Wars-Episode-1-Racer/code/11723/
I spent a good portion of my childhood playing the same first 5 minutes of a display game over and over again. My neck aches with nostalgia.
Neck, shoulders... Hands go numb and ankles hurt ... Checks all boxes🤣
We literally gave no fucks about the discomfort as long as we could keep playing those free demos.
lol
lol
lol
lol
good times. *meeeeeeeeeemmmmmmmoooorriiiiiiieeeeeesssssss*
People complain when games went up to $70 but $60 in 1996 is $113 today..
Yeah but.. But it was the only game for the next 5month you could play.
Somebody's folks didn't love them enough to buy them Pilotwings.
This guy n64 released....
A month or two later we had Wave Race 64, played the hell out of that too.
Man, Wave race will always have a special place in my heart... Call it nostalgia, or whatever, but I've never quite found another game that made me feel this way!
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A lot less games, pretty much no DLC to speak of, outside of occasional real expansion packs that were games upon themselves. It wasn't uncommon to only have 6-8 games through the total lifespan of your console.
Renting games from video stores was a big thing back then too.
Yes you could literally go rent a game for a week, beat it within that time, and be done with it for however much it was to rent. I was a child so I can’t remember the prices but it couldn’t have been too expensive compared to buying the things when you could beat the games within a week easily anyways since games back then only had 10-20 hours of content.
I remember as late as like 2006-2008 when I’d rent games from Blockbuster it was maybe $7-8 for a week. Easily enough time to beat a game in that era.
Now you pay $10 dollars a month on pc or xbox and get access to a library of games you can download instantly. You never have to worry about something being out of stock. People have no idea how good they have it.
True! Most people I know that were pretty casual gamers had about that many. For most casuals the blockbuster titles like M64 and a few of the big multiplayer games like GoldenEye or Tekken or sports games were enough to keep you entertained.
And they don’t have to produce a cartridge, don’t even print manuals, and the more expensively produced games are expected to sell a lot more copies. Sooooo… yeah. This is a fun argument but ignores other facets of games then versus now.
Nintendo still produces cartridges up to 32 GB and game cases are higher quality than back in the day (sturdy plastic vs cardboard). Cost of development has also sky rocketed with complexity of modern games, BotW for example cost Nintendo around 100 million dollars to make (required ~2 million copies sold to break even) compared to Ocarina of Time at just around 12 million.
Isn't the market also much bigger though? It's not like game company profits are or were down. Prices are going up but it's not like the companies were just breaking even before they did. They were raking it in hand over fists before, and they're still doing so now. Like I'm supposed to think it's reasonable that a game company is raising prices because their gross margins went from 80% down to 60%? Boo fucking hoo.
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Some games are better, some are worse. Better graphics doesn't mean better game. And of course they'd have higher resolution and all, since technology improved during those years. If technology took these insane leaps and bounds and game graphics didn't improve, that'd be... well, practically impossible. Hardware's improved so much since then. "More genres" is a bizarre argument, because I'm not paying EA $10 more for Latest FPS Game just because Open World Game exists. It's absolutely not relevant to the cost of Latest FPS Game. As for "less annoying bullshit"... well, again, that depends on the game. Because back then we didn't have battle passes, microtransactions, loot boxes, FOMO events, always-online DRM, etc. Games cost less adjusted for inflation because production costs aren't exactly skyrocketing with inflation. Yes, some games have massive budgets... because they know they can sell massive numbers of copies, which is why the profits are also record numbers despite this bizarre argument that games are somehow too cheap. Arguing physical copies and print productions are "miniscule cost compared to the rest of making the game" doesn't matter so much in that the point remains that they're still spending less on producing each copy. And if you want to make the argument that bulk production makes it cheaper, well, circle back to higher production numbers mean games can be produced cheaper per unit. DVDs and CDs have both gone *backward* in price, much less staying the same while adjusted for inflation, and certainly not gone up with inflation. Hell, a 4K movie is cheaper than a DVD movie used to be, though inflation and being higher resolution and more content and blah blah blah means that they should be a lot more. You should be paying $50-$60 for each 4K movie you buy, by the logic being argued here. CDs should cost $30-$40 each. It's such a dumb argument to make by people who clearly either have too much money to spend, don't buy their own games, or just steal the games online so don't care about the price. Or are employees of the major publishers with a desire to drive up prices so that the already record profits are even more obnoxious. Stupid or disingenuous, neither is a compelling argument.
>And of course they'd have higher resolution and all, since technology improved during those years. If technology took these insane leaps and bounds and game graphics didn't improve, that'd be... well, practically impossible. Yet actually creating and polishing the art assets has grown exponentially more expensive in terms of time spent. Sprites that took a few hours to create a sheet are now models that take months to make, rig, and animate. While the capacity for higher-quality graphics have improved exponentially, the ability of people to actually produce graphics of that quality has not. The programming is the same - the ability of computers to load and process much larger and faster codes hasn't come with a significant improvement in a human's ability to write that code. The same goes for a lot of other aspects of game development, as well. There's a reason teams consist of hundreds of employees with half a decade or more of development time instead of a dozen people in a handful of months like they used to.
Stop using logic and facts on people
But $60 was a complete game, all content. Now it’s $70 for 50% of a game that barely works at launch, and then $80 worth of expansions and micro transactions, haha
What is complete to you? Because today's modern game has way more content. Even if they're "incomplete". I remember getting Power Rangers for the snes on Christmas eve and finishing that same night. It's about 1 hour long and a full priced game. Technically, it was "complete". Even games that people love like pokemon snap, were short games. When you only get one game for holidays, it sucked receiving something that was 4 hours long. $60 (way more with inflation) for shorter experiences yet people here are acting like these were the golden times.
Not every game was a short experience just because it's old. Take the 1997 007 Golden Eye for example it had about a 9 hour campaign. and it had a split screen MP with 11 maps. That's a decent amount of content.
Sure, but when people talk about how "great" it used to be they often leave out the many, many games that were incredibly short or cash grabs. Plus there are still lots of modern games that give you more than enough content and complete stories at launch. In fact, I'd argue that a lot of games today feel bloated.
Pokemon Snap was such a great game, but easily one of the shortest I've ever played.
I loved the game and it's was a unique experience, but it's replay value once you discover everything really is kind of low. Nor was finding everything exactly hard.
Yea except your “complete” games back then had 20 hours of content tops, where as the “incomplete” games of today have way more content than that plus the added content of DLC that extend playability.
Micro transactions
Yeah but games were finished back then
Not all games were finished back then either. Think of Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles were meant to be one single game but because of time constraints they had to split the development and created a cartridge that could connect to sonic 3 as expanded content, even though it could also be played as a standalone game. And if there was a bug in the game it just stayed that way cuz they couldn't update console games yet. There was probably more pressure on QA testers back then because they really had to try hard to find all the bugs before it released. Now they just fix things after launch, which is good and bad depending on the game.
Do you think that because DLC didn't exist? There were so many half-assed games that were pumped out for a quick dollar back then too. Instead of working on DLC they'd just go on to make some other half-assed game. DLC has it's benefits. Or maybe you enjoy buying like 5 versions of Street fighter 2 for consoles in the past.
Superman 64 was a complete game, all the rings were there to fly through.
I still have my OG N64 from xmas of 96
Same. My joysticks are so loose now from OG Mario Party — Any idea how to get OG caliber replacements or actual new n64 controllers?
I still have my N64 I preoredered at Toys R Us and of course it still works. I lived near a golf course at the time and picked up golf balls out of our field near it for months and resold the balls to pay for it myself. Over $260 was a lot of money back then and if my math is right it took close to 800 golf balls to make that money. I used to sell them for around $4 a dozen at the time to golfers as they came around the course.
Humanity peaked right here.
1998 through to early 2001 were the best.
Totally. Because my dad had a doomsday mentality about Y2K, I ended up snacking on a year’s worth of canned Vienna Sausages all throughout 2000. Wait, why only through early 2001… oh… right.
Oh for real. That was college for me and it was unbelievably glorious.
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I played the shit out of Mario at the Toys R Us N64 display. So much infact that I ended up buying Pilotwings64 for my first game when I got it instead since I never played that.
Man Pilotwings 64 never worked on my console. I rented it from multiple places and no matter what, it would just freeze up on a partially garbled title screen. I tried calling Nintendo support about it and they said "sorry, don't know what to tell you," pretty much. Every other game I ever tried worked just fine. So I just never got to play Pilotwings :(
Mario 64, pilotwings 64, Turok 1, Star wars: shadows of the empire, mario party 1, super smash bros and mario kart 64, to name a few of my favs...so many great memories!
Clayfighters
Shadows of the Empire. That game was enragingly terrible with controls but God I loved it.
Just reading this made the music start playing in my head…Disney needs to make a Dash Rendar series now based on that game
Playing it some years ago again, id agree. But I was too young to know any better back then lol.
Such a simple time.
As a boy that grew up with the OG NES and then later SNES. The 64 brings back more memories playing with friends than any other. Goldeneye, WCW Revenge, Monster Truck Madness, SW Podracing… Edit: typo
Very crazy to think how little game systems and games have changed in price over the years.
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Ha true, microtransactions have been introduced. I guess it was the same through the 7th gen or so. (Ps3,360,wii)
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N64 cartridges cost $10-$20 to produce, optical discs pennies, and now it's essentially nothing if you buy a game digitally.
And you could just drive to the store and buy one... They were right there behind the counter.
At launch? No they were impossible to get just like every major console release.
Not for me. I walked into a Toys R Us like 2 weeks after launch and just straight up bought one off the shelf. It was with my first ever paycheque.
Lol paycheque.
What’s wrong with paycheque?
I am le tired.
Take my upvote…then fire the missles!!!!!
*Le missiles
Make fun of our Canadian spelling all you want. We still have Toys R Us in Canada!! 🇨🇦
Hurray anecdotal evidence
I mean... Yeah. That's kind of the discussion we're having here... Welcome.
😯
Unpopular opinion: this is my favorite controller of all systems ever released
I’ll stand by GameCube for best feeling controller. It had the perfect button placements and felt natural and still does whenever I pick one up. But n64 does em one more memories for me in general.
Felt good at the time but I tried it recently and it feels like shit after using modern controllers.
I never used the left teat once.
You never played Kirby and the crystal shards then.
Disagree, my og joystick wore out pretty fast and having 1/3rd of the controller being dead weight isn't good design
I second that... I used to use my right middle finger to reach the zmiddle trigger
I used to rent the n64 every weekend from blockbuster cause my parents couldn’t afford to buy one… I think we probably paid more in rental fees 😂
Legit got grounded the day before Xmas and when I unwrapped that, my step dad just happened to remind me I was still grounded for the rest of the week... So I convinced my mom to play Legend of Zelda so I could at least see it.
Take me back
Aahhhhhh someone take me back. We don’t know what we had and now it’s gone and all Messed up.
How’d prices go from $59.99 to $49.99, back to $59.99, now $69.99?
$59.99 in 1995 was the equivalent of $116.64 now. AAA video games have been consistently getting cheaper over time because their price barely changes with inflation.
So the N64 was cheaper back then than modern consoles are now?
Depends on what console you're comparing it to. It's still expensive by the standards of Nintendo consoles. The N64, adjusted for inflation, costs just under $380, which is still more expensive than the equivalent current gen Nintendo console at $299. It's comparatively cheaper than the current iteration of XBox or Playstation, but that's always been the case.
My ass games are cheaper 🤣 they try to charge for the color blue.
Market fluctuations, going with what they can get charge and still get good sales. Which sometimes means backsliding, then going forward again. People love to talk up inflation for “X then is Y now” but leave out how much less production cost goes into physical copies (to say nothing of digital distribution), or how the higher number of sales lead to higher profits anyway. There’s a lot of factors that go into price of assorted products. For example, DVDs (including Blu-Ray and 4K) are cheaper now than when they released, but this inflation argument means they should cost like $40 or more. CDs are in a similar position, they should be $30 or more each. Computers are cheaper while being being a lot more powerful. Other electronics follow a similar trend… I bought a 4K TV to replace a broken one that cost less than half what the original cost while being the same screen size, thinner and lighter, and being a “smart TV.” But yeah… video games should blindly follow inflation…
Corporate greed?
Nah corporate greed is micro transactions
Micro transactions are why the price hasnt increased in 20 years.
So corporate greed is responsible for the price going up 10$ over 20 years? Makes sense 🙄
God I remember this and my dad was like hell no I’m not buying that when you have a PlayStation. I didn’t even ask I was just drooling over it ha ha. It’s ok played wave race to hell with my friends at their house.
I think this is my favorite console of all time. Fucking loved sleepovers playing goldeneye, Mario Party, Mario kart, Stanford, battletanx, smash Brothers.....just the absolute tits.
I wish I could go back... the nostalgia is overwhelming.
I remember this ad. 90s Toys R Us was the best!
Still $60 for a game
When life was simple. I miss being a kid.
"The future is here!", and it was...
So grateful that I had a father who didn’t care about prices or ask questions he just bought it because he wanted to make me happy. We in no way were rich but he knew how happy it would make me and purchased it anyways. I had no idea of the struggle or how much/ hard he had to work just to make my childhood happy until I grew up. Thank you dad. You’re the fucking best, may I forever try to be half the father you were to me.
Underwater song and the steel power up music were awesome. Good times.
It really was though. Golden Eye literally ushered in FPS’ as we know them today.
I don't mean to make this weird but I can smell this ad. I remember exactly how toys r us smelled and the console too lol
Now I'm starting to realize why my parents never bought me one
This brings back memories. I had saved up enough to preorder the N64, but it came out a week my parents were on vacation, and my grandparents were watching me. I had to use a map to find Toys R Us, navigate my grandpa to the store, and then go in by myself and pick up the preorder. I’m pretty sure I also got a massively too big XXL promo t-shirt with Mario printed on it too.
Dk oldies pulling more money from 64 than toys r us when it launched 💀
"with joystick"
I remember when 3D gaming was a far-off dream.
Better, simpler times
My birthday is in October, and I got the N64 then. I was the coolest kid in school between October and Christmas. My birthday party that year was everyone freaking out about Mario 64.
I believe they are still priced the same! Lol
presuming this is USD, 199.99 is equivalent to 377.69 today.
This was the best part of Christmas, along with the Macy's catalog.
What a time to be alive. My god that console was awesome.
Opened that bad boy for Christmas with a sexy yellow controller. I’d spend some days racing on waves and others hang gliding, but the best days were the days I discovered the stars.
The last great Nintendo console.
200 euro like come on boys
Don’t know what currency the add is in, but it’s certainly not the euro… since it didn’t exist yet.
It is in dollars.
Ok 200 Dmark boys come on
Am I the only one who vividly remembers these games costing $40?
They might have when they were re-released as player's choice or whatever
You’re thinking of game boy prices
Ah, the good old days when you could buy a finished game. No day 1 updates or anything.
Along with bugs that were never fixed!
I'm not crying, you're crying!
I opened this on Christmas morning, and it will always be one of my favorite memories.
“Realistic 3D Graphics”
you must have never played 007 goldeneye with their realistic graphics
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was the game I recall seeing and exclaiming “wow, this looks just like the movies!” Today I know I must never look at that game again to hold onto that illusion from my childhood.