The retro gaming market has gone crazy over the past year or so and it's been interesting to investigate why this has been the case. The global pandemic left much of the world stuck at home and many looked to the past for familiar comforts such as classic telly, films and video games.
My old mancave was full to the brim of comics, graphic novels, video game vinyl soundtracks and stuffies. It’s my nostalgia den!
So why is the past such a siren, especially when things are going wrong? Well, for many the pandemic caused fear, anxiety and discomfort, and so they looked to find something that would help them; nostalgia. Nostalgia is a sentimental often rose-tinted look at the past. This process helped many to deal with the difficulties of the situation here and now, acting almost as a comforter during these unprecedented times; they offer secure memories about better times. The Rule of Drift is the process whereby we create a cohesive whole by being selective with our information and past memories. For example, we imagine the long summers that seemed to stretch on forever, playing football in the park from morning till evening only going home for lunch and staying home for dinner, the hurricane of '86 where we went to the park and gathered hundreds of fallen conkers to play at school etc. It seems like a single cohesive timeline rather than the confusing hodgepodge that life actually is where we spent rainy Sundays playing Monopoly at home, being bored and fighting with siblings. Nostalgia is a powerful thing and we are selective with what we choose to remember and so, spending hours playing games offered many the comfort they sought. In the gallery below are some of my comfort purchases which reminded me of yesteryear.
I've been into gaming for nearly all my life and, whilst in my younger years I sold my collection to buy the upgraded consoles and games, ever since the N64, PS2 and GameCube era, I've kept my favourites games. About 10 years ago, I got into the retro game collecting scene and bought much of the older games I had liked in my youth for the Mega Drive, Master System and Gameboy, as these were the systems I most associated with my youth. Needless to say, I've got a pretty solid collection of games I've kept and loved but I've had no desire to be a hardcore collector and have every game on a console system or have a complete set of anything; I collect the things I love. But, over the past year some of the prices have doubled, tripled or even more.
My Streets of Rage 1 and 2 mint in box with booklets have jumped in price due to the interest caused with the release of Streets of Rage 4 last year but even the games that haven't been in the spotlight recently have shot up, and many of those aren't even rare or limited in print quantity!
And don't get me started on the mini consoles, my £59 SNES Mini is currently available for about £250 and that's not even at the top end of the scale! Scalpers are definitely price gouging here but there has been genuinely huge interest in the mini consoles, (except the PS One Classic as the games on that were shite) as it was the most affordable and practical way to enjoy retro games on the new television setups.
I did make a retro purchase (kinda) when I bought the Bubble Bobble Mini Arcade Machine but I would have bought that at any time, irrespective of lockdown. I was just lucky it came out then to quench that nostalgia thirst. There is great power in nostalgia, but a rose tinted view of the past doesn't disguise the fact that tastes and things have changed. Many of the gaming norms from days past feel positively antiquated by today's standards. Now, I love Bubble Bobble as it scratches that itch and is pretty evergreen in its gaming loop but I wonder how often Altered Beast was turned on before being swiftly switched out for something more playable this year. I know scalpers have affected the market somewhat but this is more than that. The market is too huge for scalpers to affect it so greatly so I think is genuinely is a lot of people either trying to recapture that memory or fondness of past times or trying to share their nostalgia with their children, who they've had to spend an inordinate amount of time with this past 18 months. I know I've shared Bubble Bobble and the Mysterious Cities of Gold with the girls so far and they've loved this 'Daddy-daughter' time.
I'm not sure if the retro gaming market will balance out or if this is the new normal but I don't care really. I'll keep buying what I like and won't pay the premium to keep up with the Joneses. With the London Gaming Market opening up this weekend, I'll be interested to see what the prices are like as they were always at a premium anyways.
I wonder if any of the vendors will be able to say:
