Rare Games...That Aren't Rare Anymore
I've been tracking two "rare" games for quite some time now: Capcom's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and Konomi's Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix. These two games were fetching high prices on eBay thanks to their notoriety as being "rare", but have recently become...well, not so rare. So what happened?
Let's look at Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. This game is great for what it is- a zany courtroom/detective style game with a great sense of humor and melodrama. It was a sleeper hit for Capcom, who didn't press a lot of games because of its niche-style gaming. The game's reputation in America started growing, mostly through various discussion boards. And then one fateful day, people started to realize that they hadn't seen the game in stores for a while, and upon further searching, this game couldn't be found at any stores! If I remember correctly, it was toward the end of January of this year that this realization had dawned on people that the game they had repeatedly passed up was now no where to be seen.
Mad searching for the game ensued with success stories popping up here and there. People who had never had an interest for the game were now asking if it was worth buying. Prices for the game on eBay kept going up and up. Sixty dollars...seventy dollars...when would it stop?
March 13th. NCS gets a new shipment of Phoenix Wright and sells the game for $35. The crazy eBay prices fall back down to a normal $35-$45 range and life is as it should be...or is it??
April 14th. NCS sells out of their stock of Phoenix Wright. NCS assures people that Capcom is continuing production of the game and that it will be back in stock sometime in May. EBay prices are still normal. Life goes on.
January 2006. I notice an auction on eBay for Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix going for over ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS! Quickly checking all my favorite online stores confirms the fact that this game is nowhere to be found. I had seen the game on store shelves prior to Christmas of 2005, but have since not been able to find it. Was I worried? At first. But then I heard good news from an unlikely source: Nintendo Power magazine. Unlikely because...well, I don't really read Nintendo Power, but I had gotten three free issues for registering some games. Anyway, someone had written in asking why it was so hard to find this game, and the editors actually had some nice information that the action pack was being produced again and would be back on store shelves sometime in March.
March came and went. Then came April--still no sign of Mario Mix. Finally, this week at my local Target I find it-- two new boxes of DDR Mario Mix. Searching online, the game is now available at practically every major game retailer. Amazon
So what can we learn from these two games? The biggest thing we can take away from this is that today's video game companies are more aware of the demand for their titles than they ever have been before. Supply actually can keep up with demand. Don't overpay for a game by a major company, unless very few people want it. And buy what you like; don't let the market dictate what you should buy.
Don't be a "suck-sore".
