The T-Rex Doesn’t Want to Eat. He Wants to Hunt.

Written by Nerdberry

As my esteemed colleague ZB (Nerd Bacon senior author) alluded to in his article “The Thrill of the Hunt”: times have changed. He may not have said it with those exact words, but that’s the sentiment I gathered in his tone. A snippet from “The Thrill of the Hunt:”

“What use do I have for this stuff? I can play all of this and more with the click of a mouse button.”

The “stuff” he is referring to is his collection of retrogames; a collection that, at one point in his life, he offloaded on eBay and regretted almost immediately.

With the ease of access to emulation, many gamers out there have offloaded their old ’80s and ’90s collections to downsize everything into a singular accessible retrogaming powerhouse, either on their PC or on a modded OG Xbox or Wii. Or even on something like a Polymega or Evercade. While this may provide access to playing the game, it provides absolutely nothing in terms of authenticity or scratching that retrogaming itch. There’s a reason retrogames and vinyl records are at their highest price ever: People realize that the real deal is worthy of owning, not just playing.

My story is a little different from ZB’s, although with similar themes. My story begins in the late 1990s when I first began earning my own money and amassing my own collection of retrogames (which, at the time, weren’t all that “retro”). I was gifted a Nintendo 64 for Christmas of 1996, and I couldn’t have been happier. Thanks mom and dad! The only problem was: N64 games and accessories were more than I could afford on my own. As I got a little older (still in the 1990s), I started working some odd jobs around the neighborhood, earning a little scratch here and there. As a massive fan of these games and game systems, I wanted it all. I mean it. ALL of it. But I didn’t want to drop $60 on one game for one experience. So I found myself scouring stores and eBay for value games. $60 could get me 10 games for 10 experiences.

This is the beginning of how I fell behind on staying with the times (LOL) in the gaming industry, but also where I found my niche. Considering my unmedicated ADHD world, it made more sense to own 100 older inexpensive games than 5 to 10 newer more expensive games. There’s less guilt involved when you buy a game for $5 and only play it for about 1 hour before shelving it for months… years… decades… eternity? Collecting retrogames just rang true to me, my personality, my passions, and my capabilities.

There once was a time – 15 to 20+ years ago – when a gamer could walk into a Funcoland, Babbages, GameStop, etc., and browse a kiosk bin rife with quality NES carts for $1 to $5. Walk 5 feet to your left and you’d find another bin full of Genesis and SNES carts for $2 to $8. Sure, maybe most of them were Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt. But not all. In 1999/2000 era, these game stores were trying to liquidate their “old” inventory to make room for the new stuff.

For some reason, gamers were so entranced with new-millennium gaming from Sega, Nintendo, Sony, and newcomer Microsoft that they forgot the value of the classics. Seriously, people were almost flat out giving these games away like a VHS tape at a yard sale in 2019. My friends and I would scour the Raleigh (and surrounding town) Goodwills for games and gaming related stuff. More times than I can count, I’d walk out the door with a boxed game or occasionally a boxed gaming system for pennies on the dollar.

Seeing as many people viewed these old games like an ’80s typewriter (absolutely worthless), they failed to note one thing: It’s not like the new medium was replacing the old games. It was just advancing the technology, but with DIFFERENT games. The old games are still, well, the old games! The new games are the new games! There’s an equally valuable and important place for both in the industry, but the timelessness and sheer obscurity of these retrogames is what drives me to hunt for more.

With internet access available on-the-go, and with myriad websites dedicated at showing the value of these retrogames, collecting is more expensive and more challenging than ever. Goodwill stores are garbage hunting grounds for electronics as they’ve moved all the good stuff to their online bidding site. Success at yard sales is still possible, but sellers know the value now. Meet-up groups are good, but those sellers are fully prepared with industry-standard pricing. And don’t even get me started on what COVID has done to collecting… Or what Wata games and other scummy scammy auction and grading companies have done to the industry.

I’ve had some incredible hauls in my yardsale days. And even the early days of Craigslist. More than I can list here. And while none of them are extremely rare games/systems, it’s noteworthy because it’s rare to find them in this condition for peanuts! CIB Super Scope. CIB Sega Genesis model 1 and a CIB Sega Genesis model 2. Working Game Gear. CIB Super Mario World. And much more.

The T-Rex doesn’t want to eat. He wants to hunt.

Getting a game AT face value isn’t fun… Because anybody can do that. C.R.E.A.M. amiright? You can buy anything that’s for sale, but not everything is for sale! And most of the time the sales price is WAY too high. If I have the money, and visit eBay, I can just buy whatever I want. But so can everyone else. That’s not special. Or noteworthy.

But… Finding rare or tough-to-find games in the wild is pure joy. That’s where it’s at. Especially in today’s quick-information world. eBay and FB Marketplace are probably the best places to find value games, but even so, there’s 100 times more collectors in 2021 than 20+ years ago when I first started. It’s a much more competitive market, and at a much steeper price. The biggest challenge now is getting your hands on the games before someone else does. It’s tough for an old collecting dog like me to eschew comparisons of days of yore.

The game has changed but the players are the same. – MacGruber

*Sigh. My hunting days may be done, but occasionally I’ll find a true gem that happens to fall in my lap. And then comfort and nostalgia cover me like a warm blanket, and I smile.