Chrono Trigger DS

Written by Link on 14th July, 2008

You may know by now that back on July 2nd, Square Enix announced that Chrono Trigger will be revamped for the Nintendo DS and released in North America during the 2008 holiday season. This was followed by the opening of the official Japanese site on July 6, where it announced a winter 2008 date for the Japanese release.

This is an interesting case of how a new release of an old game will affect the prices of the original SNES version. Logic dictates that since Chrono Trigger fetches a high price because of it's popularity, not its rarity (despite what many non collectors think) - it should drop in price. The logic of supply and demand seems to fly out the window though when it comes to retro gaming.

Chrono Trigger already has been re-released. First with a ported version by TOSE in Japan for the Sony PlayStation 1 in 1999, and then later repackaged with a Final Fantasy IV port as Final Fantasy Chronicles in 2001 - which we did get stateside. Despite the availability of this much cheaper version, sales for the original are still strong.

An original loose copy of the SNES cartridge sells for around $40 on average through eBay. You can score one for as low as $20.00 if you're lucky, or you can pay as much as $75.00 if you want to hit a store BIN. A complete copy should run you from $125.00 to $200.00 depending on condition. A big difference from the $15.00 sealed copies of the PS1 alternative.

Before I give my prediction, I should mention my previous opinion of re-released games. When the Wii VC was first released, I anticipated a massive drop in retro gaming prices. I was incredibly wrong however. If anything, it got people more interested in the hobby.
The list of available VC games is chock full of solid $20.00 titles. These are games that are in demand, but not even remotely rare – your Zelda’s and Mario’s. If re-releases should have affected price, than these are the games that should have felt it.

I did have precedent for my theory though. First, you have the Playstation 1 release of Dragon Ball GT Final Bout. The original North American edition was released in 1997, a year after the premiere of Dragon Ball GT in Japan. Only 10,000 copies were produced due to the series being unfamiliar with audiences. Up until a re-release of the game in 2004, Final Bout enjoyed some of the highest collectible premiums a PlayStation game had ever seen (at the time, and to some extent today), with prices on EBay ranging from $100- $250. However, you can make the argument that this was a re-print, not a re-release and therefore a completely different scenario.

The example that I cite the most however is the 2006 release of Mega Man X Collection for Gamecube and PS2. This did affect the prices of the original SNES versions of X2 and X3. I know that I sold copies of these games for nearly $60.00 - $80.00 each around four years ago. Now the maximum you see either of these selling for is $30.00. In fact, you can pick up both with a copy of X as well, for only $60.00. To me, that's a big change.

It seems though that this is the exception to the rule. What we are experiencing these days is obvious. Over the past several months I've made multiple mentions of how Grand Theft Auto 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4 have both caused price increases in both games and merchandise from their respective series. It seems that re-releases are for the most part, having the same effect.

It gets people excited about the series in general. At best case, this means they want to explore the series and play it on its original medium – causing a slight price spike if enough people feel the same way. At worst case it reminds those gamers who prefer to shun new mediums, to pick up the original to play or for their collection – keeping demand and prices the same.

Any opinions on this effect in general are appreciated.

Add Your Comments

2 Responses to “Chrono Trigger DS”

jointhiway on July 14th, 2008 8:16 am

Link,
You bring up some very interesting points in this section. As someone who sells a lot on ebay (and also runs a huge flea market game exchange every Sunday in Fredericton for the past few years) I have seen and felt firsthand how re-releases can affect market value.

What strikes me a most important for sellers to keep in mind is that the retro game market is not static. In fact, it is quite dynamic. When the Mega Man collections came out we experienced a drastic drop in interest and prices. It is important to point out that the local market and the ebay market are two separate things, and that many people do not have the patience to wait for an item to arrive in the mail. This said, new copies of the Mega Man collections have dried up in town and now there is renewed interest in the game by local collectors (and average games: not everyone is a collector).

Supply and Demand is the most important factor in pricing and sometimes this can have a bizarre effect. Take the original Super Mario Bros. that was re-released for the GBA. It still fetches a high amount for a game that I can’t give away for the regular NES.

I personally believe that what is happening with collectors now is that they are focusing more and more on complete, mint, boxed games for their cartridge based systems. Therefore, if you have a complete Chrono Trigger the price should not fluctuate. But then again, Chrono Trigger is one of the most popular games of all time amongst many of my customers and I doubt that we will see a price drop that is truly significant. Re-releases do two things: they increase the supply, and simultaneously, rejuvenate interest and creates new interest among people unfamiliar.

This is not true for all games, but I think that games that have become “nostalgia classics” will always be coveted to a certain amount.

What I am seeing now with the SNES, however, is the same thing that has happened with the NES. Many truely rare games are becoming more and more sought after (like Aerofighters and Chavez II) and speculators may want to invest in some of these games.

But if you are a collector, buy what you want to play and have fun: at the end of the day a video game collection is useless if it isn’t being used.

Cheers,
jointhiway
PapaStu on July 14th, 2008 1:11 pm

The same kind of boost has happened with FF VII and Silent Hill thanks to weird releases. FF VII started its upward climb thanks to Advent Children, got a further slap on the back thanks to Crisis Core and its now running $50+ for a game that had somewhere in the range of 2 million units produced.

Silent Hill/Silent Hill 2 also blew up with the release of the movie, they came down, but their prices were a fair bit higher than they were pre-movie.

The re-release of DragonBall GT: Final Bout absolutely KILLED the market for the original version of the game. The game was bad, but its rarity kept its value high. Post re-release (not a re-print because it was published this time by Atari, not BanDai, even though Atari reused the code 100%, hell the game still boots as BanDai when you play it) the games value plumited. I got my copy in 2006 (2 years after re-release) and I paid 36 bucks shipped for it.

I think what the re-releases/re-prints do is really dependant on the rarity of the original and how good/bad that is. X2/X3 wern’t common and are good games, so when it re-released people were happy to get it on their current system, dropping the price of it. DBGT:Final Bout re-released and people could actually play the shittyness that it was and they moved on from the fact that it wasn’t worth what they’d been spendig before, despite its ‘fanservice’.

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