Economic possibilities of reproductions of old 16 bit games.

After all this talk of the neo geo x, it got me thinking about the high prices of alot of these old rare 16 titles. Games like super metroid and mario rpg boxed complete seem to be going for more each week, hell almost impossible to find a us copy of kirbys dreamland 3 for less than $60 and that cart only. Yet I wonder if these companies would reproduce these games for the original format would they even make much on it?

I mean imagine being able to buy reprints of old classics like chrono trigger with manual, box and all. Issues I would see is trying to figure out a way to make cheap flash chips that would work in a cart as well as alternative chips that could also do the functions of special chip games. I know it sounds crazy but honestly I think it's a market companies like nintendo and sega are really missing out on. I know there is emulation but I like playing on real hardware and even things like sd2snes still don't fully support all chips. Anyone else thoughts on this?

 

Finding suitable parts today to make a quality balance that'll satisfy the intended audience could be difficult. No matter what you'll have vocal segments complain too inaccurate ruins the nostalgia, or too accurate devalues existing copies.

 

I've never understood why companies don't continue to support previous hardware, considering millions of people still play them. There's a huge amount of money to be made from those people. I guess it's all about maintaining the company's image and trying to convince people that the new hardware is really superior to the older hardware.

 

i dont think collectors buy old games to play it. No one would buy an oficial reprint for sure. This is all about nostalgia ...

 

There's no huge underserved market here. Only a relatively small number of weirdos like us still have our old "classic" game systems. The real action these days is in more and more Farmville and Angry Birds, not classic repros. The days when people who care about games were a market worth serving are... well, not quite over, but close.

 

There really isn't that much money in it when you think about how much money was in the 16bit market when it was the leader. Yes games like Chrono Trigger brand new in the box are going to fetch a lot of money. But the reason is because you *can't* find it in that condition very often. If suddenly it was easily available to anyone brand new, it would not be worth as much. And then how many would you need to sell for real reprints to be worth doing?

The only way official reprints would be viable would be if manufacturing advanced enough to make extremely limited production runs profitable. I do disagree with Serantes. If there were official Chrono Trigger reprints that were of the quality of the original release I'm sure plenty of people would buy it. Sure some people would only want the original release. But others would not care.

These days when it comes to re-releases they prefer to just port or emulate the game on a newer platform. Costs are minimal and you reach a larger market since more people own and buy Xbox, PS3, and Wii games than any retro system.

 

The only way it would really be affordable is to take copies of other games and convert them into more popular titles. Otherwise, maybe a 3D printer would work for cartridge molds, but doing a new production run of the carts themselves would be pretty expensive.

It would be pretty funny to see a certain sports game go way up in value if someone bought out a lot of the copies to turn them into Earthbound carts or something.

 

This makes me wonder how they produced the carts for Pier Solar.

 

They do make reprints:
http://www.gamestop.com/ds/games/ch...ppc_60000001&gclid=CKnVz47P9LICFYaDQgodpggAgw

They just aren't necessarily exactly how you want them.

Probably injection molds.

 

PCBs and parts in any quantity are cheap. Injection molded cases are doable at 1000 units, much cheaper (per unit) each order of magnitude you increase. In other words, production costs are not a likely culprit.

Idle speculation as to why they don't: potential copyright issues, support problems, general lack of demand.

 

Supply and demand: the moment these new prints make it to the market the price will plummet

The reason why companies dont jump into this market is because they all know scarcity is the only thing driving the price up

There's not enough demand, the problem is that after 20 years finding a new copy for a reasonable price is impossible

 

Yeah, the demand is very slow. And the sales will be too slow for the investors to put money on it.

 

What about making a sequal. A super metroid 2 or Mario Kart 64 2. I know everyone that still has an n64 would buy a new mario kart.

 

Sega seems to churn out a shit ton of clones so I don't see why Nintendo doesn't make an official clone, It would be a million times better than the yobo.

 

technology like the everdrives / flashcarts could easily be used with digital distribution of classics, while not exactly reproductions, maybe more economical / easily achievable for companies like sega / nintendo who already have digital distribution systems in place

 

Kind off off topic but has anyone heard of someone making cartridge cases with a 3D printer yet?

 

This work for ya?

 

Well the idea wouldn't be to sell repos, its just that with snks crazy model for this neo geo x, I just curiously wondered if it would be economical feasible to make reprints for old games with companies like nintendo, but I can see how the demand could be questionable at those costs. Mind you flash chips have gone down in prices quite a bit, but making ones that would work with an snes is another story, which is probably why I haven't seen any homebrew developers release their games on snes carts like they do with genesis on stuff like pier solar at that scale. Didn't nintendo use custom size roms so you couldn't easily swap your own in?

 

ASSEMbler is right...I know guys working Colecovision homebrews and Genesis Repros...they do it more as a hobby than to make money...homebrew runs typically up to a 100 carts...after that #, they have a hard time selling...there is only a small "core" audience for these types of things...