MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Rarity, physical PCB vs emulator bla bla

> > I didn't personally keep tabs on it, but I was told that winning bid prices in
> Yahoo!
> > Japan auctions for games that the Dumping Project acquired (and that were later
> > dumped and supported by MAME) almost always declined after the games were emulated,
> > sometimes precipitously.
>
> Well, I'd like to add my opinion about this... There are two parts about this
> conversation. One is "in general, do emulated games lower the price of the real PCB?"
> and the other is "does the same happen with rare PCBs?".
>
> In the first case, I'd say definitely. If I want to play SuperTetrisFighter EX and
> it's not emulated, and I have a JAMMA rig or something similar, and I can afford it,
> well, I just go and pay for it. Not because it's a collector's item, but because I
> want to play it. Maybe I am a collector and I will keep it, but in many cases, the
> amount of money you want to spend in something that you can get for free and probably
> in a cabinet setup (since you're with the JAMMA and maybe other arcade rigs) drops
> considerably.
>
> In the rare PCB case, they are always collector items. Maybe they will only be tested
> and played a few times and spend their days mostly in a safe. Maybe they will be
> played, but they are acquired not for their playability, but 99.9% for their
> collectible value, as the first edition of Action Comics #1. In that case, wether the
> game is emulated or there's somewhere a free remake or whatever, is not relevant to
> the value. Moreover, if there's a rare PCB I am willing to buy, and it is supported
> by MAME, I might be prone to invest more money because I know that if the PCB suffers
> bitrot or something, I can repair it thanks to the documentation of MAME and the roms
> floating everywhere. Thus it's a more secure acquisition.
>
> IMHO the japanese market is not so different regarding this. There might be more
> arcade fans, but they are probably the same as other human beings in this
> economy-driven world: there are things they want, and there is a budget to get them.

Not just the arcade scene either. I might have had Mega Man and NES emulators for years, but it simply doesn't recreate the experience that having the original NES versions do. Particularly the lack of save states, the old style CRT monitor, the lack of input lag, the lack of the music jumping which is so common in Nestopia...

Every time a "Genesis" repro cart of Mega Man: The Wily Wars finds a new home, the genuine Mega Drive version jumps up 10% on eBay and the like - of course, this could simply be Game Store A selling the game, Game Store B buying it then selling the game immediately for 10-20% extra in order to turn a profit, Game Store C buying it at any cost so it can be on their shelf within two days so some schmuck can buy it an inflated cost (except that Game Store D beats Mr. Schmuck and/or brute-forces him out of the auction with a $2000 max bid, if it isn't a Buy It Now), ad infinitum until it's worth a house or three 80 years down the track like that comic book. I'm convinced that online game stores have an infinite supply of cash, or like the buyer of that comic, more dollars than sense (guess which comic book will return on eBay next week for $4 million).