|
So, Willow for the NES arrived in my mail today. I paid around $30 for a complete in box copy. Aside from a scratch or two on the bottom of the box, this is in fantastic shape. The game, box, manual, Capcom advertising poster (which showcases some of their recent games at the time), and Nintendo Power inserts are all in Like New condition, so I'm very pleased.
But I found an unexpected surprise inside the box. It had the original Toys R Us receipt from whoever originally bought it. The receipt was dated January 28, 1990, and the game sold for $45 ($47.69 with tax). For some reason, this is incredibly cool to me. Just looking at it makes me think back to the time period when Toys R Us had those tickets you had to take to the cash register whenever you bought a game. I was 12 years old in January 1990, and have many memories of scouring the NES aisles from that time. Kind of a nice bit of bonus nostalgia along with a great game, and a fantastic overall package kept in great shape for the past 27 years. I want to thank whoever originally bought this for keeping this game in near store display shape. |
|
Sweet deal on the Willow find. That game was one of my fondest NES childhood memories, even though I only rented it for a weekend. It was one of the games that stuck. I later found the cart for 5 bucks and couldn't pass up, but to find the complete package is a great treasure of a find. Congrats!
It's amazing at how, despite how much everything got expensive, videogames did not scale up that much in price along with the rising inflation. If it scaled the way other things did, games would be around 90 bucks. I mean books took a bigger hit than even videogames, and movies scaled down a bit. Crazy market....
PSN username: Deathmyrk
|
|
Cool story and a nice find for CIB Willow. I personally haven't come across any old game receipts. I do remember Toys R Us back in the day and the entire isle they had of laminated video game box art with the tickets hanging right below. That isle and the action figure isle were always the most exciting.. Fond memories of how things were back in the day!
|
|
I started saving my receipts in the Dreamcast era and would store them inside the case.
Whatever ink was used to print out the receipt back then has almost completely faded away and the paper itself has yellowed.
Saxon=Joke Account (unfortunately, I lost a bet and must keep this sig for 1 month)
|
|
My Toys 'R' Us still does the ticket thing!
I have an NES hint book that has a receipt in it from around 1991 where someone rented Total Recall and something else! |
|
deathmyrk posted...
It's amazing at how, despite how much everything got expensive, videogames did not scale up that much in price along with the rising inflation. If it scaled the way other things did, games would be around 90 bucks. I mean books took a bigger hit than even videogames, and movies scaled down a bit. Crazy market.... Yeah it is kind of crazy to think about. Hell, I remember seeing Chrono Trigger on QVC one time. The game was selling for $90! I also found a poster one time of FF3 (US). On the of the poster, it mentioned being able to mail-order FF2 (US). It was like $70-80! Anyway, I think the biggest reason video games didn't follow inflation is because they are just making up for the money in different ways. Look at how common DLC is these days. Call of Duty retails for what, $59.99? Then the "Season Pass" for the game is $49.99! Hell, it was recently announced that the new Fire Emblem Season Pass is $44.99 (the game itself is $39.99). Even for games without DLC, there's just a much bigger market of gamers out there to sell to. SNES and Genesis sold about 80 million units combined. X360/PS3/Wii combined to sell around 260 million units. You think about how common cross-platform games are... sure, developments costs have went up (bigger teams, etc), but being able to sell way more copies helps bring in a lot more revenue. |
|
Anyway, sorry to derail the topic. I can't recall finding receipts with any purchases. I do really enjoy looking through old video games ads from the 90's though. That's a similar blast from the past.
|
|
ASAC_Schrader posted...
deathmyrk posted...It's amazing at how, despite how much everything got expensive, videogames did not scale up that much in price along with the rising inflation. If it scaled the way other things did, games would be around 90 bucks. I mean books took a bigger hit than even videogames, and movies scaled down a bit. Crazy market.... Yeah... I remember Earthbound for SNES priced at like 120.00 at Walmart back when I was 10. She was debating on getting a Genesis or an SNES. Let's just say that price tag compared to a handful of games 20 a pop on a system that was 100 bucks cheaper sealed the fate that day on the system of her choosing. She didn't care how "Super" the new Nintendo was, money talks and... you know the rest... Guess it's for the better. I found little gems like Landstalker, Phantasy Star IV, and Shining Force II. Granted they aren't in the same ballpark as Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, or Final Fantasy III, they passed for decent cheap-man rpgs...
PSN username: Deathmyrk
|
|
For probably 15 years, I kept every game receipt from every purchase I ever made. Then, maybe 5 years ago, I threw them out because I thought it was a pointless expedition after a bunch of people I know kept telling me that only some scraggly horder type would bother.
Then a year or so later, I found out through other groups of gamers that many, many of them had also saved all their receipts too and put much more dedication into archiving them and it was seen as a badge of honor to them... And I started to question why I got rid of them all and further realized the hard way that relying on what other people think for my own actions is a stupid endeavor.
Owner of NES, SNES, N64, GCN, Wii, SMS, GEN, TG16, PSX, PS2, PS3, XBOX, X360, XBO, GB, GBC, GBA SP, GB Micro, DS, DS Lite, PSP and a lot of crappy games.
|
|
If you ever sell your games, the receipt would help you close the deal without having to open up every cart to look at the circuit board and verify each game as being legit.
.
Saxon=Joke Account (unfortunately, I lost a bet and must keep this sig for 1 month)
|
|
So, as I mentioned, my copy of Willow came with a promotional poster for Capcom games that were available at the time, as well as coming soon, and I noticed two interesting things...
One was that California Raisins: The Grape Escape is featured as one of the highlighted games. This was supposedly a finished game (I think it even got reviewed by some magazines), but was canceled before it could come out. Never heard why it got canceled, but I have seen some videos of the game, and it doesn't look like anything special, so I can only guess that was the reason. The more interesting thing is that there is a small "Coming Soon" section of the poster, highlighting NES games coming in 1990. (Willow came out in 89.) The games listed are Rescue Rangers, Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, and...Street Fighter II?? Seriously, it's just the logo, and no screenshots or anything. My first guess was maybe Capcom was planning to port it to the NES at the time, since the SNES was still a couple years away. But then I remembered that Street Fighter II did not hit arcades in the US until 1991, a good 2 years after Willow came out for the NES. Also, the SNES version came out a year after that in the summer of 92. So, my only guess is that this is referring to Street Fighter 2010 for the NES, which was released in 1990. Perhaps at the time, Capcom of America was planning on calling it Street Fighter II, but decided against it when the arcade went into development. I really don't know, but that's the best guess I can come up with. |
|
Saxon posted...
If you ever sell your games, the receipt would help you close the deal without having to open up every cart to look at the circuit board and verify each game as being legit. That would really only help if you bought the game new. If you got it used, it could very well have been a bootleg or repro.
Owner of NES, SNES, N64, GCN, Wii, SMS, GEN, TG16, PSX, PS2, PS3, XBOX, X360, XBO, GB, GBC, GBA SP, GB Micro, DS, DS Lite, PSP and a lot of crappy games.
|
|
I actually still have one albeit for a Snes game- Yoshis Island. It was 69.99 from Target dated November 95.
|
|
Ah those Toys R' Us tickets...
I have a receipt of my own where I bought Einhander and Demon's Crest together, new, for $20 :)
Use your computer mouse to navigate the internets. Be sure to talk to everyone you meet. You're sure to gain lots of valuable information.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment