Why are certain JPN Megadrive Games so expensive!?

[Izod1337]

Alright so I'll admit that not every single Japanese Mega Drive game out there is expensive. But there are certain games out there that I see commend for some high prices online. Examples of games that I personally want to own and play are Divine Sealing, Aleste, Eliminate Down, Gaiares, Gleylancer, and Twinkle Tale. Thanks to the internet, I've been able to try these games out and have enjoyed all of them but holy crap, the games above are all $200+ on eBay and last time I checked Eliminate Down went for $1,000! I know reproductions on certain games are available if I truly wish to own a physical cartridge. but is that the way to go?

Is the high price of the games due to some sort of low production run on the games or is it just because of the rise in market for shooters? Thoughts and opinions?

[SamIAm]

Low production quantities, probably. Especially for late-era games.

According to one Japanese article I read, Sonic & Knuckles JP apparently only sold 10,000 copies.

[SuperDeadite]

Divine Sealing was an unlicensed, adults only release.  Not something you would find in major retail stores, and as an owner of a boxed copy, you really do not want to play it.  Even it's porn is boring and crap. It's not even bad in a fun or interesting way, it's just garbage on a cart.   Eliminate Down while actually published, was a one-off from a dev nobody remembers, sold terribly back in the day.  ED is actually a really good game at least.

[SignOfZeta]

The Megadrive sold so badly in Japan most people didn't realize it existed.

And then 25 years later some kid times a million wants a copy of all the stuff that was scarce even compared to other games on a system nobody bought.

How could it not be expensive?

[TheClash603]

Twinkle Tale was one I kept almost getting years ago and for one reason or another I passed on it.  I just looked for it on ebay for the first time in a few years...  sucks.

Though this could be a carbon copy thread with "system X" in the title and it would always be true.

I work at a bank and recently we had an internal discussion about "passion investments."  Essentially the market has had no yield for the last several years, so large investors are forming buying groups and buying things such as wine, cars, art, watches, etc. These groups are doing so because returns on stocks and traditional investments are very low and these passion investments have the highest return of any asset class in the past five yours.

Personally I think it's another Dutch Tulip Bubble http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes2.asp

[Otaking]

Alright so I'll admit that not every single Japanese Mega Drive game out there is expensive. But there are certain games out there that I see commend for some high prices online.

The Mega Drive is not unique in this though, exactly the same can be said of Super Famicom, PC Engine, Neo Geo, Saturn etc. etc etc..... In fact of the consoles I just mentioned the Japanese Mega Drive game library has the smallest amount of high priced games to ratio of total amount of games released.

[xelement5x]

Most points have been touched on here, but the MegaDrive was not very successful in Japan compared to the Genesis in the US.  So a lot of the "in demand" games that were JP exclusive suffer from people in both markets (US and JP) wanting copies, and the already very limited supply is even more strained.

Interesting to hear TheClash's comments on people actively investing into stuff like that, I've never heard the term "passion investments" but it definitely makes sense.  I'm probably guilty of it myself in some sense

[cr8zykuban0]

never really knew the megadrive had poor sales in japan compared to the successful sales the genesis sold in the u.s. now it makes sence that a lot of mega drive games are pricy.

[Otaking]

never really knew the megadrive had poor sales in japan compared to the successful sales the genesis sold in the u.s. now it makes sence that a lot of mega drive games are pricy.

But the Super Famicom and PC Engine were both very popular in Japan and I guess had larger print runs and their games are even more pricey than the Japanese Mega Drive games.
I really hate to say it but over all, the prices are just because of too many collectards.
Personally I think it's fine to have a large game collection or even go for a complete set of a particular system but it's lame treating games like Pokemon "gotta catch em all" just for the sake of it, having a wall of games because you think it looks cool like some youtuber you watch, not because you love the system.

[SignOfZeta]

In the case of JP Megadrive I don't think that's much of a factor. A JP Sonic the Hedgehog fetches 10x what a US one would and that contrast in supply was always the case. I had a Diehard Gameclub near me and the MD section was like six games whereas SFC and PCE were there by the dozens.

I don't think the collectarded have even gotten to JP MD yet and when they do...it's going to be ugly.