A blast from the past!

[Bluntified]

I have something interesting to show. I was doing a bit of cleaning through an old bin I had that was full of junk and things I forgot about. I came across a Toys 'R' Us flyer from '95! The prices in the flyer was amazing, so amazing infact I had to share this with everyone (even though most of you old enough, would know).

They were selling Bass Masters for $94.99! Wow, I thought to myself. People in this (now) generation complain and whine about the costs of games and DLC, they should have seen what it was like to live nearly 20 years ago.

PS. I chose that game as example because Wii has the same game, updated of course, for $49.99 new (could be cheaper now as it's older now)

Here are a couple shots of the flyers:

This one caught me by surprise as the price for clearance games are still more expensive than a new game, now!

What happened here? Why is it that everything had lower price tags back then, EXCEPT games? I'm a '81 baby and remember lower price tags, I started smoking when cigarettes were $3.25 (DuMarier in Canada), now I'm paying $11 flat!

Ps. I know about inflation, I'm speaking specifically about the tag price.

 

[disinfected]

Things really were expensive as far as games. I don't remember anything that high in America, seeing as how Canadian dollars aren't that far off. If I can recall correctly though, when the original PlayStation came out in '95 in was around the $500 price range.

 

[GranTurismo916]

Are those canadian flyers (looking at your location)...Because those prices are really high compard to now, but the price on Canadian products usually cost $1 more than American of the same brand and product.

 

[HumanDestroyah]

I remember paying $75 for Goldeneye on the N64.....yeesh.

 

[nick09]

Now I see why my brother and me rented a lot of SNES games! I got terrible memory so I'd never remember something like this. I bet it had to be painful to pay $59.98 to buy the Pinball game for the SNES or even the original price of 69.98!

I think you should keep it. It's always good to have a link to your childhood.

 

[Hollow]

I remember paying $75 for Goldeneye on the N64.....yeesh.

+1

Best game ever played though. 👍

 

[Bluntified]

I remember paying $75 for Goldeneye on the N64.....yeesh.

It makes you happy to be paying $59.99 for a game now lol!

Those asking, it's a Canadian Flyer. After seeing it, it gave me a new look on buying games. Comparing back then to now, these games are peanuts lol.

I also remember buying my NES for nearly $200, we got it in New York as it hadn't released in Canada yet.

PS. I'm keeping the flyer, as nick09 said "I think you should keep it. It's always good to have a link to your childhood". It's also a good thing that that link is is the same passion I have up to now.

 

[W3H5]

I remember buying Mortal kombat 3 for my Sega Megadrive and it came in at a whopping £50 back in the day. It must have been around 1997.

To think, that nowadays it could be picked up for next to nothing! I had to have it then though.

 

[Antonisbob]

The year I was born haha. That's um.. surprising!

 

[f1reb1rd]

$45 for a Gameboy game? I thought they were still overpriced in GameStop.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

You'd still have to pay that much (or more) for a video game here in Australia!

 

[disinfected]

You'd still have to pay that much (or more) for a everything here in Australia!

Fixed. Or so I've heard, at least!

 

[Ross]

That's slightly pricey.

@HumanDestroyah, your avatar is disturbing.

 

[The Bman]

That's slightly pricey.

Very pricey.

@HumanDestroyah, your avatar is disturbing.

Really disturbing.

 

[DG_Silva]

The reason why the prices are so high is because they were cartridges; they cost so much more than CDs to produce. Also the technology was in it's infancy with the memory storage costing a fortune (I can remember buying 4Mb RAM for my PC in 1994).

 

[Encyclopedia]

I love stuff like this. I have a bunch of old sega magazines as well as some old computer mags from mid to late 90's somewhere. Nostalgia! The prices are somtimes shocking, especially for computers back then. I remember from one mag there was a high end computer with, I think it was up towards 1gb hardrive space. 90mhz processor etc. 40000 sek! About 5600 usd!

 

[Pupik]

Heh, I remember asking for a (then-new) game for my 8th birthday. The price was $52, a little steeper than the usual $40/45 at the time.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Yes, it was 1982. No, I'm not making that price up, and it was Toys 'R Us.

It's amazing that 30 years later, that most video games aren't much more expensive on average, in real dollars, but are usually decreasing on an inflation-adjusted basis just about every year. There's more choices, more buyers, and more competition, which has a lot to do with it.

I will admit that it was and still is, one of my favorite Atari 2600 games.

Edit: Onanda shows $1.36US to each Canadian Dollar at the time.

 

[Tornado]

Bubsy for only $48? Sign me up!





DG_Silva and Pupik basically nailed it, though one other thing is that games didn't have standardized prices back then. It took until the PSX for games to have an average price point rather than just costing whatever the publisher wanted to charge.

 

[thesuperfunk]

Cartridge production costs must also be taken into account too, i remember forking out almost £60 for Mario Kart on the SNES back in the 90's when memory costs were insane compared with today!

 

[MSTER232]

I have something interesting to show. I was doing a bit of cleaning through an old bin I had that was full of junk and things I forgot about. I came across a Toys 'R' Us flyer from '95! The prices in the flyer was amazing, so amazing infact I had to share this with everyone (even though most of you old enough, would know).

They were selling Bass Masters for $94.99! Wow, I thought to myself. People in this (now) generation complain and whine about the costs of games and DLC, they should have seen what it was like to live nearly 20 years ago.

PS. I chose that game as example because Wii has the same game, updated of course, for $49.99 new (could be cheaper now as it's older now)

Here are a couple shots of the flyers:

This one caught me by surprise as the price for clearance games are still more expensive than a new game, now!

What happened here? Why is it that everything had lower price tags back then, EXCEPT games? I'm a '81 baby and remember lower price tags, I started smoking when cigarettes were $3.25 (DuMarier in Canada), now I'm paying $11 flat!

Ps. I know about inflation, I'm speaking specifically about the tag price.

Having a look at this makes even the most expensive games today look cheap in comparison. This is a very nice find that you have there, you should keep it.

 

[Grayfox]

Nothing wrong with those prices, they are set the way they should for this country.
May be not yours but mine, it is normal.