That's because it was Toys 'R' Us and they've always been horribly overpriced.

I wasted so much time on "Populous". It's a shame what's happened to Molyneaux since then.

I only really bought used games as a kid.

I'm fairly sure I remember Street Fighter 2 on SNES being when it was released.

Toys R Us topped off at .99 for NES when I was a kid. I think I remember seeing a .99 game once but I don't remember what it was.

I guess I already covered that below, three years ago.

Yeah but the Genesis had better games. Fact.

And they were in color.

It had blast processing

I remember NES game topping out at with a very few notable exceptions that never even made it to most stores (Ogre Battle).

And the games didn't make you motion sick.

Every Genesis game I've played has a weird sense of disconnect between the controller and what's happening onscreen, like there's either too much ease in/out when you move or (more often) there's not enough. Everyone I've known who preferred Genesis was kind of off in one way or another, too. Literally both of them.

Let's not even get into the sorry fate of the kid I knew who got a Jaguar instead of an N64.

er.... completely didnt put the part about the same pricing scheme thereabouts referring to TODAY's pricing and game quality being higher.

Drugs are like that.

Way more people buy games these days, and since it costs almost nothing to print the games, companies make more money on a hit and can afford to spend more to make it.

Counterpoint: games were a LOT cheaper to make back then and had less competition. Advertising costs? We paid Nintendo for ads (Nintendo Power, The Wizard), not vice versa.

Super Mario 3 sold 18 million copies worldwide, more than any Call of Duty game. It was in 1990. Take a second to imagine the pure hooker snorting blow profit Nintendo was milking everyone for back then.

...what? Are you honestly arguing that fewer people buy games today than in the 80s?

Pick your battles a little better, FABIO. This is a lonely hill to die on.

While the total production including marketing was much lower then, the actual cartridges cost more, because every game was a specialized chip that required multiple components. From what I understand, they took a 15% hit on the material cost alone.

When CD's came about, Sony jumped on with the PlayStation because suddenly the profit margin per unit rose to acceptable levels and they already had CD manufacturing plants. Really the primary reason they got into games at all.

Fabio: Mario 3 sold 18 million worldwide over the course of 20 years. The wiki cites 2008 as the year that tally was made. It wasn't all in a blitz on the market in '88.

Battles? Chill the fuck out fella.

What I'm saying is comparing development costs, that sales...dying on a lonely hill? Jesus dude.

I suppose the blockbuster titles are more expensive to make today, but on the other hand we have teams of one or two people making top quality games, the cost to do so is practically nothing, and you can get distribution from Apple, Google, Microsoft or whoever, without manufacturing anything.