The retro game collection scene is in a weird spot these days, with a whole lot of fans who just want to enjoy old games in peace getting very annoyed at the speculators and auctioneers slabbing and grading old games like Super Mario Bros, with multimillion dollar markups. 1994 might've been a simpler time for retro enthusiasts, but they were just as price consciousness back then.
Yes, 1994 had its own retro collectors, looking for deals on classic Atari carts in an era when Super NES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive were the current hotness. That's illustrated by an article from the January 1994 issue of VideoGames: The Ultimate Gaming Magazine (recently highlighted by Chris Kohler on Bluesky) titled "Tired of the same old Street Fighter clones? Collect classic cartridges!"
The article is a review of the second edition of Digital Press' Classic Videogames Collector's Guide, which tracked the going rates for a wide variety of consoles that were old even then - platforms like the Atari 2600, Vectrex, and ColecoVision.
"If you're cynical about the idea of a cartridge price guide simply because nobody has done one before," the magazine writes, "you'll breathe a sigh of relief when you see how brutally realistic and conservative these numbers are. Of the hundreds of games included, only a handful are valued at a price that's higher than the price they originally sold for in stores. The most common titles - like Atari's Air-Sea Battle, Combat and Space Invaders - are valued at just $1 each."
You might cynically wish to return to the days where just a "handful" of retro games are more expensive now than they were at retail, but that's actually still true today. If you take a look at even a notoriously expensive platform to collect for like the Nintendo 64 on a modern price tracker like PriceCharting, you'll find average prices across all games around $33 and the median cost around $17. That's well short of the $60-$70 these games originally retailed for, to say nothing of inflation.
The difference between then and now, of course, is that the handful of really expensive games out there have a much higher price ceiling these days. VideoGames' review of the price guide highlights a few extremely rare picks. "Did you know that programmer Rob Fulop (of Night Driver and Demon Attack fame) independently released an Atari 2600 game called Cubicolor, and that only 60 copies are believed to exist? What about Froggo's Pyromania for the Atari 7800? (It was advertised, but may only exist as a prototype.) Then there's the elusive Dark Tower game for the Vectrex - has anybody really seen this Holy Grail of the game industry?"
The prices listed in the Classic Videogames Collector's Guide for these titles? "$500, $100, and $100," respectively. Just imagine telling these folks what you'd have to pay for Panzer Dragoon Saga these days.
