Why Some of Your Pokemon Games Are Selling at Crazy Prices

Certain rare retro video games, like many other pieces of media, sell for absurdly high prices at times in the current market. While many people might (rightly) consider having to spend hundreds of dollars on a video game to be absurd, these prices are at least somewhat warranted, as many of these games that sell for extreme prices sold very little amounts during the times that they were being produced officially, thus making them hard to obtain nowadays. Games like Persona 3 Portable, Metroid Prime Trilogy, and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance all sold poorly initially, but have had substantial increases in demand due to recent rises in these series’ popularity. While decade old video games should never be selling for upwards of $200, it becomes at least somewhat in the context of just how rare some of these games are. However, amongst all of these types of games, there is one collection of overpriced games that stands as somewhat of an oddity in comparison to the rest.

Ever since quarantine began with the COVID pandemic, the prices of Pokemon games have skyrocketed to extreme numbers despite Pokemon being the fifth best selling video game franchise of all-time. These overpriced games aren't even obscure spinoffs that might’ve underperformed, but rather they are mainline games that drove the sales of Nintendo consoles by  selling millions of copies. Most of the games that have been influenced by this outrageous inflation are the DS and Gameboy Advance Pokemon games such as Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, Pokemon Heartgold and Soulsilver, and Pokemon Black and White. 

If you go by Amazon standards, the cheapest of these games is Pokemon Diamond, which sells for $77 at “very good” quality and the most expensive is Pokemon Heartgold, which sells for a whopping $200 at “very good” quality. While some people might simply suggest visiting local retro video game stores to purchase these games, that might be even more expensive, as typically the prices of these games rise due to the fact that buying locally avoids some of the dangers of buying these games online, with the issue of rampant fake Pokemon games on the internet being the biggest. 

So why are games that all sold over eight million copies so rare and sought after nowadays? Finding a legitimate reason is a bit hard to come up with given the ridiculous nature of the situation, but it can best be summed up by three reasons. 

One of the main problems is the issue of fake Pokemon games, which I talked about earlier. DS and Gameboy Advance games are infamous for being easy to pirate, so naturally the online market is flooded with fake copies, making it significantly more difficult for buyers to identify legitimate copies while searching online. A lot of these games actually may work and play fine, but the problems come in with the fact that players cannot transfer their favorite Pokemon from these older games down to newer ones, which is important for dedicated fans of the series. Secondly is the issue that Nintendo, in stark contrast to other prominent companies, is resistant to porting these games to their most modern consoles. This means that if anyone desires to play these games without emulating them (technically) illegally online, they have to use the original hardware, and many of these games that fans desire are ones that have not been manufactured officially by Nintendo in years.  

The third and final reason is a combination of the nostalgia that million of people have for these games and the sheer boredom that a lot of people experienced with this pandemic. Earlier in the pandemic, many people looked to pass time in various different ways, and there are few better ways to pass time than reliving old childhood memories. These prices particularly began to skyrocket at the beginning of the pandemic; it would be difficult to discuss some of the influences behind the prices of these games without discussing it.

It has been almost two years since these prices began to rise in ludicrous amounts, and they unfortunately do not look as if they are going to drop anytime soon. If you are someone who might have any of these games in your possession, make sure to sell them to the right people, particularly either at retro video game stores or online at websites such as Amazon or Ebay. If you are looking for ways to play these games and are uncomfortable emulating games on a personal computer, then I would unfortunately recommend not buying these games at all for the time being. All of these games are fantastic in their own rights, but paying upwards of $200 for games that originally retailed at just $40 isn't worth it in the long run. It certainly isn’t ideal that this situation has gotten as embarrassingly unhealthy as it has, but hopefully it can stress to companies the importance of making video games discographies readily available on modern hardware.

By Kailen Hicks