I collect and play a lot of old games (PS1, N64, Gameboy, and Ps2 are the main ones I buy for), but the prices on retro games are rising rapidly. Many games have doubled or tripled in price since around 2020. I like to play PS1 RPGs, but a lot of them are worth way more then I'm willing to spend nowadays. I usually prefer original hardware over emulating, but I've just been priced out of most systems (PS2 is about the only one that I care about where the price is still afforable, but even that is way up). Do you guys think this is a bubble that will pop, or are these insane prices here to stay?
(P.S. if you don't belive me look up any major game on pricecharting.com and look how the prices have spiked since 2020)
What I’ve been doing is buying original hardware and then Everdrives for ROM cartridge based systems and jailbreak/softmod disc and hard drive based systems. You can do modless jailbreaks of Gamecubes, Wiis, Original Xbox, PS1, PS2 among many others. And once you do that, you can run images of games on original hardware (ahem legitimately acquired backups of games cough, cough).
So that’s how I deal with increasing game prices. Once I finished my N64 full set, I said no more.