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It's a pretty lame situation. I used to have a big collection, but I sold 95% at the beginning of the pandemic when I realized I just don't play them. I'm more likely to emulate, even stuff that I own. Game collecting is different from game playing and it's almost like a separate hobby with a lot of overlap. It's a bummer for people who want to have a cool thing and can't have it.
I found myself thinking similar recently. My gaming time is limited, and when I fancy playing something it’s easier to open an emulator, and flash carts etc anlso add a lot of moderns conveniences to playing on real hardware also. I had a whole shelf of boxed Nintendo games that I rarely if ever played because I didn’t want to damage the increasingly fragile boxes.
I downsized my collection to a few favourite systems and it’s turned out for the better. The money raised from the bits I sold has been well spent of other interests/projects, and the things I’ve kept I’m getting more enjoyment out of.
For me, I still have all my gaming stuff, but I purchased cartridge dumpers and made game (and some save) backups of nearly all my cartridge based games so I could have them on my Raspberry Pi and Steam Deck - Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, N64, Game Boy, etc. To be honest, while I do own the original hardware and game copies, I still prefer to play my dumps on emulators because of things like save states, rewind, HD resolution on legacy polygonal systems, cheat codes, better controls (Kaboom! (Atari 2600) is more responsive on Steam Deck via RetroArch than it is on original hardware on an HDTV), and overall convenience, such as portability for the Steam Deck, or a front end that allows me to easily pick a game on my Raspberry Pi.
Of course, there are some instances where I may still need to resort to original hardware, like afaik the only way to play WarioWare: Twisted (GBA) without using a control patch is either on an original GBA using an original Game Pak, or by using the VBA GX homebrew emulator for the Wii (which desyncs and drifts very quickly). There are also some games with unusual controls or features that are very tricky to map correctly on an emulator, such as the majority of the Wii and Wii U library, any PS2 game that took advantage of the pressure buttons, the unholy 3rd gen keypad controller Trinity (ColecoVision, Intellivision, and Atari 5200), games with extensive use of a microphone or a proprietary controller (Hey You, Pikachu! (N64), Caution! Seaman (Dreamcast), some DS games, etc.), just to name a few. There's also some systems that may never get dumped or have an emulator made, such as the VTech and LeapFrog learning systems.
I could go on, but I've made by point, I emulate whenever possible, but I still make an effort to obtain my games legitimately so I can dump them and emulate them
Are cartridge dumpers tough to get? I never thought of trying to dump my items before I sold them. You should make a post about the dumpes & using them, I don't hear about them much.
For the record, EarthBound isn't rare, just overpriced. It sold 140k copies in North America (Wikipedia), so while it didn't sell very well compared to other Nintendo titles, it is nowhere near the rarity of say Tooth Protectors (Atari 2600), Super Noah's Ark 3D (unlicensed Super Nintendo), Tetris (Tengen, unlicensed NES), anything on Sega Saturn, all of which can be found on eBay for comparable value, if not cheaper.
Also it is unreasonable for mainline Pokemon games to have outrageous price tags given that every one of them have sold millions of copies. Yes, I am aware of "supply and demand", but it doesn't help that a lot of these game prices are artificially inflated when there are plenty of these game copies to go around, and the "demand" only really exists among collectors as anyone who just wants to play the game has probably already done so through "illegitimate means".
I think part of the Pokemon situation is that there is still a strong competitive scene for at least some older generations on legitimate hardware, for gathering Pokémon if not for battling them (you need a gen 3 cart to get a legitimate Jirachi off of Pokemon Colosseum/XD, for example), so there is still high demand from the competitive community for many of those older games. Some pokemon can still be very difficult to get legit versions of without the older gen games due to them being only limited releases otherwise.
Also, in my opinion, if somebody has the pokemon games he will not sell them. But a new player thst will be catched by the idea of "Catch them all" will try to have allthe games.
Also the greatest Atari games are the lesser expensive ones. Berserk, Sub Hunt, Moon Patroll. All easy to get.