When the Mega Drive was launched in Portugal the price was 49,990 escudos... one of my sisters who worked in a shoe factory at the time earned 20,000 escudos a month... a game like Sonic or Ecco the Dolphin could cost around 13,000 escudos (Virtua Racing 20,000 escudos)... and then we see people here complaining that 70 dollars for a game is a lot (no offence intended)...
This is exactly what some of us have been saying all along =P And this isn't even the most expensive carts got.
Yeah, well, the American economy was a lot better back then. People worked less and they weren't living paycheck to paycheck either. Plus, cartridges, packaging, and shipping are expensive to produce...digital copies on digital storefronts are not. I don't want to derail this topic, but context matters.
I think a lot of the people mentioning the $50 games in the 90's are forgetting that the video game market was in in infancy then. It didn't have the economies of scale that we have now and games were a niche hobby that were seen as an absolute luxury. Just like any other technology, early adopters pay the tax for being early adopters. In 2000 a plasma screen TV cost around $10,000. that would be about $18,700 in today's dollars. If a manufacturer charged anywhere near that price today they would get burned at the stake. In 2023 the video game market was valued at $196 billion. In 1995 that number was roughly $34 billion. It's not just a luxury for rich kids any more, it's a huge market. The reason prices haven't needed to increase with inflation is that the entire supply chain has improved with economies of scale. Creating games has gotten cheaper per unit especially since Like DefinitiveDubs said, digital copies on digital storefronts have decreased physical costs drastically. Not trying to put anyone down or anything, I'm just tired to the whole "Mario Kart 64 was $70 back in 1997" argument.
Woah what's my prize? Back on topic I guess- I have a super close connection to Sonic 1, it's essentially been a part of my entire life. From ages 3 to 7, I loved just doing satisfying combos bouncing off monitors and enemies in Green Hill Zone, though I was never able to beat the boss and progress. Then all of the sudden, on one hot July day in 2012 I had managed to beat the entire game in 1 sitting before my family set out for a beach trip that day, I felt really proud of myself. Sonic 1 also made me believe that Super Sonic was a playground myth, like Luigi in Mario 64, or Mew under that truck. I mean, how in the world are you meant to get 7 Chaos Emeralds when there are obviously only 6? Let alone the fact that this was the most obvious Dragon Ball reference ever. Then my mom's boyfriend brought over his PS3 with Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, and I got to play Sonic 3, and the intro made my jaw drop. I had to go back and do everything I could to get the 7th Chaos Emerald in Sonic 1, and of course I never could. Come 2017, Sonic Mania came out, having heard that it was developed by ROM hackers, as well as playing Sonic ROM hacks reuploaded to ssega.com, an emulation site, during my lunch breaks in middle school, I decided to join this community, and learned how to ROM hack Sonic 1. Researched it's betas so closely I probably burst a blood vessel in my brain arguing with TTS obsessed children. And now I'm working to restore the original source code with all the information we've scraped together! Also I think Sonic 1 is better than Sonic 2 sorry.
Wikipedia is right not to cite the Sonic Retro wiki as a source, just like we don't cite Wikipedia. Anyone can edit these things, and moderation isn't perfect. It doesn't help that Sega considers the release date to be the 23rd June. "Sega is wrong, these people on the internet are right" is a tough fight if you're not fully invested in the subject (although you'd think the advertisements and receipts would be decent-enough visual evidence, but whatevs). But this is half the reason Sonic Retro's wiki exists - we're here to do a better job at this one specific topic. So yes it would be nice if Wikipedia was right, or was willing to "become right", but if the bureaucracy or politics is getting in the way, drop by our wiki and make that the go-to source instead!
