Own Every SNES Game Ever Made For $24,999

An anonymous reader writes "BSNES author and game collector Byuu has decided to put his entire collection of SNES games up for sale — at the low price of 24,999USD. The collection covers *every* game ever made for SNES, all in the original covers. From the article: 'The seller, who goes by the name "Byuu" on Reddit, says that every single game in the collection comes with its original box and approximately 85 percent of the games come with their original manuals. The collection does not include unlicensed games, and every game has been professionally cleaned and tested. "They all work perfectly," Byuu says.'"

Comments

These belong in a museum!

[Anonymous Coward]

These belong in a public museum, not some private collection. I hope that somebody who is rich and who appreciates video games makes the purchase, and donates them to the Smithsonian or some other reputable museum so that they can be publicly displayed for all to see and to experience.

Re:These belong in a museum!

[UltraZelda64]

As a gamer, I actually strongly agree on this... they should be taken care of, preserved, ba a part of a museum. That's lots of history he's selling.

BSNES is awesome, by the way.

Re:These belong in a museum!

[Hatta]

There are plenty of extant copies of any of these vintage (not even antique) consumer goods. I agree that these are as culturally important as anything else in an art museum, but this sale doesn't in any way hinder industry.

Besides, even if you ignore these games entirely, byuu has done far more than $25,000 worth of work preserving these games. Bsnes is arguably not just the best snes emulator but the most accurate emulator ever, which is likely to survive much longer than the cardboard, plastic and silicon being sold.

Re:These belong in a museum!

[byuu]

The thing I disliked most was the way emulated images do not come with any box art or instruction manuals. That was always part of the fun as a kid for me.

Ironically, you can consider my effort to be undermining the very value of owning the set: I've scanned all of this stuff in at high resolution so it'll be available long after the games are gone. That's why I bought them in the first place. I'm only selling them so I can buy more games from other regions to do the same.

Re:These belong in a museum!

[spazdor]

You're doing God's work, Byuu.

I mean, that's a cutely hyperbolic and very Internet thing to say, but seriously, kudos. It may otherwise become impossible to find the material which you are preserving for us.

Re:These belong in a museum!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you give them to the Smithsonian, they're going in storage. They've only got so much display space. But they would likely be well preserved.

Re:These belong in a museum!

[rolfwind]

These belong in a public museum, not some private collection. I hope that somebody who is rich and who appreciates video games makes the purchase, and donates them to the Smithsonian or some other reputable museum so that they can be publicly displayed for all to see and to experience.

Museums are for conservations of material goods. Libraries are better to spread ideas in whatever form they come in.

Museums are not lacking in material, I can assure you. Smithsonian only displays a tiny, tiny fraction of its inventory at any one time, and a smaller amount on tour somewhere, much of it is in warehouses, many never to see the light of day in my lifetime for want of display space. Many people I know who donated anything from their great-great-....grandfather's civil war canteen to their grandfather's US Army uniform to a local Museum often were shocked to see that stuff put up for auction from same museum. Because the museum preferred the money for budget/projects rather than common to even somewhat rare (but not especially valuable) items. It's even known some curators of smaller museums that even deal in/steal/pilfer goods and replace them with copies.

Maybe, sometime, somewhere a super nintendo with a super mario cartridge belongs in a museum somewhere. But certainly not the whole collection. It's just going to collect dust and not going to introduce more people to the joys of that era. Private collectors would be great to care for that.

That makes about as much sense as giving books to a museum to spread ideas. That's where a library is more appropriate. If you really want to get that, you would call for liberalizing copyright law. Tie it to patent length or something and only keep trademarks as ongoing. That way it would be legal to have the entire library up and served on the internet for generations to come and have people actually play them, if they so chose.

I don't think it's going to be much of an experience in 100 years to go to a museum, and look at video game and dvd titles, that you may play for 5 minutes because of a line or see for 5 minutes in some demo. That would surely be a stunted experience.

Re:eBay link

[adisakp]

Have you thought about an Indiegogo campaign or Kickstarter to fund your effort for European and Japanese cartridges?

Crowd-funding of projects is hot right now and it might be easier to find thousands of people who think your efforts are worth $10 to them than to find a single person willing to part with $25,000 for old game cartridges.

Re:Meh

[BPPG]

But you can't download an arcade where every game is 25 cents to play, not counting the many many gameovers that leave you needing more. You can't download that first gameboy your older cousin lent you for the week to play Dr. Mario over and over again just so you could beat his high score. You can't download the way it made you feel to finally get to the third stage of a boss that had kept illing you over and over before you knew how to time your attacks while avoiding theirs.

And twenty years from now, gamers from today won't be able to download the group dynamics of their MMO clan, won't be able to download the step by step evolution of Minecraft indev with it's back and forth between Notch and the smaller community. They won't be able to download all the achievements, trophies, ranks, and golden guns from their favorite FPSs. They won't be able to download the connection made between shiningly creative Little Big Planet level authors after wading through the seas of shoddily-made CoD clones and Mario levels.

I just recently got a smartphone capable of playing these old SNES games. I might download an emulator and play some games. But gaming on a touchscreen smartphone will never be the same as sitting on the carpet with my siblings, racing through the ghost levels on Super Mario Kart and figuring out exactly where to use my jumping feather to get an edge towards victory.