Retro video games live on in Utah’s second-hand market

LAYTON — Hundreds of people from across Utah gathered inside the Davis Conference Center for the Utah Retro GameXpo on Aug. 10 for one thing: retro video games and collectibles.

The Utah Retro GameXpo was created by Tracy Charlton, owner of Minus World Games, a store that sells retro video games, consoles, and accessories. He said the expo was his original plan before setting up shop at Layton because there was nothing like it in the state.

“I’ve traveled to other conventions and, yeah, this would be cool to have here. Somebody should do that. And then I’m like, maybe I will,” Charlton said.

But, the COVID-19 pandemic happened, halting any plans for the retro expo until 2022, when Charlton hosted it in the Minus World Games parking lot as a swap meet with a few vendors. Even though it was snowing and raining, he said about a thousand people showed up asking about the next one.

“It kind of blew up from there. And then we just keep changing it, growing it,” Charlton said.

While the COVID-19 pandemic halted the expo plans, Charlton said it was one of the factors that jump-started the retro video game scene for the last few years.

“A lot of people are at home, or they’re working from home, and they are bored. You can’t go on vacation,” he said. “They’re like, all right, let’s get a (video game) system.”

Charlton said YouTubers like the Angry Video Game Nerd have piqued teenagers’ interest in playing retro video games from the 1980s to the 2000s. He also sees a lot of families with kids looking for more ways to bond with each other.

“I have kids come into my store with their parents … and they’re pointing things out, ‘This is that N64. Did you know? It does this and this.’ And they’re pointed out to their parents. Their parents are like, ‘Oh yeah,'” Charlton said.

But it’s not just parents and teens who are looking to buy from Charlton. There is a whole marketplace for collectors who want these retro items.

According to PriceCharting.com, a website that tracks video game purchases and sales, games that used to cost $20 to $30 are now being sold for hundreds of dollars.

One example is Pokémon Emerald Version for Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance. The game was released in 2005 for approximately $34.99, but in 2024, resellers are pricing the game at about $200. If you want a complete version, which comes with the box, manual, and the game, buyers are looking at thousands of dollars.

“I had an Earthbound complete in the box,” Charlton said. “It was a little rough, but that one was pretty expensive. We sold it for about $2,300, which was on the low side.”

According to Charlton and other vendors at GameXpo, supply and demand is one reason for these prices. Charlton described the retro game market as the stock market. Another vendor, Court Butterfield, co-owner of Koman’s Playground, told a customer that Pokémon Emerald is basically like money you can deposit at a bank.

Butterfield said the current status of the retro video game market is fine, but games like Earthbound are just expensive for no clear reason.

“There’s a ton of copies of Earthbound, and for it to be several thousand dollars, it just doesn’t make any sense,” Butterfield said. “But I mean, it’s all about supply and demand.”

At the GameXpo, Butterfield and an attendee named Kristin talked numbers about two PlayStation games released in the 1990s. After a bit of haggling due to the condition of the two games, Clock Tower and Clock Tower 2, Kristin paid about $500.

“I actually own Clock Tower 3,” Kristin said. “And I’ve been searching for these first two for about two years.”

The reasons for buying these decades-old games differ for GameXpo attendees. For Kristin, it’s to play games she played while growing up after they were stolen from a storage unit.

“It was terrible for me. I almost gave up on collecting and gaming, but I didn’t give up on it,” she said. “A few years later, my collection’s bigger than what it used to be. So much bigger and I wasn’t expecting that. And so I figured, you know what? These and these classic horror games just as well.”

While some of these retro video games are available on modern consoles like Sony’s PlayStation 5, Microsoft’s Xbox One, or Nintendo’s Switch, most are still only available in their physical formats.

Kris Menole bought Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance from a vendor for about $200. Because the game cannot be purchased officially from its publisher, hobbyists like Menole turn to the second-hand market.

“It’s a pretty rare game to find. It wasn’t printed in mass quantities, like a lot of games now,” Menole said. “It’s one of the few that have I not gotten around to playing.”

Emulation allows hobbyists to play retro video games on modern laptops or smartphones. Still, the legality of emulation has been a topic of discussion since the 1990s as game publishers might pursue legal action for those that distribute them on the Internet.

“I thought about emulating. But I feel like it’s a lot more work. And I’m not as familiar with putting it together,” Kristin said.

It’s also playing the video game on original hardware for hobbyists like Kristin and Menole.

“I just find original hardware is more consistent,” Menole said. “I just think original hardware, it’s much more interesting to play, and it’s a better experience, in my opinion.”

And even if a video game is available in a digital shop, like Microsoft’s 360 Marketplace and Nintendo’s Wii E-Shop, that shop might shut down.

“Wii Party is like a $50 game now, and it used to be about $10 to $20 … It jumped up, I guess,” said Charlton. “Now that the 360 shop is closed down, I’m sure we’ll start to see a lot of those go up.”

Charlton said other factors for the prices include games being delisted from digital stores due to licensing issues to remasters and remakes of the game coming out for modern consoles.

Hobbyists like Greg Lobato are looking for consoles modified by other people in the retro scene. He bought a Super Nintendo Entertainment System from Dan Bejarnao of Pizza Handhelds, which had a clear shell over it.

“They seem to have a really high level of craftsmanship,” Lobato said. “You can see all the internals. (Bejarnao) does a thorough cleaning on them.”

According to Bejarnao, modifying older consoles is another reason the retro video game scene is continuing to grow. With people like him in the scene, older consoles can stay alive for a longer time.

“I want to make it look cool for, you know, other people to enjoy for new generations to enjoy. You know, I’ve found a lot of, like, joy and stuff,” he said.

While Bejarnao focuses on cosmetic changes, there are also modifications to consoles like adding an internal HDMI port, Bluetooth support, and rechargeable batteries, which also could cost hundreds of more dollars.

“If you add the HDMI mod, then it shoots it over $100 and that $120. So like, it puts it up into a $500 range,” Bejarnao said. “It’s more for those collectors who like need the pixel perfect (visuals).

The retro gaming scene is not just prevalent in Utah or the United States, but it’s a worldwide hobby that connects different people. Bejarnao showed off a Nintendo Game Boy Color he purchased that was modded by a person in Mexico.

“There’s people in Australia, there’s people in Mexico, there’s a ton of people in Europe, people all over the world, and they’re all into this stuff,” Bejarnao said.

Seth Renske, the owner of Overall Games in Loveland, Colorado, said he refurbishes the games he resells to ensure buyers get the best products.

“I mean, we take everything apart. We clean everything with isopropyl alcohol. If they need new capacitors, we do all that. Anything with, like N64s or Super Nintendos or Game Boys,” Renske said.

Most vendors, like Renske, Butterfield, Bejarnao, and Charlton, started out as collectors themselves and decided to make the hobby into a business.

“It was an accident,” Renske said. “I bought so many games … and then I ended up having multiple buckets of just duplicates of games that I thought I didn’t have.”

Renske said he had a collection of about 3,500 games that he keeps track of with a spreadsheet. Charlton said he has all the published games for Nintendo’s Nintendo Entertainment System, which is about 787 games.

“It took me about three years. And it was, it was something I just wanted to do. It was when I was unemployed,” Charlton said. “So I collected a lot during that time. I was bored, you know, trying to find a job and trying to collect,”

At the end of the day, while owning these retro video games might be costly and seem like a waste of money to those from the outside, for those in the scene, it’s reliving their past and experiencing it again with new people.

“My wife and I (were) celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary this last weekend, and she’s played a bunch of the Mario games from the Wii and Wii U with our kids. So my kids are really lucky. They can say they beat Mario with their mom, but my wife and I hooked up the SNES Classic,” Lobato said. “And we were playing some Super Mario World together, which we had never done together. So that was kind of fun.”