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[Putonahappyface]

Truly, Neo Geo console $649 in 1990... inflation adjusted $1,560 ! The game carts were $300-$400 each in todays money too.

I managed to talk my parents around to the possibility of getting one for Christmas, but when they saw the prices of the games there was no chance. I was more than happy with my PS1 in the end.

 

[Shake Your Rump]

I did not lack video games (and consoles) throughout my childhood, and we were not a particularly wealthy family. These types of comparisons make it seem like games were some kind of nearly inaccessible luxury. Games and consoles were mostly pretty affordable, even if you had to wait for deals or price drops.

Hmm... I grew up in the Midwest and my family had to put the $99 NES on layaway. I had a total of maybe six games over the lifespan of the NES, until I was old enough to make my own money, and even then I bought used games.

We did rent often.

 

[Putonahappyface]

A comparison I’ve used before but the first commercial radios would cost over $1000 today.

The N64 and PS1, as the first real 3D consoles, were absolutely worth any entry fee they wanted to slap on them.

Everyone was also better off in the 90s in the UK - wages high compared to the cost of living.

I was lucky enough to get a PS1 for Christmas back in 1995. I'll never forget going from my Sega Mega Drive to a Playstation my mind was blown by the 3d graphics.

The demo of the Tyrannosaurus rex and manta ray was the first thing I played first followed by Tekken and Ridge Racer. By the end of my Playstations life I amassed over a hundred games and various controllers and Namco light guns.

 

[Bert Big Balls]

Most people rented games or got 2 games a year, birthday and Christmas. Backlog was lot a word. I doubt corporations are rushing back to that.

Yep. 2 games a year for me if I was lucky. Birthday and Christmas. No worrying about what game I was going to play or buying a shit load of games because I had no money as a kid. I had to get the absolute most out of any new game I received. Life was easy back then.

 

[dotnotbot]

 

[BennyBlanco]

In retrospect the $200 dreamcast at launch was the deal of the forever. Trading in a ps1 + 10 games for $100 was crazy tho.

 

[Bert Big Balls]

In the early/mid- 90s, we had an NES and later a Genesis, so we were a gen behind. The games I played were second-hand and $5-10. I didn't even know my systems were "less advanced." Ignorance was bliss. And affordable!

Yeah, I had a ps1 but also my dad picked up a SNES for me from a guy he knew in the pub. Even though I knew the SNES was older I didn't care, I had A Link to the Past on it and I'd play the shit out of it most nights as a kid.

 

[DAHGAMING]

Xmas 1995 when PlayStation was released in the UK at £299.99 - inflation adjusted that's £600! (PS5 on release was £449).

Makes you think abit, I wonder how many Gaffers were around in the 90s and lucky enough to have it on release or near to it?

I had 1 as I was a horrible little cunt and no amount of slaps to my raw arse could stop me ordering my parents to get me 1. I stood stoic with my English mentality and wouldnt give in. Im proud to say they broke and got me it, my dad had to work 8 day weeks and I drove my mum into a mental breakdown, I am probably the reason there relationship fell apart but if you ask me was it worth it I will reply "corse it fuckin waz". Got myself an N64 off them aswell .

 

[a multicultural team of v]

We had a Win95 Packard Bell, it was only 100mhz with a 1GB HDD if I remember it correctly.

Our family went from a 386 to a Pentium 200 MMX lol, huge jump but I used other Windows 95 PCs in between so it wasn't a huge shock.

PC prices also varied wildly, like we got a Midwest Micro PC which was one of those mail order direct companies that were popular in the 90s and it was significantly cheaper than most other branded PCs, by like hundreds of dollars.

Geez PCs used to be so freaking interesting I miss giving a shit about them.

 

[NeonDelta]

Think I got it a year after release, £250 with 3 or 4 games.

 

[-Minsc-]

Yep. I don't even recall specifically asking for certain games, but I remember holiday 90 getting Zelda II from my parents and Blades of Steel from my late Aunt.

Blades of Steel, played a heck of a lot of that game. Some of the games may have been gotten at the request of my elder bro. Mostly my parents got what seemed popular at the time.

Reflecting, I must have leached games off my brother's or gifts until the end of the N64. First console I bought was the Dreamcast, followed by the GameCube.

Geez PCs used to be so freaking interesting I miss giving a shit about them.

.

I remember when my bro bought his IBM PS/2 with a 33MHz processor and 256MB HD. Back in the days when you could get excited for the multimedia encyclopedia on CD.

 

[tr1p1ex]

meanwhile earnings of men 15+ are flat - inflation adjusted - from 1975-2016.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

I can't believe this came out in 1990. What else looked comparable to this back then?

Now I've got to try the game

Nothing was comparable at the time.
A true "quantum leap forward"

 

[Roronoa Zoro]

N64 games were super expensive too right? Like everything was pretty much the same price or higher on the software end

 

[Ozzie666]

Back when consoles used the printer ink method of sales, cheap box, expensive games. Now look where we are, price drops happen rarely. Games are $70 for the most part. I much prefer the 90's gaming era.
Back when the gap between PC and consoles, for what they could do weren't significant. 3D gaming really changed the paradigm.

PS1 was day 1 and it changed everything.

 

[JayK47]

Well the early consoles also came with a few games. The NES we had came with a zapper gun and Super Mario/Duck Hunt. That alone kept us busy for half a year. I am also pretty sure consoles went down in price after a little while, or you could easily buy used for way less.

Cartridge games could easily be rented or borrowed. Friendships lived and died with borrowing. Each kid could only afford a few games a year and you had to coordinate to make sure you did not get doubles. Games would get passed around and traded. One guy would double trade and trade games he was traded. When asking for your game back, he'd say "go talk to so and so, he has it now" WTF?

Digital only sucks because you cannot rent or trade. Nowadays, each friend needs a full copy of a fucking game to play multiplayer. Games actually are more expensive today as a result.

 

[AngelMuffin]

N64 games were super expensive too right? Like everything was pretty much the same price or higher on the software end

N)4 games were smh were from $60-$80, which was still expensive in 1996, but the NG carts were on a while notha level, $200-$350 in 1990 due to the size of the ROM and the massive physical size of the cart.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Back when consoles used the printer ink method of sales, cheap box, expensive games. Now look where we are, price drops happen rarely. Games are $70 for the most part. I much prefer the 90's gaming era.
Back when the gap between PC and consoles, for what they could do weren't significant. 3D gaming really changed the paradigm.

PS1 was day 1 and it changed everything.

PS1 saw games drop in prices.

 

[Roronoa Zoro]

N)4 games were smh were from $60-$80, which was still expensive in 1996, but the NG carts were on a while notha level, $200-$350 in 1990 due to the size of the ROM and the massive physical size of the cart.

That's always amusing to me when people are like "$10 increase from snes prices is a deal breaker!"

 

[Unknown?]

meanwhile earnings of men 15+ are flat - inflation adjusted - from 1975-2016.

WTF Happened In 1971?

"I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop." - F.A. Hayek 1984

wtfhappenedin1971.com

If anything, it's worse off than before and it's because we went to fiat currency.

 

[EverydayBeast]

 

[Neff]

Got a PSX in 1996 with Ridge Racer Revolution and Tekken 2. It was the shit.

Then for xmas that year I bought myself a N64 with SM64. That was a fucking good christmas.

They were £300 apiece, just for the hardware, so yeah not cheap. Totally worth it though.

 

[AJUMP23]

I had to go buy my own N64 on launch day.

 

[Pimpbaa]

I got the Sega Genesis, SNES, Sega CD, Playstation 1, N64, and Dreamcast near launch or at least in the same year. I got a 3DO when it got its first big price cut. Although I never owned some of those consoles at the same time as I would usually sell off my old console to help buy a new console. I did have the SNES, Genesis + Sega CD at the same time (had to rebuy a genesis since I sold my old one to get a SNES). I held on to my SNES early in the Playstation 1‘s life. Oh how I wish I held on to my nes, snes and genesis (and the games I owned which wasn’t a lot since I rented most games). Should have at least too advantage of people dumping their 8 and 16-bit stuff in the late 90s.

edit: had to buy a bundle from eb games (gamestop in Canada) with an extra controller and Demon’s Souls to get a standard PS5 here so I paid a lot more than I wanted to (I just wanted a digital edition PS5).

 

[SportsFan581]

Geez PCs used to be so freaking interesting I miss giving a shit about them.

I wasn't building my own back then, because of that I find it more interesting today. The process of trying to piece together your build, especially as a budget builder.

 

[Shadowstar39]

I got my ps1 dual shock edition it was $149 and got resident evil 1 and ff7 with it. Games I woudk get at the local mom and pops shop many were $20 a pop. Getting the ps1 a few years after release meant many games were cheaper. You don't have to buy the newest thing all the time.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Things like the sega CD and Tg16 CD I did not get from my folks for Xmas. I got the base systems though when they were $99 to 149. All came with a game too.

The first system I bought myself wasnt it was a super vga card and some ram for our home 386.

 

[10101]

PS1 was the first console I bought myself, but I didn’t mean to get it. I didn’t even know about it at that point as it was near the UK launch and I was a Sega nut.

I went out that day to buy a nice new pair of speakers for my HiFi, saw a PlayStation in Dixons running a demo of FIFA ‘96 and was instantly sold. Picked up Tekken and Ridge Racer that day as well and spent a small fortune on it all. Never regretted it either - I got the speakers the following year

 

[Team Andromeda]

Cost of living was exponentially cheaper back then. Luxury items like electronics were expensive, but essentials like housing, food, fuel, and transportation were dirt cheap.

We didn't have the net zero nut jobs back then, that's why. That is to overlook mind, the UK have one of the worst and most brutal recessions in living memory, in the 90s with super high interest rates where millions of home and business owners lost their property over the ERM.

Video games have always been expensive. The price Nintendo asked for the UK Snes Street Fighter 2 or their N64 Pal games, took the piss. SEGA wasn't much better and people also forget that Nintendo was fined twice for price fixing and SEGA was fined once. So like with layoffs, it's a myth it was all so much better and cheaper in the 1990's


Still, I was the silly sod who paid over £680 quid in November 1994 to import this

 

[Team Andromeda]

Imagine if the Saturn and 3DO weren't as high priced as they were..

That is for the birds. If you make your hardware desirable people will find a way, more so with die-hard console fans at launch.
One only needs to look at how well the PS3 did on its launch for that, where even with the super price it broke launch sales records in the UK and Europe and

That is another myth that the PS3 didn't see well on its launch when it did.

 

[Flintty]

When my friends were getting Playstation for Xmas, I got a second/third hand Commodore 64 with hundreds of games. I think my uncle was offering it cheap to my mum so she asked if I wanted it. Hell yea I did.

People at school laughed but I loved that thing! I always leaned towards the older systems. When SNES came out I asked for a NES. My Dad suggested I go for SNES but I was insistent

I didn’t get a day one console til I got the OG Xbox, and have been day 1 with them ever since, for better or worse.

 

[Matt_Fox]

/\ 1999, the decade's end and I thought I knew all the obscure gaming tech but 'Game Boy Camera and Printer' and 'Systema TV Boy' I have no memory of these at all!? (Looks like the Switch designers liked the Systema TV Boy design)

 

[dragonyeuw]

Blades of steel, played a heck of a lot of that game. Some of the games may have been gotten at the request of my elder bro. Mostly my parents got what seemed popular at the time.

Oh I played the shit out of Blades of Steel. My parents may have gone the 'what's popular?' route with Zelda II because I don't recall being aware of that franchise back in 1990 to ask for it. It did get me into watching the cartoon on the back-end of the Super Mario Bros show.
"Well excuse me princess!!"


I remember my dad coming home with a Colecovison in like 82/83, and I'm 100% sure I never asked for that ( or would have even been aware of it at the time, I was 5 and arcades were my lone experience with video games to that point).

 

[KaiserBecks]

/\ 1999, the decade's end and I thought I knew all the obscure gaming tech but 'Game Boy Camera and Printer' and 'Systema TV Boy' I have no memory of these at all!? (Looks like the Switch designers liked the Systema TV Boy design)

I remember the Game Boy camera and printer, those were official peripherals made by Nintendo. They were heavily advertised in Germany. Never had one of those though. I remember that you could record small clips and edit them with snapchat-esque filters and effects. You could then print screenshots, even as stickers. Pretty cool for the time.

 

[SportsFan581]

I got my ps1 dual shock edition it was $149 and got resident evil 1 and ff7 with it. Games I woudk get at the local mom and pops shop many were $20 a pop. Getting the ps1 a few years after release meant many games were cheaper. You don't have to buy the newest thing all the time.

This. My PS1 library included a lot of those green "greatest hits" banners.

 

[Dr. Suchong]

I had 1 as I was a horrible little cunt and no amount of slaps to my raw arse could stop me ordering my parents to get me 1. I stood stoic with my English mentality and wouldnt give in. Im proud to say they broke and got me it, my dad had to work 8 day weeks and I drove my mum into a mental breakdown, I am probably the reason there relationship fell apart but if you ask me was it worth it I will reply "corse it fuckin waz". Got myself an N64 off them aswell .

My Dad drove to Toys r us with a hangover from hell to buy my Snes with Mario world.
God bless him.
Then he wired up the plug for me because back then, plugs weren't fitted as standard.
Seems bizarre now.
What a legend.

 

[-Minsc-]

I remember my dad coming home with a Colecovison in like 82/83, and I'm 100% sure I never asked for that ( or would have even been aware of it at the time, I was 5 and arcades were my lone experience with video games to that point).

Before the NES we had an Intellivision II. That was either dad's or his bro gave it to him since he was the one with kids at the time.

Played lots of Space Armada. There was also this Dungeons & Dragons game.

 

[nkarafo]

In the 90's my family were earning a lot more money and we could also afford, get this.... our very own house! And not just one but two!

I'm sure a console being slightly more expensive than it is today wouldn't be an issue.