As has already been mentioned, CRC isn’t licensed and localized by JAST/GC/PP. So the chances of a digital download version are pretty much none, since as I recall Nandemonai is right about the company being out of business.
They came back a couple years ago (under the brand name LIBI), but ceased activity again after releasing one game. Legally, I think the company still exists even if there’s no product development.
Back on topic, it’s hard to assess collector’s value. Quantitatively speaking, probably every localized game qualifies as a “rare” product. However, demand is also very low, so I don’t expect to see high values attached to used copies (unless the market were to expand substantially). These games are worth collecting for one’s personal ownership/enjoyment, but are valueless to those who aim to buy low and sell high.
IMO the question is more of simple demand and supply rules.I personally dont see them selling millions of game copies, a few thousand maybe??. Also in most cases download might be more economically feasible.
Most of these games won’t have long-term collectability value. CRC is probably the best bet being sold by J-List, but even that one isn’t going to appreciate in value for a while. You want valueable games, you have to look to untranlated (or sometimes they may be fantranslated) titles. Those are the only ones that will have a potential as a true market resale value and of those mostly first-run and doujin game for which at times your playing against the odds. There are a few company’s like Minori, who you can trust to always print very few copies and have quality work (although Minori still blocks non-Japanese so I’m not too fond of it as even Illusion isn’t), but by and large your on your own if your buying new items and if you wait to see what’s available you might not be able to get 1st print runs which are the valued ones.
Oh yea, and if anyone knows any I might like don’t hesitate to let me know. I do collect valuable games that I like.
Softhouse Chara. ><
Their games are always so hard to find after a couple of years. ><
Palette aren’t in the same league as Softhouse Chara in that sense (Moshiraba aside), but I still find their product page rather amusing. Every single eroge they’ve released is out of print, including their two 2008 releases :roll:.
You can still get some of them.
Problem with me is a lot of the games I like the artwork the stories are meh and those i like the stories i don’t care for the artwork or characters.
Tsukibako is selling for 529.99$ on Paletweb…
I tried to ebay bid on it once… started around 80 went up to 180$ then last minute it boosted to 255$ and lost ;(
As for english bishoujo games… I’d think brand new english versions of EVE burst error and Nocturnal Illusion should sell for a decent price to a collector…! Most of PP/Jast/G-Collections games are easily attainable from stores at low price so their collector’s value is probably quite low for a long time to come. No first editions/special editions as far as I know of…
Getting the game signed by JastUSA staff might boost the value way up for some collectors…
Yes, but that’s only because Erogeshop still has a backlog of copies in stock. On amazon.co.jp (and presumably elsewhere) copies are only available through the marketplace (ignoring the Palette dark side title that’s been discounted from 9240 to 2280).
Yume Miru Kusuri is pretty rare/valuable nowadays I think.
Sorry, JAST USA supporters, this doesn’t apply to the English translated version =P
Still, it’s nice to know that since translated bishoujo games are geared towards such a miniscule demographic your game is basically a limited edition from the get go.
Only the original release. There’s a budget re-release that’s pretty common and cheap.
What about the Otaku Publishing releases? I still have boxed copies of True Love and Paradise Heights (and the sequel) lying about somewhere. I used to have Time Stripper and Ring Out as well, but I must have thrown them.
Collectibles are only worth what someone will pay for them. Yeah, the old Otaku publishing games are pretty rare by now. But that doesn’t mean they’re worth anything. Probably there is not enough of a fanbase to actually make the games have significant value. In the future, that might change (after all, they only get rarer, and the market expands) but right now, I’d have to say probably not.
Sorry, that was me.
I do have a spare copy of Fate/Stay Night DVD-ROM ver. though because of ordering problems though.
True love might be the best of those.
I do want to add to my comments: They may not be collectible now, but neither were baseball cards, once upon a time. And that is the reason very old baseball cards are valuable: they’re extremely rare now, and there is a market for such things that wasn’t really there once upon a time.
However, sometimes old things are just old, not really collectible at all. Old candy wrappers, for example, are probably just garbage, no matter how good condition they’re in.
The problem is, you can’t always tell what is going to be worth some money later on, and what won’t. How much is Michael Jackson memorabilia going for now? How much will Hanson memorabilia be going for in 30 years? These are pretty easy … How valuable will out-of-print anime (these games are close enough) become over time? That is much harder. It really depends.
If b-gaming becomes hugely mainstream, then the value of the discs will appreciate. B-game translations haven’t been around long enough to say whether or not that is going to happen. Anime (which is much more popular) for awhile looked like it might, then it retreated. But for b-gaming, even a self-sustaining niche market is really only since Peach Princess: all the others went under after a few years.
If b-gaming implodes, and the fandom disintegrates, then probably none of it is worth much anymore (because nobody wants it). How likely is that to happen?
But most likely, b-gaming kind of continues the way it has been: b-games a niche market, with a stable fanbase but not mainstream appeal. Then it’s hard to predict how collectible things are going to be, because demand is kind of hard to gauge.
If digital distribution takes off and physical copies go away, how will that affect the market for discs? Will they become more expensive because they’re rare? Or will the price crash because nobody can do anything with them anymore, as with VHS, when it died? Or is VHS going to start going up in value as working tapes get harder to find?
And then there’s the lifetime of the media. CDs and DVDs are not like old books. They will eventually become useless coasters. My limited edition Critical Point, for example, doesn’t work anymore. Trying to read the disc fails with CRC errors. So there is always a chance that your collectible will be compromised: you may have the package, the original disc, and the original materials, but the disc is dead. Mass-produced CDs and DVDs haven’t been around long enough for large numbers of them to start dying, so we don’t know how long their average lifespan really is.
All these make guesstimating how valuable these products are going to be in the long run very hard to do.
Give that candy wrapper several hundred years and it may be worth something as a museum piece.
Anime is kinda in a flux right now. Really most anime isn’t worth too much resale value wise. Those that are, are stuff with special pshysical content. The same is true with video games though (see FE the difference between Working Design’s Growlancer: Generations’s title with the special items and those without).
CRAFTWORK’s ??? ~comment te dire adieu~? goes for ?60K ($644) on Amazon. Also, you can easily find copies of Tukibako on auction sites whereas Softhouse Chara’s ??? is very hard to find (OTOH, I think it goes for “only” ?30-40K).
HAH, I got it for over 5K less than that. Sucker! For Elise I got at roughly a tenth.
… of course, I went through dankedanke and the intermediary fees on top… ughhhhhghgh. Good thing it’s a great game.
Oh gawd… not only that… but if you ever find one of their really older titles they go for such hyperinflated prices… i was hoping to snag a copy of Tsuzukuri Dragon but the going price was $200-250 and I couldn’t afford that at the time T_T