What Happened to Player’s Choice?
Remember when Nintendo games were at reasonable prices? No? Well believe me, it happened. Way back in the SNES days, Nintendo debuted a program called Player’s Choice, that would be copied by competitors for years to come. The program discounted the best selling titles on both their home consoles and handhelds.
Some early Player’s Choice titles on SNES and Game Boy included. Donkey Kong Country, Super Metroid, F-Zero, Super Mario Land, and Donkey Kong 94. Over the years this program has been used on the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, and Gamecube. The idea worked well enough to cause Sega, Sony and Microsoft to do the same with their best sellers.
Nintendo now has the Wii and the DS, and while we all know that Nintendo doesn’t NEED to make their games cheaper, many older Nintendo published titles are seeing a incredible white market price increase. This looks to be due to Nintendo allowing many games to go “out of print”. It doesn’t effect Wii games as much as it does DS games. Currently at Amazon.com about a dozen or so Nintendo Published titles have a mark up of up to 500%. These aren’t independent sellers, this is Amazon.com. Here’s whats going on right now.
Game _______________Amazon Price
Donkey Kong Jungle Climber/$106.99
Mario Vs. Donkey Kong 2 March of the Minis/$111.87
Many GBA titles even some that WERE part of the Player’s Choice line are seeing crazy increases in value.
Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga/$74.94
Kirby and the Amazing Mirror/$139.99
Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland/$129.94
Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2/$108.77
Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3/$149.95
Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3/$98.40
Mario Kart Super Circuit/$99.94
Classic NES Series: Super Mario Bros/$164.99
among dozens of others…
The real question is, why? Why would Nintendo not reprint these games in some fashion to earn revenue on products that would move units. Everyday there is a new DS owner hungry for DS games and Nintendo has a glorious back catalog that could easily be exploited with re-releases. Sure, many of these are available at a much lower price in the used section but good luck finding a copy in good condition that has the case and manual.
The least they could do is reintroduce Player’s Choice on the DS to try and muffle these prices. That would give people a chance to play classics such as Warioware Touched and Yoshi’s Island DS without forking over their paycheck to get a copy in decent shape. Obviously right now Nintendo doesn’t need the extra cash, but I can only think of a handful of games they are in constant production. Super Mario 64 DS, New Super Mario Bros., and Mario Kart DS are always available on shelves new, with the later two often ending up in the top 10 NPD games. What is causing Nintendo to Black Ball older DS games? Who knows, but I think as soon as Nintendo’s luck turns around and they need cash quick, the Player’s Choice name will come storming back.
