EB Games is now doing retro trade-ins… but why?

Do I have thoughts about EB Games going down the retro gaming route? Of course I do.

It’s been an unusual week for me so far, so I did in fact miss the news yesterday that EB Games was starting to take retro games titles in for trade-in through its many Australian stores.

Though of course, not for long.

While details are somewhat thin on the ground right now, I do have some thoughts on the return of mass retail to some of my favourite gaming systems of all time.

The biggest of all is… why?

I mean, I do get why, money is involved and EB Games would rather like to make as much of it as possible. The retro games market for specific titles under specific circumstances has expanded considerably in the past few years, over-inflated by a wave of speculators who saw retro as the “the next big thing”.

But the timing, it feels to me, ain’t great, and it’s not exactly going to be a boon for Australian retro games fans either. Let me explain why.

The retro bubble is nowhere near as inflated as it was

There was a time – and it wasn’t that long ago – where it felt like I was doing radio spots on a weekly basis explaining why somebody had paid thousands or tens of thousands for a retro game. Remember the million dollar Mario 64?

Yeah, well, that was almost certainly a victim of inflationary hype – and absolutely not worth it in any way, just in case you were curious.

I am 100% firmly in the camp that says that games were made to be played, not sealed in tiny little plastic tombs, but it’s pretty clear that a lot of the hype that led to prices like that has subsided. Not that long ago I was in Japan on holidays, and of course I did a little retro shopping while I was there, because, well, I’m me.

Did I see games in the likes of Mandarake and Super Potato for silly money? Yeah, for sure, but these were for genuine rarities that are indeed sought after, not overhyped sealed plastic tombs in every single case.

What was more interesting – and this is based off my own observations, but this covers retro browsing in (deep breath) Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Sendai and Sapporo – was how, while Japanese game prices have risen to international expectations… they’ve largely settled there.

Nobody’s trying to sell a million dollar copy of Mario 64, because they’re not daft like that, but even some of the better known “classics” that did in fact appreciate in value have largely hit their limits, and in some cases, dropped down from those limits.

Yes, dropped.

I’m not saying these are cheap — they’re not — but they’re not appreciating in price, just staying still, effectively.

There was only ever a certain number of people willing to pay over the odds for games, and once they’ve got what they want for their collection, are they going to pay even more for an extra copy? Almost certainly not.

Most of what you’ve got ain’t worth much

The argument will go that somebody’s probably got a dusty old box of SNES games in the back of a cupboard somewhere, and they may as well realise some cash for them and get a new game (or increasingly, a dusty pop vinyl or weird Monopoly variant if my local EB Games is any indication) for them.

Sure, maybe that’s true, but the reality is that around 90% of every single game published on the classic systems is worth way less than you paid for them back in the day, especially if you, you know, played them.

It doesn’t take too much crystal ball gazing to see Dave – it’s always Dave, right? – heading to his local EB Games with his slightly stained copy of Rugby League for the Xbox expecting to be able to trade it in for a PlayStation 5 Pro, only to find out that they either don’t want it, or they’ll offer him maybe 20c in trade-in value for it.

EB Games does say that its retro trade ins are covered by its Best Trade Price Guarantee, but that’s going to be an incredibly floaty matter to manage for retro titles where so much of the “value” is tied into condition. We’ve all seen the copies of games that EB Games already sells for current consoles with no actual cover going for maybe $5 less than the new copy, right?

It really doesn’t work like that in retro gaming, but good luck getting the sales staff to appreciate the difference between a copy of, say, Secret of Mana with manual and maps and box in nice condition versus a cart-only copy with half the label ripped off.

Actually, I feel really sorry for EB Games staff; there’s been lots of reporting over the years (most of it sadly lost when Kotaku Australia went under, dammit) about how hard it is to work in those stores.

Adding somebody bringing in their box of retro “treasures” and wanting thousands for them and getting angry when they don’t get it… ouch.

Also, I don’t want to be second in a queue behind that guy, not that I’ve bought much in an EB Games in Australia for a while, to be honest with you.

Will the EB Games staff be trained to spot retro fakes?

Another casualty of the retro gaming boom has been the massive rise in fake, or if you’re feeling generous, “reproduction” cartridges coming out China.

Some of them are really blatantly obviously fake, but others are… less so for specific platforms. I’m willing to bet more than a few fakes end up in the EB Games retro games stream, which brings up another thought…

What does this mean for retro sales through EB Games?

In some ways this is a stroke of genius, because if it works well and Dave does bring in his minty copy of Pokemon Yellow and gets $10 for it, EB Games is rolling in the dough. But if it doesn’t, it doesn’t seem like it’s put a lot of resources into making this happen, and the worst that will happen is that it ends up with a few odd copies of, say, Voodoo Vince that it somehow has to work out how to shift.

True, random fact: I have a Voodoo Vince plush doll. I found it the other day behind a cupboard, been there for quite some time.

But it’s far from a guaranteed matter that this will usher in a new golden age of retro buying for Australian gamers. For a start, EB Games has overheads. All those stores cost money to run, whether it’s rent, power or employees, so it seems unlikely you’ll be scoring copies of Radiant Silvergun in the 2-for-1 bin any time soon.

Though you might find N-Gage games. It entertains me massively that of all the systems it’s chosen to say it’ll take in, the N-Gage is amongst them… but I digress.

Think of any EB Games sale, and the odds are you’ve seen a title at a great price, only to find it’s only in one store, and they won’t post it out, it’s for in-store sale only. That feels like a frustrating way to search for retro games especially where the entire chain might only end up with a single copy of a game, but online isn’t much better.

Here I’ll turn to competitor chain CeX, and how it handles retro gaming in the UK. There you can very much order online for delivery, but (again, anecdotally, but there are never huge data sets for this kind of thing) chatting to UK retro gaming friends, they’ve all got horror stories about games purchased arriving in terrible condition, or being fakes, or missing manuals, or… you get the idea.

Australian consumer law should protect Australian gamers there to an extent if things do go badly wrong, but that isn’t exactly comforting if you do have to go through the stress of trying to get something refunded when and if it goes wrong.

All of which leaves me wondering… why?

It’s not just me, is it?

Star Wars Outlaws - Xbox Series X

(8)

$50.15 (as of March 23, 2025 19:38 GMT +11:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Grand Theft Auto V - Xbox Series X

(11)

$24.65 (as of March 23, 2025 19:38 GMT +11:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - PlayStation 5

(286)

$59.00 (as of March 23, 2025 19:38 GMT +11:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora Gold Edition - Xbox Series X/S

(1)

$58.65 (as of March 23, 2025 19:38 GMT +11:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Split Fiction - Xbox Series X

(1)

$67.00 (as of March 23, 2025 19:38 GMT +11:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)