When I was about 13 I went to my very first Nintendo game convention.
For weeks I had heard commercials exclaiming that we could trade our old video games for new ones. These spots ran often, so naturally I begged my mom to take us to the local Holiday Inn for the event.
If memory serves, it cost about 3 or 4 dollars to get in. That’s right kids! conventions and shows were cheap to get into back in those days… Nowadays expect to drop $30-$80 per day
I went with my cousin, who was my closest gamer friend. We played everyday from the days of Atari and Intellivision all the way up to Super Nintendo which is when we eventually graduated high school and moved on to other things like jobs and girls. But I digress…
I remember we had grand plans of trading video games for new adventures and experiences with like minded gamers as the radio spots lead us to believe.
I don’t quite recall which games I took. I believe it was Castlevania (I had enough of those stupid Medusa heads and birds) and Bad Dudes (got too easy) which I had hoped to trade for two new games. Sadly what I discovered was the business world clashing with childhood innocence.
Of all the “professional” traders in the place they all seemed really money grubbing and incapable of offering a fair deal to a couple of kids. My cousin and I joked about the trade terms, after the fact, saying something like “OK, now you give me these two games and $40 (more than the price of a new game at the time) and I will give you this USED copy of Mario/Duck Hunt” or something like that.
At 13 I didn’t understand business and that the owner needed to make a profit just to pay his bills and keep the store lights on. I get it now but that day never sat well with me. I ended up trading my games and something like $10 for one used game, I don’t recall what it was. It was a bad deal, I’m sure. After that, I never went to another “Game-trading show.” I had felt burned and deceived.
I don’t really blame the businesses (all that much, though the deals were really lousy) Instead I think the advertisement of the event fell way short. I had heard it on the radio and probably a couple of local news channels but I distinctly remember them pushing it as if it would be full of like-minded teens hoping to find new adventures with even trades. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
In the coming years as the NES faded out and the SNES came in to play the video game store became a mall staple. No trip was complete without a visit to Babages or Electronics Boutique (later EB Games and then with Babages eventually becoming GameStop)
I often took my old games up to the store to trade them in TOWARDS new games. Some of the deals were pretty raw there as well, but I never felt as though there was a secret effort to con you out of your games. They told you upfront they were going to give you nothing for them and you would have to come up with the rest of the cash to get something new. One time EB Games offered me $1 for Starfox complete with box and instructions. I didn’t take the deal but a few years later they offered me $8 for it. That deal I took. Looking back it was a bad deal for me but oh well what can I say.
Today the practice of trading video games still occurs. You still get nothing for your games but that fact is widely accepted and people just used it to upgrade to new experiences and adventures.
CONNECT!
with 80's Toy Review