Some highlights or lowlights - really, you should go see the whole thing - Marvel vs. Capcom 2 bottomed out after releasing to Xbox Live Arcade and PSN this year. After reaching highs of $109.99 (PlayStation 2) and $91.99 (Xbox), they slumped to $43 and $30 respectively after the title went out online. Ouch.

The games get a dead-cat bounce but prospects for a recovery beyond that aren't good, if Castlevania is any indication. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in its PSOne form hit $50.75 in December 2006. The next year, the game was released on XBLA and PSN, dropping the hard copy value to $19.99. It's recovered slightly to $27.12, but that's just a little over half its pre-re-release (say that three times fast) high.

MTV Multiplayer did its analysis according to VideoGamePriceCharts.com. Really, though, take a look for yourself. They covered much more than those two titles above, and offer tips for the safest investments unlikely to be undercut by re-releases.

Video Game Collectors Feeling the Pain of Re-Releases [MTV Multiplayer]

Syd - a collector who runs...The Personal Computer Museum- is on a bit of a PS2 bender at the moment, and flushed with pride, sent us this snap of his library. Over 1200 games. And Syd would like you all to know that number's not being padded with Greatest Hits variations; he only picks those up when they include worthwhile, additional content (like his Devil May Cry special edition).

For reference, his first game was the original Jak & Daxter in 2002, while the 1000th game was...Chicken Little: Ace in Action. Hey, you collect, you collect the good and the bad.

In 1982 Data Age created Journey Escape, based on the then hugely popular band Journey's album Escape. In the game, you have to help the band reach their "scarab escape vehicle" (from the album cover) after a concert, while avoiding "hordes of Love-Crazed Groupies, Sneaky Photographers, and Shifty-Eyed Promoters. For some reason the band manager looks like the Kool-Aid Man. A less successful Journey arcade game followed in 1983, from Bally Midway.

What's interesting to me about this game is that it is one of very few attempts to license and adapt bands or music to videogames.

Sure, we have Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but those are music performance games. There was Michael Jackson Moonwalker, a 1990 Sega arcade game. And a strange KISS-inspired Dreamcast game. And Peter Gabriel's EVE, which is more like an interacive CD-ROM than a game. And a Chemical Brothers Flash game for the single Galvanize, which now seems to be offline. And one of my former students, Rob Fitzpatrick, made a game adaptation of a single from the band The Most.

But really, music adaptation is a fairly unexplored avenue in videogames. Interesting, no?

Journey Escape for the Atari 2600 [Journey Tribute]

Remember the Kool-Aid Man character and ad campaign from the 70s and 80s? Oh, Yeeeaaahh. By the early 80s, General Foods had started spreading the character beyond their own advertising, first into comic books. In 1983, Mattel's M-Network software division created videogame versions of Kool-Aid Man for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. This was a more complex process than the Johnson & Johnson and Purina games I mentioned earlier.

General Foods did a lucrative deal with Mattel. There were two ways to get the game. One was by mailing in proofs of purchase, just like Tooth Protectors. The amount of Kool-Aid you would have had to drink was irrational, over 60 gallons by my count. Another was just to buy it the game at retail.

Even by 1981 third-party publishers were creating games for multiple platforms. Imagic in particular, which was founded by ex-Atari developers, started creating their titles for VCS and Intellivision, as well as VIC-20, Colecovision and Odyssey 2. But these were always ports of the same game.

The Intellivision and Atari versions of Kool-Aid Man, however, are completely different. Not just slightly different graphics and sound to account for the different machines, but totally different games. Both games pitted the player (as the Kool-Aid Man) against the evil Kool-Aid stealing Thirsties while collecting the fixings for a refreshing pitcher of Kool-Aid. In the VCS version, Thirsties are drinking all the contents of a swimming pool. The player must touch the Thirsties' straws to stop them. In the Intellivision version, player, Thirsties, and kids are trapped in a haunted house. The player must help the children avoid the Thirsties.

Making two different versions of the same title hadn't happened before and, perhaps unfortunately, didn't really happen again.

The reason for making different versions of the same game is actually quite compelling. Platforms differ. The Atari and the Intellivision in particular are very different machines. The ̄Atari has no frame buffer and requires the programmer to synchronize graphics to the scanline of the television. The Intellivision has an operating system, a lot more RAM, and a video graphics system based on "cards" (or what we'd now call "tiles").

The M-Network programmers made the argument that each game should be different to take advantage of the different capabilities of the systems. Marketing reluctantly agreed, partly because of the limited development time allotted for the campaign.

It's an interesting lesson in an age when games are rarely developed for a single platform. Titles that appear for all three current consoles are usually developed atop middleware that makes targeting easier. Of course, this can also change how the titles are designed and developed — the middleware is the platform as much as the end machine. Unfortunately, console exclusive titles are often marketing ploys more than they are attempts to take full advantage of a specific platform.

Kool-Aid Man Ads [Toy Adz]

The games depicted above aren't the first advergames (more on that another day), but they are among my favorites. They are Chase the Chuckwagon, created for Purina, and Tooth Protectors, for Johnson & Johnson.

In 1982-1983, enormous numbers of games were created for the Atari VCS by large and small developers alike. The flood of games on the market may have partly contributed to the so-called "videogame crash of 1983." But it also represented a time when anyone could create, manufacture, and distribute a game for the most popular home console system.

One of the groups that became interested in such activities were corporations trying to market their wares to kids and families. Remember sending in UPCs? These two games were created as promotions for purchases. You would have to buy Purina dog chow or Johnson & Johnson dental hygeine products and then send in the UPCs to get the game.

As far as the games go, they aren't world changing experiences, but they are interesting attempts to integrate the products into a game. In Chase, you have to steer a dog to the Purina chuckwagon, avoiding a dogcatcher. In Tooth Protectors, you have to protect the teeth from attacking food bits. A full brushing regimen can be used to revitalize. I've got much more about how both games make claims about the products they advertise in my book.

Since these games were only available by mail and for a short time, they are pretty rare. Some speculate that Chase is part of the inspiration for the title game in the novel Lucky Wander Boy, although I don't think there's any evidence for that claim. Chase actually came in a box, although I don't have it. Tooth Protectors was simply shipped in a foam insert.

Chase the Chuckwagon [Atari Age]
Tooth Protectors [Atari Age]

Jack LaLanne is a fitness and nutrition expert. He was born in 1914, and at 93 years old he's still going strong. His accomplishments are many. He started one of the first health club chains, which he later licensed to Bally (they became Bally Total Fitness). He hosted "The Jack LaLanne Show," the first television exercise show. He set a number of world records, mostly by swimming irrational distances with large weights shackled to his body.

As part of their image of "intelligence" (remember the George Plimpton commercials?), Intellivision promised a Keyboard Component for the device, to be released soon after the console's 1979 launch. It was a disaster. The device was delayed again and again, and disgruntled consumers who had bought the Intellivision "Master Component" specifically in anticipation of the promised Keyboard filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC launched a fraud investigation. After finding the complaints valid, the FTC began fining Mattel $10,000 per day for the violation. Mattel finally canceled the Keyboard Component and introduced the Entertainment Computer System add-on instead.

The Keyboard Component was to have a cassette drive for loading and saving data, and a number of games were advertised in the 1980 catalog on cassette. Most were educational titles, including Conversational Spanish, Stock Analysis, BASIC Computer Language, and this one, Jack LaLanne's Physical Conditioning. From the catalog:

Now that you've stimulated your mind, let the Jack LaLanne Physical Conditioning program help shape your body. With an exercise program custom-tailored to fit your needs. And your goals. It even gives you progress reports. In a few short months, you'll be ready for any beach, including St. Tropez.

Intellivision 1980 Brochure [Intellivision Lives]
Official Jack LaLanne Website [JackLaLanne.com]

From the Intellivision port of Congo Bongo to the surprisingly rare Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Master System version), prepare to be shocked at the financial limits people will go to scratch their collector's itch.

I won't spoil it for you, as the trivia contained within makes for entertaining reading. But when the #2 entry on the list, Kizuna Encounter (come again?), goes for over $10,000 to the obsessed rich you might just feel a hint of regret that you didn't pick up some of these titles when they were knew. I'll take comfort Michael McWhertor

Holy Grails Of Console Gaming

Some people collect cats. Other people collect bottles of their own excretions. Others start hostels in Romania and collect disemboweled backpackers. All these people are crazy.

Less crazy, but still disconcertingly gung-ho, is Brett Martin. Brett collects pieces of video game memorabilia... over 15,000 of them. That's over 1.6 items a day.

Brett is married to an extremely tolerant woman who apparently indulges him 'investing' the entirety of his income as a games tester into gaming ephemera.

We're a little creeped out by Brett, but also a little bit jealous. He's the ultimate, stone-cold crazy gamer, but ultimately, we love him for it. It's hard not to love a guy who says shit like this:

It was inevitable based on my passion for games. I play them, listen to their music, dream them, have a job testing them, collect their merchandise, and want to design them someday. Oh, and I also ate them in the eighties when Mario had ice cream sandwiches and cereal out. I live them.

Florian Eckhardt

The Land of 10,000 Plastic Marios [Vintage Computing and Gaming]

Remember this? The lucky child and pretty much every video game ever printed. RedWolf over at VintageComputing was able to track down the owner and conducted a short email Q&A. "He's a bit reclusive (answering only 10 of 17 questions asked)," writes Red "and not exactly a master at typing the English language (I've had to clean up his answers quite a bit)." Huh, the greatest video game collector evar is not the greatest grammaritarian evar. Imagine that. (Is grammaritarian even a word?)

Vintage Computing and Gaming: What do you do for a living? Videogamecollector: Collect video games, for now.

VC&G: About how many games do you have in your collection? Have you ever counted all of them precisely?
VGC: I'm not sure if I really want to know.

VC&G: What has driven you to collect so many games?
VGC: It seems to be the rush of finding something I don't have. Or you can call it my addiction.

VC&G: Is the young boy in your collection pictures your son? If so, what does he think of your collection and video games in general? Do you ever let him play any of your games?
VGC: Yes, my son plays games. He has a few hundred games in his room that he plays.

A few hundred?! Notice how the Video Game Collector just tosses that out so casually.

Full Interview Here [VintageComputing]