Too early to start talking about rare/valuable Wii games?

[prfsnl_gmr]

Awesome guide. Some real surprises in there. I “completed” my Wii collection a few years ago, and I have seven games from the main list and eleven from the additional games of value list. Surprised to see Dokapon Kingdom still holding on to the number one spot. Despite its value, I ran into it “in the wild” several times and don’t think it’s really that rare...

[racketboy]

Awesome guide. Some real surprises in there. I “completed” my Wii collection a few years ago, and I have seven games from the main list and eleven from the additional games of value list. Surprised to see Dokapon Kingdom still holding on to the number one spot. Despite its value, I ran into it “in the wild” several times and don’t think it’s really that rare...

nice!

In your experience, which games do you think were the hardest to encounter?
I might add an Affordable Rarities section at some point too.

[Omerta]

Wii and Wii U oddball game prices seem to fluctuate wildly for a variety of reasons. I'd imagine that reprints were numero uno when they were still selling consoles.

One that sticks out in my head was some YouTube video on how wildly rare Walk it Out is/was. It shot up in price, made a bunch of (still standing) lists of rare Wii games and eventually fell back down to Earth. It's cheap and plentiful on eBay right now. For all I know it may actually have a low print run, but I think a lot of people were trying to get ahead of the curve during the end of the console's life span and call out the holy grails - which has happened a quite a bit on Wii U recently as well.

Another weird one I remember fairly recently is Let's Sing 2016. There are plenty of forums that were rumbling about a recall but on a quick Google search I don't see any official news stories about it. There was something about crappy microphones or microphone software functionality and even an Amazon review complaining about nudity on one of the the music videos (which I can't confirm either). This one appears to have a lower stock and higher price on eBay at the moment.

This could be an ever-evolving article for many years considering the massive amounts of shovelware and smaller studios that have produced hard copies of Wii games. I'll stay tuned.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Some games on the list I never saw in the wild, such as American Mensa Academy, the 2-for-1 packs, and Cyberbike. Fritz Chess, Guilty Gear, and the Maximum Racing games are also pretty tough to find, in my experience.

The issue with the Wii is that there are just so many games for it, and even to this day, I run across some titles I’m not sure I’ve seen before. Moreover, some of these random games can be a lot of fun (e.g., Pirates Plund-Arrr). I that this is part of what makes it so fun collecting for the system.

Some of the harder to find games, in my experience, are:

Free Running
GTI Club
Gunslingers
Mr. Bean’s Wacky World
My Personal Golf Trainer
Princess Isabella
SpeedZone
Top Shot Dinosaur Hunter

All of those were tough for me to track down, and I had to order some from eBay. There are also four Mexico-exclusive Wii games (Atreve a Sonar, El Chavo, FIFA 14, and Lucia Libre) that are undoubtedly rare in the USA.

EDIT: Great post, Omerta. I actually found Walk It Out several times in the wild. I don’t think it was ever really that rare. I wonder about some of the ultra-late releases like Just Dance 2018 and...Just Dance 2019. The fact that Ubisoft is still releasing Wii games is a bit mind blowing, and I wonder how many of those Ubisoft will print ultimately.

[Omerta]

Yeah it's probably not technically dead for years to come even though Nintendo doesn't support it... but hey - there could still be a PS2 game in the works for all we know, too.

Granted I'm not the go-to authority on the very outer edges of the Wii library, but I'm still impressed that I can make my rounds locally and find some random game I've never even heard of. In fact, I just saw Spray for the first time ever a couple of days ago. Mind = Blown

[racketboy]

This is great, guys -- thanks!
Yeah, I think this is one I'm going to update every year or two.
I'm still updating a lot of the old ones -- with all the volatility in the market, it's hard to keep it all current while also giving reliable and useful information (instead of just automated numbers like some other sites...)

[isiolia]

Was there actually a not-Steelbook version for Metroid Prime Trilogy prior to the Gamestop reprint? I don't recall seeing it (I own both, original release is still sealed).

I feel like rare game things now are harder, because it's so much more likely for automatic pricing algorithms to end up influencing things.

[Omerta]

^ Nope. The original print was steelbook only and a major pain in the ass to get your hands on even early on if you didn't move quickly. Nintendo initially said that was a limited run, but somehow later on Gamestop magically ended up with a ton of brand new looking "used" copies of non-steelbooks that never existed before. Since they were allegedly pre-owned, GS charged a jacked up market rate instead of a fixed MSRP. Not sure how they pulled that one off. (One takeaway from that story is that there is no such thing as a legit sealed non-steelbook MPT since they were supposed to be all opened.)

Surprisingly - in contrast to my last post - I've also seen quite a few of the higher priced games in the wild for cheap. Dokapon, Guilty Gear, etc. I even scored a disc copy of Gunblade NY last year when Hastings went bankrupt for something stupid like 38 cents.

[racketboy]

^ Nope. The original print was steelbook only and a major pain in the ass to get your hands on even early on if you didn't move quickly. Nintendo initially said that was a limited run, but somehow later on Gamestop magically ended up with a ton of brand new looking "used" copies of non-steelbooks that never existed before. Since they were allegedly pre-owned, GS charged a jacked up market rate instead of a fixed MSRP. Not sure how they pulled that one off. (One takeaway from that story is that there is no such thing as a legit sealed non-steelbook MPT since they were supposed to be all opened.)

Surprisingly - in contrast to my last post - I've also seen quite a few of the higher priced games in the wild for cheap. Dokapon, Guilty Gear, etc. I even scored a disc copy of Gunblade NY last year when Hastings went bankrupt for something stupid like 38 cents.

Well did you see the notes on the Dokapon Kingdom GameStop reprint?
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/the-rare ... -wii-games
Maybe they did a similar alternative print run?

[Omerta]

I wasn't aware of that one. They must have had their hands in a quite a bit of Wii print runs. I vaguely remember something about exclusivity for The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Pandora's Tower as well. Crazy.

More random thoughts:
- Zangeki no Reginleiv from Japan and Disaster: Day of Crisis in PAL were pretty hot ticket items at one point in time but appear to have dropped in price. (ZnR likely due to a Wii U verison.)
- I see that you also have some Fatal Frame love in your Japanese section - it appears the PAL version of Project Zero 2: Wii Edition runs in the $40ish range lately, too.
- There are multiple instances of JP versions of Naruto Shippuden: Gekitou Ninja Taisen Special hitting some high water marks on eBay as well as Inazuma Eleven Go: Strikers 2013 with a couple, lately but I can't really confirm their rarity or longevity of high prices.