A long while back a discussion on NESFan's NES board was brought up by myself about videogames of one title or another being rare ranging in areas from state to state, to country to country. I aptly called this Regional Rarity. I found a lower scale version of it on a recent trip to the biggest city in the state.
Well the theory goes that some game allotments were better in some areas, or were only released in large numbers in certain areas. Take for instance one poster that replied saying Color Dreams games are pretty easy to find in New York, the poster wasn't specific but it makes a little sense. New York is a big market, Nintendo had a stranglehold of most other retailers so it was probably less challenging and much more easier to get rid of a order of games there than some better controlled areas.
Now onto my findings.....
Well in my little small town I got three pawnshops, two of which deal in NES games, one on a large scale [250+ games] and the other on a smaller [about 50], the other doesn't even carry them. Since my selection seemed rather limited I at-the-time, [two weeks ago], looked forward to a trip to the Doctor's office in the largest city in the state, oddly enough selections in Wichita seemed rather limited on their own merit.
In my small podunk city [which I shall not reveal here], I had found the following games and what they numbered.
- Zelda 1 gold (about six copies)
- Zelda 1 gray (about three copies)
- Zelda 2 Gold (3 copies)
- Zelda 2 gray (1 copy)
- Super Mario 3 (2 copies)
- Super Mario 2 (0 copies)
- Super Mario 1 (7 copies)
- Strider (3 copies)
- metroid (1 copy)
- Rolling Thunder (1 copy)
- Venice Beach V-ball (1 copy)
- RBI B-ball (2 unlicensed copies)
- Battle Toads (0 copies)
- Bayou Billy (5 copies)
- black Jack (1 copy)
But in Wichita, with three major pawn shops, one of which had over 500 games, another well over 200, and one in-between those numbers, I did find some games that were much more rare in Wichita than in my area, but they all sucked, the only good place to find popular fun games was in my area. With that said here are the numbers for select game titles that I found in all the stores combined in the larger town.
- Zelda gold and gray (0 copies)
- Zelda 2 Gold and gray (1 gray copy, no gold)
- Super Mario 3 (0 copies)
- Super Mario 2 (1 copy)
- Super Mario 1 ( no more than 20 copies in all the areas combined)
- Strider (about 10 copies)
- Metroid (5 copies)
- Rolling Thunder (6 copies)
- Venice Beach V-ball (3 copies)
- RBI B-ball 1 (10 unlicensed, one licensed)
- Battle Toads (6 copies)
- Bayou Billy (3 copies)
- Black Jack (2 copies)
- Impossible Mission 2 (2 copies)
Although these numbers are interesting and only one individuals observance, it does show the difference in gaming purchases between small town and big city buys, along with different amounts of certain games. Although the above list is limited only to what I recall I hope it gives the reader a idea on how the probability of R.R. exist From what I noticed, for popular stuff smaller city seems better and for rare a larger city is nicer. But then again most of the rare games I found sucked
I would personally like to see more articles on observances like these. SO seem them in as a small informative email or even write up a whole article about it.
A few other O.T. and semi OT notable mentions are.
- I did not see one NES in Wichita, and the Pawnshop I have near my house has four broken ones.
- I saw three NES Advantages in Wichita, two at one pawnshop, one at another, all at $14 each.
- I haven't seen NES controllers anywhere except on eBay and the now defect Funco online store. They seem to be getting harder to find.
- I saw one Sega Saturn. Several Sega 32X games. a ton of N64 and Playstation stuff. No Atari stuff, Atari appears o be officially dead in my area. I saw no more than three Game Genies.
- I have yet to see Any Wisdom tree games running around loose in my state. I saw my first in-person copy of a Color Dreams game after looking for three years, if it wasn't grungy looking I would have got it. So in my judgment, the southern area of Kansas is good for the A.V.E. brand and some popular and rare games like Final Fantasy and Pac Man. But seems dead for W.T. and C.D. games.