Dyadka Yar

Somewhat historical, but I managed to play the single rarest arcade game on Earth today at my local arcade. It is Galaxian 3: Attack of the Zolgear in it's theater configuration from 1994. It allows 6 players at once and the thing is massive. Takes up a tenth of the total space on the 3rd floor of the arcade. It might actually be the last one on Earth running original hardware. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/04/this-might-be-the-only-working-galaxian-3-attack-of-the-zolgear-cabinet-in-north-america

This is where Nintendo can't be defended. The biggest argument I have heard is that old games cost this much or more. That is true, Street Fighter 2 for SNES cost $70 at release. There was good reason for this. Cartridges were expensive. It would cost roughly $35 to manufacture this game. The $35 left over was split 4 ways between the retailer, distributor, developer and the licensing fees. Then CDs and later DVDs came out and the price of manufacturing a game dropped to around $5. At that point for the first and only time the price of new games dropped to $50. Everybody won, the consumer pays less and there is $10 more for everyone involved in getting the game to the player. Then we get the digital download garbage on consoles and they charge as much as a physical copy and the price jumps to $60 per new game. Now we have got rid of the retailer and the distributor. So the game developers and companies get to keep all that money. While servers and electricity are required, it would amount to pennies per game sold. Overall, there is no reason for games to cost $80 and $90. There was an argument that this was to counter the pirating issue, well that is only going to make the issue so much worse as nobody is going to pay that for a game. With all that said, it is Nintendo's turn to be the dumbass of this generation of consoles.