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I don’t really remember 1992 other then one of my brother’s friends bought a game called Final Fantasy 2 (before that the only game that ever held my interest for more than five minutes was Zelda). I remember watching him play the game for well over six hours when he came over to show it off. Sadly he bought the game in January and I had spent all of my Christmas money on just owning a Super Nintendo, I didn’t have the luxury of getting games (besides Super Mario World) with it. After that my mind was made up; I would own that game. After three months of saving my lunch money the game was mine.

I bring up Final Fantasy because, for me, it was the birth of a true gaming experience. Before that point I had understood that video games were entertaining but hadn’t understood that they could be used to express emotions (I was 9 and didn’t notice the poor localization until much later in life). From that point on in my life I asked only for video game and video game accessories for gifts. Over time my collection grew and became a worthy bragging point in any conversation. I still own most of those games that I spent years collecting, although some of my collection has slipped through my fingers over the years, due to moves, theft, or just selling them off during college for quick cash.

I have recently been looking into reclaiming those lost parts of my childhood only to find out that a select few have fallen into the expensive area known as “ultra rare”. For those that are looking for mint condition, still in box with manual this easily means that some of the games go for well over 100 dollars. For those (me) who don’t really care and just want to play the games, like UN Squadron, that were lost to the ages the Wii is a Godsend (emulation always felt like cheating). I would finally be able to play the most obscure games from my childhood that I have been longing for.

But then there is Illusion of Gaia, the only game I have ever played that has made me physically ill. The memories of other really bad games started to surface, and the Wii has access to every experience I wished to bury and no one is really letting on any of the approval process of any of the games.

What does seem to be driving all of the forces behind the rerelease of all of these games is popularity and the willingness of any developer to jump on board and do as much of the work as possible. This is terrible for two very distinct reasons: 1. the games that were published by people who are no longer in business and 2. Companies like Square that already have a very sizeable business selling Game Boy Advance ports of all of their games.

A perfect example of the first problem is Quintet. Quintet, while being responsible for the terrible Illusion of Gaia, brought the world Act Raiser. Quintet, as a hole, may not even exist as a company any more (having released fewer and fewer games since 2000, and almost none crediting the company as having worked on them), but still hold the legal rights to most of their games. If they were picked up by a former publisher (Enix) chances are that most of the games that were sold on the virtual console would get only minimal treatment before being pushed out the door. So if we get Act Raiser we get Illusion of Gaia as well.

Issue two has to do mainly as Square as a company. Will Square even bother releasing any Final Fantasy on the console when they know from firsthand experience that they can retranslate the game and sell it for full price, again, without having to fall into Nintendo’s very lower virtual console pricing? Probably not. For those of us who didn’t rush out and buy any of the Final Fantasies when they were brought back, because we didn’t have the system or we didn’t want to pay that much for a game that they already owned, will they even consider the effort of bringing it to another system? Once again, probably isn’t going to happen.

All of this may have a negative impact on people who collect these video games in hope that one day they will increase in value (The original Dragon Warrior games go for a couple hundred dollars on eBay, with packaging). How much will they go for when they are released on the Virtual Console? Will it affect that price at all? Probably, but not for the people who need mint edition versions.

I am personally looking forward to playing Final Fantasy 4 and 6 again on a big screen TV without having to dig out my Super Nintendo. I would go so far as to say that experience might even be worth 5 to 8 dollars. But this is starting to get to the point that you begin to wonder how much longer can companies keep charging us for things that we already own? All I can hope for is that the good games float to the surface while the weaker games that should be forgot sink to a dark depth where we can all ignore them again.