1982 cart prices and inflation: around $77 today

[Flojomojo]

Can you imagine working 10 hours to get Atari Pac-Man? BONK BONK BONK BONK BONK

[Recycled]

Can you imagine working 10 hours to get Atari Pac-Man? BONK BONK BONK BONK BONK

 

I'm still smarting from paying full price for Pac-Man. Probably didn't even play it an hour.

 

(Just need to let that go already...HA!)

[zzip]

I'm still smarting from paying full price for Pac-Man. Probably didn't even play it an hour.

 

(Just need to let that go already...HA!)

Luckily I was too young to have an income stream and my friends got Pacman first so I knew not to buy it.. I did get it eventually in the bargain bin.

[Flojomojo]

Same here -- probably more than one because OMG CHEAP VIDEO GAMES!!

[Recycled]

Luckily I was too young to have an income stream and my friends got Pacman first so I knew not to buy it.. I did get it eventually in the bargain bin.

 

I think I was probably 13. I kept hounding the department stores...."Did you get Pac-Man yet?" Probably like so many kids at that time. The answer was always "no." So I quit trying. Then later some kid told me that his friend got it and "it's just like the "real" game except there's not a ball on the end of the joystick!" With that "review" I bought it ASAP. I found out it was NOT like the "real" game. I don't know what happened to that copy. I got a free one in box of games somebody gave me about 15 years ago.

[Flojomojo]

Then later some kid told me that his friend got it and "it's just like the "real" game except there's not a ball on the end of the joystick!"

Clueless kid?

Or just a liar?

[Recycled]

Clueless kid?

Or just a liar?

 

Definitely, a VERY undiscerning kid!

[Zwackery]

I am not an economist, but if we're going to factor in average hourly wages, I think you missed something important. If you got your figures from here (they match, in any case), there's another column for CPI Adjustment (consumer price index) that factored in the cost of goods and services at the time. Wages are a lot more stagnant than the raw numeric comparison would have you believe, and our buying power is slipping even as the numbers in our paychecks go up.

 

CPI adjusted average hourly wages would be $16.08 in Feb 1982 and $17.57 in Feb 2018.

 

1982: 1.86 hours worked to buy a $30 game cartridge

2018: 4.38 hours worked to buy a weird $77 collectible when you could just download the minuscule 8K ROM if you just wanted to play the game.

 

Some people make more than others, and $80 (for the Classic SNES Mini or a modern game with a season pass) seems to be the new $30.

 

I am also not an economist, but if you are dealing with CPI, then should you also not convert the price of the single item into CPI? So the CPI for the cart - (77/30)*100 - yields a value of 256 (rounded). So a 1982 CPI of $16.08 gets 15.92 to get the cart and in 2018 a CPI of 17.57 yields 14.57. My point is that it is still "less work" to get the game, and, as many people in the game industry have decried, the cost of a game has remained relatively the same across many decades, hence the creep with things like DLC, season passes, collector's editions, and so on.

 

And, as I pointed out previously, with regard to the Crazy Climber cartridge, this is also bit of a mix comparing something MSRP versus "collectible value" set by a small market.