Those were the days!
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As a youngster/student- you had a good supply of friends with free time to indulge games with- I miss that . There is also the difference in intensity of experience ....when you are at that age - your mind seems to be more invested and focused in the process of gaming. As a fully fledged adult - you always have distraction and lesser intensity of experience.
I think that makes the nostalgia element more pronounced.
I remember going for the first time into a hobby store with a friend in my mid teens which I thought only sold fantasy games stuff on the ground floor but on the second floor they had a war-games section which was jam packed with SPI big box games and others - flat pack tray games and large and small plastic wallets with games on every conceivable battle and campaign subject - from Ancient to Modern- It was an incredible, eye opening experience.......a whole wall of shelves full of stuff.
It was like being a half starved dog and walking into a Walmart to see a whole section of shelving 120 feet long and 6 rows tall full of pooch food. You could wag your tail so fast; it would easily detach and fly off into the checkout aisle.
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I am nostalgic about the prices of games then.........I do not think many teens today get a $150 weekly allowance.........
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Please not Southern Comfort! Shipmate convinced me to drink a bottle of terpin hydrate cough syrup with him. I got wasted and hung over for almost two days. I was at another shipmate's house and he offered me some Southern Comfort, a refreshment that I had never had.That was probably a new SPI game, just released for $35 - the hobby store I mentioned used to have sales at 50% off and even sold Monster SPI games in large plastic wallets at a third off the price- simply because they were shipped to the store without boxes. You could also get a size-able discount if the box was a bit damaged or torn. They also had a great second hand sales and exchange board where other buyers/gamers would advertise games and mags for sale and swap at reduced prices.
Anyways; I would rather pay more for a superior product produced by SPI than Avalon Hill which suffered from multiple erratta clarifications sheets months and years down the line for one game and badly printed counter sheets with dodgy counter glue to boot.
Totally agree that games are expensive now but maybe not comparatively so.......GMT and Decision games being at the tip of the Iceberg. Paying $170 for their modified version of SPI's Wacht Am Rhein that sold for about $28 in 1980.........that's 6 lawns mowed in 1980 versus ($20 per lawn ) today , so that's 9 lawns to be mowed now......50% more. The games have increased in price by six or seven fold while you have to do much more lawn mowing, even with a four times the 1980 charge for doing so equivalency.
GMT and Decision games know that most of their buying base are not teenagers and have access to better funding ..... They know that Actionjick has a large Southern Comfort bottle hidden under the sink stuffed full of $20 notes.............no need for research costs....in the modern digital world ....................they know everything...........
I did pick up a mostly unpunched copy of The Art of Seige at Goodwill for $2.00. A great find but never played it as I was too much into Squad Leader. Also picked up The Army Air Corps game at the same Goodwill. IIRC it was produced during the war. Used to get some pretty good stuff at the thrift stores BI. Before Internet.That was probably a new SPI game, just released for $35 - the hobby store I mentioned used to have sales at 50% off and even sold Monster SPI games in large plastic wallets at a third off the price- simply because they were shipped to the store without boxes. You could also get a size-able discount if the box was a bit damaged or torn. They also had a great second hand sales and exchange board where other buyers/gamers would advertise games and mags for sale and swap at reduced prices.
Anyways; I would rather pay more for a superior product produced by SPI than Avalon Hill which suffered from multiple erratta clarifications sheets months and years down the line for one game and badly printed counter sheets with dodgy counter glue to boot.
Totally agree that games are expensive now but maybe not comparatively so.......GMT and Decision games being at the tip of the Iceberg. Paying $170 for their modified version of SPI's Wacht Am Rhein that sold for about $28 in 1980.........that's 6 lawns mowed in 1980 versus ($20 per lawn ) today , so that's 9 lawns to be mowed now......50% more. The games have increased in price by six or seven fold while you have to do much more lawn mowing, even with a four times the 1980 charge for doing so equivalency.
GMT and Decision games know that most of their buying base are not teenagers and have access to better funding ..... They know that Actionjick has a large Southern Comfort bottle hidden under the sink stuffed full of $20 notes.............no need for research costs....in the modern digital world ....................they know everything...........
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