For context: I was very young around the NES & SNES era, but a lot of kids back then went to play at other kids’ houses. Not every household had one, but one of my friends would and I’d want to go play at their house because they had one. In this way, 30 million NES’ could reach far more million people (kids), leading to modern nostalgia.

Personally, my grandpa had a NES and I ALWAYS wanted to go to his house to play Duck Hunt.

PlayStation and Xbox continue to lose their competitive edge almost entirely due to a lack of exclusives. Okay, I’m lying there are more reasons but I posit that games are the primary reason players choose to play where they play. If games aren’t locked to consoles, players don’t need those consoles.

That’s good for players but bad for these console businesses, long-term. It’s the reason why you so commonly see that people have a <console/PC> and a switch. Players still need the switch

Pokémon Diamond and Pearl are both WAY slower than Platinum. In particular there’s just a delay between every action and Pokémon losing health in battle is excruciatingly slow. Mostly fixed in Platinum.

Scarcity and some artificial scarcity called grading. Take for example Pokémon vintage trading card game packs. Base set has a bunch of print differences but even buying a normal unlimited version pack is $300-400. The value of a Charizard, if you pull it out of that pack, is ~$200-400 raw. However, if you grade it and it comes back a 10, it’s suddenly “worth” $1000+.

This is not quite as prevalent in video games but it is happening. The price of popular Pokémon games that are complete in box are sky high because someone somewhere wants to buy it and submit it for the chance it’s “worth” 10x the price.

Pricecharting.com is your friend. Patience is a virtue.