I think I'm going to try posting smaller things more frequently for a little while. Maybe I'll enjoy this, maybe I won't. Only one way to find out.
This is a very narrow piece I wrote on a whim. I bought a boxed copy of NHL '97 for the Sega Genesis for $1.50 all the way back in 2008. While rearranging some game shelves I popped it open and found the original receipt tucked away in the manual.
Let's look at it up close:
OK, at a glance that seems high but it's really not.
It's come to my attention this site is often referenced for historical game prices. I posted a lot of catalog scans from the 1990s but 1996 in particular is an incomplete year. I have a catalog and CD, that are essentially the same, from the spring. Then nothing else until early 1997 . An xmas 1996 catalog would really be nice to scan. Catalogs are not the most reliable source though. They usually list the highest hypothetical price of games. If a catalog lists a lower price than what is in the store that's an obvious problem. In reality, games were often a few bucks cheaper than what the catalog listed.
Anyway... the 1996 catalog has NHL '96 for $59.99. That seems awful high since it's near the end of hockey season. The rosters, already somewhat obsolete from trades, are close to being very obsolete. The earliest 1997 catalog I currently have doesn't list NHL '97 for the Sega Genesis. The PlayStation version is on the front cover but the price isn't listed. It is part of a buy 2 get 1 free promotion. That makes me more skeptical about the price of NHL '96 roughly one year earlier.
NHL '97 launched on the Genesis in September/October 1996. I can't find a definitive date. The PlayStation, Saturn, and PC versions are better documented which makes sense as they were the systems being paid attention to then. The release was covered by a couple newspapers still available on Google's newspaper archive:
They list the MSRP as $59.95. No reason to doubt that, it was the going rate for new releases then. Was that the launch price for all versions, including the Sega Genesis? Probably. If so, it didn't take long for stores to shave a few dollars off. Here we can clearly see that on October 24th 1996 it sold for $56.99 at Target.
Now the real question, was NHL '97 on the Genesis worth almost $60? It isn't for me but I'm not the target audience. I can imagine a couple audiences for it. There are those who simply prefer the 16-bit version of the game over the 32-bit one. Then you have those who enjoy sports games and are waiting to see who wins the next generation war before upgrading. Even if the PlayStation conquered the Saturn by October 1996 the Nintendo 64 was only a month old in the US. It would be a perfectly reasonable position to see how the PlayStation vs Nintendo 64 battle went before choosing one.
I tried NHL '97 a bit. I didn't see a lot of differences with the previous 2-3 versions. I'm aware of a community that thinks the series peaked with NHL '94. That leads me to conclude the 16-bit versions of '95-'98 are the same engine with updated rosters. That and this is how EA typically treats sports franchises for previous gen systems. In this theory, EA upgraded the NHL engine going from '94 to '95. Although some didn't consider it an upgrade. After that they shifted to 32-bit development and the next 3 16-bit games are incremental changes off the '95 engine.
I wasn't very good at this game. The practice mode was alright, that's mostly what I tried. I only paid $1.50 for this so I'm not feeling ripped-off.
Alright, so this went on longer than I thought it would. This was just supposed to be a picture of a receipt I found. It didn't take long to write though so maybe I'll try a few more quick articles like this.
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