The Path of Radiant After Markets

Since having recently finished Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones in preparation for playing Awakening -- like the good Nintendo Ambassador that I am -- I found myself very taken with the game. It being the first one that I've played to completion because I'm something of a philistine, I finally see how the FE faithful have become such a ravenous audience. If anything, the love/ hate relationship that I formed with Sacred Stones brought me back to the first time I went through Demon's Souls, and by that I mean that when I finally delivered the killing blow to the last boss and watched the credits roll, I felt like I had been through some shit. Since Demon's Souls has seem deep sentimental meaning to me, this is praise (if you can call it that) that I try not to heap on to a game very often.

Naturally, I started doing research into the other localized Fire Emblem games, and was caught by a fair amount of surprise. After taking a quick look on eBay, it seems that Path of Radiance, the series' first and only GameCube release, has catapulted in price over the years. I clearly remember its release when I was working in retail, and I have routinely seen it in used shops and shows as the years have gone on, but it seems as thought I've completely lost track of its status as a collectable over the years. The $75 that this example auction is calling for right now caused me some serious sticker shock. The other entries into the series, the GBA Fire Emblem, Sacred Stones, Shadow Dragon for DS, and the Wii release Radiant Dawn, all command close to full retail price for their respective consoles, too. Clearly, the community around these games hangs on to them for dear life.

Is this hike in price caused.by the recent release of Awakening? I'm going to speculate so, since most of these games are still fairly common. Are they worth investing in to pad out a back log of games I'll probably never get through? I'm sure you all have some thoughts on that, but for close to a c-note it's looking more likely that these games are just going to be curiosities to me rather than actual life experiences. Then again, St. Patrick's Day is on Sunday, and I've made some costly eBay decisions before when I was not so sound of mind.