The video gaming industry is one giant arms race for the newest technologies and most impressive graphics. Every few years a handful of computing and electronics giants step up to the plate with what they think will blow all other video games out of the water. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft – this generation’s big three are going at it once more and for those of you who aren’t in on the race yet it might seem like a great big mess. With the Wii, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360 madness this last Christmas you might be asking, where are all the classics? Where’s the simple fun gameplay of the games of childhood.

We’ve reached the first true generation of gamer nostalgia. It’s been 20 years since the Nintendo Entertainment System swept the video game market and brought the industry home to stay. There are those that remember the glory days of Atari, but it was truly Nintendo that revolutionized the idea of an at home console. The Super Mario Bros. and Kid Icaruses of the 80s are long past though and as the kids of the 80s reach the apex of their careers, graduating college, entering the work force and making the big bucks, the retro market is booming once more. The Nintendo Wii offers its virtual console, with a collection of dozens of old games from Nintendo and Sega past and Xbox Live offers its Arcade options. Even Sony is giving it a go with Playstation emulation on its PSP handheld. Square-Enix is rereleasing all of its Final Fantasy classics and the remakes just keep coming.

For those of us who remember the good old times so fondly this is finally the chance we’ve been waiting for to grasp our memories and play once more the games we’ve always wished would be rereleased. But what about the collectors among us? The video game machine, constantly pumping out bigger and better options of its gaming hardware tends to throw the last generation to the wolves as soon as possible, cutting production, cutting availability and inevitably spiking prices across the board for a game that everyone owned only a couple of years ago. Reprints might find their way back to the market for extremely popular games, but for the most part it’s impossible to find games of the last generation after the window of its marketability has past and the graphics look too outdated to justify a purchase.

If you want the games of the 8, 16, or 32 bit generations, it’s a crapshoot as to where you might find them. As mentioned above, more and more options are opening up in the new generation of gaming; downloadable content and the like, but not every game reached the upper echelons of popularity that the console makers deem necessary to reprint a game. If I want a copy of Chrono Trigger or Suikoden II, I’ll be shelling out at least $75 on eBay to find one. Chrono Trigger even saw rerelease in the days of the Playstation, but as the final hours of its life passed and were forgotten, so too were the prints of that compilation. Even a game like Final Fantasy VII, of which millions of copies are in print and could be found for as cheap as $10 in used game stores only 2 years ago now sells for more than $50 on eBay because of a lapse in production by Sony and a disagreement over reprint rights. For those very few that don’t already own a copy and want one, Final Fantasy VII is an expensive commodity.

So what are your options then? There aren’t many. EBay sets the market price through demand and if you want any of the rare games from years past you’ll be headed there. Even if you were to find an old copy of Final Fantasy III in its original SNES cartridge form in a pawn shop or used record store, you’ll likely pay the same premium as those shops are turning more and more to eBay to set their prices. However, for those patient enough to wait, the demand of a generation of retro gamers growing nostalgic in light of so much expensive, noisy equipment might find that the software makers will slowly but surely sate your appetites.