OK, maybe $9 isn't really steep.

After all, NeoGeo games were $200 and up when they were originally released and they played on a console that cost $650 in 1991, which in today's money is something like the equivalent of a hundred thousand dollars. And the thing couldn't even play Blu-ray movies! From that perspective, $9 is almost stupidly cheap.

Still, charging a $1 premium over the NeoGeo's contemporaries, the SNES and Genesis, seems out of place when titles for another lesser known contemporary, the TurboGrafx-16, sell for $6. Further emphasizing the high price is the fact that NeoGeo fighter Fatal Fury Special is coming out for Xbox Live Arcade, with online play and achievements, for $5. 

While there are no doubt many gamers out there who wouldn't hesitate to shell out $9 to play Samurai Shodown II on their Wii, I can't imagine most people are going to be familiar with the majority of the Neo-Geo's library. VC operates largely on nostalgia and not too many are going to be nostalgic for Magician Lord and 'Nam 1975. Oddly enough, I'm nostalgic for both and I've never played either. Chalk that up to time spent staring at Nobody Beats the Wiz ads every week, trying to wrap my brain around how a console could cost $650, and more importantly, how I could get one.

Nintendo, whittle the price of these things down to six or seven bucks and then we'll talk.

[via Joystiq]