Collecting Baroque

The definitive version is the cheap one. The expensive one is a translation. That inversion is the whole market.

Baroque collecting runs backwards. The 1998 Saturn original, the version archives call definitive, is a modest purchase: PriceCharting, checked in November 2026, puts a complete Japanese copy around $39, loose near $12, and sealed copies near $74, against a 1998 launch price of ¥6,800. The North American PS2 remake is the mid-tier: complete around $98, sealed around $118, loose near $35. The Wii version completes near $55. And the market's spike is the European PS2 edition from Rising Star Games, complete copies around $194 on thin volume, a small-print PAL release of a game that was never popular anywhere.

Prices here are history, not prophecy: they are dated snapshots from PriceCharting's sold-listing records, and the PAL figure especially rests on few sales. The shape, though, is stable and instructive. Rarity in this market is not about the game's fame, which is modest, but about print runs and regions.

What to look for in hand: the Saturn copy is catalogue T-33901G, and complete means the jewel case, manual, and the spine card, the paper obi strip Japanese Saturn collectors treat as part of the object. The pre-order artifact, the Baroque Report CD Data File, travels separately and is the connoisseur's extra. The PlayStation port exists in standard and 2000 budget editions. The manga, Ueda's three GFantasy volumes, runs roughly the price of the game itself when it appears, and World Guidance's 2012 reissue is the findable form of the great sourcebook.

Baroque Sega Saturn package — **THE DEFINITIVE OBJECT**The 1998 Saturn original as it reaches collectors now: the cheap, definitive version of the game.

THE PRICE LEDGER

PriceCharting, checked November 2026, US dollars

Saturn, Japan, 1998

Loose about $12 · complete about $39 · sealed about $74. Launch price ¥6,800. Several copies change hands weekly; this is a buyer's shelf.

PlayStation 2, North America, 2008

Loose about $35 · complete about $98 · sealed about $118. Launched at $39.99; spotted at $17.22 in a 2009 bargain thread. The arc of the whole cult in three numbers.

Wii, North America, 2008

Loose about $40 · complete about $55 · sealed about $73. The first-person option and the motion controls live here.

PlayStation 2, PAL, 2008

Complete about $194 on thin volume. Small print run, big number, handle with care: few sales set this price.

WHICH COPY

Buy for the reason you have

To own the art

The Saturn original: Mu's designs, Iwata's score, the box that prints its own poem. Cheapest and best.

To play in English

The North American PS2 or Wii remake, the only official English Baroque of its era, full dub included.

To complete the shelf

The Report CD, the Kanzen Guide Book, World Guidance, and Ueda's manga volumes: the paper Baroque, scarcer than the game.

The Baroque Gallery Why Baroque failed, and endured

Collecting Baroque

THE PRICE LEDGER

WHICH COPY

THE FIRST WORD