Oh, snap! Not to hijack the thread or anything, but that game was awesome! First game I ever bought. It was on sale, I paid twenty bucks for it in... 1987? Something like that. Still love that game, currently playing it on the GBA.
Anyhow, my experience was similar -- typically, a game would cost fifty or sixty bucks, when I was growing up, and a new system was $300 or $400. Until the price started to drop a little. Looks like the next round of systems and games will be about the same, which is pretty cool.
-- Rafael