Most foolish game purchases

[exodus]

Have you ever bought something only to realize you already had it? Or that you used to have it and didn’t like it? Or didn’t have the platform that could run it?

Since I don’t keep good lists, I often find myself buying games in Japan that I already own. Usually this isn’t a big deal because it’s something small or weird and that’s why I don’t remember I had it already.

This one is another story.

I discovered - just this week! - that I have two copies of blast wind for Saturn. Aficionados will know that this is 1) a cool game and 2) a very expensive game.

The thing is I don’t remember buying either copy. and one of them had a price tag on it - 30800 yen. I would’ve remembered (I think) if I bought it when the yen was super low, which means I paid like… Kind of a lot of money for it (though about $250 less than the last copy with spine card that sold on ebay). I really do not remember doing that. Even more, I don’t remember buying another copy. When did this all happen? Why didn’t I realize? I have played blast wind! I’ve played one of these copies!

What the heck did I do? Luckily whatever price I paid for blast wind it’s worth more now, so I can sell it and fix my costly error. But maybe there’s some value in keeping lists of your games after all.

Anyway feel free to share your tales.

(for those who don’t know blast wind, it’s a shooter from techno soft that was planned for arcades in 1993, did poorly in location tests and was retooled, then retooled again, then released on Saturn in 1997. It features branching paths which is cool! Also has great music. See 3:20 in this video)

Saturn Longplay [086] Blast Wind

[powderooze]

Lol ‘blast wind’

[cheeriersandals]

Mines infinitely lamer, I borrowed an Uncle’s SNES when I was a kid. Super Mario World and Link to the Past were endlessly entertaining, however the third title Ultraman: Towards the Future was obtuse and confusing.

It’s a straight forward arcade brawler with a 3 minute limit. However, I could never beat the first foe Gudis. I’d chip damage Gudis to an inch of his life, I didn’t know how to FINISH Gudis until I saw the Game Center CX episode where Arino made the exact same error on Ultraman. Watch the first six minutes - that’s basically my experience with the game. [T-N]GameCenterCX_-_21 Ultraman.avi : gamecentercx : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

You need to power up to Level 4 (by waiting for the special gauge to fill) and use it as a finisher with Gudis at his FINISH state. The ultimate troll is Gudis can recover damage, if you release the Special at the same moment Gudis recovers - you need to build the gauge from scratch.

Anyways, I later got a SNES of my own for my 21st and decided to rebuy my Uncle’s collection including Ultraman: Towards the Future. Powered it on and nothing! It’s a bum cart, or missing a connection. I gave up on closure and moved on, still own the cart though. The moral is, don’t be a fool never buy a game out of spite.

[exodus]

The famous out run track “passing breeze” was originally titled passing wind before SOA noticed it. They love wind over there

[onnuhhhh]

I’ve started saying this a lot lately since you’ve been saying it on the show, and it’s very fitting for this situation so:
blasted

[穴]

i think blast wing is the sega saturn game i’ve played the most and it had never ocurred to me that the title is funny

[Toph]

I did this today, actually. While at Mckays I saw Pro Pinball: Big Race USA and thought, “That looks like some dollar bin game I’d buy.” Turns out I was right. I own two copies now. Not nearly as costly as Blast Wind, but probably harder to get rid of without just giving it away.

[Gemstonez]

I’d probably have to say my most foolish video game purchase was an Analogue Pocket.

I got really excited about all of the cool games I’d play on it and curated a bunch of files and folders for all of the different compatible systems that I was excited to eventually play as I waited for what felt like a year for the order to be fulfilled.

When I finally received it, I got overwhelmed with the process of setting up the fpgas and internal files appropriately and gave up. I barely used it at all.

I still have it around, but just thinking about it stresses me out.

[exodus]

Yeah I hear you on this one. I do not like to fiddle with computer things, and even though I bought it with the intention of using real carts, my analog pocket is still in its shrink wrap.

[ninjapresident]

oh I have a fun(?) answer for this one.

earlier this year I bought Petz: Catz 2 for the Wii because I found out that it was a spiritual successor to The Dog Island. looked for quite a while because I wanted to pay as little as possible and it’s pretty common. finally get a copy for a good price, get home to add it to my collection, and notice I have Petz: Dogz 2. Turns out it’s the same game, just with dogs instead of cats. Welp.

I’m playing the cat version! I have to justify my stupid purchase.

[samderboo]

Steel Battalion, when it was new. Was kinda dumb to spend so much money on a single game to begin with, but I also didn’t really have a proper space to install the controller and play it in any comfortable fashion.

… and then I didn’t even ever get far in the game because it’s so darn hard and unforgiving.

[Slink]

My best friend tried SO hard to convince me to invest in that Steel Battalion set-up.

You’re the first person I’ve ever heard from that actually did it. It still intrigues me to this day, despite continuing to have zero interest in ever owning all that.

[WanderWhist]

I was at a Toys R’ Us as a young teen and asked the clerk (an old teen) to recommend me an RPG.

He grabbed a PS2 case within arms reach and said “this one is really good and, and the chicks are, like, x-rated”. I don’t think I understood what that meant but I sure bought it.

The game was Ephemeral Phantasia. I couldn’t get into it, but I bet I would appreciate its repeated day structure more now. I wish I got some discounted PSX games instead.

@Gemstonez

When I finally received it, I got overwhelmed with the process of setting up the fpgas and internal files appropriately and gave up. I barely used it at all.

I still have it around, but just thinking about it stresses me out.

I get the pain points. The system just does not make it welcoming at any step or help when things are wrong. Pocket-Sync has been helpful to me for taking core folders out of my human hands. If you ever want to tackle it again on a rainy day I’d be happy to help out. But moving on from something you just aren’t enjoying is already a good move.

[Slink]

Shaq Fu would be it for me. I heard the game wasn’t good, my cousin told me not to get it, I could’ve easily had MKII or SFII instead…but no, I was a basketball freak and loved Shaq even more than MJ, and also the cover art was cool. So I used my hard earned grass cutting money to buy it (which was only just enough for one new game, and then not again for several months).

But yeah, even my love for Shaq at the time couldn’t overshadow what a boring mess of a fighting game it was. And this is coming from a kid who even found a way to enjoy Jeopardy! Sports Edition.

I still hold a grudge against Shaq Fu to this very day.

[Sun_Crypt]

as a fledgling gamer and a baby I was knee deep in gba pokemon, and mario, and sonic. I was at Toys r us and saw a copy of SimCity for the gba. I had some casual understanding that “sims” were popular and it was on sale so I asked my dad for it. While this could have been a formative experience for me, and led to me loving sim and civ type games, it was not. I bounced so hard off of it, and was not prepared to be collecting tax, laying out roads etc. I disliked it so much I tried to get my dad to return it, which in retrospect, he probably didn’t and just ate the cost.
This is probably when I truly realized that not all games are good (for me). I think from that point forward I researched games a little more closely before I bought them, which lead me to the corners of the internet like IC. So I guess it was formative.

[Taliesin_Merlin]

As a young teen, I bought Everquest at full price not understanding that an MMORPG required a paid subscription. I read the manual, played the tutorial, and then balked at asking my parents to help pay for the subscription. (They likely would have said yes, but I didn’t want to have to do more chores for it and had middle-child “don’t want to be a burden”-itis.) The box sat in a desk drawer I thought of as the drawer of shame.

My first game for the Nintendo 3DS was Myst, because there weren’t many games out for it, wanted to buy something physical, and was being indecisive. Myst felt safe because I knew I liked the game, but the 3DS version of Myst was so clunky control-wise that I played it once and never touched it again.

[biff_stallion]

That box art + Shaq’s expression rules. So many hot displays of aesthetic prowess doing the jaws of life on our wallets in the 90s.

[shlootermcgavin]

When I got my Xbox Series X, I got all excited about backward compatibility and ordered a copy of Spartan: Total Warrior off eBay because I remember loving it around the time it came out. I put the disc in the box and, to my horror, was immediately owned.

I should have just looked up the list before buying it, but I didn’t. I have held onto it in the hopes that Microsoft decides to keep adding games to the list of backward compatible games. I don’t think they will!

(Also feel free to add me on Xbox I guess!)

[Death_Strandicoot]

I have a kind of opposite story that doesn’t answer the question, but it’s a time I purchased foolishly, but everything ended up great and I have zero regrets.

This must have been late 2000-ish, when I was still in high school. I went to a GameStop in the mall, looking for a used copy of a game. I think it was Street Fighter Alpha 3 for PlayStation.

I had been to this GameStop maybe one time before, but the employee there acted like he knew me. In retrospect, I’m not sure if this was a genuine case of mistaken identity or if this was a sales tactic, but after he assured me he did not have the game I was looking for, he was asked, “Oh yeah, you wanted to preorder Metal Slug X for PlayStation, right?”

I did not want to preorder Metal Slug X. I had never heard of it. But he gave me this knowing stare. Somehow, it felt like he was saying, “Trust me, you want to preorder this one.” I was a pretty awkward and shy teen, and since I had some money in my pocket and didn’t get what I came for, I just went along with him. I put $5 down and left. In retrospect, this was probably a tactic he used to sell more preorders and he could have very easily steered my towards a bad game instead. What did I know? He seemed like he knew his stuff.

I got a phone call several weeks later letting me know my game had come in. Since then, I had looked up Metal Slug X and it looked kind of cool, I guess? I decided to go pick it up because I had nothing else to play at that moment.

I absolutely fell in love with that game and played it over and over. To this day it holds a special place in my heart. I can honestly say if it wasn’t for that weird interaction with a GameStop employee, I would not have the gaming tastes I have today.

Thank you, GameStop guy, whoever you are. My foolish trust in you was rewarded.

[nate]

I regret buying any and all SNK fighting game ports before I knew what Fightcade was; also I never had a powerful gaming PC growing up, but really really wanted to run Battlefield 2042. Could not get it to run higher than 8fps on any machine we had…