Have you ever bought a game for a system you don't own?

[Thierry Henry]

This is around 4-5 years ago now, I bought a complete copy of Metal Slug (AES) for the Neo Geo system. I was always of the intention of eventually buying the console, but some or other thing always seemed to come up and I never got around to purchasing the system.

[gennss]

I owned some saturn games for years before owning the system. Right now I won an sms game even though I cdont have a system for it. (r-type)

I gave away some of the other games I had for systems I dont own to the girl im dating. Had to make space somehow.

[Ziggy]

Oh, I just remembered... A while back I was in a Toys R Us and they had some old sealed games collecting dust. I picked up a sealed copy of Castlevania Bloodlines for about $15 and three copies of NHL 97 at $5 each for the Saturn, but I didn't own a Saturn back then.

[Dave Auto]

I found a 20-gig HDD for 360 on clearance for $17, and bought it, knowing that I would own a 360 at some point. A year later, I built up a ton of store credit by "flipping" used games between Gamestop and Blockbuster, turning $100 cash into $200 credit over the course of about 3 weeks, and picked up a 360 Arcade bundle. Brand-new 20-gig 360 for $117 FTW!

God, I'm so cheap it's pathetic...

Just to make sure I understand what was happening here, you bought a used game from one store, then sold it to another store at a profit?

Well done sir.

Don't wanna veer OT but... yeah, this past fall/winter had some ideal conditions for "flipping:" when one store runs a "buy one/two games, get one free" promo while the other runs a trade-in credit bonus, it can be easy to double your money. I bought lots of used copies of GTA IV at Blockbuster (and there were lots to be had) during a BOGO sale: 2 for $15. Traded them in at Gamestop for about $15 tore credit apiece after Edge card & bonuses, doubling my investment.

Cheapassgamer.com runs a great, well-maintained forum thread about which trade-ins net the most profit.

Oh, and as an independent contractor, I was between contracts at the time, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. That always helps

Sorry, back to the topic... in college, it wasn't uncommon for my roommates and I to buy games for each others' systems. Damian may have owned the PS2, but that didn't stop Johnny from buying a copy of GTAIII for it. And I think one of them bought Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast that I owned. And when we graduated and went our separate ways, I'm pretty sure they just relinquished ownership of the games they had bought to whoever owned the system: Damian kept Johnny's GTA, I kept Damian's Crazy Taxi. I guess we were pretty share-and-share-alike back then