Days gone by: Buying games blind

[TSTR]

I bought Shaq-Fu. Enough said.

[Gunstar Green]

I still buy some retro games blind, like Bone it's usually Atari games I've never heard of.

The last time I bought contemporary games from just looking at the box was with the original DS.

[ExedExes]

Heh, when you said Red Faction for whatever reason it made me think of Red Zone for Genesis. That was a horrible choice I made in about 94/95.

Red Zone had some of the best graphical effects on the Genesis. Heck, it even tells you all that it does without any hardware enhancements or special chips right at the start.

Too bad the game itself isn't good.

[Hobie-wan]

Contra's going for $25? See at that point I have a hard time believing it's supply and demand. It's more you paying for pure nostalgia. Suddenly a treasured old game is going to sell for a ton because it's a treasured old game? It sold how many copies? It can't be rare. That's what drove me away from buying so many used games to begin with.

It is still supply and demand. There are tons of copies of the game, but if most people are holding on to theirs, then the supply of ones available for sale can still be smaller. Nostalgia creates demand for the game. If carts weren't selling at the higher price, then they would come down.

[Fragems]

I buy blind on a pretty regular basis. If I find something interesting for under $10 I usually nab it. Since my favorite pawn chain has two stores near by with PS2/Xbox/GB-GBA/GC games for $3 and last gen stuff for $5-8 I always end up walking out with something new.

Pretty much anything over $20 I usually won't buy blind unless it is a limited edition bundle or something really nice for a good deal.

[Sarge]

I very rarely bought anything blind growing up. There's something about having pretty much no money that really makes you picky. And I was a stat-nerd, so I'd pore over review scores in Nintendo Power. I knew what the good games were, and I targeted them mercilessly.

That also meant I went even longer getting games, because I was pretty picky. Now, every now and then I'd grab something when it was cheap, or I'd find something that looked interesting at a yard sale. Most of the time, that turned out pretty well, but that copy of Treasure Master didn't exactly work out.

Recently, I still don't buy a whole lot blind. I think the last one I really grabbed without thought is Metal Dungeon for XBOX, and that was pretty awful. The closest I get is snagging stuff at our local closeout store, but even then, I've got a smartphone to look up reviews pretty quick.

And yeah, as regarding Contra, I don't see a whole lot of copies in the wild anymore. It's edging up, for nostalgia reasons. More supply than some of the rarer games, but also more demand because I mean, c'mon, it's freakin' Contra. Plus, I don't think Contra has shown up on VC yet. Castlevania is another one that has crept up in recent years. I thought a store was insane asking $20, then I looked it up on eBay and found that was pretty much spot-on.

[jvalentine98]

Heh, when you said Red Faction for whatever reason it made me think of Red Zone for Genesis. That was a horrible choice I made in about 94/95.

Red Zone had some of the best graphical effects on the Genesis. Heck, it even tells you all that it does without any hardware enhancements or special chips right at the start.

Too bad the game itself isn't good.

It wasn't Desert Strike, that's for sure

[Luke]

Advertisements in comic books greatly influenced what games I wanted when I was a kid. I say wanted, because let's face it, our parents were the ones doing the buying. Most of the games my parents bought for me were purchased "blind".

Could have been due to an advert, or possibly even cool box art. And a game didn't have to be good to warrant wanting it, as long as it was popular and you showed up to a friend's house with "the cool game" it mattered little if the game was four star stuff.

When I was much, much younger, having a Master System was way cooler than owning a NES. It was all about the graphics, and the sms usually took the cake, so any sms game was on the want list. As I, and the other kids, got a bit older, we bought whatever Nintendo Power told us to. If the game was on the cover, it was a necessity to own.

It really wasn't until the days of the snes and Genesis where you could walk into an Electronics Boutique and see games being played on television. You might not have able to play the game, but you did get to see it played in real time. Because of that I bought a Genesis instead of a Turbo Grafix 16 (thank God).

[jvalentine98]

My parents would occasionally buy me games that I didn't even ask for. They would scour the Wish Book magazine and select some. I remember on my 8th birthday (1991) getting 3 NES games, one of which was Uninvited, one was Rampage and can't remember the other. The same year I got a Genesis for Christmas and that became my primary system for the next 5/6 years.

Didn't upgrade from Genesis to PSX until 1997. I remember calling a pawn shop to see what they could offer me for the Genesis, 3 controllers and about 25 games...they said "Nothing. Everyone's playing PSX now." Click.

Sold the Genesis and the games to my uncle for $125...which he got a STEAL because in my library of games was Shadowrun, Liberty or Death and Shining Force 2, all of which became valuable later on.