Buying Games Like It's 1989

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

I spent my bar mitzvah money on a 32X when it first came out. That wasn't a smart move. Never did get another 32/64bit system. I just heard "You already got a 32X." Good thing I had a nice computer.

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I begged for months to get a 32X for Christmas, probably more than for any other gift ever. I spent that Christmas playing Afterburner (which ruled) and that hideous sci-fi themed fighting game. The next year I did have a lot of fun with the 32X (Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, BC Racers) but in the end I was so pissed off that Sega dropped it (after insisting it was the real deal) that I skipped Saturn entirely. I started to get urges for Saturn pretty bad, but I held out until Mario 64 showed up in the local Toys R Us kiosk and blew my fucking mind.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

The age dynamic is interesting. Josh and I are almost exactly the same age and have very similar memories. NeoZeedeater is a bit older and was making different types of decisions by then. I believe animegirl is younger, so she would have likely had less access to money and would have to be more selective.

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chalk me into the 28 crowd as well. i pretty much agree with what Josh already said. normally we had to EARN our games (at least i did) any way we would and sometimes that mant begging mom for extra money. it was very rare for me to get more than 3 NEW games a year and this mant once i bought it i HAD to play the hell out of it. usually if it was a bad game that ended up meaning i would find way to break it (figuratively, not literally) and would play it for hours upon hours doing so.

at the same time now i agree with Yoshi in that i am much more fickle and tend to look at games under a microscope now. it's almost like i go out of my way to find reasons for a game to not be fun. we started the family on the 2600 but what i remember the most is being one of three kids in my class that had a Master System and i had a lot of friends that had TONS of NES games. when we'd get together everybody would talk about the latest NES game while i sat and watched them play. it wasn't until my one buddy played Punch Out and Jaws religiously that i got an NES. i was never as good at Punch Out as he was but at least then we could borrow games and my grandma was the one who would rent m a game every week.

sometimes now i actively tend to stay away from the internet for game related purposes. it will be much easier since all have now is my new PC and a Modded [x].

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

Wow. I was in college by the time 32-bit hit. My dorm room was the place to be, since I had a Jag, Neo CD, Saturn, PS1, and N64. Mario Kart 64 probably got the most multiplayer play time.

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haha, same here. i had to be the only person on campus with a modded Saturn. EVERYbody came in to play the 4-meg fighters.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Talk of the Town in cherry hill?

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No, pretty sure they were a chain though.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

If I remember correctly, the Sega CD came out about 5 months after I turned 16, so I had my first real job. Each store in St. Louis got three, and they were all sold out, except a Kay Bee that had its shipment get misrouted. I was standing in the store waiting for the box to arive and paid with 16 crisp $20 bills. I honestly never regretted that for a minute.

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Holy shit, the Sega CD cost that much when it came out? I got the second version for christmas, it came with sewer shark (I played the shit out of that game). Don't remember how much it was at that time. I remember debating over buying a FMV fighting game (can't remember the name of it) and Eternal Champions CD. I'm pissed to this day that I didn't buy EC. The other game sucked donkey dick.

Yep. It was $300. Missouri tax was 6%, so it was $318.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

If I remember correctly, the Sega CD came out about 5 months after I turned 16, so I had my first real job. Each store in St. Louis got three, and they were all sold out, except a Kay Bee that had its shipment get misrouted. I was standing in the store waiting for the box to arive and paid with 16 crisp $20 bills. I honestly never regretted that for a minute.

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aside from the pretty bad pack-in games (that i was forced to play until i bought Willy Beamish) i never regretted it either. then of course, when Lunar came out i was in heaven.

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Originally Posted by Timber

There was this chain of large drug stores called Phar-Mor around here when I was a kid and they had a NES & VHS rental section in the back. You could get games for 5 days at $0.50 a pop. I tried out almost every game before I bought them with just a few exceptions (Dragon Warrior, Castlevania & Mario sequels).

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Phar-Mor was awesome. I rented tons of games and remember it was the only place with Gameboy carts to rent. I rented the hell out of the first two Final Fatnasy Legends, as well as Final Fantasy Adventure. I rented Mystic Quest until i nearly beat it. I don't remember renting anything that wasn't Final Fantasy, besides some helicopter shooter for SNES that my mom rented for me when i asked for Legend of Mystical Ninja. How she could mix the two up is beyond me.

I remember they had the Tengen Tetris on the shelves for what seemed like years. It might have stayed up there with its prohibitive $60 price tag until the store closed. That was long before "L@@K! R@RE!" meant anything at all.

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But then, I bought a few stinkers like Deadly Tower, Legacy of the Wizard, and Friday The 13th, and that wasn't so good.

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I remember my friend and i liked Deadly Tower. We really didn't know any better back then. and kept renting it. after a while we stopped, because i think we quietly realized that it was bad.
Legacy of the Wizard was something i'd seen in a hint book and really really wanted to play. I want to believe that it's really a great game.

It was really really rare that i got a game of my own. I remember when it came down to Star Tropics and Bart vs. Space Mutants. Thank god that Walmart only had Star Tropics. The worst thing i ever owned back then was Mappy Land, and for some reason my brother and i couldn't stop playing it.

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Originally Posted by YellerDog

I remember mowing yards for games. Saved up enough to buy Ghostbusters for the NES, $50 bucks or so?, was totally stoked opening that awesome Ghostbusters logo-on-black box on the drive home and reading the manual, imagining how awesome it was going to be...

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I remember reading the manual on the drive home too. Now with in-game tutorials I never read the manual. Shit, back in the day, the manual was the only story background you had about the game.

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Originally Posted by Timber

There was this chain of large drug stores called Phar-Mor around here when I was a kid and they had a NES & VHS rental section in the back. You could get games for 5 days at $0.50 a pop. I tried out almost every game before I bought them with just a few exceptions (Dragon Warrior, Castlevania & Mario sequels).

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Word. Phar-Mor was how I did my NES gaming. Also, my folks basically forbid me from paying $40 or more dollars for any game but my dad would always find stores that had games on clearance for 10-20 bones so my brothers and I racked up a nice stack of cartridges.

I did buy some really shitty C-64 games.

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Originally Posted by YellerDog

I played the hell out of Jaws, convinced you could arrow the shark to death.

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You can't?

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

Wow. I was in college by the time 32-bit hit. My dorm room was the place to be, since I had a Jag, Neo CD, Saturn, PS1, and N64. Mario Kart 64 probably got the most multiplayer play time.

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I had a N64. We rocked Mario Kart and WCW something or other. The one with the boxer.

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Originally Posted by Dyne

normally we had to EARN our games

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I went straight from nes to n64 because of this.