Most Regrettable Video Game Purchases

I can't imagine how much money I've spent on video games in my life time. My current collection at retail prices as tracked by my list on IGN's website says that it's totalled at almost $5,000. I'd say that with considering that there are quite a few Atari games that aren't on their list, the price of buying consoles (some multiple times because I sold them when I was a kid), and of course the games that I just don't plain have anymore, I'd say the figure is somewhere closer to $7,000 in my lifetime (I have owned every major Nintendo console/handheld at one time or another).

But as I was taking back a third Wii-mote that I purchase this weekend and decided it was a waste of $40 for someone who barely uses two at a time, that there have to have been some pretty stupid purchases down the line. And I bet that most of them weren't even as a kid who couldn't research games online before he before bought them. No, I'd say that as an adult with a pretty big disposable income, the time between I graduated college and when I got married probably had the highest chances of buying something stupid. Especially when I went on a shopping spree for about two years and bought almost everything back that I had sold when I was a kid. That included an NES and games, a SNES and games, and a handful of Atari 2600 cartridges.

But I still can't think of a boneheaded purchase that I truly regretted and actually kept. But here are some of the purchases I made that I think stand out the most and the price I think I paid for them:

• A PS2 and Madden 200(ish) so I could play with Brian online. $200+
• Farcry 2 so Brian and I could make online maps together. We never did and I barely touched the game. $60
• Dance Dance Revolution 3 Ultramix because punishing myself with 1 and 2 wasn't enough. $50
• Devil May Cry just because it was hyped so much. I hate that game. $20
• Earth Defense Force 2017 because I wanted to see how bad a game really could be on purpose. $20
• Full Spectrum Warrior has to be one of the worst games on my list that I still actually have. $40(?)
• Hotel Dusk: Room 215 completely didn't meet my expectations. $30
• LEGO Indiana Jones proved that not all games are good LEGO material. $50
• Lost: Via Domus I knew would suck, but my wife is a serious tv junkie. She played it for an hour. $15.
• Two copies of each of the following DS games: Mario Kart, Tetris, Nintendogs. Having two DS's is murder on your wallet. $180.
• Need for Speed Underground 2 is a classic sequel of suck. $40
• Nightcaster was really an apology from Microsoft for losing my console in the repair center. Free
• X-Men Legends had mutants in it. And suck. $30

So there's my big regret list. And those are all games I still have in my possession. I can't even begin to remember how many games I would buy and then sell on eBay because of retail stores refusal to take return video games because of pure dissatisfaction. When you buy things purely on hype, marketing and review scores, your taking a huge chance with your money and there's no safety net except for eBay.

But in the last couple years I decided that I was going to quit that practice and not sell anything ever again. It's worked pretty well so far and I've only ended up with a couple of novelty lemons.

Digital is More Expensive?

Since the Xbox 360 started offering the ability to download older games from the original Xbox library of games online and store them on your hard drive, the Wii, PS3 and PSP have also taken to the idea and started doing it as well. I think it's a great service to have digital games instead of cds and cartridges (though I am a bit enamored with my own collection of stuff).

But I don't understand what's going on here. Instead of the idea of a digital service saving money by not using physical media, companies have started to offer the service at a premium, charging way too much money for games that are 5-20 years old.

It's hard to say for the PS3, since I can't seem to find any prices on their Playstation Network website, but the Xbox and Wii offer titles to download from their older consoles at about 200-400% markup on prices based off of eBay offerings ($15 from Live vs $6 average from StillLivesAtHome128 on eBay). Of course, the used games behemoth Gamestop is still selling Halo, a game from 2001, for $20, but only idiots shop there.

*crickets chirping*

Nintendo isn't doing much better. Nintendo offered the first three Mario games for download on the Wii for $5 each. You can find it on eBay for under a $1 if you can get an auction that doesn't charge $8 for shipping. That's almost a 500% markup on a game that they fully admit on their store website is 25 years old. In fact, it's the oldest commercial Nintendo game ever that they gave away with the console. I'm not even sure you could buy it because they made it available to everyone that had the NES.

And what's worse is that your paying for a transaction back into your childhood. Most people played these games when they were kids. I'd even bet that the majority of the buyers of games like Super Mario Brothers are in the 20+ age bracket and realize after buying the game that, like most childhood memories, some things are best left in the past. Games that old evoke other memories from times of yesteryear but not the ones that help you compare your new HD-loving, 1080p, BluRay watching eyes to the 8-bit bleeps and bloops that you fondly remember sitting cross-legged on the living room floor drinking a Tab.

Sure you have to manage a new set of resources when your dealing with digital distribution. Instead of trucks delivering games, your paying for bandwidth. Instead of paying retailers profit margins, your paying for server hard drives and routers. And instead of packaging, your paying for programmers to retrofit code to new consoles. But per game, I'd have to imagine that it's still cheaper to sell games digitally that it is to keep shipping out disks. Especially if sales are stagnate in brick-and-mortar stores.

So here's an offical plea to Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony: Stop trying to make money on games that are older than our kids. Here's some logic to follow: If (ParentAge-ChildAge/2) < GameAge Then GamePrice = 0. I think that's a pretty fair rule to follow.

Wii Store: http://www.nintendo.com/wii/virtualconsole/games
Xbox Live Store: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/catalog.aspx?d=5

PSN Store: http://www.us.playstation.com/PSN/Store

GamezNFlix: IzBeAllupOnz

I know that sub-cultures can generate a lot of weird memes. The internet one is proud to present to you the "z", the "N" and the "x" suffixes and whole word replacements. It's a general eye sore of a website name, but as your mother once taught you, don't judge a book by it's cover"z".

What GamezNFlix.com does offer is a 9 buck video game rental plan, cutting GameFly.com by almost half. And since Blockbuster's 5-day rentals are $8.00 a peice, I'll gladly consider joining GNF.

Actually, I'm really considering it. Besides the fact that you can rent PS1 games on there for twice what you could own them for, it's really the fact that they've gone that extra mile to do so. The advertising is sort of big, but interesting. I haven't read much of their reviews or watched any of their video reviews, but I'll give it a look over before I subscribe and then realize how big of a douchebag they really are.

On Finances

We finally decided to go to someone about help with our finances.

We have pretty good financial standing, so it's nothing like bad debt or anything negative. We are just getting ready for that stage in life where we want kids and are thinking about the future.

How does this relate to games?

One of the ways we are planning on shifting our money is to pay ourselves every month with what's left of our paychecks. Instead of having a pile of cash after the 1st of the month bills, we're only going to have a small amount to curb rash, spontaneous spending.

Now I don't buy a lot of games off the cuff anymore. I was for a while when I was trying to build back my Atari/NES/SNES collection. Now I'm on top of my collection and waiting for new stuff to come out. If you've seen my list of games to buy this fall, this new home finance plan is going to hamper the shopping list by quite a bit.

That's not necessarily a bad thing I guess. But winter is when I play a ton of games since I don't ride motorcycles in the cold or play tennis. But this is also probably the most impressive fall line-up of triple-A titles to hit consoles in a long time. Halo, Mario, Metroid, Grand Theft Auto, Katamari Damacy, Ace Combat...all great titles worth every penny.

Christmas is coming early this year. It just sucks growing up and having to buy your own presents.

Review: Wario Ware

We had our first Wii party tonight.

About 6 of us got together around the HDTV and the non-HDTV Wii (which still looks just fine).

To get ready, I went and renewed my account at Blockbuster. I only have WiiSports and WiiPlay, games that while are fun, I wasn't sure would be enough to satisfy our friends. So I picked up Wario Ware: Smooth Moves. It's still game of mini-games, but they are so much more fast paced and hectic. Chaotic even.

When I brought the game up to the counter, I had a fiver and two singles. Surely rentals havne't gone up that much in two years. I almost fell on the floor when he said the total was $8.40. For a week rental. Apparently Blockbuster is charging more for Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 games. I don't know if it's a supply/demand thing or what.

I thought it would be a good way to check out new and unknown Wii games, considering how not many games utilize the Wii controller very much. But after finding out about the prices, I'm never going back.

Wario Ware, though, was quite a hilarious group game. You only play one person at a time, but the games, the animations, and the strange sense of humor the game definetly leave their mark. We laughed the whole time we played. But that's probably the games major downside. Along with the fact that the mini-games don't always quite control like you expect or want them to (or should), after playing through the games levels (70 or so minigames), I can't imagine wanting to play them much on a regular basis. The game does track high scores for each set of mini-games, but there really isn't much of a reward for it.

So maybe the $8.40 was worth the rental. I was never planning on buying the game, but at least I got a real good taste of it. I liked what I had. But I'll be moving on. If you or anyone you know has ADHD, you might consider it a solid purchase.