Games that you wanted for years before you finally got them

The Core Video Games Forum
1

I recieved Legend of Mana in the mail today. Legend of Mana was the second game in the Mana series that I played. Since playing nearly all of them, save the horrendous remake of FFAdventure, Heroes of Mana, and Dawn of Mana, I can say without a doubt that Legend of Mana is the best, and we’ll probly never see another game like it.

I still remember seeing this game in a Toys R Us for 30 dollars when I was seventeen (a few years after I’d played it) and thought “Nahhh, I can get that game any time.” I never saw another one in stores again.

Well, six years later, after having listened to the soundtrack millions of times, as well as having replayed parts of it with one of my friends, I couldn’t take not having it anymore. So, I bought it online, ‘like new’, for almost 60 dollars. I don’t even care if I got ripped off, I’m just so happy to have the game.

I’ve got a few more stories like this one, but I wanna see if anyone else has similar stories. Go.

2

Lufia 2. This game made me neurotic.

So, one of my local game stores had a copy of this game, and I would rent it out whenever I could. Well, around the time when the next gen of consoles (N64, Playstation, etc.) was coming out, they decided to sell all their SNES carts, cheap. I remember grabbing Kirby Super Star and ogrebattle from the big shopping cart out in the front for about $7 each. But what I wanted was Lufia 2.

Well, I couldn’t find it, and when i asked the clerk, she told me it was because someone had rented the game the very day before they would start selling carts, for an entire week. So i had to wait five days to get my chance. ‘Fine,’ I said to myself. I’ll get it then.

I come back on the proper day, and ask about it. Find out that they’d rented it out again (the store had some policy saying you could re-rent a game you already took out without having to drop it in.) So I had to wait ANOTHER week.

I came back, and practically RAN to the bin, to look… and found out the kid who had rented it twice over, decided to just buy it outright. it took me almsot TWO WEEKS to find out that I couldn’t buy my favoritest game at the time.

of course, about a year or two ago, A very friendly RPGCer sent me his copy, and I played the SHIT out of it. And I still play it every so often since.

Looking back, I think it’s what really influenced my impulse-buying tendencies. I really do believe if I don;t buy it now, i might never see it again.

Edit: I’d just like to add that the thing I love about LoM is, even though it’s a very polarizing game, even the people who hate it have to admit the graphics and music are top-notch. I bought it from a friend in high school for $20, and he threw in the guide for about an extra 75 cents. Not that that thing was worth anything. Dammit, you should at least tell me how to beat the game in one playthrough if I wanted!

3

Final Fantasy 2 (4).

My family had an Atari before I was born. We got a Nintendo when I was only 5 or 6, probably, around 1999. I was the youngest of 4. We got Dragon Warrior through Nintendo Power’s promo, and from there I got into Final Fantasy. Now, while in love with that game I happened to see NP’s coverage of Final Fantasy 2. However, when my brothers and I had scrounged up enough money to get a 16-bit system (I remember the day, a garage sale had put us over the top), I was out-voted and we ended up with a <strike>SNES</strike> Genesis instead. Being on a $3 allowance or something like that, a SNES was out of the question for me to get on my own. So for five years I badly, BADLY wanted to play Final Fantasy 2. Seriously, had to have reread that Nintendo Power an indecent number of times. Anyway, years later, in the summer after sixth grade, I cobbled together enough money (I auctioned off winning cards from a comic CCG to friends) to buy a SNES, and a few weeks after that got to rent FF2 from a local movie store. It fulfilled every expectation, though I ended up not liking the Dark Elf’s Cave.

During college I often used games to burn off some stress. In my senior year’s fall semester I was particularly high-strung by the time November rolled around. I spent the greater part of the month looking forward to DQ8. I had ordered it with Amazon so that it would be delivered the Monday before Thanksgiving. Monday went, no game. Anger. Tuesday morning. Fury. Tuesday afternoon, Rage. Thanksgiving was going to be the one damn time the whole semester I got to sit down to play a game. If I didn’t have it by the time I left campus Tuesday night, I wouldn’t have time to get it until Sunday. No stores open on Thanksgiving (Thursday), Friday and Saturday were set aside for research expeditions to the New York Public Library. That left Sunday, the day I’d have to head back to campus anyway. So knowing this, I managed to get my roomate to drive up to a mall so I could get the game (he was as big a gamer as myself, so it was a mission understood). Got back in time to run to an evening class, and then, finally, when I got home about 10 I managed to play it for 40 minutes or so before passing out to wake up at 4 in the morning and play more. It was a good weekend, just relaxing enough to keep me level-headed for the research in the city and writing that came afterwards.

4

LoM is a fucking amazing game.

One of the games I wanted for years was Tactics Ogre. I was a big fan of the Ogre Battle series and when I was really young I saw pics and a preview on a sequel to Ogre Battle on the SNES in Nintendo Power. I used to have the phone numbers of 7 different game stores in Montreal when I was a kid and I regularly called them for years to know if they knew when it was going to be released because I really wanted to play it. Fast forward several years, it was re released on the PS1 and I bought one of the extremely rare copies (Atlus is known for very limited releases) by exchanging Wild Arms 1 and a damaged copy of Vandal Hearts that I had bought from a friend for 10 bucks. This game actually came out after FF Tactics and had aged pretty well. The graphics were SNES but not that bad, the music was by Sakimoto and Iwata, the massive scope and open endedness of the story compensated for the rudimentary difficulty of the game; it was hard if you were under leveled, easy if you weren’t. You just had to grind a level relatively quickly after every other fight (and its a big fucking game, so its quite a bit of grinding).

In the end, I was very happy with it and I am sad they haven’t fleshed it out that much more beyond Knight of Lodis on GBA and OB64. It was a solid franchise.

On a similar note, I’ve never played DQ4. The NES game was too ugly for me to stand. I really enjoyed DQ7 and when I saw the ad on the back for a remake of DQ4, I was thrilled. Then it never got released on PS1 in NA and I thought it had fallen into the abyss. But lo and behold, its coming out on DS within a week! I can’t wait.

I like to stay informed as to what is coming out when so I’ve never been in the situation SG and VE have been as I tended to have planned getting the product well in advance so that I could when it arrived. The closest I ever got to a story like that was renting the hell out of Secret of Mana, finishing it several times over and knowing the game inside out. My parents just bought it for me since they were sick of the 3 day rentals.

5

Heheh, I love the Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3(Secret of Mana 1 and 2) and also Secret of Evermore.

Okay, my story revolves around LoZ: OoT(we all know and love this game :D). Well, we got the game a few weeks after getting an N64, but that’s not the problem. A few years ago, about three weeks before getting a Gamecube and Metroid Prime, one of us spilled(don’t remember which of my brothers) on the N64 and basically killed it. So…I wasn’t able to play Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time anymore. >_<

Now, that’s not the end. About a year ago, my youngest brother brought OoT with him to my aunt’s house so we could play it again(she had a working N64 w/ expansion pack). So, I got a Zelda fix, but it didn’t last long. Just two months ago, my brother lost the game at that house and then my uncle took the N64 and all the N64 games, which included OoT! Worse thing is is that it happened just after we had found out the N64 at my house still works. For weeks now I have been trying to find a Master Quest or one of the Collection games, but with no luck.

…I feel like a failure.

My second story is happier. It revolves around Lufia II as VE’s does. About 8 years ago, when I still only had an SNES, my family rented SNES games from a local store. Some of the games we rented multiple times because they were so kick-a**! One of those games happened to be Lufia II. At the time I didn’t really know what it was, I just thought it was a normal, everyday good RPG, though no one could beat the game because of the puzzles, VE knows about them as well. Okay, back on track, well, Chrono Trigger kind’ve blocked my memory of the game for years.

So, about two years ago, after I had given up on beating Metroid Prime for awhile(I really suck at the plant boss battle >_<), I found out about ROMs and Emulators, so I decided to get a SNES RPG. That’s when I got Lufia II, and played it. At that moment I remember playing it years ago, but now I loved it. I got halfway through, but my computer crashed. A few months later I played again and beat it(still hate the Burning Bushes puzzle of Dragon Mountain). Then I replayed it and a few months ago I played again and beat it once before going into Replay Mode(4x Exp and Gold).

I…am…a…fragging Lufia Otaku!!! XD (Still have yet to beat Lufia III(at Pirate Cave) and I don’t much like Lufia I because of the slow walking in caves.)

6

Breath of Fire 2.

Back in the day, my parents had a policy of “you want it, you save to buy it”. I had a gamepro with part of the BoF2 solutions (+ the shaman transformations) and damn if it didn’t look great! I’d be looking at the magazine and then go play one of the games I had. By the time I had a real allowance, N64 had been announced and I spent it all on a N+Mario 64. Perhaps all my daydreaming about the game is what makes me think it has an atmosphere of a real world.

Then there are games I had played with friends, which I later wanted to replay on my own. That was the case with FFVII and Fallout. In Fallout, we played first time as a brute with Intelligence 3/10 who could only make incoherent noises instead of talking. Good times!

Somewhat tangentially, I’ve often had games which I lost and then really wanted to play again. Some of them worked out (Age of Empires) others not (Mischief Makers, Zelda:MM). I bought Majora’s Mask again, only to find out the controller had ceased working, and I’ve been waiting for a VC release ever since.

7

LoM is beautiful and inspiring, but leaves a lot to be desired in terms of gameplay.

The closest I can come to is either Xenogears or Wild ARMs 3, but neither of those were on my “want” list for more than about two years.

8

The only game I wanted for any length of time was Xenogears, and I only waited a few months for that…

9

That little bastard screwed you up something bad, huh? :smiley:

The PSX era didn’t really grab me for games; my brother and I got out of video games during high school (16-bit era) thanks to everything else going on, and I didn’t get back into it on my own budget until after the PS2 was released. I have a feeling I missed a lot of things!

Final Fantasy 2/4 was one for my brother and me - we had begged for the SNES for Christmas, and getting that was big enough. I think we both also reread that Nintendo Power coverage an indecent number of times! Anyway, the only times we really got games was for birthdays or Christmas, and we actually ended up getting FF 3/6 instead. The rest of the time we rented, and we did rent the hell out of 2/4. We never got to the moon on our rentals because some bastard would always erase our game… (that reminds me of another story about renting Final Fantasy before we actually got it, where someone had a great game going and had named their two Knights, one White Wizard, and one Black Wizard Butt, Head, Dick, and Weed respectively)… plus, we only got games on the weekend. So, anyway, it took years before we found out that FuSoYa existed! Finally, after my brother started college, he found a used cart and picked it up, and we still have it. Of course, now I have every other frackin’ version of the game.

When DQ4 is released this month I’ll be on Cloud 9 - seriously, one of my favorites, and I felt so gypped about the lack of a PSX remake here.

10

The only game that I ever had to wait for was Legend of Legaia, for the Playstation. I had rented it for a while, but never bought it then. After a while I ended up thinking about it again, and decided I wanted it. But nowhere had a copy of it anymore.

So I decided to look on eBay, but the only copies I could ever find were American ones, and being over here in England that wouldn’t work for me.
After a couple of years, I was randomly searching eBay, and found a copy of the game. So I bought it, and I didn’t mind having to pay the price of a new game for it, since I actually enjoy it. And still do.

11

Ogre Battle 64.

I remember it being previewed in Nintendo Power and I nearly crapped my pants. I have been waiting forever for another Ogre Battle game. Despite its many delays I finally got ahold of it the next Christmas it came out. I loved the game itself but I thought it was too hard, even when I abused the item duplication bug so I never finished it. I still have it stowed away somewhere, maybe I’ll give it another go.

12

The only problem I have with LoM is it’s way too easy.

I wanted FFVI for a long time when I was little, but the SNES cart was $100. I didn’t get it until it came out on PSX, after renting it countless times.

The only game I wanted for any length of time was Xenogears, and I only waited a few months for that…
I STILL haven’t played a single Xeno game.

13

I’ve started Xenogears and XenoSaga, but they didn;t quite hold my interest. Although I found it hilarious that this military operation ship had a couple of grown men wanting to play fucking tag.

I never did make it to the bridge… got distracted by mini-games, stupid people, and way too many e-mails. I think it’d be hilarious if the point of the entire game is just tot ry and get to the bridge… and when you do, the game ends.

14

Let’s see, here’s an odd one: SaGa Frontier, my favorite RPG.

From the minute I played the game on a rental when I was 12, I KNEW I had to have that game. No amount of begging made it come any faster, though (was NOT too proud to beg at age 12). Finally, they did get it for me for my 13th birthday, which was nice.

…If only that were the end of the story. See, when my bro and I were alternating between two games on the Playstation, we’d put the other game on top of the lid instead of back in its case. Well, sometimes my mom would decide it’s time to clean our shit for us, which we hated - it means she was gonna relocate our stuff and not remember where she put it. Fuck. :confused: So, she did this one day (I was 14 at this time) when SaGa Frontier was on the lid. I only found it several months later, at the bottom of a box. It was only several months later AFTER that, when I tried playing it again, that I realized it had been broken; there was a very fine split all the way from the edge of the disc into the center - so fine that I didn’t even notice it all those months ago! So, there went that.

About two years later, I found a used copy at a rental store to be bought. I bought it, and some parts played fine, but there were a lot of parts that wouldn’t even load, so I could only play so far into any scenario before it just froze all the time. Shit.

Some months later, I was talking to one of my random friends in band class about it, and he was like “Oh yeah, I have that game? You can have it, but I don’t know if it works anymore.” Apparently his little brother used to scratch up discs, and he might have scratched up this one. Well, I greedily accepted anyways…and, it didn’t work. Shit.

Not long after that, for some STUPID reason, I decided to get on eBay and buy an Import copy. I think was the idea that maybe there was something in the Japanese version that wasn’t in the American version. Well, there wasn’t anything new, so now I had a mint condition IMPORT copy of the game. Augh.

FINALLY, a year or two later (I was 18, and in my first semester at Junior College), my best friend, also a big gamer, just bought me a copy for Christmas. This copy still works just fine, and I still play it a lot every summer. I even worked on the shrine a whole bunch this summer, finishing up the last walkthrough, and revising the other ones.

So yeah, I went without my favorite game for about four years. What a painful four years that was. :confused:

15

This would have to have been xenogears for me. I looked for it off and on for years, having played the demo that came with parasite eve in 98. Then somewhere around 2002 I found a few copies in an EB, but I didn’t have any cash on me (I was 15 on a day trip with my parents, but they wouldn’t loan me the money till we got back). The following week we returned to find that they had sold all but the shelf copy, which was missing the case but I didn’t care (plus they knocked 10bux off the price). I played the hell out of that, running through it about 3 times before I graduated high school.

16

Hah. I had such GOOD luck finding Xenogears - I found it like new at a MUSIC TRADER of all places for 13 dollars. Of course I bought it. :stuck_out_tongue:

17

Oh geez. I’ve got dozens.

The biggest one was FF VI which I rented repeatedly but could never afford (though I did the same with Super Metroid though my brother ended up getting that one). I got to the point where in three days I could start a new file, get all the way to the WoR, and complete most of the sidequests (only Wrex Soul gave me any real trouble before I figured out how to beat him or at least remember about the X-zone trick) When I saw the advert for FF Anthology on the back of FF VIII’s instruction booklet I, for a lack of a better phase, became ecstatic. Once I got Anthology I dabbled a bit with FF VI, then with V, then took the plunge with VI again until I finally finished it.

As a fan of SoM when it first came out I naturally jumped at the chance to own LoM. At first I was disappointed when I found out that it had almost nothing in common SoM (being a poorly explained, slow-moving, side-scrolling, one-player brawler didn’t help things either). But once I played though the Jumi and the Faerie War storylines I was hooked. I have one file that’s seen multiple play-thrus with my main at Lv 99, a pet Land Dragon at Lv 90 something, armed with an Admamatium 1h-sword at 156 (or more) power, with every skill and special move learned, I’ve played through all three modes (somehow), and so on… I even rented SaGa Frontier 2 (which I also enjoyed and should get someday) just so that I could fight that hidden boss.

Another game that comes to mind was Mega Man X. Yet another game which I rented excessively in the hopes of beating it, but I’d always get stuck on Sigma’s final form. Worse still I kept asking my parents every Christmas to get it and every Christmas I got some other game (though to be fair the games I got for those Xmas’ were Mario Paint '92, Star Fox and SoM '93, Illusion of Gaia '94, DKC2 '95, and Yoshi’s Island for '96).

18

Can’t really say I waited years for any game (except maybe MGS2), but there’s a few game I anticipated months before they even came out in the US.

But first, a little story for everyone. Back in the day, (16-bit and below) I got the majority of my games for free. This came about as my dad worked for Montgomery Wards and he was the warehouse manager. So whenever people would bring back their “defective” games, he couldn’t really resell them, so I’d end up getting them instead. So I ended up getting literally a shitload of games (NES, SNES, Genesis, GB, Game Gear, Super Game Boy, and even a 32X that didn’t work). I would say about 95% of the games I got were good and even had the instruction booklets. But, after the N64 and PSX came out, Wards went bankrupt and no more free games for me.

Back to the subject at hand…Disgaea 2 and Tales of Symphonia, I waited months before they came out and nabbed them the 1st day they were out. Another game I waited very graciously on was Pokemon G/S. I must’ve been following those games for months before they even came out. Finally, I had waited a good couple of years before I got LoZ:LttP for my SNES. Played it years ago at a friends house, but could never find it in stores. Then I saw it one day some years later and picked it up. Fun times were had.

19

The game I looked for the most was Earthworm Jim for the SNES. I don’t think I ever found it either. I rented it lots of times, despite never getting past the water level. I even got upset when I went to rent it once and found out the video store’s copy was damaged. I ended up getting EWJ2, but it was no EWJ. Still wonky though.
My friend has a copy for the PC though so I ended up borrowing it from him then and beat the PC version, which ended up having extra levels anyways (the Genesis “Intestinal Distress” and the big red dinosaur level).

I saw it for GBA too but I heard the port was horrible… so I’d rather not. I still have a burned copy for the PC though so I can always play that.

20

Well, it’s wierd having a few SNES games other people don’t. For example, I have Illusion of Gaia, Super Metroid, DKC1, Secret of Evermore(lovely game) and about 40 others. I know for a fact that you guys probably have more, but meh, I don’t think anyone here has Skulljagger. :stuck_out_tongue: