Selling Games

Selling Games

(This suggestion provided by @xexyzx)

Have you ever sold a game? If so, why?

I’ve always maintained that I have never actually sold any games, ever, aside from one which I traded in (more on that later), but I when I sat and had a proper think about it I remembered that wasn’t actually true: I have sold games before. A long time ago.

When I asked for Sega Mega Drive for Christmas, my parents said I could have one if I paid for half of it. In order to make some money to do this, I held a garage sale and sold some of my stuff. Not a lot of stuff, and unimportant stuff (to me) at the time, but crucially it included some games. I can’t remember any of them. There was a small number of Spectrum tapes, in a box almost exactly like this:

Cassette Case
Image from here

I think most of them were probably Crash or Sinclair User cover tapes. I kept all my Your Sinclair ones, but never had any affection for the other, lesser, magazines so they were probably those that went.

In addition, I sold what I would later realise was some variant of the Magnavox Odyssey 2, which I’d picked up not that long previously from a carboot sale, with a couple of games. One was some sort of Pac-Man clone, but I don’t recall the other. Possibly a space shooter? It’s likely. I’ve since bought an Odyssey 2 (or rather, a Philips G7000) again though.

Anecdote: The Odyssey 2 was sold to a neighbour, who called me round a few days later to complain the console had stopped working. I assumed it’d be something like a cable was unplugged or they needed to retune their TV (ah, RF!) or something, but on arriving I just couldn’t figure it out. The power was working, it appeared to be outputting something to the TV, but neither game cartridge actually operated correctly.

I asked if it had broken while they were using it, or had they just turned it on and it hadn’t worked, and the dad of the family replied with “Warl, they war[ref]Norfolk, innit[/ref] playun it and ee (gestures to one of the kids) poured cahfee[ref]Norfolk for coffee[/ref] in the ‘ole there (points at cartridge slot). War that that than?”.

Yes. Yes that war.

Anyway, the game that I had remembered I’d traded in I’ve lamented about here, there and everywhere for many years. It remains the only game I have ever regretted buying and, paradoxically, also the one I regret selling. I’ve since bought it again. Which game?

World of Illusion

World of Illusion for the Sega Mega Drive. When it came out, I’d just reached £45 in my pocket money savings and because it had some fantastic reviews, and I hadn’t yet realised that all 16bit Disney games were terrible[ref]They are, this is a Fact[/ref], I bought it from a local games shop (remember them? All gone now) without a second thought.

Within 4 hours of getting it home, I’d rinsed it.

One of the big selling points of World of Illusion was that it was two player, but also that you could play as Mickey or Donald separately (with slightly different levels for each). I sat down and completed it on my first go with Mickey. Then I did the same with Donald. “Well this is a bit too easy,” I thought to myself for probably the first time ever with a game.

I then played two player with a friend who’d just watched me play through it alone twice. And even though he was useless, we finished it in co-op on our first try together too. I was terribly, terribly disappointed. The game was so easy, it was ruined.

Just for fun (because I’d had none), I decided to play it in two player again, only on my own. I controlled Mickey with my hands, and Donald with my feet. And again, completed it on my first attempt. I was almost in tears at all that pocket money being utterly wasted on such utter crap. £45 for less than 4 hours of gameplay.

So I took it right back to the shop and traded it in for the cheaper (they wouldn’t just let me have a refund, sadly) Lemmings. A game which lasted me years and I wish I’d bought in the first place.

I never sold a game after that. But boy did I buy a lot.

(Featured image is from here, is unmodified, and used under this licence)

0 Comments

  1. I don’t think I’ve ever sold a game either.* I did, as I’ve mentioned many times on CSS, lose a 48K Speccy+ to a “friend” who “borrowed” it about 25 years ago, but I’ve never sold anything.

    Although, coincidentally, I was browsing second-hand prices online just last night after I realised I could get about £15 for my copy of Bishi-Bashi Special on the PS1. Which isn’t exactly a fortune, but still probably way more than I paid for it, since I’ve only paid full-price for about three games since 1990 and didn’t even have a PS1 when it was current: a friend of mine gave me his after he upgraded to the PS2. So I may not even have paid for it at all. Unfortunately, it turns out most of my other games are worth – no exaggeration – about 30p. I could make more than that – I have done – selling Steam trading cards. Oh well…

    Actually, there’s a good one for a future post: what game that you own do you think is worth the most? And – since this is the sort of thing that was going through my head last night – what’s the very last one you’d consider selling, regardless of price? (Well, okay, obviously not regardless; if someone offered me ten grand for my copy of P.N.03 I wouldn’t have to think too hard, but you know what I mean: a realistic market price.)

    *Actually, the “either” there doesn’t make any sense, does it? I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever sold a game at all.

    Duncan Snowden
    1. There seems to be a thought at the moment that old games are currently the cheapest they’ve been for a long time, so £15 for Bishi Bashi is probably a fair bit lower than its going rate a few years ago. I’ve not noticed this trend myself as I’ve not been buying retro games much in the last 4-5 years (aside from an Atari Lynx a couple of month ago). If true, I wonder why it is?

      Maybe emulation? Maybe rereleases? Maybe people just can’t be bothered with them any more? Who knows.

      Your suggestions duly noted too, thanks 🙂

      deKay

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