Your Biggest Retro-Gaming Mistake

[RetroDefense]

1) In my youth, purchasing a SMS instead of a NES. There are many fine gems on the SMS - don't get me wrong - and I'm very fond of the system. But buying a SMS on the promise of an 8-bit Afterburner port was not the best idea.

2) Years ago, a local Toys R Us eventually began blowing out their Saturn stock for cheap. With $20 in my pocket, my options were Street Fighter Alpha ($10), Street Fighter Alpha 2 ($10), and Panzer Dragoon Saga ($20). I still think about it every time Ryu is kicking my arse.

3) Selling Golden Axe Warrior (SMS), Ghouls n Ghosts (SMS), and Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn).

[miketheratguy]

Man, some of these necro jobs are crazy. But I love it! It's fun to see some threads that I wasn't around to participate in the first time around.

I don't have many gaming regrets, retro or otherwise. A few bad rentals here and there, sure, but thanks to my picky nature I've managed to stay mostly on the positive side regarding gaming purchases. Still, it hasn't been a perfect record. I'll never forget stumbling onto the knowledge that Mortal Kombat II, my favorite game in the series, was ported to the Sega Saturn. Being that the best version available (that I was aware of) was for the SNES, an awesome machine but one that was nonetheless technologically inferior, I sprang forward to get my hands on a used Saturn. This was around the year 2001 so the system was still kind of in the valley of that pendulum swing between "no one wants this" and "it's an expensive collectible". I made some calls and found out that a Funco in Gurnee, Illinois - 45 minutes away - had a used Saturn sitting around. I had just three more questions: Do you also have a copy of MKII, have you ever played it, and if so, how does it compare to the arcade version? The answers were "yes", "yes", and "arcade-perfect". That was it. I was sold. I drove on down that same day and excitedly paid my fifty bucks or so to pick up the system, plus probably a tenner for MKII. I got it home, hooked it up, and my first reaction was "The graphics are great"! Then, a few seconds later, my second thought was "What the hell is up with the sound?"

MKII for the Sega Saturn was most certainly not arcade-perfect. It looked nice and sharp, sure, and I seem to recall that it played about the same, but the audio sucked. Lots of the sound effects were good, but others were missing entirely. Shao Kahn (the announcer) didn't say "Round 1" or "flawless victory" or even "Joe Blow wins". Other voices, like some of Raiden's garbled yells, were gone. The music sounded like a blippy MIDI remix and sometimes kept playing when it shouldn't have, yet also had the tendency to cut out completely during the fatalities. The music during the "climbing the tower" next opponent segment was changed altogether (to something much worse).

Long story short the game looked good but sounded like shit. I also hadn't anticipated having to wait through load times whenever Shang Tsung morphed, something that was true of the Playstation but that system's Mortal Kombat game was much more advanced than this was. This was honestly like a Sega CD game. I felt pretty disappointed, and I don't think I touched the system again after that week. I don't even know where it's at right now. Probably a storage box somewhere.

Probably my BIGGEST gaming regret though? Dropping 70 bucks on the SNES version of Samurai Shodown. It was such a total impulse buy. I liked the game in the arcade, but never really loved it. MKII was my baby. But one day when I was 16 I hopped a bus to the local Kmart for something to do. Lo and behold there was the game, now available on the SNES. I hadn't expected it, I didn't know that the game was out yet. And right then and there I thought "I can be playing Samurai Shodown at my house! RIGHT NOW"! And boom. Almost every remaining dollar of my last paycheck (last one as in "final", since Wal-Mart fired me two weeks before) was gone in a flash. I left the house with about $75 bucks to my name and boom, just like that, now I was broke.

I distinctly recall walking outside the store and sitting on the bench outside to wait for the bus. In my solitude, away from the beckoning shine of the various products on the store shelves, I had time to collect my thoughts. All I could think was "This might not have been a good idea".

[lalalei2001]

This is, hands-down, THE dumbest thing I've ever done. I bought a cartridge copy of Shantae, brand new, when it first came out...

And later either lost it, gave it away, or sold it to a store for being too hard. (The only reason I even beat the first dungeon was thanks to Nintendo Power #153.)

At least I finally beat the game on Virtual Console.

[bostonpops]

My biggest mistake was leaving my massive collection of video game mags (GamePros, EGMs, Nintendo Powers, etc) in Texas after I moved away.  My sister cleaned house one afternoon 13 years ago or so and THREW THEM ALL OUT.  I still haven't forgiven her, but this site does a lot to ease the pain.

[DemigodRob]

Before retro game collecting really took off I found a boxed Jaguar in a thrift store for dirt cheap. I looked at it, put it down, then started to look at something else, some kid grabbed it and asked his mom if he could have it. I just let it go. To this day haven't found a replacement.

[honkbahh]

Throwing away boxes and manuals!

[CombustoDragon]

Selling my Sega Genesis and Super NES for Yard Sale.. i hate that cr@p! 

 

at least i keep my PS2 forever. no one mess with my PS2 or i will freak out like this-

 

 

 

[MetalJuggalo]

If i could turn back the hands of time i would have never NEVER EVER had traded my Sega Saturn in High School ... Don't get me wrong i got another Saturn (luckily) some of the games back (NiGHTS into Dreams, Daytona USA, NBA Jam TE, Virtua Fighter 2) some I havent (Astal being a big one) but luckily I learned and also realized the joys of Importing which helps a load (Fighters Megamix, Panzer Dragoon, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei , House of The Dead & Clockwork Knight being the ones coming from overseas)

[giorgaras]

Not buying Certain NES games when I had the chance

[Alex1]

After keeping NES and SNES boxes and manuals for years I left to college only to have a spring cleaning undo all that. And now years later seeing the value they could have been.

[dc2142]

Selling all my old systems and games off.  When I moved from Pennsylvania to Nevada I didn't wanna take everything with me so I sold most of them off for cheap to friends or game stores.  The only thing I kept was my Playstation since it was 2001 and they were still releasing games for it.  I wish I would have kept at least my Saturn or some of the SNES and NES games but at the time I wasn't thinking about it.

[daven000]

If I could take back one stupid mistake only it would definitely be getting rid of all my old game stuff. NES, SNES, PSX, tons of games, tons of RPGs, tons of issues of Nintendo Power, EGM, Game Players, etc. I figured I wouldn't care about them anymore and that it would be stupid to cling to old stuff when I could be playing next gen games. Little did I know that I would grow to have a large disinterest in the direction that the gaming industry took itself in, and that I would have a better time sticking to the classics.

 

If I could just isolate one especially stupid moment it would be selling Chrono Trigger CIB to a friend for only $30 back in 1996 so I could afford a new console.

[coolisami]

I still kick myself for lending Final Fantasy VII to my friend in elementary school. I remember him begging me so much to lent him the game on the bus to home. So I gave it to him. And each week would pass he would tell me something about the condition of the game. Things like, "oh my nephew tore the manual" eventually I got the game back in a really sad condition. Discs 2 and 3 would fall from the case. not to mention how scratched the the discs are, cutscenes would stutter a lot of the time,  and sometimes it would just hang. I swore not to lend him any other game. I didn't get rid of the game though I still have it lol