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Gaming on a Budget, Part 1: A Personal History
By Marc | January 13, 2009
Welcome to a short series about being a cheap frugal gamer. This first part is a short history of my experiences with video game consoles.
Old as Dirt
I’ve been playing video games since my parents brought home a Pong-like console they purchased at a garage sale. It had probably a dozen monochromatic games on it and paddles about the size and shape of toilet paper tubes. My sister and I played that thing into the ground.
A few years later, they bought an old six switch Atari 2600 and ten or so games, also at a garage sale. One night I remember playing “Donkey Kong” until early the next morning to try to beat the game. It wasn’t until I beat level 99 that I realized there was no ending to this version; it just kept alternating the same two screens with increasing difficulty.
Some time later, I had $40 to spend on something and I bought my first “new” videogame. I whittled my choices down to “Kangaroo” and “Swordquest: Earthworld”; I chose poorly. The Swordquest series is the biggest waste of time and money I have ever seen. You had to solve puzzles in “rooms” based on Zodiac signs. If you beat one of the games and found the secret password, you still had to buy the other three games to get the full effect and vie for the chance to win money. Whenever I look to purchase a game I know nothing about, I think of that time.
An 8-Bit Friend
My family stopped buying systems for us after that. The original Nintendo came out late in my high school “career” and it was far too expensive when we still had a perfectly good Atari. My friend, Joe, had one though. I would go to his house and watch him beat the Super Mario games and about any other games that would hold my attention. I know what you’re thinking, what a jerk not letting me take the controller. But lots of times, I would rather watch someone play a game than play them myself. I like to play video games, but I’m only about mediocre at them, so I don’t consider myself a “gamer”, but merely a fan and participant.
16-Bits, Stoners, and Drunken Sailors.
When the Super Nintendo came out, I was a college dropout and unemployed. One of my roommates had one and played “Final Fantasy II” (actually IV) while getting stoned with his friends. He let me play it while he was at work until I got my own job.
In the Navy, I bought a Nintendo Gameboy and a Sega Genesis. The Gameboy was fairly new at the time, but I had heard lots of good things about it and invested wisely. The Genesis was nearing the end of its lifecycle, so I think I paid around $100 new.
32/64-Bit Style
A couple of years later, the Sony Playstation came into my life. It had been out for a couple of years by then and so I got it for about $150, along with “Final Fantasy VII”, one of the best games ever created.
Then, Julie and I purchased a Nintendo 64 after playing it often at her sister’s house. We knew it was fun enough for a group of people to play and had a host of party-type games, so when we saw it on sale for around 80 bucks, we snatched one up and got some of the games we enjoyed playing.
The 128-Bit Generation
The next few things I did were maybe my biggest mistakes. I pre-ordered the Playstation 2 (PS2) and one of the launch games. The PS2 turned out to be a good system, but I spent $300 on it when I could have waited a while when the price dropped to $200, and also waited for Sony to work the bugs out of the system or at least wait for the first wave of reviews. The pre-order game, “Summoner”, was decent enough with a good long story, but it was kind of buggy and at times really ugly.
Some of the games I bought for a while were good and some were complete wastes of $50. One of the games I asked for (and received) as a gift was “Shadow of Destiny”. It was actually a pretty neat game with branching storylines, sort of like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. But the thing could be completed within an evening, including all six endings. After you get that done, there’s really no use playing it again, so it collected dust.
Then came my Dreamcast. Sega had decided to get out of the console-making industry and focus on software for other systems. Since they were discontinued, I was able to get one for $50 new and some games for as low as a buck at Best Buy since they were trying to make room for newer stock. I eventually had a dozen or so games, none of which I spent more than ten dollars each.
No Newer Bits
Somewhere in there, Julie got me my own Super Nintendo at Target that came with “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past”. An awesome investment because it’s classic with a classic game. Within a few weeks, they were no longer available.
Then, I traded in the Dreamcast (and games), the old Playstation (except for a few favorite games), a broken PS2, and a bunch of PS2 games either too violent for children or no longer fun. For them I got a used Nintendo Gamecube, a handful of kid-friendly games, an extra controller, and a memory card.
We don’t own any of the newest generation of systems. We still get lots of use out of what we have and don’t need to spend the money on the newer stuff when it could be used for something we need. Also, since I’m a father of two (soon to be three), I really don’t have all that time or money I used to have to play as often as I’d like, so I have to think of value.
What does this little story show?
- Who cares if you’re the only kid on the block without the hottest console? Fun doesn’t come from having the newest and the best.
- In most cases, my biggest mistakes came from paying full price without knowing what I was really buying.
- Waiting for lower prices and more product reviews makes a wiser consumer.
Stay tuned for part 2 of “Gaming on a Budget”: buying new.
Topics: Miscellaneous, Tutorials | 3 Comments »
January 13th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Man I have to totally agree with you that Final Fantasy VII was awesome. I had it on PC in college and me and my roommate played it through. Loved it. He would spent time at the apartment when I wasn’t there just racing Chocobos trying to breed the best one he could.
Ah, memories.
I will wait for the end of your two-parter for more comments ;o)
January 13th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I bought Sword Quest and experienced my first brush with buyers remorse. FF7 never caught my eye, though it was good looking. Now, World of Warcraft. Its amazing how far we have come technically. Kids got it good today, back in my day you had to stare at a block and pretend it was a warrior. Now they look amazing.
P.S. Aiden’s friend from class was amazed at your drawing. You are a hero to a segment of the fourth grade class.
January 14th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Thanks for the comments, guys. I like where games are going and I really love to relive older memories. I used to have a guide to raising gold chocobos and once actually got one.
I wonder how many people got ripped off by Sword Quest? Are there statistics with numbers comparing those people with disgruntled postal workers?
I’m flattered I could impress Aiden’s friends. I’m glad they like it.