Missed Opportunities?

[hizzy]

Are there games - games you saw in-store, games you could have bought on line - that you passed on and now you regret it? I could have picked up the recent Pink Panther reissue and passed. Now, I regret that like crazy. I also wish I would have picked up Spies in the Night with a box. I stupidly passed on that. Had a chance to get Polo in box and took a pass and I regret that, too. I also should have got the limited edition of Lady Bug. That cart in the Coleco style is cool as hell.  What are your missed 2600 connections?

[HoshiChiri]

1- I found a complete copy of Suikoden 2 at Gamestop, back when they still carried them. It was worth around $200 at the time, and was marked at $50. I couldn't afford it, and it was gone by payday. That actually worked out in the long run, as a series of lucky finds let me piecemeal a complete copy for $30 over the course of a couple years.

 

2- Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney. It had that weird bit where it was on the pricey side- same deal, Gamestop got one in & I couldn't afford it, gone by payday. This is the one that spurred me to set aside an emergency chunk for this kind of situation. Once again, worked out since it was reissued later.

 

3- Solatorobo. Passed on so many cheap copies in the area, waiting for it to go just a biiiit cheaper... then it sold out & I couldn't get it. Paid the new, inflated price at a con this summer. *sigh*

 

4- Pokémon Mini Lot. Chikorita green console, yellow official zipper case, and a couple games, Ebay auction for $30. I got sick & forgot to bid, it only went to like $35. I try not to think about this kind of thing too often, it's bound to happen- no need to make myself feel bad!

[+davidcalgary29]

Ok, this isn’t 2600 specific, but I remember finding the starship edition of Starcross and full-mask Suspended for the A8 in the bargain bin of some store in 1984 for less than ten bucks apiece. I passed, because I was 11 or 12 and wanted to play Dig Dug. Ugh...

 

I also missed out on a box for Princess Rescue. Got the cart and manual, though...

[hizzy]

I'm surprised no one has said they regret missing out on Boulder Dash!

[+-^CrossBow^-]

For me it was about 15 years ago or so? There was a used video game store here in town that carried just about everything at the time. They had a smallish selection of 2600/5200/7800 games and honestly charged too much for them at the time. I can remember them asking like $10 for Pitfall! as an example. But they had one cart that was in a blue shell that was shaped like an activision cart and appeared to have a 5.25" dot matrix printed label on it that said Demon Attack I believe? I wondered what the heck it was but passed because I already had Demon Attack and I figured it was some odd mis-mash cart put together by someone from back in the day when their original demon attack cart had gotten broken. It was like $10 as well as I recall and I passed on it not knowing anything about it.

 

Then...like a year later a fellow AA member who also lived here, made a post that they had picked up a strange blue cartridge from a local shop and wondered if anyone knew anything about it...

 

Well, needless to say, that was when we all learned about the Xante carts.

 

That AA member would eventually move out of state and I don't know if he kept that Xante demon attack cart or sold it. But you can believe that had I known what it was then, I'd have grabbed it right up. But I was new in the collecting scene still and didn't know anything about these carts at the time.

 

@EricDeLee I hope you still have that blue beauty that I let slip past me so many years ago....?

 

[+TwentySixHundred]

1) Desert Strike, Jungle Strike and Urban Strike all for SNES and all at the same gametraders on the shelf. I had the money to buy them at 25AUD a piece yet ended up deciding ill just buy Desert Strike then come back next week and buy the other two. They were gone and kicked myself ever since.

 

2) Many years of my childhood i had Bezerk for the 2600, i was told by my uncle it wouldn't work as we didn't have the paddles. He was thinking it was Breakout so i always kept the game aside. I decided one day to throw it in out of curiosity to atleast see the title screen only to discover, it worked just fine with joysticks...

 

3) Nothing too spectacular but probably 10 years ago i went to cashconverters (like a pawn shop) and found a 7800 with all cables and some games for $15. Wasn't an overly popular system here and the PSU is ultra rare now, kinda wish i picked it up.

 

4) Would have to be the NTSC SNES found at another pawn shop. This was before youtube and other popular media sites id say around 2003 when i found this SQUARE SNES with PURPLE switches! I really should have picked this thing up as proof more then anything. When id tell friends about it they would look at me strange like i was yanking their chain. Found out later on the internet it was the North American design lol.

 

It's amazing how sheltered of a life we lived without the internet we know of today

[high voltage]

In Germany I saw Rainbow Walker (A8) at the computer shop for approx. $15. I didn't buy it. 

 

A Computershop in UK had 10 Boing! (VCS) cib slanted top, lined up in the shop window, selling for £1 each!!!.

I only purchased one, which I later sold with my original collection, bummer...

[schuwalker]

My worst offender would have to be Swordquest: Waterworld at K&B toys

 

Another miss is Nes Black Box series - looking at you Stack Up. 

 

As far as 16-bit goes, I did miss out on SNES Mega Man x3. Rented and thought it was meh, should've purchased since I have the previous two. Dracula X is another SNES I missed out on. Don't know why that slipped through my radar. Now the Genesis it would have to be Crusader of Centy - good lord those prices! I rented that on a whim from Blockbuster and really enjoyed it. Guess I did make up for it and bought Musha bitd at our local mall.

[Keatah]

7 hours ago, hizzy said:

I'm surprised no one has said they regret missing out on Boulder Dash!

 

Well, IMHO, I believe that if something is utterly unobtainable it tends to fall off the radar. People are not going to waste time waiting around. And when it does come around (ebay sale) most of us won't be able to afford it.

 

So we're just gonna chase after games that are realistically priced and here today. I'm not interested in bellyaching over something. I'd just rather go play!

Edited August 3, 2019 by Keatah

[BONEMAN]

I also saw Swordquest Waterworld at KB Toys and passed on it. 12-15 years later, I paid about $200 for it loose.

[hizzy]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

 

Well, IMHO, I believe that if something is utterly unobtainable it tends to fall off the radar. People are not going to waste time waiting around. And when it does come around (ebay sale) most of us won't be able to afford it.

 

So we're just gonna chase after games that are realistically priced and here today. I'm not interested in bellyaching over something. I'd just rather go play!

 

I don't think it was unobtainable. There were 250 copies and they took forever to sell. There must be someone who looks back and wishes they grabbed a copy when they were dying on the vine.

[Albert]

23 minutes ago, hizzy said:

 

I don't think it was unobtainable. There were 250 copies and they took forever to sell. There must be someone who looks back and wishes they grabbed a copy when they were dying on the vine.

Just to clarify, it took about a year to sell all those copies, which isn’t bad.  There’s definitely some demand for the game currently, for various reasons (always new people coming into the hobby, or people now interested in Boulder Dash that missed it previously, or people who can now afford it and previously they were unable to, maybe finally saw a review of the game and are interested in it, etc.)

 

 ..Al

[+Starwander]

Biggest regret was that I didn't bid more on the sealed copy of Stadium Events that sold for around $3500 many years ago. Really wish I bought this now. 

[jaybird3rd]

The missed opportunity that stands out the most in my mind involves a part-time job that I had when I was about thirteen years old, working for my Dad at a secondhand computer store called Second Byte Computers in Dover, NJ.  The store began as an outlet to resell working electronic scrap from Rockaway Recycling, where my Dad worked at the time.  He and I often say that we wish we had a time-traveling truck that we could take back to that store, because some of that "scrap" would now be considered rare collector's items.

 

I had a part-time weekend job in the warehouse, where I spent my time dismantling nonworking electronics, pulling EPROM chips and dot-matrix print heads and other resalable components.  I got to see some incredible old gear in that warehouse: stacks of DEC Rainbow machines, dedicated word processors (Wang, IBM DisplayWrite, etc.), mainframes, a variety of CP/M systems, and even some old punch-card machines.  I also got to visit the showroom where the best stuff was on display, and I got to see the newest PC gear at the time, along with loads of 80s home computers and games.  I could go on forever about that showroom, which was filled with treasures: stacks of Coleco product, a couple of Osborne machines, boxes of Timex/Sinclair machines, lots of Commodores, and even some Atari 2600 product.  I bought as much as I could afford—including an Atari 800, a Cromemco C10, and lots of TI 99/4A stuff, most of which I still have today—but I've wished ever since that I could have bought much more.  A lot of that stuff probably ended up in the garbage or back at the scrap yard, which is a shame.

[KevKelley]

Not too long ago I came across an eBay auction of a bunch of rare colecovision games. The lot was of pretty much all the Xonox games. Some were in rough shape (but those were the ones I already had). I just finished a huge round of buying so I was debating what was a ridiculously low price (I think around 60-70 for 8 or so games). In the time it took me to debate buying it someone else snagged it. 

[Tickled_Pink]

I have no regrets!

 

* Sobs over his beer *