How did people get used games outside of yard sales and pawn shops before Funcoland and the internet? Were you simply fucked if you wanted a game more than 2-3 years old?
>>12339073In the case of 80s microcomputers, games had a longer shelf life and were also often rereleased (sometimes in packs/compilations). Otherwise you could just copy the tape from one of your mates.
>>12339073The used game market didn't really become a big thing until the late 90s or so. I've read blogs from guys who used to work at Electronics Boutique and they had a very flexible return policy - to the point where people took advantage of it and basically used the store for free rentals. I believe they'd just put returned games back on the shelf and sell them as new.Anyway if you wanted something out of print, yeah your best bet was probably flea markets or maybe something like a K-Mart which would often have outdated merch sitting on the shelf for years. Toys R Us had a huge selection and you could sometimes find older stuff there. Generally though it was pretty tough. If you played Mega Man 3 and decided you wanted to try out the original, you might be fucked.
>>12339073Borrowed games from friends or rented them at Blockbuster
I bought an NES game, brand new, in 1998 in a regular store which had a video game aisle.
>>12339073mom & pop game stores and mail order.
>>12339084>mail orderthis!
local stores were happy to give you $10 for your 50 stack of old games that are now worth $1000
>>12339073>and the internet?Was everyone here born last year or something?
>>12339083We had a mid size toy store in my town and they had a bunch of brand new Dr. Marios and some top loader NESes as late as 1999. I managed to get a Dr. Mario but didn't have the foresight to pick up all the toploaders.
>>12339073i found a wet plastic bag full of ps1 games from blockbuster in an alley once.
>>12339073You could buy them from people you know. People used to do a lot more inter-personal sales among each other. Now it seems to have become a bit strange? Maybe I'm out of the loop...
>>12339114>People used to do a lot more inter-personal sales among each other.>Now it seems to have become a bit strange? Maybe I'm out of the loop...I don't understand it either, you'd think it would be more prevalent now that "everyone" is a gamer (but that's ignoring the digital sales of games these days)
>>12339114i dont remember actually buying games from friends but loaning at school>hey did you remember to bring <game>>aw i forgot>aw fuck
>>12339110were they good ones?
>>12339073The 7 mile fair was a giant flea market that had a used video game store that predated funcoland and was where my family got it's copy of SMB2.
>>12339073>Were you simply fucked if you wanted a game more than 2-3 years old?No because the 2-3 year old games were still being sold new
>>12339109Based. I got a sealed copy of Star Tropics in a KB Toys clearance bin around that time.
>>12339137not really. it was mostly sports games and heart of darkness. i was like a 13 year old edgelord at the time so the little kid on the cover with his dog seemed "gay" to me and i didnt play it much
>>12339168>KB Toys clearance bini loved these bins. back then it was spelled kay bee toys. i remember buying the piece of shit FX Fighter from them but also Trog which i loved
>>12339168I got a copy of Mystical Ninja out of a KB bin for 20 dollars in the summer of 1994. One of my best purchases as a child.
>>12339109I bought a NES top loader in the mid 90's along with the re-release of Metroid. I still have the box and receipt. They were only $50 brand new back then. I definitely have always preferred it over the other model which always had tons of issues loading games properly
>>12339084This. There were plenty of used movie/game stores you could find locally that were not a part of a national chain.
>>12339152>joy boy clubThe fuck.
>tfw born 2003>tfw never got to shop at funcoland
>>12339079>Toys R Us had a huge selection and you could sometimes find older stuff there.I remember back in what I assume was 2007-2008 I found a copy of Mario Kart Super Circuit at a Toys R Us. Still have it.
>>12339172>>12339171great tales, thanks anons>>12339213I was born in 88 and never did either, they were pretty regional
>>12339216it was perfectly normal to see sealed GBA games for sale until around 2008 or 2009
>>12339131Yes we did that a lot too, but I also bought games from friends and family for $10-20. In school I went around to every classmate asking what games they owned at home, then pestered them to borrow them if they were interesting.
>>12339226CVS near me still had some as late as 2019.
>>12339073When the Playstation and Saturn were out and N64 looming, I was still on an NES. I'd scour any local video store for NES games they were selling. It's how I was able to pick up Starship Hector and Totally Rad-- by that point the store was asking like a dollar for each game.
>>12339073Pawn shops and friends saved the day.
I bought final fantasy IV from a used games bin for $10. Electronics Boutique is think. Was 1993 or 1994
>>12339073renting , piracy, buying from friends, hand me downs
>>12339073People did that thing where they used their vocals chords to generate sounds, which we now call linguistics. Using linguistics, the human being, living in the time before the internet or crony capitalism, simply used words to communicate with their friends and or extended circles. Given word of mouth, someone selling a game that another wants to buy, wouldn't have been hard considering the human being speaks, and typically keeps a social circle. To think no one knew how to function or communicate, to solicit sales, before cringe-insta or ugly mug book. Is this the zooms thinking?
>>12339131Friend in elementary school sold me his copy of Namco Musem Vol. 3 for $10 I think. Borrowing games and lending out games and buying and trading games with friends was far from unheard of back in those days. It was a great bonding opportunity for us as well. Only person I knew who played and loved Onimusha as much as me was a black dude, and he let me borrow his copy of Onimusha 2 for a while, which is one of my favorite PS2 games. Kids these days likely do the same shit, though with less tangible means like allowing a classmate to borrow a precious belonging of yours.
pawn shops. that's how my dad found me a SNES in like 1998, and they had games.
You could also do direct from manufacturer. My parents bought me brand new Colecovision games for Christmas in the early 90s directly from Coleco/Adam computer. Some of the games came in original boxes, others had generic labels.
>>12342669I would trade games with people and then later buy my original game back for super cheap. Like one time i traded my friend Kid Icarus on GB for Links Awakening, then about a year later i bought my KI back for a dollar.
>>12339073they stole them
>>12339073>the entire thread is full of larping zoomersI don't understand why they feel the need to do this. Very strange behavior.You got used games and movies from the same places that rented them. When a new game or movie came out, these places bought a bunch of copies for the initial surge of demand. After demand started to die off, they would have more copies than they needed and they would then sell the excess used copies. Any store that offered rentals would also have used games for sale.
Telegames USA sold everything from 2600 to NES, Lynx, Coleco etc mail order. They even developed new games for orphan systems like the Lynx later. Sadly their classic inventory was lost when a tornado hit their Texas warehouse in the 90s. They actually had the rights to colecovision and made new carts from old parts, identified by the lack of color printing on the labels, photocopied manuals and so on.
>>12342258kill yourself
>>12342759It’s true. That’s how I got my copies of Fear Effect 2 and Misadventures of Tron Bonne back in the day.
I remember just going friends houses after school and on weekends with a bag of games you thought would be fun. Some of them you would ask to borrow to play them; some of the games you never took back, some of the games you lent out were never returned. It was like musical chairs, nobody cared who ended up with them since they were were just video games and friends. There was always at least one kid who wanted them just to steal them, nobody ever lent games to these thieves but the games somehow disappeared regardless.
>>12342759I remember getting a ton of boxed n64 games back in the day this way. Sold them for a nice profit later on.
>>12339131Somebody loaned me Worms on PS1 once. Still a damn good game.
>>12339073We had friends and we traded carts, you incomparable ass. We got to play pretty much everything in existence because there'd always be at least ONE kid with a copy somewhere.Can genz even comprehend this concept? I literally don't think they went outside and talked to other children, ever.
>>12339073Flea markets and pawn shops were pretty much it. I remember going to pawn shops in late 90s and asking for NES games and getting looked at like I was fucking retarded for even wanting them but them digging a box out from the back and being like "Buck a piece". I got so many good games for next to nothing in late 90s/early 2000s. But you just had to go out and find them. When you did they were cheap as fuck.
>>12347513I remember those days. A box on the floor with 20 copies of Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt and Play Action Football for 50¢ each.
>>12339084Damn, back then they'd buy games for 1/2 the price they sell them atNear the end of physical they would only buy them at 1/6th the price
>>12343036(You)'re ok thoughOP Posts dumb questions get dumb replies. I can see how the literal is incomprehensible to the naive youth.
>>12339176Why they didnt tought of adding Battery saving to this rerelease and fixing the fuck ups as well, like the enemies already being rendered and in activity when you enter a room, that causes so much misery in this game, and maybe be more merciful with the health, that would have been a seller.Also i noticed that Nintendo just screw the pooch in these because only 4 games were released, this, The two Zeldas on a gray cart and Punch Out with no Mike Tyson, there was an updated version of Mario Bros with more polished details but only release late in Europe as Mario Bros Classic, (luckily there is an NTSC patch)
>>12347845Also for some odd reason Konami re-released Blades of Steel of all games in a rad red glossy label, but no other games? why not Castlevania or Contra? i own this btw (not my pic tough)
>>12345354You fool!
>>12350246RIP
>>12350246Was that a hollywood squares reference?
>>12339213you didn't miss much
