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Member
(05-02-2012, 11:45 PM)
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How did you choose games to buy when you first started playing?
#1
Back when I first picked up gaming as a hobby, I didn't really know about the internet or various gaming magazines. For the most part, I played devoid of recommendation--free of influence outside of highly public advertisements. During this time, I rented games pretty frequently: usually once every few weeks, as a reward for getting good grades in school. Almost every game I bought, I bought used, and I mostly purchased games that I had played before and liked. The only games I bought new were sequels/extensions to stuff I'd played and liked previously, as my allowance was pretty small, and saving up for a new game usually took a couple of months.
Inevitably, I discovered the internet, and once you've gained knowledge, you can never return to ignorance. Now, I still only buy games I know I'll like, but I usually do so on the basis of recommendations and impressions from others online. (Costs a lot less that way.) What I was wondering was: when you first got into gaming, how did you pick which games to buy? Were you already involved in online communities? Did you buy whatever your friends were playing? Did you pick the games with the coolest boxes? Share your stories! Get nostalgic! |
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or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
(05-02-2012, 11:46 PM)
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#2
The box art at the video store.
And there was no Internet or "online communities", unless you mean some crazy usenet shit which I didn't know about. I became educated once I got into EGM, and later, the rise of the net. |
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(05-02-2012, 11:47 PM)
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#4
Rental stores were vital back in the day.
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Member
(05-02-2012, 11:52 PM)
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#16
When I literally first started playing the question is moot because when I was a kid, we didn't have any game consoles in our house. All I ever got to play was what my various friends had. All kinds of Atari 2600/Intellivision/Colecovision stuff.
I didn't have my own console until I finished college and bought an SNES as part of a scheme to establish credit. For the first couple of years after that I'd just go to whatever retail place, often Toys R Us, and look around until something caught my eye. A big part of the reason I bought A Link to the Past was because the commercial showed literally nothing at all from the game, and that fact became a brainworm whereby I had to find out wtf kind of game it was, and if it turned out to suck ass so be it. That little gamble worked out pretty well. |
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Member
(05-02-2012, 11:56 PM)
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#22
Electronic Gaming Monthly + Nintendo First Party.
Word of mouth from friends as well, but it was primarily Mario, Zelda, etc. My neighbor owned a PSX and I owned an N64 so we pretty much bought two different libraries worth of games and played them at each others houses for several years. Prior to that it was almost exclusively Nintendo stuff and Squaresoft titles. |
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Member
(05-02-2012, 11:58 PM)
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#23
If the game had an anime styled cover it was essentially a instant buy, with FFVII being one of the first games I've ever bought back in 1998-1999 from a flea market with my own money I saved from lunch because of the spiky hair and the huge sword. While I still love anime aesthetics a lot (much much more than the average gamer my age nowadays), back then it was a borderline obsession with all things anime. I didn't care if someone said it was shit, if it had an anime styled cover I wanted it. I would ask my mom and dad to buy it for me or save up my money to buy it used.
Nowadays I don't do that too often as I'm much more well informed about various video games now but I still stop and look at a game if I see well drawn anime styled characters on a cover while in Gamestop or something. |
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Member
(05-02-2012, 11:58 PM)
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#24
My first console was a NES and i was only a kid so couldn't really afford games. The only games i got were what parents bought for christmas.
Then there was an N64, which was pretty much the same scenario as above. First consoles i really bought my own games for were my gameboy/gameboy colour/gameboy advance. In which case, i usually went for Mario, or whatever my friends said were good (lots of my friends in my village had gameboys, so we would go to each others houses and play them together). When i got my PS2 i was older and could afford to buy what i wanted, pretty much. Again, i went for what my friends said were good, sequels to games i already had and loved, and a game's boxart. The name of the game often played a rather large part, too. I was a sucker for a cool sounding name. It wasn't until the end of the PS2 era that i started using gaming sites and reading games magazines. |
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Member
(05-03-2012, 12:01 AM)
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#27
Originally Posted by BocoDragon:
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(05-03-2012, 12:07 AM)
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#32
Magazines, box art, friends, rentals.
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Member
(05-03-2012, 12:09 AM)
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#34
When I was a kid I had three local video stores that rented out games, so I was pretty lucky. I'd either ask the employees for advice or I'd just browse through the games and pick a couple at random.
Did this for two generations (8 bit and 16 bit). Good fucking times. |
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Member
(05-03-2012, 12:11 AM)
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#36
Box art for Master System games when I was in primary school ~grade 4. Ended up with some real horrors and massive disappointments.
Then just before high school rolled round, gaming magazines were such an education. Used to get so excited for each new monthly issue to come out with their new previews of upcoming games, never mind the release of those games themselves. Just reading about them fuelled the imagination and was often all I needed. Then demo discs came out on the mags, which was perfect. Nowadays thanks to the internet...you end up knowing far too much about a game, and always have to try to stay away from the coverage and hype. |
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Member
(05-03-2012, 12:12 AM)
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#37
When I first got into gaming there weren't online communities, and I had no access to gaming mags. So it was either something I tried at a friend's place or what cover looked cool.
There were a few stores that actually let you pick a game to try in the store for a few minutes before buying, but that wasn't common practice. |
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Member
(05-03-2012, 12:12 AM)
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#38
My first 3 consoles (2600, NES, Genesis) each came from garage sales and included large boxes of games. N64 was the first time I actually got to choose what I wanted and then I bought my own games, not many mind you, and that's right about when I got into EGM, IGN, and Gamespot.
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Member
(05-03-2012, 12:18 AM)
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#43
When I was a kid? Uh well, Mario and Zelda and the sort were all that most kids talked about, so of course I had to try them out myself. A lot of it too was going over to friends houses and playing the games they had. I also asked for games based on cartoons I liked; some of them, like Ducktales or Tiny Toons were good choices, some of them like pretty much any Simpsons game weren't.
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Have a fun! Enjoy!
(05-03-2012, 12:18 AM)
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#44
I'd just play everything. Games were cheap back in the C64 days when piracy was rampant. if not even legal. At least in Italy, you could simply change the game title and be free to sell pirated games collections at the newsstands.
Not that I had other options anyway. Toys stores in my town only began selling original games around the MD/SNES era. Original Amiga stuff was available in computer stores, but in very limited quantities and variety. You'd usually get the X-Copy'ed version of a game back then. Games I liked from my pirated collection I purchased original from a store located in another part of the country. In a way, pirated games back then had the same function as demos these days. Anyway, I digress. Bottom line: when I started gaming (on C64 mainly) I never really choose which games to play. I played everything that was available. I have to say I miss those days of discovery.
Last edited by TTP; 05-03-2012 at 12:25 AM.
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