I play old games. That might be a strange thing to admit, but it's true. I have an odd compulsion to collect and play lots of video games, but to also not want to spend a whole lot of money doing so. These statements might appear to be at odds with each other. I mean, video games are expensive, right?

So, kind of out of necessity, I became somewhat of a bargain hunter. A connoisseur of cheap games, if you will. I know what you're probably thinking, "Cheap games? Everyone knows that cheap games are awful. They're games with no marketing budgets and no development budgets, and they're designed to separate uninformed parents who don't want to spend a whole lot from their money." And, yes, you'd be right in most cases.

So, what do you do?

Do you pony up $50 or more per game? That gets expensive real fast.

Do you buy and sell used games? It's tough to build a collection if you're selling everything off when you're done with it, and used games are usually missing some important component, like the final install disc or a serial number. Not to mention that buying a game for $50, selling it back to the store for $25 in store credit so they can resell it for $45 means that they sold the game twice and essentially charged you $25 to rent it.

Do you rent? Renting is a great way to play a lot of games for cheap, assuming that the people that had the game before you did handled the game with a reasonable amount of care (i.e. didn't use the disc as a surrogate dinner plate one day when the dishes were dirty. But you don't build up much of a collection from borrowing, and if you ever want to go back and play a game that's become out of print... well tough luck.

The best compromise I've found is to stay a couple of years behind the curve. This actually has several benefits.

1. You get to figure out of the game is actually any good by taking a look at the user reviews, which I admit are mostly worthless. You have to filter out the reviews that blindly give out perfect scores because, "OMG the game is sooo good because it has Cloud in it and he and Aerith are both going to totally make the game awesome, and I haven't played it yet, but it's obviously perfect in every way, LOLz!" You have to also filter out the ones that give the game a zero because, "OMG the grafx are totally gay, and I haven't played it and won't play it because Link totally looks like a girl."
2. Bugs get worked out and games get patched. This is more true for PC games, but there have been several console games where later versions have quietly been released to fix a bug or two.
3. Again, this mostly applies to PC games, but running games that are a little behind the curve means that if you have a reasonably powered PC, you can push the games to their absolute limit, and have them look as good as possible.
4. Probably most important of all, playing games that are on the verge of going out of print or have just gone out of print are going to be dirt cheap. Which is one of my favorite prices.

So, let's take a look at some of my recent finds for the PC:

Not bad, right? I got five reasonably good games for slightly more than half the price of a full-priced game.

Awesome.

Of course this also means that I have to keep up on the latest releases to know what's going to be good in a few years. And I have to put up with the sneers of my peers when I get excited about getting a game that they've already played through and retired four or more years ago, so I'll end up buying a new game at full cost occasionally to keep up appearances. But that doesn't really work very well. That label of 'plays old games' is permanently affixed to my forehead.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I have an article over at Stage Select that walks you through the process of making your very own NES ringtone for your phone.

We all love our cell-phones. We love the ability to download a custom ringtone to show off our individuality. What we (and by 'we' I mean 'I') don't like is paying $2.49 or more for a 10 second snippet of audio that's been compressed so aggressively and then played back so loudly that is sounds like you're trying to listen to a piece of some song through a blown speaker under a swimming pool. Or worse yet, $2.00 for a MIDI version of the song that only sounds kind of like the track you really wanted. And if you're interested in video game songs? Forget it. You have the choice of exactly one song: a MIDI version of the Super Mario Bros. theme song. It's recognizable, but only just.

It's well worth a read. Check it out here (Stage Select).

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You may or may not be aware, but last weekend a Pokémon tournament took place at several GameStop stores across the nation, mine included. I was seriously contemplating going and testing my mettle against the best my city had to offer, but unfortunately had to work (sudden schedule changes, the bane of my existence). Penny Arcade guy 'Gabe' was able to attend and his account is pretty telling. As the event approached, I was feeling a bit weird about going, and was pretty certain that if I did go, that I'd be the oldest one there by a pretty significant margin. I would have felt very strange knowing that I bought my first Pokémon game back in 1998, my sophomore year in college and the same year that some of these kids were born. So it's somewhat comforting to know that someone else shared this concern.

"As it turns out I was the oldest person in the tournament by roughly twenty years and the only one not wearing a shirt with Pikachu on it."

I've ended up purchasing a ridiculous amount of Pokémon things in the last decade. Since I've played games in the series for so long I sometimes forget that though the game is as deep as you want it to be, see EVs and IVs, it really is easy enough for the next generation of gamers to get in to. Gamers that don't know or care what the different natures mean or what moves compliment others in a double-battle situation, just which ones look neat.

My mom, as it happens, works as a photographer for many of the schools in the region. One day she produces a copy of Pokémon Fire Red that she found in some parking lot of some school. This game was pretty beat up, it had been run over at least once and was missing a chunk of plastic from the corner, but still worked. I looked around the save file on it and noticed a few things, primarily that the person that played the game was not 'Pro'. This might not mean much if you aren't versed in the game, but his wallet was empty, all of his TMs were gone, all of his items were gone, he had no pokéballs, and all of his pokémon had been taught all of the HM moves they could learn, whether they were useful or not. He had linked up with and battled 9 times and lost all but one of those times. But the thing is, the timer on the game had clocked more than 145 hours in the game. The person who owned the game, someone called BLAKE, had spent a significant amount of time with it, and played the game the way he wanted to, not the way that it must be played, if the voice of the internet is to be believed. I sometimes forget that for every player on a message board obsessed with crafting the optimal team with perfect stats, there are dozens that just play the game. Not to necessarily be the best, but to take their ragtag team and show it off to their friends.

I don't really know if I'd have made any significant progress in the tournament or even have made a respectable showing, but I do know that it was not for me. I am by no means 'Pro' at the game, and might well have lost, but contrary to what you may have been led to believe I would have felt pretty crummy if I managed to pound some little kids into oblivion.

Link! (Penny Arcade)