Weird stories of how games got into/about your collection.

So to start I’ll just clarify what this thread is. This is a place to share stories about weird ways you got a game or a weird feature or theme of your collection/backlog. Or a interesting thing about a second hand game or weird way you played a game or a strange memory of a game.
Ps if a thread like this already exists please direct me to it,

To start I have two stories:
1. I somehow ended up with 3 different editions (not copies) of Dues ex human revolution. A game I don’t care about or like.
2. I got portal 1 in the orange box for a birthday. Portal became one of my favourite games but it took me at least 5 years to play HL2 which was the main game of that collection.

So does anyone else have stories?

I was looking at a pair of 3DO games at a used game story like... 17 years ago now. They were Demolition Man and Quarantine. Complete in the long boxes. I was a regular in the store and the owner already was giving me half off deals on old Atari 2600 cards to get them out of the store. When she saw me looking at the 3DO games, she asked me "Do you know what those games are for?" and I responded that I did. She then says "You're the only person who has looked at those since they came in. Go ahead and take them." So she just gave them to me for free. Still have them too. I pretty much play them every time I hook up one of my 3DOs.

This was about 2 years ago when I was living in an apartment about half an hour from my parents' place. My game collection was split between the apartment and my parents' house just because I didn't have the shelf space for everything at the apartment.

A few months after moving in, I had a few friends over to play some party games. At some point in the conversation, one of my friends told me that they had just bought a copy of Banjo-Tooie from a used game store. He knew it was one of my favorite games, so he was excited to finally give it a go. His girlfriend chimed in to say that this copy of the game had extra character because some kid had written the title along the top of the cartridge in permanent marker. I admitted that I had done that to my N64 games when I was a kid, but I knew better now.

Fast forward a little bit--I was visiting my parents and decided I would bring a few more games up to the apartment. However, the container that held my N64 games was completely empty. I wondered if maybe I had already brought them up to the apartment and just forgotten about it, but they didn't turn up there either.

The conversation with my friend echoed in my memory. I asked him to send me a picture of the cartridge he'd bought. I didn't think he'd sneaked into my house to steal my N64 games, but something seemed fishy. He texted me a picture, and sure enough, it was my handwriting along the top of the cartridge.

As it turned out, my brother (who still lived with my parents) had taken a bunch of my games and sold them without my permission. It was a pure stroke of luck that my friend had decided to visit that specific game store during the brief interval of time where that one game with my handwriting on it was prominently displayed. And the reason he bought it was explicitly because of my recommendation. I offered to pay him to get it back (since he had paid for it at the store), but he wouldn't hear of it and just let me have it back. Eventually I confronted my brother, which is its own saga, but it's still wild how many things had to line up for this to happen.

I have one… years ago we had to exchange out PlayStation 1 due to some issues and the guy at Best Buy tested it with a game before we left to make sure it worked. When we got home and opened the tray to play something… hey look! Free game! Years later we parted with it because we didn’t care for Contra. Oh well.

I have one… years ago we had to exchange out PlayStation 1 due to some issues and the guy at Best Buy tested it with a game before we left to make sure it worked. When we got home and opened the tray to play something… hey look! Free game! Years later we parted with it because we didn’t care for Contra. Oh well.

I have a similar story. As a young kid my father's birthday present for me was a new graphics card. I had researched into graphic cards for weeks beforehand. He went to the store to buy the one I had written down for him.

He returned with the wrong one - the store staff had talked him into another brand, I was inconsolable ;) - and an illegal copy of Quake, which they had used to test the graphics card. Quake at the time was on "The List of Media Harmful to Young People", the German index for media, meaning harsh restrictions on advertising and sale in order to prevent minors to get a hold of it. But it didn't mean much, at that time everybody at school and among my friends, including me, already had a copy of Quake anyway. Having these "illegal" games was such a big deal back then for us. :) I just thought it was very funny that a store gave a customer an illegal copy of an indexed game.

Back then, as a child, I was also very much anticipating the release of Goldeneye 64 and was very sad when I heard that it too would be indexed. The threat of indexing almost always made developers cut out or heavily change content to prevent it, like replacing human enemies with robots, replacing blood with oil/green/blue/whatever liquid. I don't remember anymore if I feared the same outcome for Goldeneye 64. Anyway, I had the idea to just order my copy from the UK and so I did. For the whole duration before the game arrived I was almost sure it wouldn't work, I would get a call or a letter by some government agency that I was trying to circumvent the law (I was a child back then). But the game came, without any problems (and became one of my all time favourites, definitely the best couch multiplayer and best N64 game I have ever played). I was flabbergasted that you could just circumvent the index like this. Years later I read that they made this impossible but I didn't care anymore because by then I guess I was over 18 years old. I guess this one is not such a weird story, in the end I just ordered a game by mail, but back then I just couldn't believe it worked.

I guess more a bargain then weird but once got the Age of mythology collectors edition cause it was cheaper then the normal edition of the game

I have a similar story. As a young kid my father's birthday present for me was a new graphics card. I had researched into graphic cards for weeks beforehand. He went to the store to buy the one I had written down for him.

He returned with the wrong one - the store staff had talked him into another brand, I was inconsolable ;) - and an illegal copy of Quake, which they had used to test the graphics card. Quake at the time was on "The List of Media Harmful to Young People", the German index for media, meaning harsh restrictions on advertising and sale in order to prevent minors to get a hold of it. But it didn't mean much, at that time everybody at school and among my friends, including me, already had a copy of Quake anyway. Having these "illegal" games was such a big deal back then for us. :) I just thought it was very funny that a store gave a customer an illegal copy of an indexed game.

Back then, as a child, I was also very much anticipating the release of Goldeneye 64 and was very sad when I heard that it too would be indexed. The threat of indexing almost always made developers cut out or heavily change content to prevent it, like replacing human enemies with robots, replacing blood with oil/green/blue/whatever liquid. I don't remember anymore if I feared the same outcome for Goldeneye 64. Anyway, I had the idea to just order my copy from the UK and so I did. For the whole duration before the game arrived I was almost sure it wouldn't work, I would get a call or a letter by some government agency that I was trying to circumvent the law (I was a child back then). But the game came, without any problems (and became one of my all time favourites, definitely the best couch multiplayer and best N64 game I have ever played). I was flabbergasted that you could just circumvent the index like this. Years later I read that they made this impossible but I didn't care anymore because by then I guess I was over 18 years old. I guess this one is not such a weird story, in the end I just ordered a game by mail, but back then I just couldn't believe it worked.

Oh, that reminds me of Einhander. On the aforementioned PlayStation console, I used to play certain demos over and over again from the disc that came with it. Einhander wasn’t a game that I was able to get at the time, but years later when I started to hunt older games down, I looked it up again and decided I wasn’t going to pay what it costed on eBay. It’s not on PSN either… or so I thought. The Japanese PSN had it. I’d never tried anything like this before and I did not think it was going to work, but I was able to get English voiced digital copy after some Googling. I thought I was going to get flagged on some network or something when I was making the account for it. 😅 To date, that’s the only reason that account exists.

@khalb I’ve seen that happen a few times with digital games and physical copies. It confuses me how the physical copy would cost less than the digital.

at 2016 when i was 12 years i broken my arm and in the same week a friend give me their ps3 for 3 months, but i only have my left arm. I had never played GTA V and i was very excited, so i just play with left hand and my foot (yes, my foot). I was so euphoric that i beat all singleplayer trophyes with my foot

at 2016 when i was 12 years i broken my arm and in the same week a friend give me their ps3 for 3 months, but i only have my left arm. I had never played GTA V and i was very excited, so i just play with left hand and my foot (yes, my foot). I was so euphoric that i beat all singleplayer trophyes with my foot

That is some serious dedication.