Topic: Worst impulse buy you've ever had?

[Phil]

Let's rap for a moment. I remember back in the day-- as you kids like to say-- when I picked up a copy of Shaq Fu for the Super Nintendo. It had Shaquille O'Neal in a fighter. What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure a lot of us gamers prior to the advent of the Internet purchased A LOT of games that weren't very good (see: awful) either based on cool box art, misleading screens on the back of the boxes, or something else.

What games have you bought with little knowledge of that turned out to be duds? So help me if you say Bebe's Kids...

[Fatty The Hutt]

The Wii

 

[ShyGuy]

F-Zero GX

[BranDonk Kong]

Superman 64.

[Ceric]

Anything Bethesda has done.  I keep giving them a chance and I keep despising them.

[ejamer]

Not really sure about this. For a long time, I didn't have enough money to make bad impulse buys when it came to games (for a long time I didn't have money for games at all). By the time I was buying games, it was almost always possible to rent or borrow first.


During the Wii lifecycle I bought a bunch of pretty bad games out of curiosity - but it's hard to call them "worst" buys because the pricing was extremely low, matching my expectations.


So in the end, my worst impluse buy related to gaming is probably grabbing a Wii U as soon as the basic sets dropped to $200. The Wii U console sat unplayed for many months because I was still enjoying Wii, and because wireless simply wouldn't work with my router. It gets more use now and trading routers fixed the connectivity issues... but my idea that "things will get better soon and prices won't go any lower" ended up being (mostly) wrong. That said, I'm still pretty happy with the purchase - it just that the timing/value wasn't as good as I had hoped.

[Shaymin]

Walking Dead season 1. Telltale owes me a Something Awful membership.

[lolmonade]

Several years ago, I impulse bought a used Skylanders starter pack because my wife had morbid curiosity about it, and I had credit that made it a cheap initial buy.
 
Today, I'm afraid to think how much of my overall gaming $$ have been spent for this one series.

[Oblivion]

My ex-girlfriend.

[ThomasO]

Scribblenauts on Nintendo DS. Horrible controls. Returned it a week later. Turned me off from the rest of the series.

[Pixelated Pixies]

Man! That game was bad!

[Adrock]

Used: Sega Saturn via eBay. Almost every game I wanted to play was over $100.

New: Madworld. Not a bad game, but I paid $50 and barely played it. The price dropped so rapidly. I saw it for $5 used once. This was merely a financially irresponsible impulse buy.

Close-call: Baroque. I don't remember even wanting this, but they got it at GameCrazy and I wanted something new for Wii. I bought the game at full price, never opened it after roughly eight months. I ended up exchanging it for The World Ends With You at Best Buy with the once-per-year no-receipt return.

Absolute worst is probably the Sega Saturn. I'm glad I put my retro-game collecting days behind me. It's an expensive hobby.

[Ceric]

Used: Sega Saturn via eBay. Almost every game I wanted to play was over $100.
...
Absolute worst is probably the Sega Saturn. I'm glad I put my retro-game collecting days behind me. It's an expensive hobby.

Agree.  I bought it for Panzer Dragoon and Nights Into Dreams and never think I actually hooked the thing up or got those games...

[Soren]

Worst impulse buy was probably buying the Wii SSX just because I played the crap out of 3 on Gamecube.


Recently I have to say buying Pandora's Tower was pretty bad. I barely made it out of the first tower and have no interest in getting back into that game. It exists only to complete the OpRainfall trilogy on my shelf.

[Phil]

I encountered the infamous final towers glitch, where the game would freeze each time I tried reentering the towers... 

[Pixelated Pixies]

Worst impulse buy was probably buying the Wii SSX just because I played the crap out of 3 on Gamecube.

That's a shame. I really liked SSX Blur. Like with the Pro Evo games on Wii, the motion controls felt natural and I would have really liked to see another iteration with some improvements.

[broodwars]

Skyrim on the PS3. Man, I really thought I'd done my research on that game first. My best friend showed me his copy of the game on his PS3, I'd read the reviews, etc. I ended up picking the game up on a whim despite my reservations after playing Bethesda's extremely crash-prone PS3 ports of Fallout 3. 20 hours later, the game was completely unplayable and only became further unplayable every time Bethesda patched it (most notably when a patch triggered every enemy I'd ever raised using Necromancy to spawn around me every time I fast traveled).

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

Dr. Muto on Game Cube, I was at a used game store and had spent an hour drooling over about twenty or so games on PS2 that were not on Game Cube and instead of doing the smart thing and buying a PS2 I stuck to my guns and loaded up on Game Cube games. I picked up Dr. Muto and Wario World on the same day, both games were garbage that I returned right away and traded in for a copy of Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life.

[pokepal148]

Anything not made by Sony or that isn't Tomb Raider

[terribledeli]

Hmm.

I had a nasty habit of buying a game's original release, then buying the GOTY edition as well. I bought Fallout New Vegas on clearance. Then saw New Vegas Ultimate Edition on sale for $20 one Christmas and bought it as well.

Both still have the plastic seal on them.

Thankfully, I've tried to move past that. Though I did buy Razor's Edge after picking up NG3 on PS3 about two months before I bought the Wii U.

[Mop it up]

3DS

[smallsharkbigbite]

Used: Sega Saturn via eBay. Almost every game I wanted to play was over $100.

Absolute worst is probably the Sega Saturn. I'm glad I put my retro-game collecting days behind me. It's an expensive hobby.

My wife hopes I'm close to calling it a day on retro collecting (and I may be soon with a family now).  I've got nearly all the old stuff I want.  Question for you though, as I was considering a Saturn since I've enjoyed retro collecting the dreamcast.  Did you get the Action Replay 4 in 1 and try out Japanese versions of the Saturn games?  That seems to be the most economical way for most games.  My retro collecting has extended into some Japanese SNES games, and as long as they aren't RPGs they seem very playable.  I've even been surprised at the amount of actual English text in games.  That was my plan at least to counteract the high price of some of the Saturn games.  I haven't been able to pull the trigger yet though.  It looks like I'll be at $50 for the system and $40 for the 4 in 1 and I haven't come to terms with that entry price yet. 

[Adrock]

Did you get the Action Replay 4 in 1 and try out Japanese versions of the Saturn games?

I did not. I wanted to play them in English, but it was extremely difficult due to the rarity of the games I wanted and how chintzy the discs were. I only had Fighters Megamix, NiGHTS into Dreams, and Shining Wisdom. I mainly wanted Dragon Force, Shining Force III, and Panzer Dragoon Saga even though none were in genres I typically gravitate towards (except maybe Saga).

A few years ago, I just sold most of my non-Nintendo things I collected. I still want to get a Virtual Boy and a GameBoy Light eventually. A 64DD would be nice albeit ultimately pointless.

[Ian Sane]

CT Special Forces for the GBA.  It was released in Europe at least a year before it came to North America and I read a review on a European site comparing it to Metal Slug.  It was hyped like some GBA holy grail, only available in Europe.  I unexpectedly came across it at a store when it was released here (I had no idea it had been localized) and bought it on a whim.  It doesn't really suck.  No, it's something even worse: unexceptionally average.  It's a completely forgettable title that would have attracting no attention if it had been released in North America first.  What bothers me is that if I was interested in a Metal Slug-esque game, why didn't I just buy Metal Slug?  At that point I didn't own any Metal Slug games and I had a Playstation so I could have bought Metal Slug X.  It's not like I needed a portable version.

I briefly owned an Xbox for literally less than a day.  Future Shop had some online only deal on a refurbed Xbox that came with Jet Set Radio Future/Sega GT and I bought it on impulse.  When it arrived I popped in the game, started the first stage and the damn thing froze.  I rebooted and tried again and it still froze.  I tried Sega GT and couldn't get anywhere.  So I packed the broken piece of **** back up (apparently refurb means "put the broken console back in the box and resell it") and returned it to Future Shop for a refund and I have never owned any Xbox since.  I had had second thoughts about the whole thing anyway and it not working was kind of a blessing in disguise since it let me backpedal on the whole thing.  Now that I'm thinking about it, do I know if the Xbox was fucked or the game?  What if the disc had a scratch on it?  Did I check?

I think I did both of these of regrettable impulse buys in the same year.