Do people still swap games back and forth like the cartridge days?

[Technosis]

I remember back in the CV/Atari/Intellivision/etc. days people routinely swapped games back and forth for a few weeks that they had gotten bored with for other games from their friends. This was when new games cost a bundle and before the wide spread rental of cartridges.

Since the carts were so durable there really wasn't worries about damage and I don't recall anyone too concerned about labels since half the carts had the owners name or initials on them.

I did however almost loose a CV Galaxian since a lot of time had passed, I was into the C64 and when I finally got back to my buddy I found that he had traded his whole ColecoVision and about a dozen games (including a Xonox double ender and my Galaxian) for a well used Sony Walkman to someone else. He got it back and returned it but that was a close call. I had no idea of rarity at the time (1980's).

I'm guessing that many gamers here were active "temporary" traders?

I wonder if with the threat of disc ruining scratches and all the rental places if this is still common with the current system generation users?

[Diosoth]

The popularity of Gamestop has made it "acceptable" to just sell to places such as this, even though they pay a fraction of what you would or should get otherwise. Likewise, eBay and Craigslist have made it more acceptable to simply sell the game for money.

Even trading? Not much anymore... depends on the value of the game. A popular title can't be swapped out for something in little demand.

As for disc-based anything, I never lend CDs or games out to anyone. After I had a $16 CD completely destroyed I put an end to that practice.

[sebastiankirchoff]

I use to do this with my uncle, and he took good care of my stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't do the same for him and I feel pretty bad about that now. I then let some people outside of family borrow games, but they got pretty beat up and I just quit doing after a while.

[GM80]

CD and DVD-based games ended swapping for me. About half my NES carts were usually loaned out to buddies at one point or another, but I would never let anyone borrow a Xbox 360 game for any length of time due to the game-ending potential of scuffs and scratches.

[otaku]

I haven't for a decade or so a friend of mine back in jr high used to trade games and systems (usually my psone for his Dreamcast) it was very nice. I still trade with local game shops also but the value is usually not very good

[IceDrake]

I've borrowed a couple games from friends but mostly just buy stuff for myself. Today, I just buy games I want and know I will like. I can't remember the last time I bought a game I regretted buying.

[kedawa]

I only ever do permanent trades. I can't be bothered tracking down my games and hoping they're still in good condition.

[TurboGenesis]

My friends and I still swap games… With my closest friends, we exchange games on occasion… I still have XII Stag out on loan and I just returned DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou(PS2) to my friend…

I have sold some games full well knowing that I have a friend who has it should I get some odd urge to play…

Game swapping is a practice that I have been doing since the NES and have done it for every console…

I treat my friends games as my own and they do the same.

[drewbrim]

I have one friend that I still do this with. But we kind of do it on a "1 of mine for 1 of yours" type basis. He's playing my RE5 as we speak, while I'm enjoying his Street Fighter IV.

[Draven]

I used to temporarily trade games all the time back in the day. Not so much anymore. We traded permanently, too...usually to this same kid who allowed himself to be ripped off at every turn (I remember trading an old stack of MAD magazines to a Gameboy and about 8 games when it was new, best deal ever!). I would still trade or loan temporarily, even given that games today are on disc, but I don't have a current gen system and all my friends do. The last disc based game I loaned out was Devil May Cry 2, back when it was new. I loaned it to a guy at work and he let me borrow some baseball game. Never traded back because he quit not long after that. I learned not to loan unless I'm willing to lose it. As far as my "collection" goes, I wouldn't loan anything out because of this. I've lost 2 games already and I don't want to lose anymore! (I later re-purchased one but I'm still trying to get SMB 2 back at a reasonable price)

[Robocop2]

I have a friend here that I occasionally swap games back and forth with but yeah alot of great things died with the death of the cartridge in my opinion

[scooterb23]

I would if I had a community of gamers nearby, but having to box up and ship games off to swap just isn't all that feasible.

[crom]

in my apartment building I still trade back and forth with buds... to the point where I wont buy certain games because I know I can borrow it from them...

when I get the games back though they end up being traded at gamestop or EBgames...

which really sucks trading in 3-4 games for 1 new game, but they will just collect dust on my shelf, that and I dont consider my 360 games to be worth collecting ...

thank god for kijiji though

[IceDrake]

I traded a bunch of games in once; I barely got $50 back and I traded in about 7 or 8. Even though I don't play them, I'd rather keep a game than get as much as $20 back.

[RJ]

I've told this story before, in 8th gr. I swapped a friend(?) my 2600 Crystal Castles for his Pitfall 2. Every day from then on he "forgot" to bring it back to school, to the point where he seemed to find it funny even though I was bugging him every day for it.

Eventually school LET OUT for the summer & I had my dad take me over there to get it. I recall yelling over the phone "& you BETTER be home when we get there!"


On a better note, a better friend & I used to pick a corner equidistant from our homes to meet & swap VCS carts. & on the subject of good trades, I once traded him his Star Wars action figure Millenium Falcon (still have it!) for a bunch of pics of girls from my sister's fashion magazines.

[Haoie]

I'm sure most will agree: Nowadays, only suckers trade in with a game store.

[kupomogli]

I don't allow people to borrow disc based games because of scratches.

[Gameguy]

I've never really loaned out games to anyone, but I did bring some Gameboy games to school for someone else to play at recess(he helped get past some of the tricky levels). I got the games back when recess was over, and never let them out of my site the whole time.

[darkslime]

I'll occasionally let my friends borrow games, and borrow games from them.

[Nirvana]

My friends and I used to do trade-borrowing. Now, we just let each other borrow games whenever. We never do permaswaps.

[PentiumMMX]

I usually only let friends borrow my games, though after an incident with my sister's former roommate (Who I was friends with at the time) and my 10+ year old copy of Mario Kart 64, I now only let people I trust borrow my stuff.

[RagedGamer]

I'd go over my friend's houses, take a game or two home with me and eventually bring it back when my friends started wondering where they put that batltoads doubledragon cart.

[thom_m]

I did it all the time back then. In fact, I still have stuff left from this - some of my friends would buy a newer gen system and let me keep the "old" games/accessories I borrowed from them (that's how I got my six button Genesis pads!). Unfortunately, my beloved Gradius II Famicom (bootleg) cart is still missing because of that same practice. Damn cousins. :bad-words:

Curious thing is that, after years and years of not borrowing/lending anything, a friend of mine bought himself an used SNES and is currently with my copies of Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart and Rock'n'Roll Racing. I stayed with a lot of his games for a while, ands he takes good care of things, so I guess it's ok.

That, and I know where he lives.

[Sudo]

Not anymore, haven't since the N64 days.

[bangtango]

Let an acquaintance borrow two PS1 games that were pretty expensive back then. He had them for about a month. One day, this jerk called me and had the nerve to say the following to me:


"FRIEND": You ain't got another copy of Resident Evil II I can use, do you?

ME: What are you talking about? You got my copy. I let you borrow it.

FRIEND: Well it doesn't work anymore. Its got a lot of scratches on it and I can only play it a little bit before it freezes. (Note: My copy was gem mint until he borrowed it)

ME: You ruined my game and you're asking me for another copy? What the hell for?

FRIEND: I've almost finished it. I have my game saved and need another copy so I can beat it.

ME: (speechless for a solid 10 seconds and then I exploded on him........)



He wasn't kidding. I got Resident Evil II back from him and that copy was unplayable, even after a resurface or two. The other game I let him borrow also came back looking like a cat or puppy had run across it with its claws drawn.

[Phyeir]

I won't even borrow games between my friends, either to or from, just because if anything happns to them while in the other one's hands, you kind of get socked with the blame, even if you didn't cause the damage. Just causes more problems than anything, IMO.

[Astrosmash]

I never did *that* much loaning, but there were a few instances, especially in the SNES era. One of my friends had my Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest cart for a few months at one point (I believe I still have his save file on it), and another time I temporarily traded my Final Fantasy III (6) for another friend's ActRaiser, before I had my own copy of that one. (As I recall, when I got my FF3/6 back Terra was renamed "RuPaul" in said friend's save.)

Several years before all of that, in 4th grade a friend left his copy of Ninja Gaiden (NES) at my house. I still have it.

[WhatsMyUsername]

Me and my best friend lend 360 games to each other. Though i am starting to stop because when he brings them back he is dum and just shoves them in his backpack and the cases sometimes get broken >,<. He keeps the disks in good condition but i like my cases to be... ya'know now broken?

[Game Freak]

I dont swap much anymore, especially cartridge swapping. Im pretty worried that something will happen to em, but I do let my friends borrow games i am not likely to play. I have one friend that seems rather interested in any 007 games I have, and he also has recently borrowed Medal of Honor: Frontline...I also routinely borrow PS2 games from another friend of mine, although now I have copies of them myself, so i dont really need them.

[emceelokey]

There's not a big sense of "variety" now a days. Back then there wasn't huge advertising budgets for games and people would end up buying games based on either review or cover and people would end up with a wide variety of games and a game can still produce steady sales even after a year because of people finding out of the game with time. Now when Halo comes out there's a red carpet even on both coast and 80% of the people that will own it will buy it within the first month.

I remember borrowing Gunstar Heroes on Genesis from a friend and I never even heard of it and it was over a year old at that point. I think I let him borrow Super Metroid for it. It just got so different from the cart days to the disc days.

[scooterb23]

I wonder if the loss of this really, really fun part of the hobby is directly related to the "valuing" of games. I mean, back when I was a kid...they were just 2600 games, Combat was on equal footing as Atari Video Cube. It didn't matter what games cost, or how much they were worth. They were just games, and we traded and swapped them as such.

Eventually, price guides started to come out, and all of a sudden...you have people obsessing over values, and then condition...suddenly those games we've been playing weren't worth crap because the label was loose, or it was torn, or we had put our initials on the cart. Or the only way you'll get X game is to give up Y,Z, AA, and BB because X was "worth" more.

Same thing happened with baseball cards, Magic: The Gathering, and lots of other hobbies. I'm not saying it's been a bad thing for the hobby...but it's definitely an aspect of the hobby that seems to have been lost to the ages. I just wonder if it is the sensitivity to perceived value is the cause.

[Gameguy]

I actually took care of my stuff when I was a kid which is why I didn't want anything to get damaged. I didn't write on my games, or damage the labels. I also kept the packaging to all my games. At the time I didn't feel it added value to anything, I just liked to keep it.

[hoaryhag]

I don't have any friends into classic gaming and don't own a current console so no. Back in the day why not, we were kids and probably wouldn't care if the game was beat up if it still played. I can't imagine loaning my expensive cd games to people. The manufacturers know darn well that cds are flimsy, delicate things that will have to be replaced if not taken good care of, it just makes them more money. Remember the minidisc that came out for a short while? Couldn't they add a protective casing like that to cds? But would just mean less profits for them and a higher production cost. Cds are cheap and easily destroyed and they wanna keep it that way. <------cynicist