Video Game Horror Story: Freak Show

[celerystalker]

So, this was actually inspired by a post Niku-sama made in the Fire Shark game of the day post, where he noticed how the previous owner of my cart tried to make the damaged label look better:

You can see where they wrote in the missing letters after pulling a rental sticker or something off of it. Kinda makes you imagine who it was, sitting down with a felt-tipped pen writing it in, somehow making them feel better about it.

His comments on it have had me thinking for a while about the history of the carts, as I've often been amused pondering similar things, such as...

my copy of Devil World. You can see where the original or who knows how many owner wrote the title on the top of the cart in kana. The handwriting is a little sloppy, so I kinda like to imagine a nice, dorky kid who couldn't stand not being ableto read the labels as they were sitting on the shelf, and took it upon himself to rectify it by writing their names on each game.

Another thing that gets me are those games I've gotten great deals on, but have damages that can't just be repaired by simple means legitimately. For instance, my US copy of Ogre Battle:

I got this one in a trade from a buddy of mine for a Star Wars CCG card that I had doubles of (Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker from the Death Star II set if anyone was curious). He had bought it from a rental place, and he was careless in his sticker removal, leaving this beautiful game forever tarnished. At the time, I didn't care much, but as Ogre Battle became one of my favorite strategy games, this has become increasingly tragic to me. Sure, I have other pristine versions, but my SNES cart is a sideshow freak.

I just thought it might be fun for people to share some of the amusing graffiti, labels, or tragically damaged games in their collections... the runts of the litter... and any stories or theories behind them. Got any?

[bb_hood]

Ive got a different kind of horror story.
Years ago when I was collecting ColecoVision games, I won 5 or 6 loose coleco carts off ebay. It was a bunch of uncommon/rarer carts, cant remeber exactly which but one of them was Slurpy. Anyway, the package arrives, small box. The box was just big enough to hold the games. So I go into my gameroom and sit down at my desk. I tear open one of the box flaps, and begin pulling the contents out when I notice that the box contains a large squirming black mass. Takes me less than a second to realize what I was holding, a huge cluster of fat black ants. Out of shock I toss the box and contents on the floor, ants all over the desk, my hand and now the floor. I begin stepping on them when I think "you moron, take the package OUTSIDE".. so I grab the box and clump of games and rush outside. I empty the box on the driveway and scatter the games. Then I went inside and cleaned up the other ants. It was absolutely unbelievable. There was sooo many ants and they were the big fat ants. The box must have been completly packed with ants, because the games were packed tight in the box. I highly doubt the games were shipped with the ants. Wherever they came from, it seriously scared the shit outta me when I pulled them out of the box.

[Tanooki]

Unless Paul popped it into the NA database of his goodies I've got no copy of the image anymore but I'd guess 4-5 years back I ended up with a naked (no label) copy of Gun-Nac. He had one but the outer plastic laminate over the label is somewhat fubar. He proposed a trade, which I did, but part of it was to make the cart unique. I worked up a label using a nice white sticker and my standard tipped black Sharpie pen I had making a goofy copy of the original label in all its cheesiness. As I recall he was pretty amused by it. No idea when I got it why it was as it was, probably the label was just too far gone to be saved and looked better off without which I can understand unless you want to reprint another to restore it but back that many years it would have looked fairly terrible as an ink jet sticker or paper with tape over it.

I saw a couple Fire Sharks by the way this weekend, equally nasty. One was like the above, the other looked like it had yellow browning earwax color old sticker chunk all over the bottom half of the entire sticker so I left it. Stuff like that just bugs me. I can deal with a few small spots and dents, but that's over my limit and the Gun-Nac I have now is pushing it but it's not worth $100 or anywhere near that to replace a game over a sticker.

[RP2A03]

Ive got a different kind of horror story.
Years ago when I was collecting ColecoVision games, I won 5 or 6 loose coleco carts off ebay. It was a bunch of uncommon/rarer carts, cant remeber exactly which but one of them was Slurpy. Anyway, the package arrives, small box. The box was just big enough to hold the games. So I go into my gameroom and sit down at my desk. I tear open one of the box flaps, and begin pulling the contents out when I notice that the box contains a large squirming black mass. Takes me less than a second to realize what I was holding, a huge cluster of fat black ants. Out of shock I toss the box and contents on the floor, ants all over the desk, my hand and now the floor. I begin stepping on them when I think "you moron, take the package OUTSIDE".. so I grab the box and clump of games and rush outside. I empty the box on the driveway and scatter the games. Then I went inside and cleaned up the other ants. It was absolutely unbelievable. There was sooo many ants and they were the big fat ants. The box must have been completly packed with ants, because the games were packed tight in the box. I highly doubt the games were shipped with the ants. Wherever they came from, it seriously scared the shit outta me when I pulled them out of the box.

It could have been worse. Had the package been in the deep south you could have gotten fire ants

[Emperor Megas]

The original manual for my copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga was dropped in a puddle of water by the person who gave it to me. It was a former friend who basically let me have all of his Saturn games after he got a Dreamcast (he didn't really care that much about his older games after he got a new system), and of all of the games that he could have dropped the manual for, he drops the ones for the Panzer Dragoon Saga. It took me more than 10 years to find a cheap replacement.

I also lost more than half of my pre-millennium collection in a house fire, and the majority of the rest of the pre-millennium stuff that was in storage at my mom's place in Hurricane Katrina. I do have a few game cases that survive both tragedies which are stained with soot from the fire though. I've since replaced most of them as I've some across duplicates here and there in game lots over the years, but I still keep the stained ones as mementos.

I don't even want to think about games and consoles that I've acquired and discovered dead (or in some cases LIVING) roaches in back in the day. Urgh....Jesus! One of the best things about living in the Mid-West (coming from the deep South) is that I haven't seen a roach in some 15+ years.

[celerystalker]

The original manual for my copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga was dropped in a puddle of water by the person who gave it to me. It was a former friend who basically let me have all of his Saturn games after he got a Dreamcast (he didn't really care that much about his older games after he got a new system), and of all of the games that he could have dropped the manual for, he drops the ones for the Panzer Dragoon Saga. It took me more than 10 years to find a cheap replacement.

I also lost more than half of my pre-millennium collection in a house fire, and the majority of the rest of the pre-millennium stuff that was in storage at my mom's place in Hurricane Katrina. I do have a few game cases that survive both tragedies which are stained with soot from the fire though. I've since replaced most of them as I've some across duplicates here and there in game lots over the years, but I still keep the stained ones as mementos.

I don't even want to think about games and consoles that I've acquired and discovered dead (or in some cases LIVING) roaches in back in the day. Urgh....Jesus! One of the best things about living in the Mid-West (coming from the deep South) is that I haven't seen a roach in some 15+ years.

I remember you talking about some of those stories in other threads... your collection has definitely had a rough go! I think I'd keep the scarred stuff from the fire as well. It's kinda nice sometimes to have something with strong memory association tied to it. There are quite a few games that I keep in spite of the fact that I could easily replace them just because of the fact that I have memories strongly associated with them. Also, I agree, I enjoy living in the Midwest as far as not having the kinds of pests that come with that southern climate. Seasons might be erratic, but I've not once opened up a game or system and had to fumigate.

Another kinda funny one:

You may notice those little dents on the right side of the controller. That's from whem my brother and I were teenagers, and I beat his ass so badly at Street Fighter II Turbo that he bit the controller! I still make him use it when he visits as a subtle reminder that he'll always be my bitch.

[Emperor Megas]

That bite mark though!