Video Game Horror Story: Freak Show
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?
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