Ever bought a game that just didn't work?

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

When I was a kid, many stores gave you the option of buying opened computer games for extremely cheap, on the condition that there would be no return / refund if those didn't work (which was often the case).

While the bargains themselves were hard to pass up on, these were a rich - and seemingly endless - source of disappointment for me and I was wondering if you guys had any similar experiences to share.

I think I remember an old video by LGR talking about some combat medic game that has never worked for him (regardless of the system or hardware he tried it on) and that's kind of my "gold standard" for this sort of thing.

 

[Generic Edgelord]

I once bought a copy of Soul Reaver 2 at a pop-up booth at a summer festival. It worked through the intro and first 5-10 of gameplay, but a mandatory cutscene froze at the same spot each time, probably because of scratches on the disc. I couldn't return it because the booth was gone the next day.

 

[JellyjamLu]

My SH3, brand new copy, PS2 boots it for a sec, then loops back to the browser menu.
Now I just play the PCSX2 version instead.

 

[Sanarchy]

I have two examples:

In Super Paper Mario, there is a gamebreaking bug in the PAL version, in the Haunted Manor, if you speak to Mimi at a certain part of progression, the game will freeze and create a ghastly sound. Kid me must have attempted this 10, 20 times? To absolutely no avail. I had to refund the game.

Only in my adult years of finally trying to come back to this game via emulation, I found out through the internet that there IS a bypass for this bug, just don't talk to Mimi for hints and find the answer for yourself. Still led me on a fear that my Wii was bricked back then.

The other time was when I bought a copy of Persona 3 FES on the PS2 but only had a PS3 but I imagined PS2 games were backwards compatible with the system, so no problem!

Unless. . .
The only PS3 that did NOT support backwards compatability was the one I owned. My grandmother bought me a very old PS3 as a gift bless her heart, she never knew what she was getting of course. Just saw PS3 and that was it. I could never make that copy of P3 FES to work.
Thankfully there was a digital version on the store I could play.

 

[Bloodshed]

I bought Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines on Disc in 2005, but I couldn't get it to run at all on my PC that time and it wasn't that the Specs were off or anything like that. Ultimately I played it in 2018 in 4k with community patches, and loved it

 

[Rez09]

Someone sold me a physical copy of The Orange Box for PC in college. That they had already used the activation keys for.

Still never played through any of those titles.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

Someone sold me a physical copy of The Orange Box for PC in college. That they had already used the activation keys for.

Still never played through any of those titles.

What a fucking asshole!

 

[zombie100379]

years ago i bought "Firepro Wrestling Returns" - it was the pal version for my (obviously) pal ps2 - brand new and sealed - no scratches or marks on disc. to this day its never worked even once.

 

[Jon-Patrick-S]

I bought Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines on Disc in 2005, but I couldn't get it to run at all on my PC that time and it wasn't that the Specs were off or anything like that. Ultimately I played it in 2018 in 4k with community patches, and loved it

I had more or less the same experience buying VTMB on steam when I was younger. Game straight up did not launch and I was relatively new to PC gaming at the time so I didn't really know there was a community patch or how I'd even go about playing it. Years later I did know about the patch bought it on GOG where the patch was pre-installed anyway, and it was definitely an all time classic.

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

Not bought, but some games in DraStic (DS mobile emulator) directly crashed in a white screen when booting

 

[MorriganW0lf]

Bought Darksiders 2 for the Xbox 360 on a garage sale 4 months ago, disc was immaculate, also legit, neither the 360 or Xbox one read it. It is what it is, I already have it everywhere else so not a big loss lmao.

 

[Burzuru Burzuru]

i bought a used copy of no more heroes once that didn't work. i just returned it, and got another game.

 

[Frickinfrik]

My copy of R&C Going Commando freezes during the cutscene right before the final battle, the only way to bypass it is to skip it with the shoulder buttons


I had bought copies of Sly 2 and Pac Man World 2 but those would freeze on a black screen after the PS2 logo


I had SSX On Tour, but that would just get stuck on a loading screen


A very long time ago, I had Revenge of The Flying Dutchman on PS2, it never worked. Though later i found out that game is notoriously broken and is prone to freezing during loading screens and corrupt data.

 

[CrunchyComputer]

Some years ago, back when Radio Shack was still around, I bought a copy of DuckTales: The Quest for Gold. Mind you, I was just a little kid at the time. It came on a three and a half inch floppy disk.

I got home, tore into the box, ignored the manual, popped the floppy into the drive, ran DUCK.EXE, and nothing happened.

Either the game got corrupted when it was copied to the disk, or my PC just didn't like that particular floppy. I tried every executable in the directory and even went back to read the manual to make sure I wasn't missing something. Nope, DUCK.EXE really was the correct command.

A few days later I exchanged it for another copy, and that one worked just fine. To this day, I still have no idea why that first disk refused to cooperate.

 

[CheesyExplosive]

N64 cartage..... toooooo fragile...

 

[SpcDaicon SpcDaicon]

My copy of Valkyria Chronicles for PS3. It was second hand.

The game would crash after an specific cutscene. Thought my game was busted and would never finish it but luckly you can skip cutscenes altogether. Crisis averted.

I think it was the only time I had problems with a legit copy. All other problems I had came from pirated copies burnt on CDs. Sellers were cool enough to let you have another copy or just get a different game

 

[BrawlMan]

Slice, Dice, and Rice would not work when I downloaded it on PS4, so I had to get a refund for my $10 money card. When I tried downloading the game on my PS5, the game worked with no issues. I guess my PS4 just hates that game.

 

[BanchoQueen]

SMT Nocture (Lucifers Call as it was on my store) was on the EU PS3 PS Store, funny thing... This port of the game was busted. After defeating the final boss Kagutsuchi the game would just freeze. And by what I could find this happened pretty much 9/10 times. Now you could try for that 1/10 chance but honestly I think the odds of it not crashing were lower than that. This crashing also screws over the True Demon Ending too. So glad we got the remaster even if the music makes my ears hurt.

 

[hyperdeathRainbow]

A few years back, one of my friends convinced me to get Empyrion Galactic Survival only for it to not work on my busted-ass PC. We split up after our guild died and now it's sitting there in my library, unreturnable and with no playtime.

 

[Metroid_Hybrid]

Decades ago, during my first playthroughs of Mega Man Legends, for whatever reason the game would lock-up within the first 5 seconds of the cut-scene immediately before fighting the final boss. Luckily it was skippable, but I had no idea what transpired during that rather important cut-scene until I bought the game again 10+ years later..

 

[lestagio]

Bought an N64 second hand in the early 2000s and it didn't work! Luckily I was able to get a refund and get a working one.

As for games, the only one that comes to mind that didn't work was recent. I bought Doom: The Dark Ages earlier this year and the damn game would freeze once it hit the title screen. I can normally solve most game issues, but no matter what I did or configured, I could not figure it out.

 

[werewolfx]

Me and my friend in high school both owned Front Mission 3, and one day both of our copies stopped working at a certain point. We swapped copies just to try and we could both continue.

 

[Metroid_Hybrid]

Me and my friend in high school both owned Front Mission 3, and one day both of our copies stopped working at a certain point. We swapped copies just to try and we could both continue.

Now that's the first time I've ever heard of something like that..

Did it work?

 

[Mr. SyS]

Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2005) was how I learned about system requirements.

 

[werewolfx]

Now that's the first time I've ever heard of something like that..View attachment 214425


Did it work?

It's not my weirdest story: had a copy of Super Mario Brothers become Baseball on the NES. Only recently learned why.