Only Fools and Consoles

[Harsin]

As you look back over your years of gaming, are there moments you wished you'd have done things differently? Do you have a Virtual Boy or a ridiculous special edition of a game hidden shamefully in the attic? If so share your tales of reckless spending here.

Mine.

I remember getting a promotional cover VHS tape for the Mega CD on one or the other game mags I used to get. Young me thought it was the hottest shit he'd ever seen (the Batmobile in (quasi) 3D! Full-motion video! Scantily clad ladies!). I begged and pleaded with my parents to get me one for Christmas, they agreed eventually as long as I saved up a certain amount towards it, which I dutifully did. I think I ended up owning about 3 games for the poxy thing. Needless to say I took Roger Daltrey's advice when Sega announced the 32X.

The original Xbox was the first console I ever bought at launch. It's hard to begrudge getting to play Halo and Jet Set Radio Future as early as possible. But nevertheless, a month or two later Microsoft realised that no bugger was buying the console at £300 and promptly knocked £100 off. Now at least they attempted to make it up to the poor sod's who'd already shelled out and I got my choice of two MS Game Studios releases (which were promptly traded as I'd already bought the ones I was actually interested in) and an extra absurdly large 1st gen controller (which I didn't need). In retrospect I think I'd have waited and saved myself £100.

[Kevvy Metal]

Owning a Sega Saturn at the age of 16.

The PAL version of that console was so limited due to region locking and no easy way of importing all the great Japanese only titles.

I did have a lot of fun out of it and a fair few great games were released over here, but missed out on so much.

You really had to be an import enthusiast to get the most out of the console. Not a 16 year old with little to no income.

[Let us measure]

I remember getting a promotional cover VHS tape for the Mega CD on one or the other game mags I used to get. Young me thought it was the hottest shit he'd ever seen (the Batmobile in (quasi) 3D! Full-motion video! Scantily clad ladies!).

I think I remember having that too. There was a half-undressed guy on a sofa and then some sexy lady comes waltzing in (representing the Mega CD I think) and continues to drape black lace over his torso while he fondles a MegaDrive pad. Then it cut to footage of that Batmobile game and Night Trap.

At least it was something like that. I might be confusing the video with last night's dream here...

EDIT: On topic, I've never owned a console I regretted having.

[simms]

Black ops prestige edition. Considering to exchange it for vanilla or hardened though when it lands at my door

[The Mighty Ash]

Spending £475 on one of these. A beautiful piece of kit, but what a waste of money.

[mechamonkey]

The GBA no back light, unplayable.

Actually the GB Colour was quite the turd too.

[Strangelite]

I have a horrible record with "consoles at the end of their life" purchases

Bought a Gameboy Colour 2 months before the GBA was announced.

Bought a GBA 1 month before rumblings about the DS...

So I bought a DS on the day of release... Only to get the crap over sized one...

And recently I bought a Xbox 360 Elite to replace my day 1 premium Xbox 360, about two weeks before they announced the Xbox Slim version.....

Playing GameDev Story is a bloody nightmare, I keep sitting around doing contract jobs because of my engrained fear of making a game for a platform that's going to get superceeded in two minutes by the WonderGit that is going to enter the market with 900,000,000 units and a market share of 99.1%

[layten]

Japanese launch PS2. Cost around £700 iirc.

[Kryptonian]

Console-wise, there's only the Wii I regretted buying and it is the only console I've sold on that I can recall. It was fun for the first Christmas but I just didn't touch it again, it just wasn't my cup of tea.

In the games department, Steel Batallion wins hands down for me - I just didn't have the time to get into it. Luckily I managed to sell in on for the RRP a bit before the servers were closed down.

I don't have too many ltd editions besides Halo games really...

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

Nothing extreme like some of these examples, although I also fell for the launchhype of some consoles or games that turned out to be shit. In retrospect I would never have bought a PSP, GameCube or Wii for example.

[Pob]

Buying Pit Fighter on the MegaDrive for £50. I don't think it was even an imported one or anything. That's just how much it was. I always think about that when I'm about to drop £40 on something like Halo: Reach in HMV to reassure myself that games are, relatively speaking, excellent value these days.

[dreamylittledream]

Spending £475 on one of these. A beautiful piece of kit, but what a waste of money.

That's my biggest waste of cash too. Got lumbered with a £120 customs bill with it too.

Was a very pretty machine though.

Accidental neg by the way. Fat fingers and iPad don't mix. I shall find a random post to plus one and even out the universe.

[Pistol]

I don't think I've ever spent over the odds on a game or console, 'cos I'm a cheapskate and I tend to buy things when they're affordable for me.

I have bought games and consoles which I haven't got as much use out of them as I should have, but I've still enjoyed them enough not to regret the purchase.

I suppose buying a duff Xbox 360 as a fixer-upper was my worst gaming purchase, considering it died and I had to get another one, but even that wasn't the total disaster it could have been. Trying to think what it ended up costing me - probably about £150-170.

[Not Thread Owner]

A few years ago my original Xbox 360 was on its way out (a few DDEs and several games insisted on crashing) I decided to trade it in and buy a new 120GB Elite. I bought the Elite first so I could transfer my stuff over, then shopped around town for the best price for my original (which, after the transfer, turned out to be perfectly OK - grr).

A local indie offered £125 which was £20 more than anywhere else. I took it in, and while they were testing it, I noticed they had white PSP slims in for £125.

Somehow, despite not wanting one, and essentially already having spent the £125 from the Xbox, I did a straight swap and walked out with a new shiny under my arm.

Worst. Purchase. Ever.

[Not Thread Owner]

The PAL version of that console was so limited due to region locking and no easy way of importing all the great Japanese only titles.

Remove one clip from the disc lid, and do the swap trick. Easy and free, and isn't permanent or detectable by Sega.

[Not Thread Owner]

The original Xbox was the first console I ever bought at launch.

This was probably my best ever buy, because I got it for free

[jonbd]

PSP was probably the worst purchase of all for me, what a waste of cash. Closely followed by a Wii I bought at launch on a whim! Best console purchase would be my Xbox 360, thanks to online multiplayer it's been the most used console i've ever had

[3.142]

Not strictly console per se, but I'll be dropping pounds on a pair of nvidia 580s when they come out, just to squeeze a few more frames out of my games and to finally play Crysis which I've been holding off on. yikes. could buy a nice macbook pro for that.

[Comrade]

I don't regret buying any of my consoles, but then the only ones I've bought at launch have been Nintendo ones. There was the incident where they knocked a bit off the price of the N64 not long after it came out, but I was so ludicrously hyped up fro Mario 64 that there was no feasible way my young brain could have coped with knowing it was out in this country and I didn't have one, so it was probably worth it, for my health and the health of those around me.

[scottcr]

PSP - what a waste of money that was. I bought one at launch in the states as well - drove for miles to find a shop with any stock.

[Not Thread Owner]

I don't regret buying any of my consoles, but then the only ones I've bought at launch have been Nintendo ones.

Same here - Wii, DS, DS Lite, GBA, GBA SP and Gamecube were all pre-orders. Don't regret any of them. Never felt the need to pre-order anything else.

The way I see it, you're *guaranteed* some good games on Nintendo hardware at some point. Whether they have many or lots or whatever is arguable, but they're the only consoles that - even without a list of planned games - you KNOW there'll be something good on.

[Guest]

£350 for an imported N64. It was well worth it though thinking about the gametime we got out of it. Although paying £75 for OOT was not I felt. I didn't have time to play it for a couple of weeks and by then it had come down to about £40.

[Fusty Gusset]

I tried to get Just about everything decent when it was released in Japan...PC Engine/GT etc, but the most monstrous was a NeoGeo AES + Mem card + Extra Pad + Fatal Fury - £700ish, which was basically a month's wages for me back then, hmmm...thinking about it my JP Dreamcast was £500+ all-in w/extra pad + mem + Sega Rally 2 (possibly Power Stone too, I forget), think that was the last really big un.

I sorta miss those flamboyant indie/import days, it was worth every penny to be king of the consoles for 6-12 months.

[matt0]

I had a GBA, Xbox, Cube and PS2 when they were all current consoles. I probably bought a game a week for a 4 year period... Made no sense at all, a lot of the games I only played for a couple of hours.

[Yix]

Easy target but the Wii. Bought during the Christmas absence having received a wad of cash twenty-four hours previous, I very rarely do impulse buying and I will most certainly not do so again. I seem to recall trying to flog it here. So I done did Galaxy and Ghost Squad and all the other stuff people prattled on about. Struggled through Smash Bros. online and failed to give Little King's Story the time it may have deserved but the simple fact of the matter is however entertaining I found it (and that's not much), there was always something else I wanted to play. A marathon of Civ Rev or levelling Dissidia, the latest GTA or embarrassing fun on Valkyria Chronicles.

The Wii gets a brief look-in as far as pirating but otherwise I'm quite prepared to flog it on. The fact that I'm mostly apprehensive about the inability to play the few GameCube games I have speaks volumes.

[Qazimod]

A while ago my folks pointed out that I had a fair bit of money in my account and that I should treat myself once in a while, maybe get a new console like an Xbox 360...much as I was tempted by the machine at the time I was nervous about the stories I'd heard about a certain hardware fault that several people had been experiencing, but at the same time I wanted to keep everyone happy so I splashed out on a Premium unit. I guess I don't really regret buying the machine - despite all the repeat trips to UPS I had some great fun with it - but if I wasn't given that extra nudge by people I would have waited a little while longer.

I also regret buying an original Game Boy Advance - the screen was absolutely shocking and when I finally got a Micro (which has since been thrown out ) the difference was incredible. Conversely, I've only ever bought one Nintendo DS; the big fat silver original. The 3DS will no doubt be my next handheld (since it's more of a hardware upgrade than a superficial makeover), but I'm tempted to wait for a while to see how long it takes for Ninty to release smaller/lighter/more efficient models...

[Uncle Nasty]

Definitely the Wii. I can forgive myself for buying all manner of addons, peripherals and getting sucked in on almost every single console launch day over the years, but the Wii was pretty much DOA for me.

The batteries ended up leaking in the remotes and ruining a decent cabinet, so the total cost of Wii ownership so far has been near enough a grand. Total playtime - less than a day.

[Mr. Pickle]

Heh, where to start?

£550 for an import PS1

£250 for an import Dreamcast

£425 for an import PSP

and the biggie

$2000 for a launch 360 from the States, 8 games, faceplate, extra controller...

[lordcookie]

Buying a UK, US and Japanese PS2 before eventually being sensible and just getting one modded.

I bought a second Xbox and never once took it out of the box (although I still have my 360 that needs fixing after the RROD struck it down about three years ago). Back during the last generation I was always buying limited edition consoles (The Final Fantasy Wonderswan, for example, despite hating FF) so God knows how much I ended up losing on them all. I spent more time trying to get the Steel Battalion controller back in the box than I ever did playing the bloody game.

I did buy a few consoles after their life span (Virtual Boy and 32X spring to mind) that I hardly played on but managed to recoup my costs when I sold it on.

[sandman]

Heh, where to start?

£550 for an import PS1

£250 for an import Dreamcast

£425 for an import PSP

and the biggie

$2000 for a launch 360 from the States, 8 games, faceplate, extra controller...

I paid £500 for a CDi at launch, but nothing on your magnitude mate.