What game did you find in a bargain bin that turned out to be awesome? For me it was Z by Bitmap Brothers which I got at Zellers for $0.47
If you're thinking of buying Z now - the modern remake is a careless trash port FYI
Elder millennial, here. One of the weird things about the 90s was cereal boxes marketed to little bastards like me at the time would often have some kind of toy included in it.
PC gaming was kind of in its infancy and growing rapidly in popularity, so eventually the inevitable happed: a cereal company promoted their cereal by shoving a fucking CD into it, that little bastards like me lost their shit over, installed, and played the snot out of.
It was literally just Doom, except reskinned so the demons were boogers, and everything else was a fucking Chex cereal advertisement.
AND IT WAS AMAZING! lol
Best box of cereal my parents ever bought. Not a bargain bin, but I feel like "in a box of cereal" fits the spirit of the question.
Hey that was me, too! Definitely worth $4 for that game, and a free box of cereal, lol.
Gonna vouch for Chex quest. That game was SOLID! 😂
I got the original roller coaster tycoon from a cereal box! I got other games too, but that's definitely the best (by far), and only one I remember.
That had to be wild to work on. You get brought into the kickoff meeting for what you assume is going to be some soulless marketing gimick, then they start laying it out.
It had a plot, a decent amount of levels. There was a good amount of heart that went into that.
all shareware was bargain bin.
Jazz Jackrabbit was THE fucking SHIT.
Oh shoot, thanks for reminding me of that old classic! That reminds me of Jill of the Jungle as well!
If my memory is right, after seeing how good sonic was on the megadrive,I was surprised with Jazz on my PC. It was so good and showed me that I didn't need a console.
Second reply...
I distinctly remember in my city various computer stores had kiosks which were basically coin op PCs and for $1 you could transfer shareware onto a floppy disk. You were still responsible for paying for the full license if you liked it.
Does anybody else remember these?
Dungeon Keeper. I can still hear the sound FX of a slapped imp, or the Dark Mistress' scream
Castlevania Symphony of The Night!
Apparently it released at a time when 3d graphics were the new hotness and it originally flew under the radar for a lot of people.
Loved every minute of it!
Age of Empires 2 when a Kmart was closing down back in like 2001.
Morrowind promised and delivered complete freedom to roam where I wanted and I found it in the big box of videogames at Superstore... That was after trying it for 15 minutes, thinking the animations were jank as hell even back then, and then not touching it again until a month later when I thankfully gave it another chance because I was bored
I played that game entirely to young and somehow finished the main quest line, eventually.
But man, I spent so many hours just murder hobo-ing it because I didn't really understand the quest based game loop yet. I'd just pick a direction and look for something cool. When I found someone that looked like they'd have cool stuff I'd just kill them and take their stuff. The only time I'd reload is when I got the prophecy warning; I broke like every quest except the main one.
This was compounded by the fact that 1) I was really enjoying just exploring and 2) that game was not particularly hard to destroy the balance on. Even a kid with poor mechanical skills could get wildly OP pretty easily.
12/10 no notes.
I got Fallout 1 and 2 in a 2-pack for $10. This was back in the early '00s before the others were released. I loved those games so much.
I got metal gear rising for 5 bucks at a 5 below. Everyone shit on that game but running around as ninja Raiden was so fun.
I bought Phantom Pain for like $4. I was really burned out of the series after MGS3.
But Phantom Pain is incredible! Giant open-world game where my main focus was collecting pokemon soldiers by tying balloons to their asses.
I don't remember the price, and Mom almost certainly paid for it, but Faxanadu. First game I ever beat, got an emulator and sought it out on a rom when those came out, and most recently played it at an arcade that had a bunch of older games loaded onto a "TV" with real controllers. Hadn't used that kind of controller for a long time.
A few years back, dusting off the GameStop bargain bin with old gen games, I found a sealed copy of Zone of the Enders and a used copy of Metal Gear Rising.
I had never heard of the first, and I was only mildly aware of the second one (it was before people started memeing it into mainstream status).
Best summer ever!
Not quite "find your pocket change" but a solid value: Starcraft + broodwars for $20.
So, soooooooo many hours. And it came in a sweet looking box! Like the kind that people shell out an extra $50 for as a pre-order these days.
I'll always remember you this way Blizz. You were one of the greats.
I got shadow of the colossus (ps2) from gamestop. I have the ps3 that can play ps2 and ps1 games so I bought it. I had never heard of the game before but was interested in the name. I ended up loving the game.
Total Annihilation. Yes I peaked young.
Same, found that game while I was way too young to understand any strategy, which is kinda important in a Real Time Strategy to have. The units were cool enough to occupy little me's mind, so I had a good time.
So much fun!
The original Mount & Blade at an office max, I think? 5 dollar bargain bin game. I remember being blown away by the army combat in that game. The first one was so barebones but I still love that janky mess.
The original Creatures I found in the going out of business sale at KB Toys when I was a kid for like $2. IIRC, it was also the first game I ever bought on my own.
To this day, it's still be the best virtual pet game I've ever played. The whole system of genetics was cool as hell, and the fact it was made by scientists studying the human genome and uses real science behind the genetic modeling was super fucking cool.
I loved that game even though I never figured it out. I couldn’t find anything else like it. It’s one of the reasons Spore disappointed me so much. Spore had customizable appearances but all the creatures acted the same. In Creatures, it almost felt like they were alive.
The memory I have ingrained most from the game is that once I hatched a norn that for whatever reason, could not walk. It just stayed where it hatched unless another creature moved them. I feared it would starve to death, but the other norns took care of her. They brought her food and liquid, they played with her, they taught her language, they even protected her from the Grendel. This wasn't necessarily pre-programmed behavior; this never happened at any other time for me. They usually didn't teach each other much, and they certainly never brought each other food or gifts. Just for the one that was unable to take care of itself.
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom back in like '04
There are several games in that series, most if not all of which are on GOG for cheap. I recommend Caesar III (don't bother with IV), Zeus, Pharoah and Cleopatra. They all follow the same basic formula and are a lot of fun.
I once got Lufia II for SNES for $5 from Blockbuster. Absolutely amazing game and I still have it!
That's also how I got my copy 😂
Sunset Riders, thought it looked naff and was disappointed when I got it, hoping for something better known. Ended up loving the coop mode.
FFX. The video store near me was shutting down and I scored an unopened copy for like 5 bucks, still playing with the same disc today.
Making the Calm Lands a grind fest was Grade A trolling by Squaresoft in retrospect.
So much trolling in that game... The chocobo races, lightning dodging & butterfly catching mini games pushes the idea of fun a fair fucking bit.
Also unlocking Nemesis was a chore, 10 of every monster in every area please... Urghh.
Fallout and Fallout 2. Two disk set at Walmart for $10 in the late 90s. Kept me busy through college, and I was so happy to see Bethesda bring it back from the dead and create some of my favorite games of all time!
Well this is more of a digital bin but I picked up Brother a tale of two sons on sale ages ago because the art looked cool. Hands down one of the best games I ever played, made me sob like a bitch.
"Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball Max'D" for the PS2. It had no right being as fun as it was, and it sure wasn't polished, but it was a fun little title. My roommate and I played it off and on for a couple years.
Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror
It was the OG Counterstrike that started as an Unreal Tournament mod before getting a standalone release. It was popular for a long time entirely because it had zero anti-piracy built in and it supported modding. The game came out in 1999 and people still play it today.
Got it for $5 in the bargain bin at EB games.
I got Okage for PlayStation 2 at Liquidation World for like $5.
It's not the best RPG, but it's one of my favourites just for its whacky humour and fantastic character designs.
Majesty the fantasy kingdom sim. Got it at Ross the clothing store with the expansion and it's genuinely the most fun management games I've ever played. Available on steam very cheap now.
Discounting Steam because otherwise I'd be here typing for an hour listing all the cheap games I enjoyed from there.
Lufia 2 for the SNES, which was great because it was a prequel to Lufia 1, though it took me a couple years to finally track down a copy in the pre-internet days. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a prequel, and there are actually massive spoilers for the 2nd game in the intro for the 1st one, so I unintentionally played them in the right order!
Crack Dot Com's "Abuse". Greatest run-and-gun platformer ever.
Mission Critical, back in the 90s
God I loved that game.
i got forza horizon 3 and all dlc for like 5 bucks
All of our NES games were bargain-bin. Section Z was the only one we had with a decent soundtrack, which made up for how often I died
I'm not trying to be Mr Snappy but I think I paid a dollar for it too, and I feel I overpaid by about 99.9 cents
Edit: I can see why other people like it, but I found it to be utterly monotonous and just shallow, wanton destruction which didn't appeal to me
Edit 2: I should be fair to the game, it was technically very well done (ignoring modern crash problems), the destruction was pretty cool, I thought the graphics were neat, and it offered was a variety of things that many people would enjoy. For my taste there not a enough world design, too much copy/paste, and the story/missions were perfunctory. For me, it had many good ingredients, but it didn't make a stew. It comes down to personal taste.
Quake series. Thousands of hours on them.
Kengo on PS2. Five bucks.
Way late to the party, but I picked up Lost Kingdoms for the GameCube for $5 back when GameStop still had bargains. One of my favorite games to this day.
Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2. There was a box set with both games in it, and the box art for DK1 caught my eye, just this cartoonish grinning demon. Of course I got it home, and then noticed the box art for DK2, which certainly got my attention and definitely not because I have a fetish for thighs.
Z is a fantastic game but some of the levels infuriated me, no matter how well I played the AI seemed to have an answer... Turned out the difficulty goes up a notch after each loss since the devs expected you to git gud.
Oh wow, I wasn't aware of that!
I remember initially falling in love with the concept of the game and the humor and the graphics, but them feeling absolutely crest falling that I couldn't accomplish anything in the game.
But then I had my very first big gamer epiphany, you need to be aggressive! So not only was it one of my big surprise favorites, I had one of my very first aha! moments as a gamer with it
I don't remember where we got it, but back in the old days when everyone was trying to replicate the success of Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 & 2, we had School Tycoon. It's certainly no Rollercoaster Tycoon since it was specifically aimed at a younger audience, but I find it still enjoyable enough when you want to just kill time.
Definitely better than Deep Sea and Space Tycoon. That's a definite. We had those as well and I could never figure out how the hell to actually properly play them.