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.
Gonna vouch for Chex quest. That game was SOLID! 😂
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.
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.
Dungeon Keeper. I can still hear the sound FX of a slapped imp, or the Dark Mistress’ scream
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.
Morrowind was the first game I started “Do a quick save so that I can go on a murder spree, and then reload when I’m done” xD Also learning how to insult people wearing glass armour enough so they’d attack me first, and now it wasnt illegal for me to kill them and loot the glass armour off of them
hahha, I’d just go on a spree picking up as much Ordinator armor as I could, sell it, and buy off my bounty.
That’s pretty clever for a kid!
never underestimate the strength of boredom and time in a pre-DSL era lol
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.
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!
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
pokemonsoldiers by tying balloons to their asses.
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.
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.
Sunset Riders, thought it looked naff and was disappointed when I got it, hoping for something better known. Ended up loving the coop mode.
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 😂
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom back in like '04
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.
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!
