Share the most terrible retro gaming memory you have

[Neocaron]

Hi there, earlier on one of the thread I read on how someone got his entire Saturn gaming collection stolen, and it made me remember a terrible memory I have that it also retro gaming related. I wonder if any of you have similar horror stories that you would feel comfortable to share? I feel like sharing this kind of stories absolutely helps to put them in perpective and feel better! For people like me, the Mister is also a way to get back something thought forever lost and keep it forever in a tiny little box.

Of course another thread, where we could "Share the most beautiful retro gaming memory you have" is also on the table

[WILL1384]

Not exactly video game related, but I had some old Mac computers in storage, they were all working when I put then in storage, but when I checked them out few years later they had all died or been damaged beyond repair, here is a list:

Apple Power Macintosh G3 233 Minitower beige with AV - battery damaged the motherboard and case, battery rotted hole in metal case, hard drive now bad, scraped for parts.

Power Mac 7200 / 180 -- Case suffered heavy damage - scraped for parts.

Power Mac 7300 / 200 -- Case suffered heavy damage, battery damaged the motherboard, scraped for parts.

Apple iMac G3 Bondi Blue 233MHz -- powers on but wont boot, hard drive clicks, and CRT is making popping sounds, scraped for parts.

SuperMac C600 mini-tower -- battery exploded, will not power on, scraped for parts.

Macintosh Quadra 800 -- case damaged, what little metal inside case was badly rusted, and would no longer power on, scraped for parts.

Apple Macintosh Performa 6205CD - powers on, wont boot, wont boot from any drive, scraped for parts.

Basically moisture in the form of condensation rusted all the metal parts and the BIOS battery rusted holes in the cases and motherboards, and mice did some damage, I was so sad, I also had a bunch of PC computer parts that also damaged like that.

When I was a kid in the 1980s, me and my friends would try and beat video games on the NES buy taking turns playing the game and leaving the NES running but paused for long periods of time, they had the NES plugged into a wall outlet that was behind a bed, and when we were about near the end of Ninja Gaiden I sit on the bed and it unplugged the NES, and all my friend hated me for it, and unfortunately it happened again when playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

Once when I was a wee lad I got so frustrated with Star Trek 25th Anniversary for the NES I ripped the cartridge out of the console and stomped on it. Ended up putting a heel-sized hole in the plastic. I got scared of getting in trouble and threw the whole cartridge away.

I sold my Genesis and all my Genesis games at a Funcoland in the late 90s to put towards a used Playstation. Thankfully, my Genesis chose that moment to act up so they took my games and controllers but made me keep the console. Still have the Genesis, wish I still had all those games.

Bought a used Gameboy at that same Funcoland, only for it to immediately develop vertical lines on the screen. Didn't know at the time how easy those are to fix, so I was just bitterly disappointed.

Had my Saturn boxed up along with all my other retro consoles, but then I moved between towns in Washington state, then moved to two different places in Illinois, then moved to South Carolina over the course of a couple years. After I finally got everything settled, Saturn console is nowhere to be found. I still have the games, the controllers, the cords, everything but the most important part. I miss that Saturn. I traded in the N64 I got for Christmas to get it, a decision I have never regretted.

Losing that Saturn is a big reason why I finally pulled the trigger on gettng my MiSTer. Soon I'll be able to play those games again and I'll never have to worry about losing another console.

[Stupid Dufus]

In 1996 I traded in what is now easily $15,000 of games complete in box... for around $1,000 in store credit at a local game store so I could get an N64. Worst decision I've ever made.

[retro]

I regret throwing out my old 80386 DX 40 PC
It had a functioning VGA CRT, and a mono SoundGalaxy sound card
Would love to have it today to play DOS games on real hardware

[Shogun]

I had a near complete collection of Nintendo Power from the 90s, a large number of gamefan issues, and quite a few issues of other magazines like PSM, gamepro, egm. I also had most of the lucasarts games for the mac as well as other games from the early 90s Mac era. All of it was lost in my parents divorce when my dad did who knows what with everything that was in the house. I think he had a garage sale. I have managed to restore most of the gamefan issues from that time over the years.

[Bas]

My complete collection of PC Format magazines got eaten by mice in storage. Even the one in which they published my very own weird cheat for Golden Axe.

[grizzly]

Hmmm???
I do not remember anything specific.
But it would have to be 2 or 3 times renting NES games (and/or sega master system with the whole console) and they where soooooo bad i had to force myself to play them for 15min and then could not force myself any longer.
The disappointment was huge! And the whole weekend was ruined, mostly because i got angry and did not want too do anything else.

I know 1 or 2 of those games i almost bought but rented them first and i sure as hell was glad i did that, imagine the disappointment if i had bought them instead of renting.

Then there are the times around 98-00 playing Thief 1/gold/2 and scared myself to death many times.
One time with a mod map with some ghostly guardian that where 98% invisible when they did not move, and became slightly more visible when moving.
I slowly crept around and was really careful and stopped and waited often, and then after having waited for 2-3min in one spot one guardian started to move half a step to my front left.
And damn that was literaly the by far the most scared i have been EVER, and the thing was the guardian did not see me and moved away from me and was probably scarier then IF he had seen me.

Thief 1/gold/2 are the scariest game i have played slenderman/amnesia/and all other "scary games" is not scary at all and i maybe get slightly scared 1 or 2 times in them and i have played many of them.
Almost all games and scary stuff in them is scripted jumpscares after jumpscares and i see them before they happen every time=not scary at all.

[akeley]

Then there are the times around 98-00 playing Thief 1/gold/2 and scared myself to death many times.

Same here but I count it (and the whole games) as one of my best retro experiences.

[kfreiberg]

My younger sister sold off our childhood NES and SNES collections without my permission. In fact, I told her straight out NO to selling the NES collection and she did it anyway. The SNES collection she sold without asking or telling me.

Burns me to this day... The consoles I don't care about, they're easily replaceable. Same with the games if I really wanted to re-purchase them second hand. But what I really miss are my old save files for games like Final Fantasy 3 (FFIV) for SNES. I put so many hours into leveling up all the characters to level 99 and got them all the Ultima spell, etc. Wish I had that game back... Ugh...

[german_user]

From today's perspective, my story is probably rather funny, even if it was rather very frustrating at the time.It's about my first Amiga 500 computer, which of course I bought directly for the 1987 release. That was a lot of money for me back then.All the more annoying that the device showed an error after a relatively short time.The screen just went dark after a while and so I had to send the device in for repair. The technician could not find a fault, but it occurred again for me when the device came back from repair.So after a phone call I sent the device back for repair. It was definitely gone for 4 weeks and, as still no errors were found, some of the chips were exchanged on suspicion. When that didn't help, the fault was still there with me. Just as I was about to complain over the phone about the poor repair performance, I suddenly saw writing on the screen, because I had never seen before when the picture went dark. Something wunderfull has hapend to your computer. You are infected by ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCA_(computer_virus)

[Enthropy]

My first and only computer from 1991 to 1995 (we were poor and computer prices in Czech Republic were insane after the fall of communism) was a ZX Spectrum+ with Opus Discovery 1 and a single joystick. In the summer of 1992, we were taking turns playing Manic Miner with my younger brother. His turn was over but he did not want to give me the joystick. After few minutes of shouting at each other, he ripped the joystick out with the connector and part of the PCB. It was the only joystick port on the disc drive/dock and I was not able to get a replacement.
He has soon lost all interest in games and I had to play on keyboard only for next few years.

I wasn't able to enjoy Manic Miner ever since

[LamerDeluxe]

A friend of my parents worked at an electronics store in the seventies and eighties. He often gave my parents white label records. He heard I had a VIC-20 and gave me some games. Two were prototype cartridges, without labels, probably in-store demo versions. They contained eproms.

One of them was Q*Bert, the other one was Popeye, both by Parker Brothers. Popeye only had the first level playable, the next ones were just static level images.

When I got a new computer, all my VIC-20 stuff went to my brother, who sold it to some neighborhood kid.

Somewhere in the nineties I messaged a site that had a list of VIC-20 games about this, they registered it as a rumored game. To this day, I haven't found anyone who knows anything about this game. So apparently it was extremely rare.

On a smaller scale, I finally got an original Mine Storm overlay for my Vectrex, which I've owned for about twenty years. It was part of a set of games with overlays and a controller. I decided to clean the Mine Storm overlay with some lukewarm water and soap, only using my hands to gently rub it. Then I suddenly noticed a large blank spot in the middle where the blue coloring had suddenly flaked off. That was massively disappointing. I didn't know it was such a thin and brittle layer and can't find anything about that on the internet.

[grizzly]

Don´t have a Vectrex or even seen one so can´t say if the repro overlays is any good or if they still sell them.
https://www.retrorgb.com/reproduction-v ... rlays.html

[bazza_12]

I had the entire Crash Magazine collection, until i decided to do an Art A-Level and use them to make an 'arty' computer chair for a project. I started by gluing all the pages together and compacting them in an old printers vice then shaped them into a cube chair. at the time they had very little meaning to me, now i regret it so much.. and to top it all i failed the exam!

[gojira54]

I opened my copy of 'dead of the brain I &II' for PCE CD which had been sitting factory sealed for years when I was drunk :s

[lamarax]

The worst? Lemme think...

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Oh! It was when I managed to put my hands on one of the sparse authentic cassettes which could be possibly available to me in the early 80s; "Fortress", a Zaxxon clone for the BBC micro, which I got for free as a promo with my subscription to the "Micro User" magazine.

Back then in my country, although we were in the EU EEC, it was extremely hard to obtain foreign currency, even for small things such as a magazine subscription. My late father stood hours in queue at the bank in order to be granted a check in £.

Then, when I finally had it in my hands after nearly a month of waiting for it to arrive and had managed just a couple of plays, a friend came asking if I'd lend it to him, which I promptly did. Guess what happened -never saw it again (although I'm still in contact with that person)

[grizzly]

WAIT!
I just remember my 1year and almost 2 months long suppressed absolute worst retro memory.
It started with a expensive buy of some small things called MiSTer/io board/128mb ram/BliSTer.
Then about 1 week after i got everything home i suddenly came to the horrible conclusion that i need to eat and sleep

Guess what happened -never saw it again (although I'm still in contact with that person)

If it where me that person would still be dead to me today!

[elvis]

Selling a tonne of Master System and Megadrive games, plus a Power Base Converter, all for peanuts as a kid at a yard sale my parents' friends had.

Then using that pittance plus a bunch of savings to buy "Mickey and Donald: World of Illusion" which had great reviews in magazines, for a whopping $80 (games are expensive in my region, and that was a fortune to me as a kid).

Then taking the game home, and completing it in under 4 hours.

I've never sold a game or console since.

[Larkhainan]

The one that comes back to me, that haunts me, is for some insane reason I as an adult threw away a beautiful mitsubishi CRT monitor I'd saved up $700 as a teenager to buy. Washed dishes at min wage to save up for this beast. It was beautiful, it looked amazing, probably just needed minor repairs on the caps or something, I had it in storage... And I tossed it less than a decade ago. It was old enough to be right at the peak of late retro goodness, I had it in my hands, and tossed it without knowing how valuable it would be a few scant years later.

[LamerDeluxe]

Don´t have a Vectrex or even seen one so can´t say if the repro overlays is any good or if they still sell them.
https://www.retrorgb.com/reproduction-v ... rlays.html

Thanks! I saw those before, they are supposed to be as almost exactly like the real thing. Postage to the EU with duty/tax is a bit high though. I bought another used overlay almost right away, for a relatively okay price (I wasn't going to wait years for a good deal again), still a bummer though and a waste of a classic item. I have yet to receive it.

[aberu]

I'm playing Phantasy Star III at my friend Daniel's house for the first time. Our other friend Chris is over. I had to have been in 4th or 5th grade, maybe. I was almost at the end of an extremely long dungeon, and I got everything in the place. Chris nearly kicked the Sega Genesis, I told him to be more careful. He taunted me by acting like he was going to kick the Sega Genesis, and he actually did on accident. The game locked up. I lost like an hour and a half of going through the dungeon... -_-

I've never beaten Phantasy Star III still lol...

Still an awesome friend to this day, it's a memory we both laugh about.

[city909]

Mario Kart 64, epic disappointment compared to the original

[beamrider]

A friend of my parents worked at an electronics store in the seventies and eighties. He often gave my parents white label records. He heard I had a VIC-20 and gave me some games. Two were prototype cartridges, without labels, probably in-store demo versions. They contained eproms.

One of them was Q*Bert, the other one was Popeye, both by Parker Brothers. Popeye only had the first level playable, the next ones were just static level images.

As the writer of Popeye 2015, I would sure like to see this rumoured original conversion even if it is just the first level.
Pity it can't be located.

[LamerDeluxe]

A friend of my parents worked at an electronics store in the seventies and eighties. He often gave my parents white label records. He heard I had a VIC-20 and gave me some games. Two were prototype cartridges, without labels, probably in-store demo versions. They contained eproms.

One of them was Q*Bert, the other one was Popeye, both by Parker Brothers. Popeye only had the first level playable, the next ones were just static level images.

As the writer of Popeye 2015, I would sure like to see this rumoured original conversion even if it is just the first level.
Pity it can't be located.

Cool! I saw your version in Retro Gamer magazine, which then reminded me of the prototype. I only remember it used multi-color mode. It was pretty well done. Indeed quite frustrating that it is nowhere to be found, I had no idea at the time.

[Pepeart]

When I sold my SNES TNMT "not for sale label" for $30

[Neocaron]

When I sold my SNES TNMT "not for sale label" for $30

Oh noooooo, I hope you haven't been on EBay for the pas 5 years XD It would hurt even more...

[retro]

Trading in my North American Chrono Trigger cartridge for a measly RM100 (around $35 at the time) discount towards a PlayStation

[Narenek]

For me it's probably ditching my 21" iiyama monitor. I'd kill for it back these days
Same goes for the 32" Sony Trinitron TV I used to have.

[AdamM]

That sinking feeling when the N64 memory card needs to be reformatted for the 50th time. Luckily not many games used it, and sometimes when they did it was for optional features.