Battlemouth

I’m a bit of a retro gamer, but I almost always try to play great games if I’m going to play anything. There are always a few titles a year that I jump on when they’re released, but some give me pause to wait till they hit that venerable Bargain Bin.

Truly great games usually never reach the bin, unless the publisher themselves thought the title a huge moneymaker. Rez cost me 40 dollars in 2006, a mere ten dollars less than it was when it first came out for ps2 in 2002, and when it came out on XBLA, another ten. Beyond Good and Evil however, which is a fantastic game, was printed for all three consoles at the time and I was able to snap it up for $8.99, only two years after it’s release. The difference being Rez was a limited run from a small invovative developer, and Beyond Good and Evil was a marketing flop, from a developer who used to be at the top.

Still, Beyond Good and Evil is a great game, getting it for that price only makes me love it more. So I recently went to game stop searching for more underrated or under marketed titles I could add to my collection. This is what I was able to pull up, from highest to lowest price. Some of these games I’ve owned before, and all are Backwards Compatible with new systems.

Megaman Anniversary Collection (Xbox) - $9.99

I had originally purchased this game for ps2, but had traded it in after mine had died.If you’re even remotely excited for Megaman 9, you can purchase 1-8 on one disc, that’s backwards compatible for the same price Megaman 9 will be when it comes out on XBLA, WiiWare and PSN. I remember paying 40 bucks for Megaman 8 for PS1 to trade it in immediately for Megaman X4.

Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams (Xbox) - $9.99

While the original Silent Hill is still the scariest and most disturbing video game I have ever played, Silent Hill 2 remains the most compelling, and it was still friggin scary. While it didn’t follow the original’s story like Silent Hill 3 did, it further helped to flesh out what the was up with that town, and why there was all this crazy shit happening. It also introduced the most-badass-bad-guy ever, Pyramid Head, which no game will ever top in our lifetime,

Killer 7 (Xbox) - $8.99

And that’s for the Gamecube edition, PS2 fans can get it for less ($4.99).

In My opinon, killer 7 is not really a game as much as an interactive story designed to be tedious and furstrating to help set the tone for the engaging plot. If you take it in small steps, playing less than a whole chapter in a sitting, You’ll find by the end that your concept of a video game has changed dramatically, and will be rewarded for your trouble. No More Heroes is a continuation and flucation of the theme: instead of the combat being designed to make you angry and anxious, hitting you with convoluted ressurection rituals and annoyingly awkward cameras, it’s designed to desensitize you with the pure brutality on the screen. You perform the same cartoonish slashes over and over to produce copious amounts of visceral blood all over the landscaping of a baseball diamond. If you think Video Games are art, the Grasshopper studios should be on your list.

Panzer Dragoon Orta (Xbox) - $6.99

The last Gasp of the dead genre of rail shooters, Orta is by no means a masterpiece of any sort. It’s a difficult game that’s really short and only fairly pretty to look at. It’s controls are the first obstacle in your way, and then it’s recognizing enemy patterns, and the story, which is absolutely terrible. Amazingly though, the game is far greater than the sum of it’s parts, it feels and plays like Ikaruga and Rez combined. A noble concept if anything.

Serious Sam (Xbox) - $3.99

I had originally played the first encounter in 2001. I was awed. Shooters had become so sophisticated by that point, timesplitters was a perennial favorite, and Halo had just revolutionized the genre. But Serious Sam brought me back to a time when I thought there was no game that could ever be more fun to play than Doom 2. Serious Sam plays almost identical to those old games like quake and Heretic, but ups the ante with rediculously overpowered weapons, enemies that can kill you instantly, or thousands of enemies on screen at at time, wailing down on you simultaneously. There were hundreds of easter eggs and gags to discover (one of my favorites involves walking behind a certain bush making a huge pair of eyes appear in the sky, if you shot at the eyes, it spawned a massive enemy and blocked off the entire area), and high scores it would take 10 minutes to recall. If anything is worth 4 bucks, than this is.

Prey (Xbox 360) - $3.99

The Downloadable demo for Prey is free and contains nearly the entire first third of the game, but now at Gamestop the full game is 50% off it’s 7.99 Pricetag. While developer 3D Realms, obviously were taking themselves serious when they made this game, it really is more of a comic romp through an alien spaceship with a native american douchebag as it’s main protagonist. The game is rediculously easy, and it’s portal-themed gravity-bending gameplay is at best a gimmick, but oddly enough you’ll have plenty of fun the entire time. And the game is pretty long, about 12 hours long, which is epic for a first person shooter nowadays. It runs smoothly and never suffers from the slowdown that similar titles like Quake 4 suffered from, and you may get a few laughs while you’re at it.

Megaman Network Transmission (GC)- $2.99

This is a unique game, I have never played anything like it, and I doubt I ever will. In the megaman NT series it comes after the first GBA game in terms of story, but you probably won’t be concerned with the story… This game is incredibly hard and incredibly detail-oriented. Your megabuster is completely useless, it does next to nothing to baddies, and the chips you have to equip to actually be able to do damage are almost random in their selection. Furthermore the gameplay is slow and the plot demands to be acknowledged every 2 minutes or so, and skipping it is not an option. unlike Killer 7, this game is not a deliberate hate fest, it just came out that way. It is a beautiful steaming pile to be examined. And I think it belongs in the same catergory as Superman on N64 and Escape from Bug Island.

Escape from Bug Island (Wii) - $12.99 (It should be $1.99)

I think this is the worst game of this generation. Released in Japan as Necro-Nesia, in the US it was given a B-movie-esque title screen and box art to try and sell it as deliberate camp. Once you’ve seen your first head-sized, vagina-shaped cockroach, you’ve seen them all. survival horror has never been so terrible. Only conesiuers of crap should dare attempt instertion into an actual wii.

XIII (Xbox) - $1.99

Another 50% off tagged price game from Gamestop, XIII is actually worth way more than it’s 2 dollar price tag. The game has it’s flaws, and some may have called it terrible. But I think it’s heart was in the right place, and in some ways it excells. To put it simply, the concept is what I really like about it: The cel-shaded graphics made to match the original comic, and the panels that arise when you get a headshot, much like a real comic would display. Unfortunately it worries about that kind of stuff too much, making it awkward and harder to play. I think this game is prime for a remake, and could one day have justice done to it’s concept.

So Hopefully, and in conclusion, you will feel compelled to delve within the depths of these discarded discs. And remember, gaming isn’t always about playing the newest title with your friends, totally pwning newbs and getting 1000 achievements, and that sometimes the best (or most interesting) games can come from the place you thought you’d never find them: in the Bargain Bin next to Madden ‘06.