I’ve heard people say it is therapeutic to reflect on your actions and interactions with others.
So relieve that mental burden and let us know the retro game(s) you took/borrowed and never gave back. Or let us know the game(s) that were taken and never given back to you.
Are you still friends with that person? did you confess to them or call them out? How do you feel about it now? Did you make out like a bandit in today’s retro economy? Spill the beans!
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I have three occasions:
I ‘worked’ all summer doing chores so that i could buy RPG Maker 3 for the PS2. Once I received it i had troubles figuring out how to play it. it didn’t come with a manual so a friend offered to make me one by playing it. I believed him and gave him the game. Shortly after, my dad lost his job and we moved. I never got to truly play the game that I had worked so hard for that summer. I was very young and i do not talk to that friend at all. However, that memory stays with me and I’m still pretty miffed. perhaps i would have found an early passion for game development! who knows!
I apologize to my good friend who I accidentally sold his copy of harvest moon 64 before i left for university. I fessed up years later, and he just laughed. still good friends to this day.
I apologize to a childhood friend’s brother for borrowing both Alundra and Alundra 2 on PS1. Even after 22 years I still have them and keep them in my home office waiting to return them someday. I don’t talk to the friend, but I have been trying to reconnect. to make it more difficult, I’m pretty sure his brother moved to Japan and i don’t want to pay postage.
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I think i got $25 for harvest moon at the time, and I don’t think the Alundra games are all that sought after these days. Same for the loss of Rpg maker 3, but I remember paying at least $45, and I felt that missing as a tween! If anything I’m in the hole or broke even.
A temporary trade became permanent: their Rampart for my Toejam and Earl: Panic on Funkatron. I got the worse end of it, but it was my idea to trade.
I was at a friend’s house playing Utopia: The Creation of a Nation on SNES.
He warned me not to save my game, but I blanked and did anyway. Apparently there was only one save slot, so I overwrote all his previous work. There’s not really anything to fess up to here, since he was sitting right there giving me the most what the fuck look a teenager can give. But for the record, I’m still sorry 30 years later, Rick.
He followed up a few days later, having continued my game, and the aliens absolutely fucked up my (our) colony almost immediately the save point. I didn’t even give him a good mid-starting point to begin from.
When I was in like first grade, my parents got us a Super NES, which I took to a friend’s house to play, thinking it was the same thing as a regular NES (just “super,” y’know?). I spaced and left it behind… and never saw it again.
I don’t even know who the friend was anymore, tbh.
When I was in fourth or fifth grade, a teacher did this thing where you could earn bonus points during the year and later spend them on prizes. I had a lot of points and so got to make my selections early, and I got a bunch of gaming magazines because I liked to read them, even though we didn’t have a modern console. Some other kid in the class, whom I do remember, got annoyed at this and stole them from my locker. I think I found out, because I remember that he explained it was because I wasn’t even a gamer - I didn’t have a PlayStation or Dreamcast so obviously (in his mind) it didn’t make sense for me to take those magazines. Sorry for being poor, I guess? I’m pretty sure I got the magazines back, because I remember reading them, but I’m not positive.
First situation I blame myself more than them. Second one I’m still annoyed when I think about it.
My ex somehow ended up with my copy of Suikoden II. She would have known to sell it and not toss it, but no idea if she did sell or for how much.
I let a “friend” borrow my gameboy advance back in the day. Never saw it again. Never let anyone else borrow my shit after that either.
One of my friends let me borrow heroes of might and magic. Through being lazy, I ended up misplacing it and it was either destroyed or lost for good.
Years later I bought him the whole collection on Steam.
As a kid, I used to borrow my sister’s games and play them (which I think annoyed her because I always got further than she did…) and it got to the point where they “de facto” became mine and are now somewhere in my games collection.
I guess I feel guilty about it, but haven’t really spoken to her about it.
I think our parents eventually made us give them back in the end, but my brother and I certainly held on to a bunch of our friend’s Game Boy games a lot longer than he originally meant to lend them to us. We fell out of contact with him after high school.
Swapped my copy of Power Stone 2 for Soul Calibur with a friend of a friend and what was supposed to be a week or so became forever…
I also let a mate borrow MSR on the Dreamcast and when I went over again I found the disc being used as a coaster to someone’s coffee…
oof. yep that is a rough discovery.
The first time our house was broken into and the thieves made off with our SNES and about 20-odd games. I still have some memories of going to the mall as a kid with my dad and brother excitedly lugging the SNES and Super Scope boxes through the mall.
The second time our house was broken into (different house and neighbourhood) years later the thieves stole my Gameboy Color, DS lite, and about 25 games between the two handhelds complete with every single box.
Some 20 years later I say I’m over it, but I still feel a knot in my stomach just revisiting the memories.
