Most ridiculous thing you've done for a game / new console etc ?

[Peter Withe]

My story isn't too crazy but I would be interested in how far you eager beavers would go for a new piece of tech or a video game?

I loved the PES 2013 demo so much and I heard a store in London was selling it early so I jumped on the train and took an 8 hour round trip to buy it. Just to get it two days earlier.

I was so impatient as a younger man.

 

[elfie]

Well, recently i tried to obtain a ps5 (which i did in the end).
I joined a telegram group that had bots who sent a link as soon as some company had stock.

So, each day i had my personal laptop, work laptop, ipad and phone ready.
Logged in on all websites, turned on notifications.

Every time i heard ping i ran to my pc's and tried to score a ps5.
My wife and kids got nervous in the end, but as said i finally managed to get one.........still don't own a single ps5 game though

 

[Chris Davies]

Mine isn't too crazy but I would be interested in how far you eager beavers would go for a new piece of tech or a video game?

I loved the PES 2013 demo so much that I heard a store in London was selling it early so I jumped on the train and took an 8 hour round trip to buy it. Just to get it two days earlier.

I was so impatient as a younger man.

I'd still do that today, I really would.

Craziest thing I did was probably importing Rock Band plus all the equipment (and all the sequel games) from Canada, because the first game was released six months earlier in Canada than Europe - which cost a fortune. But the worst bit pisses me off to this day.

Using a Canadian import meant I had to create a fake PSN account to play it and buy all of the extra songs for it (the EU store versions were incompatible)

I couldn't use any bank cards to buy anything from the Canadian PS Store (i.e. the extra songs), because the cards were rejected (being registered in the UK).

So, I had to drive to a newsagents 3 miles away that sold these disposable Mastercards, that you could load up with money at the counter, register to a fake Canadian address when you got home, and then use online. Which I did, often.

I spent £300 on extra songs. My friends and I were a bit obsessed with it.

Then, five years ago now, Sony forced two-factor authentication on everybody due to a series of hacks.

The fake account had a fake email address on it - and there's no other way to authenticate the account, to log back into it... So I've lost all of it.

I've not played Rock Band since.

 

[elfie]

Due to that rock band thing @Chris Davies mentioned i'm starting to recall some more.
I also imported a few rockband / guitar hero guitars for my ps3.

One was a V-shaped thing that Lenny Kravitz always used.
Then i imported the Beatles gretch guitar that Lennon used.
I order the ps3 version on Amazon uk, and received an x-box version.
Had to send it back to get the right version.

Then later i imported from the USA that guitar that had about a 100 buttons instead of just the 5 colored ones.
Loved that one.

Here's another thing : my 2nd daughter was born in 2003. Wife and kid were in the hospital and i needed to get some stuff for my wife to bring to her.
I collected the stuff, then thought i'd sneak to a game shop to get a new game i wanted (can't recall which one).
Had to drive to the city to get it, got stock in a traffic jam and only got back to the hospital 3 hours later. (it's normally a 10 minute drive).
Don't know what excuse i used, but i could tell from the look on my wife's face she didn't buy it.

 

[Flipper the Priest]

Hmm... Nothing too wild for me. PS2 PES days was always a state of high alert as to which shop/site would get stock early. I remember my local Virgin (Megastore, before the jokers pipe up) confirming they'd be selling PES3 early and I was there for them opening the doors.

I bought most PS3 golden era FIFAs from an Asda or Tesco at the stroke of midnight. Me and dozens of others.

I also spent too much money on a sealed copy of PES 2014 for PS2 last year. Opened it not realising how easy it was to obtain and play the ISO. Meh.

 

[Peter Withe]

I'd still do that today, I really would.

Craziest thing I did was probably importing Rock Band plus all the equipment (and all the sequel games) from Canada, because the first game was released six months earlier in Canada than Europe - which cost a fortune. But the worst bit pisses me off to this day.

Using a Canadian import meant I had to create a fake PSN account to play it and buy all of the extra songs for it (the EU store versions were incompatible)

I couldn't use any bank cards to buy anything from the Canadian PS Store (i.e. the extra songs), because the cards were rejected (being registered in the UK).

So, I had to drive to a newsagents 3 miles away that sold these disposable Mastercards, that you could load up with money at the counter, register to a fake Canadian address when you got home, and then use online. Which I did, often.

I spent £300 on extra songs. My friends and I were a bit obsessed with it.

Then, five years ago now, Sony forced two-factor authentication on everybody due to a series of hacks.

The fake account had a fake email address on it - and there's no other way to authenticate the account, to log back into it... So I've lost all of it.

I've not played Rock Band since.

Oh shit that’s so annoying.

I LOVED Rock Band 2. I got pretty good on the drums, my wife would sing and my brother on guitar. Good times!

 

[PRO_TOO]

only story i have, that would fit the topic is the following:

back in 1996, i was playing games on a computer (cant remember what machine exactly i owned back then). one of the games i was eagerly awaiting was the new FIFA97.


one of my close friends, he still is, was a nerdy nerd, really... sitting in his small room all day, downloading data from FTP servers around the clock and IRC was a thing back then too. so he was our go to guy when it was about computer and software and "new media". he was the first in our clique that had a analog modem and double ISDN speed (a bit later).
so between pizza boxes and empty bottles of coke, there was tech all the way. server, computer, cables, CRT monitors... you name it. it was a mess (he admits that today).


so, games back then, when downloading from FTP servers, came in small zip files... you had to download them all and then unzip the whole thing. one corrupt file and it wasnt working. good old days!
so i was pumped to get my hands on the new FIFA... i was calling him on his house phone every hour to check his download status... finally, in the morning hours, must have been around 4am, he confirmed the dl had finished.

so i put on my shoes instantly and started walking towards his house. his place was like 45 walking min. away from my house, you had to go through the city and up an hill (a steep one). 4:30am in the morning!!! anyway... an hour later i arrived at this place, my blank cd's in hand.
when we sat down and started burning the data to disc... we had errors! so many errors, we called it a day and i went home without my FIFA97.
the next day i went to his place again as soon as he woke up... we tried some stuff and got it working.
still, years later, i have to smile about that situation! i just wanted to play that game so badly!!!

i hope its ok to post my story (legal issues wise). if not, i can delete the post!

 

[jaygrim]

NERDS!!!!!

 

[Andy]

The only time i can remember off the top of my head, was the time Tomb Raider 2 was released on PS1. ATT i was just moving house, and knew i would be too busy for the next few days to even play it, but i anticipated queues for the game, and didn't want it to sell out.
So early one dark winters morning, i went into town, on the bus i remember thinking to myself "all these people going to work and my only concern is the game, your 31 yrs old ffs!".

I remember getting to the GAME store around an hour before opening. There was no one queuing or anything, so off i popped to McDonald's for breakfast, getting more excited as the watched clock ticked slowly towards opening time. On my return to the store, there was 1 person in front of me as the doors were unlocked and no one behind. But mission was accomplished, just like Lara i returned home with the prize. Safe in the knowledge that when my work was finished i could spend hours lost in tombs.

Thanks for invoking the memory.

 

[Peter Withe]

Hmm... Nothing too wild for me. PS2 PES days was always a state of high alert as to which shop/site would get stock early. I remember my local Virgin (Megastore, before the jokers pipe up) confirming they'd be selling PES3 early and I was there for them opening the doors.

I bought most PS3 golden era FIFAs from an Asda or Tesco at the stroke of midnight. Me and dozens of others.

I also spent too much money on a sealed copy of PES 2014 for PS2 last year. Opened it not realising how easy it was to obtain and play the ISO. Meh.

I remember the midnight GTA 4 launch at Tesco, the queue felt like it was 10 miles long.

Good times but I always regretted it afterwards. I would get home at 2am ish and be too tired to even play the game that I had just queued for hours to play!

 

[OPM]

i remember irc groups and ftp sharing...the one that stands is doing it for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, as it never officially was released in Germany back in the day.
Plan A actually was to pick up a copy on my way to vacation in Austria, but convincing your parents to stop in the middle of nowhere at some random electronics store to buy a 18+ rated game so you could kill nazis and have the whole experience with swastikas - no bueno. So i could call myself lucky being pretty much knee-deep into the whole FTP scene back in the day. The company servers i logged on to download games overnight back in the day...crazy.

Other than that - nothing much. Imported the PSP first day back in the day, just so i would not play any games on it but start watching downloaded TV shows instead in my bed. Imported a red PS2 Slim from Japan because i loved the look of it. Imported GT4 from Japan because i could not wait for the European Release.
That's about it. Ah, Paying Resell for a PS5 in November and Driving 50km one way to pick it up. Regrets followed shortly after.

 

[Flipper the Priest]

I remember the midnight GTA 4 launch at Tesco, the queue felt like it was 10 miles long.

Good times but I always regretted it afterwards. I would get home at 2am ish and be too tired to even play the game that I had just queued for hours to play!

There was always a hefty queue for the FIFAs in the glory days. I'd take at least the next day off. 🙈 They were better prepared over the years - I remember the first time I queued up it was just one sleepy nightshift guy unloading copies to one sleepy till operator and they sold out really quickly. They soon cottoned on and as the years went on there were promotional gifts for the first X customers with an army of staff grabbing copies of a big fuck off pallet. Oh to be that excited about a football game now.

 

[PRO_TOO]

The only time i can remember off the top of my head, was the time Tomb Raider 2 was released on PS1. ATT i was just moving house, and knew i would be too busy for the next few days to even play it, but i anticipated queues for the game, and didn't want it to sell out.
So early one dark winters morning, i went into town, on the bus i remember thinking to myself "all these people going to work and my only concern is the game, your 31 yrs old ffs!".

I remember getting to the GAME store around an hour before opening. There was no one queuing or anything, so off i popped to McDonald's for breakfast, getting more excited as the watched clock ticked slowly towards opening time. On my return to the store, there was 1 person in front of me as the doors were unlocked and no one behind. But mission was accomplished, just like Lara i returned home with the prize. Safe in the knowledge that when my work was finished i could spend hours lost in tombs.

Thanks for invoking the memory.

you are not alone... I had that feeling too.
Exactly the same.

 

[Flipper the Priest]

Not sure if anyone is familiar with Glenn Plant's excellent N64 channel on YouTube but he tells a great story about the lengths he went to in buying Ocarina of Time.


From 7:19. The preamble struck a chord with me, but for ISS 98. Buying all the magazines for the odd paragraph with a sliver of new info or a single screenshot. The free VHS taped to the front of a magazine with 10 seconds of gameplay footage. The playground rumours. Different, simpler, better times.

 

[PotatoCouch]

Nobody chucked in sickie on those ISS/WE/PES/FIFA release? I know I did, but couldn't remember which year 😂

 

[Andy]

I remember the midnight GTA 4 launch at Tesco, the queue felt like it was 10 miles long.

Good times but I always regretted it afterwards. I would get home at 2am ish and be too tired to even play the game that I had just queued for hours to play!

That reminds me again....2012 (i think) GTAV release...
ATT it wasn't released on PC and by now i had become a PC gamer so i was on a mission for my son.
I remember getting to Tesco's around midnight. You could tell there was that vibe that something big was about to happen. A couple of boy racers with their mates were pumping sounds (i think they were expecting another gang banging affair like San Andreas). Anyway got inside and saw the length of the queue, and thought "i will come back later" Returned at around 3.00am the place was empty...and they still had plenty of copies left. However i do remember them selling out pretty quick after that, within a day or so. The things we do for the kids. and myself aka big kid.

 

[Chris Davies]

Nobody chucked in sickie on those ISS/WE/PES/FIFA release? I know I did, but couldn't remember which year 😂

View attachment 112545

Well, you have just reminded me of one thing.

Once, my mum was giving me a lift to college, and an idiot who was talking on his mobile phone didn't bother braking as he entered a roundabout and ploughed straight into the side of her car.

We ended up spinning around and the car stopped in the middle of the roundabout. We were shaken but totally fine, and the car still worked.

Ten minutes later, they exchanged details and we're ready to go. Mum says, "how do you feel about college today", and I said "nah, think I'm too shaken - but they probably won't believe me"...

Long story short, she drove me to college and sat in the car fake-crying so I could explain to the tutor that I had to go home to comfort mum, as we'd just been in a very dramatic car crash - pointing outside to mum with her head in her hands.

One hour later... ISS Pro Evolution 2, in the living room. I played for hours and hours. I remember it so clearly. Best day ever.

 

[gabe.paul.logan]

I think it was PES3, we have contacted an Irish bloke and made a bargain with him so he would burn the PS2 PES3 patch on a disc for us and mail it to our country. I think it was from here or gamingaccess, not sure.
We had no idea how to make an ISO onto the PC from the original copy we had, how to install the patch, how to burn a disc for the PS2. What a workaround, especially since it was not such a big deal moving forward when we learnt it and oh my just by looking at how far modding has come.
But yeah, a kinda silly story and also what a nice guy.

 

[rockstrongo]

This thread reminds me a lot of my old tape tradings days ,sending demos all over the world getting some obscure Brazilian metal band in return etc.
Can't remember doing anything out of the ordinary for games though.
Similar though

 

[Redhat]

Nothing too crazy. I spent 13-14 hours in a Walmart layaway section for the Xbox 360 launch. It wasn't that bad because I was with four of my friends, I was 17, and there are worse places to be "stuck" in than a Super Center Walmart. That said, it was the first and last time I ever did something like that.

 

[*aLe]

I never did anything really ridiculous that I can remember.
The two most "ususual" things I did were having to drive for an hour to get a retail copy of F1 2013 (as they had already pulled it from Steam but I was missing it to complete my collection) and to spend hours on my 56k downloading every kind of kit/boot/ball for PES3 back in the day, basically having to redo it all over again if someone dared call home during the process.

Nothing to be ashamed of I guess.

 

[TroyDeeneyScoredAPenal!]

Imported a PS3 from America before they were released here in the UK. Why? Because of Formula One Championship Edition!

 

[TroyDeeneyScoredAPenal!]

There was always a hefty queue for the FIFAs in the glory days. I'd take at least the next day off. 🙈 They were better prepared over the years - I remember the first time I queued up it was just one sleepy nightshift guy unloading copies to one sleepy till operator and they sold out really quickly. They soon cottoned on and as the years went on there were promotional gifts for the first X customers with an army of staff grabbing copies of a big fuck off pallet. Oh to be that excited about a football game now.

I took the day off to play FIFA 08 when it got released. I also did it after picking up GTA IV on a Midnight launch all them years ago. Wow.. where has that time gone?!

 

[OPM]

oh, one more thing i remember, calling the local game store to see if they had Ridge Racer R4 + Driver already in stock...that was way before internet information was wide-spread & games were delayed on a weekly basis...so i called every week. i got a "voucher" from my parents to get these 2 on my birthday (end of march), it took a whole lot of waiting to get R4 (september) and Driver (July) - but i still remember popping them into the PSX back in the day...fond memories. fantastic games.

 

[Flipper the Priest]

oh, one more thing i remember, calling the local game store to see if they had Ridge Racer R4 + Driver already in stock...that was way before internet information was wide-spread & games were delayed on a weekly basis...so i called every week. i got a "voucher" from my parents to get these 2 on my birthday (end of march), it took a whole lot of waiting to get R4 (september) and Driver (July) - but i still remember popping them into the PSX back in the day...fond memories. fantastic games.

Yeah I remember calling shops in the week leading up to a game's release to find out if one was selling a day, even hours, earlier than the others!

Driver was a game worth waiting for. Phenomenal.

 

[Peter Withe]

Yeah I remember calling shops in the week leading up to a game's release to find out if one was selling a day, even hours, earlier than the others!

Driver was a game worth waiting for. Phenomenal.

So many good memories with Driver, what a game.

 

[Peter Withe]

I took the day off to play FIFA 08 when it got released. I also did it after picking up GTA IV on a Midnight launch all them years ago. Wow.. where has that time gone?!

2008 was a golden year for gaming. GTA 4 on the Xbox 360! Cops N Crooks in multiplayer was hilarious fun.

 

[Emroth]

Mine is not really a mad story of getting a game/console, but game related. And now when I think of it - it was a bit crazy.

Back in ISS days, I didnt have PC or anything more advanced. SNES was all we could afford (and I was very happy to even have that)
ISS had only 26 teams, as we know and no clubs. I loved club football tho.
So I went to a friend, who had Fifa and wrote down in a notebook all the teams and their squads.
Then I picked 5 top/favourite teams from Germany, Spain, England, Italy and France and assigned ISS teams to them.
So FC Barcelona was Brazil, Spain was Real Madrid...etc
I basically assigned strong teams to strong clubs, weak to weak.
Then I assigned players to ISS players.
(Everything in my notebook)

So I had 5 leagues, with 5 teams in each.
I was recording fixtures, results, goals, cards, even transfers.
I was doing interviews and writing little articles..

Teams had their budget, getting money according to their results, imaginary sponsors, stadium attendance (regarding how a team was doing, I was making up imaginary attendance and calculating tickets money)
Players had to be paid wages.
(Reminder: Everything was in my head and my notebook)

Top teams were qualifying to champions league and uefa cup.
I was always controlling team that was playing their home game.
Before each mach I was changing their kits, to match their club kits. I learned how to do patterns, so it looked like kits had stripes and whatnot.

I played many seasons this way and used multiple notebooks to record everything.

I did all that when I was 11-13.
And the sad thing is - till this day it was probably the most immersive and deep "manager mode" I have ever played...

 

[Chris Davies]

Mine is not really a mad story of getting a game/console, but game related. And now when I think of it - it was a bit crazy.

Back in ISS days, I didnt have PC or anything more advanced. SNES was all we could afford (and I was very happy to even have that)
ISS had only 26 teams, as we know and no clubs. I loved club football tho.
So I went to a friend, who had Fifa and wrote down in a notebook all the teams and their squads.
Then I picked 5 top/favourite teams from Germany, Spain, England, Italy and France and assigned ISS teams to them.
So FC Barcelona was Brazil, Spain was Real Madrid...etc
I basically assigned strong teams to strong clubs, weak to weak.
Then I assigned players to ISS players.
(Everything in my notebook)

So I had 5 leagues, with 5 teams in each.
I was recording fixtures, results, goals, cards, even transfers.
I was doing interviews and writing little articles..

Teams had their budget, getting money according to their results, imaginary sponsors, stadium attendance (regarding how a team was doing, I was making up imaginary attendance and calculating tickets money)
Players had to be paid wages.
(Reminder: Everything was in my head and my notebook)

Top teams were qualifying to champions league and uefa cup.
I was always controlling team that was playing their home game.
Before each mach I was changing their kits, to match their club kits. I learned how to do patterns, so it looked like kits had stripes and whatnot.

I played many seasons this way and used multiple notebooks to record everything.

I did all that when I was 11-13.
And the sad thing is - till this day it was probably the most immersive and deep "manager mode" I have ever played...

So when we did our little online Europa League and I was calculating the league positions in a notepad, you were just thinking "Jesus Christ, what are you, 12?"

 

[Emroth]

So when we did our little online Europa League and I was calculating the league positions in a notepad, you were just thinking "Jesus Christ, what are you, 12?"

No, I was thinking - Finally someone who knows how to do it properly!