Great games you have accidentally stumbled upon

[Jakeisbest]

Ok here is my short story:

During the Summer between 6th and 7th grade for me. I was bored as usual I went to the movie rental place near my house and decided I wanted to pick out a game. (SNES was the console of choice at the time).

I didn't have a subscription to any game magazines and I didn't really have any friends who played video games. I had also never played an RPG before except for Legend of Zelda (the SNES version).

Completely based upon the box art I rented Chrono Trigger! Once home I was blown away! The story and characters had me totally engrossed. It felt like reading a good book I really wanted to know what happened and learn how the story winds up. I still have great memories of spending long summer nights up hammering away trying to find all the moon armor and making sure that I saved Luca's mom in each play through.



So, has one else stumbled into a game they loved randomly.

 

[tatteredpotato]

OMG Chrono Trigger!!!! I feel there's still a market for that type of game on the console front, however I feel it's been largely ignored, at least on the Xbox.

 

[nakedfrog]

I picked out my first two NES games based solely on the screenshots on the poster that came with the system... Legend of Zelda and Metroid. Pretty solid choices

 

[viivo]

I have great memories of playing Final Fantasy II with my brother. I was always jealous that he had a SNES and a Sega Genesis while I was still stuck with a regular old NES, and it was rare that he would let his little brother in his room. He came home one day with FF2 and invited me in to take turns playing. It took us a couple weeks to finish it that way, but it was awesome. I think when Cecil betrayed the party is the first time I ever became emotional over a video game.

 

[Rage187]

I got Dragon Warrior when I subscribed to Nintendo Power. That was my first console RPG.


Recently, Crackdown was awesome. Totally picked that up because of the demo and not because of the Halo 3 beta.

Godfather 2, man, I hope they make a 3rd as it was like Scarface meets GTA. Just awesome.

 

[Aquaman]

What was that SNES game were you control an airline......... that was pretty addictive as was the SNES game Metal Marines.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[coldmeat]

I accidentally stumbled on GTA San Andreas.

Broke the case but luckily the disc was still fine.

 

[TecHNooB]

Zelda: OoT. The control scheme and colors caught my eye. Played the demo at CompUSA and, after a few tries, got hooked and bought the game.

 

[purbeast0]

only recent one i can think of is Table Tennis on 360.

 

[NGC_604]

I bought Secret of Mana on a whim back in the day because the game I went to buy was out of stock and I just had to buy something. Best decision ever, one of my favorite games to this day.

 

[reallyscrued]

Darkstone. Hated RPGs with a passion but my friend back when we were in elementary school basically gave me the game because he was too busy with Diablo. Conversely, I've never gotten into Diablo.

Jet Force Gemini. Dude from my neighborhood and I had a 64 and got this as a present, didn't like it. I think we decided to trade awful game for awful game, but to my surprise, Jet Force Gemini was far from awful.

 

[mmntech]

Okami probably. I saw it on IGN's top 100 games of all time list they published back in 2007. I had absolutely no idea what it was about but the screenshots looked interesting and reviews were raving. I like unusual stuff. Picked it up and fell in love with it. Easily one of my favourite games.

 

[shortylickens]

SNES Zelda. We didnt know it was out yet (no internet) and while walking around a mall stumbled upon it at a KayBee toy store for a mere 30 bucks. Asked dad nicely and he went ahead and bought it outright. Let me pay him back through allowance later on.
The video game places would not get it for another week and would charge more than 30 dollars. I was the envy of every kid on my block.

 

[destrekor]

Oni and Beyond Good and Evil were my random pickups that turned out to be extremely enjoyable.

Bastards at Bungie just had to go and stick to Halo development only. Those bastards better make an Oni 2 now that they can work on other IPs.

 

[ChaoZ]

Gran Turismo 1. I was planning to buy Need For Speed 3, but the store sold out so I just grabbed Gran Turismo. It's one of the best impulse buys I ever made.

 

[zerocool84]

I've never bought a game that I didn't know about. I'm what you would call a cheapass and would never buy a game without researching it prior.

 

[Fox5]

Up until the Internet, I bought all my games based off the boxes just about. (and game magazines) So I stumbled on quite a bit for the NES, Genesis, and PC.
SNES and N64 I really only bought the big games for. Well, I bought less popular games on the n64, but they tended to suck.

 

[hans030390]

My friend randomly bought Final Fantasy VII back when we were in 3rd or 4th grade. So I went over and checked it out. At the time, I had never seen anything like it...and ended up loving it. This was in '98-'99 time period...so, before it became OMG FF VII IS THE BEST GAME EVAR!!!!

When I say it's my favorite game, I am not one of those idiots. (I took Japanese in high school with those idiots...ugh)

Also, Zelda: OoT. And Goldeneye. Zelda was a random rental because my older brother (who was not a gamer) said he heard people liked it. I had no idea what it was like or about. The same was with Goldeneye, though we actually purchased that one (instead of renting).

 

[gorcorps]

Quite a while ago I bought a game called Moonbase Commander for the PC. It was $5 at target and looked interesting, plus I remember seeing a short review in one of my magazines saying it was pretty solid. The game was totally badass. It's a simplified turn based strategy, but it's very cartoony and fun. The mechanics of it are quite a bit different than anything else I've ever played and that's why I liked it so much. There was no story, no frills, no anything... just pure and simple innovative game design.

 

[A5]

Originally posted by: Aquaman
What was that SNES game were you control an airline......... that was pretty addictive

Cheers,
Aquaman

Aerobiz! My brother and I would play that pretty much constantly whenever we rented it. He went and bought a copy of the sequel (Aerobiz: Supersonic) on eBay when he took our SNES

 

[mc866]

Castlevania SOTN, I was borrowing an original Playstation at the time, loved Castlevania titles from the NES days so I figured I would rent it, but didn't know anything about it. Funny thing is that the box art from the PSX version was very plain just a black cover with Drac's castle on it, so it wasn't anything too appealing. Anyway, played the hell out of that game, loved it, still one of my top 5 titles ever.

There were some others from the SNES days also, Chrono Trigger and FFIII(US) mostly because like mentioned before this was pre-internet times for me so I wasn't able to look up every game before I rented/purchased.

 

[venkman]

Most recently, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.

 

[pontifex]

probably, but can't think of any atm.

 

[dougp]

Pirates! Gold on the Genesis

My little cousin had a Genesis growing up, and my grandparents got him the SEGA channel (Anyone remember that?) - well, I hogged that thing whenever I was at his house and "fell" into this game and have been addicted ever since!

 

[thraashman]

Daggerfall. I totally bought it because of the cool looking shiny box art. I knew nothing about it really before I bought it. As a result I'm hooked on Elder Scrolls games.