There are a lot of games that have came out and that I want to buy. But my will so far has managed to stay strong.
I’ve been so close. I already had the cart ready with Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, Into The Breach and Final Fantasy IX, for some reason. This is, a remake of a game I already have on my PSP, a game I already have digitally on the Nintendo eShop and Epic Games Store, and another game I already have on my Anbernic RG35XX SP. And yet here I am having a dilemma because I kind of want to buy them anyway.
So, there are a lot of thoughts about this in my mind.
I’m from Mexico, if you want to sail the seven seas, all you need is to be born here. I grew used to this lifestyle and it obviously was a thing when it comes to gaming.
Every friend I had with a PS2 or an XBOX had like, maybe 2 original games, and a bunch of thin CD cases filled with very much not original games.
Every friend I had with a Nintendo DS, maybe had a couple Pokémon games, and all the rest of them were inside an R4 cart.
Every computer game I played on other friend’s computers up until maybe 2012—or wherever I stopped playing videogames on other friend’s computers—was probably cracked. The only official disc I remember having was for FIFA 07 and the free games that came inside cereal boxes.
The only cases where I didn’t see this was a friend with a GBA SP, but they only had like 4 carts anyway. I also had one friend with a Game Cube and well he kinda just played two games because they were expensive.
Around the 360, PS3 and Wii era, selling pirated games kind of stopped, now there were services to just hack the consoles themselves!
Buying games on Steam seemed like a joke. Why pay when I can just get them for free? I can’t even afford them anyway because I am a middle schooler with no job and my parents won’t buy games for me anyway.
So I just grew my digital library on my computer via emulation and of course on my PSP and left it at that. A little later I got an Epic Games account and started collecting some of the freebies there, even acquiring some great games like The Batman Arkham Trilogy, Celeste or Alien Isolation.
Later on I finally got Steam, and played some freebies as well, like that Smash Brothers clone and even one of the first indies I played, Doki Doki Literature Club—what a game that was huh.
Eventually, I thought spending money on games wasn’t an unfair deal, I got some money and I started to purchase a thing here or there, maybe a mobile game for Android, even a couple of Steam games, at last. Like Hollow Knight and CrossCode, which I’ve mentioned before.
And then I had a proper job with a good pay, and I bought a Switch!
I kind of wanted to go on different route, but I had the money to finally do things “right”, I bought my games from the eShop, my physical collection steadily—maybe too steadily—grew, and I’ve been trying to be a responsible buyer since then.
And of course, this has left me with a slight sense of remorse when it comes to the games I’ve obtained through different means in the past.
The problem is that companies keep making things difficult and refuse to provide decent ways to obtain those games! I even wrote about that a while back.
For indie games I have no complains anymore, Into The Breach deserves the money. Right now I just want the physical to support the developers further! Hollow Knight which I didn’t want to buy twice before, has completely changed my mind and I am giving them all my money to buy the music albums and merch because they deserve it!
For big studios I have some issues. I obtained the PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics, so I could just play that, or I could play the original on my Anbernic handeld, but I also feel like I’ve gotten a lot out of other games by Square Enix so maybe I should support the new release anyway. But at the same time they are charging full price for a game that came out more than a quarter of a century ago. Sure, it was built from scratch again. But why is there no way to just get the original if I want to? At least on a Sony platform for the PS1 version?
And well, Final Fantasy IX is the same, to be honest. It’s not even a full remake with lots of changes, although the price is also lower as it came out a few years ago, so I can’t complain much. Besides, I want to have all the Final Fantasy games available on Switch, and since I have the Pixel Remasters (I-VI), VII, VIII, X, X-2 and XII, I may as well get both IX and Tactics!
Sometimes I wish I just didn’t care again and that I also wasn’t as enamoured by physical media, because those boxes just look awesome to have! Except for FFIX, that box art is kinda ugly, but I’m sure the game is great.
Anyway, for now, my backlog has only grown bigger, so I will stop this madness for as long as I can, and keep completing games!
