Shelf discovery … video games in a charity shop. Photograph: Keith Stuart/The Guardian
Hidden gems can be unearthed, but you have to dig deep into the bargain bins of countless outdated Fifas, Wii Fits without the controllers and partially finished quizshow games
As an eternally optimistic charity shop fan, I hold on to the fantasy that one day I’ll walk into my local Oxfam and find a pristine copy of the Sega Saturn shooter Burning Rangers for £1.50. Or perhaps a box full of old Neo Geo carts for a quid each. Sadly, this is now unlikely. Charity shops have caught on to the fact that old video games – like old vinyl albums – are highly collectible, and so they’re putting the good stuff on eBay. That’s fine, it’s their job to raise money, not to provide opportunist swine like me with bargains. But what games can you find tucked away in your local branch of Barnardo’s? To find out I visited about 40 charity stores across the country. Here is what I discovered on the shelves … And please do share your own charity shop gaming finds in the comments!
Old versions of annual sports games
Some good seasons, and hilarious commentary … old sports games. Photograph: Keith Stuart/The Guardian
By far the biggest category. Almost every store I entered had a selection of Fifa, Pro Evolution Soccer and Madden titles from years gone by, most of them on Xbox 360, and usually going for 50p each or less. There were a few decent outliers: I picked up a copy of tennis sim Top Spin 3 for £1 and was tempted by Major League Baseball 2K5 for the original Xbox, but was put off by the fact that it was missing its instruction booklet – and also, I don’t own an original Xbox. Are any others worth buying? Well, Fifa had a really good streak from 2010-2015 – super-fast gameplay, great licensed soundtracks, so if you don’t care about the latest squads, they’re entertaining for the money. I’d also recommend Pro Evolution Soccer 4-6 on the PlayStation 2 – a true golden era of footie simulation and unintentionally hilarious commentary.
Brain-training and quiz games
Titles such as Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training and Big Brain Academy sold in their millions on the DS and Wii in the mid-00s, accelerated by smart, celebrity-crammed TV advertising. Naturally, there were reams of imitators – seemingly all of which have ended up on charity shop shelves. The original Brain Training is still challenging and compelling – although if you grab a copy, be careful to check any saved game files still left in the cart’s memory. I got a copy for a quid, and when I loaded it up, one of the stored usernames was “Martin’s Sex Bitch” (brain age: 35). Steer well clear of all the TV quiz show games that clogged up the DS library. One charity shop I went into had just a single game: Golden Balls, based on the daytime gameshow presented by Jasper Carrott. Reader: I did not buy it.
Music and fitness games – without the required peripherals
Board not available in my branch of Oxfam … Wii Fit. Photograph: Itsuo Inouye/AP
This was another ubiquitous category. No matter where I went, charity shops were filled with copies of Dance UK, SingStar and Wii Fit, but all lacked the necessary controllers to make them work. There were Kinect games with no Kinect and PlayStation EyeToy games with no camera. Out of all of them, I’d be tempted most by PlayStation 2 SingStar titles – it’ll only cost about £12 on eBay to buy the microphones and adaptor, then you can pick up the dozens of SingStar instalments for a few pounds (Rock Ballads! Motown! Sing along with Disney!) – hey presto, karaoke heaven. Wii Fit is also OK if you’re happy to pay £10 for a balance board on eBay that hasn’t been pounded to death.
Kids’ games
Once again, these proliferated on the family-friendly Wii and DS consoles and as they hold little replay value, they show up in great numbers. Peppa Pig, Pirates of the Caribbean, lots of pet games – one store I found in Brighton had at least five horse sims, including Horse Life and Pippa Funnell. Ubisoft’s range of job sims including Imagine: Fashion Designer and Imagine: Teacher were in abundance, though sadly, I didn’t find a copy of Imagine: Journalist, which would have been useful. One title in this genre that was present in at least 65% of the shops I visited was Carnival Games from 2K Play, a wretched collection of fairground mini-challenges including duck shoot, ring toss and balloon darts. The motion controls are appalling and the player avatars are terrifying, dead-eyed monstrosities. If the backrooms had a games area, this would be playing.
Blockbuster games from previous console generations
Some games sold so well, they have absolutely no value in the secondhand market. You can always count on finding a number of Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed or Gears of War instalments as well as many copies of GTA V. Some of these are worth rediscovering. The campaign modes in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2 and Infinite Warfare are exciting nonsense, while Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Origins and Odyssey are all worth playing – as is Assassin’s Creed 2. I’d also buy Gears of War 2 and Halo 2 for the campaign modes if you’ve not played them. The Mass Effect and Dragon Age titles are often knocking about and still have a lot of charm.
PC games
CD-Rom drive anyone … some old PC games. Photograph: Keith Stuart/The Guardian
These are still clogging the shelves of charity shops everywhere, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that a lot of PC owners no longer have CD-Rom drives, and even if they did, they’re likely to face compatibility issues trying to load ancient copies of, say, The Sims 2 or saucy adult adventure title, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust (the latter might still be in the Frome branch of the Cats and Dogs charity shop if you’re interested). With digital stores such as Steam and GOG stuffed with retro titles at teeny prices, there’s little reason to buy disc PC games now – unless you stumble across an ancient “big box” copy of Doom, Half-Life or Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. Which you won’t.
The odd gem
Opportune moment … Time Crisis games Photograph: Keith Stuart/The Guardian
They’re still out there, especially at pop-up charity shops and smaller independent stores. I bagged a copy of the rare Japanese role-playing adventure Koudelka at the Rotary Club shop in Frome for a pound, and feel a little guilty about it. I also recently acquired the light gun titles Time Crisis II (PS2) and Time Crisis: Razing Storm (PS3) for £3 each – and I even have a G-Con 2 and PlayStation Move controller to play them with. Elsewhere, I’ve regularly spotted copies of Dead Rising, Bulletstorm, FEAR and Project Gotham Racing – all great fun. Oh and fellow games contributor Jordan Erica Webber recently found Tiger Electronics’ handheld LCD game Poke Ball at the Cats Protection shop in Leamington Spa. I’d have snapped that up.
But if you do find a copy of Burning Rangers on the Sega Saturn it is completely worthless and terrible and you should just send it straight to me.
