I found BG2 at a Goodwill

Nonnahswriter

Just a silly story I thought I'd share with you all.

So my mother and I frequent this store called the Goodwill Outlet. If you've ever walked into a traditional Goodwill store, the Outlet is nothing like it. It's more like a warehouse, with rows of big blue bins filled to the brim with all kinds of stuff. They have different categories for each row--toys, clothes, housewares, electronics, etc.--and whatever you find out of those bins costs pennies to buy. Needless to say, there's quite a bit of junk mixed in, but we've found countless treasures digging through.

As I was looking through the books bin, I started to find a bunch of MMORPGs still in their boxes. World of Warcraft, Diablo II, and even a complete Everquest. Sometimes you find games and CDs mixed in with the books, but this looked like somebody just tossed all their fantasy PC games into the garbage one day. Then I went to the furthest bin, scanning the CDs, and I recognized it--Baldur's Gate II:Shadows of Amn. Not only was the case not broken or scratched, but it even had all the discs, almost pristine! I would have bought it and taken it home with me, but alas, Baldur's Gate II Enhanced Edition comes out next month; I'm sad to say this little copy would never see the light of day. I ended up rescuing the game from the bin and putting it on one of the bookshelves, where it would hopefully be bought by someone who would glean more use from it.

I did, however, also find a nice copy of Icewind Dale sitting right next to the Baldur's Gate II. That one found a home.

What about the rest of you? Where did you buy your first copy of Baldur's Gate? Or any sort of fantasy or sci-fi PC game? Have you ever dug into the mud only to pull out...gems?

Syntia13

Throughout high school, university and unemployment, most of my games came free with computer magazines - needless to say they were either crappy, or great, but old (that's how, after years of hunting, I finally got my hands on Thief). Nowadays they come from supermarkets and Gog.com; (and now Beamdog too). However, I used to occasionally go to supermarkets with a friend, who had similar tastes in books and games to me, and we'd dig through the 'half-price' bins.

On one such occasion, she pulled two games out, and she said, hey, let's each of us buy one, and then we can trade. I was very dubious, the deformed dragon maw on the cover didn't look very encouraging, but hey, it was just 10 pln (about 2,5 euro, or 3,3 $), and I happened to have the amount, so why not?

I don't remember what she got out of the deal (it could have been Spell Force), but what I got was what quickly became one of my top ten favorite games. I'm not sure why, as it's a very mixed bag. It is called "Evil Islands: curse of a lost soul".
The plot is intriguing enough (yeah, you are handed a protagonist who has an amnesia and has to travel around to find out who he is at the end of the game - but it's handled very differently than in Planescape:Torment, promise) , but it's also painfully linear - you pretty much get told what to do and hop to it, after listening what your character thinks about it. The graphic is not stellar and somewhat blocky, but to this day I prefer it to over-realistic skyrim - it's just esthetically appealing to me - both the model designs and color palette. The item and spell creation is complicated, and by gods I love it. The dubbing and translation verges on horrible, and even without the ridiculous mistakes stemming from double translation (from Russian to English to Polish) the dialog was nothing to write home about. There are many more small problems with it, like how it tended to stutter on my old comp, and yet... I can't help it, I really like this game!
I love the atmosphere, I love the monsters, I love looting, I love the look of it, I adore the creation system, spells and stealth and fighting system. I finished it a good dozen times if not more, and got much more entertainment for those 20 zeta than I did from much more expensive DA2.

It truly was - for me - a gem fished out of mud.

Wonderboy2402

I was in Madison, Wisconison and checked out their used book store. Being a college town alot of nerdy stuff find its way there.

On the media / cd / movie section... I saw it. A mint condition Baldur's gate 2 collectors box for $15.00. =] Cards still wrapped and everything mint! Also scored the shirt too.

I remember getting BG1 when it released. The car ride home had me in the black looking at the cover art and marveling. I pretty much played only PC gamer demo cds (fallout 1 demo was mind blowing) and had only used an AMIGA 2000 to play games previously. So our new PC at the time was swiftly filled with games from those CDs. And then Baldurs gate 1 arrived.

Metalloman

OOOOH, sweet past memories!

With your topic you've let me fall in sweet memories of my most loved hobby: scavenging for games.

I can perfectly remember when I've found by purest luck my actual original boxed copy of Icewind Dale, a special boxed edition of BGII with TOB, a boxed Arcanum, a boxed System Shock II. All left alone, taking dust and in sadness, just waiting for their savior (me, of course).
Not the only games I've found in that way... but surely the most gratifying ones, and I'm talking of about 10 years ago at the least. ;P

OH, THE REEMERGING EMOTIONS!

CoryNewb

There is a goodwill store in the city I work....will have to stop by for treasure hunting!

Edit: I bought fallout 1 & 2 on PC CD a couple years ago at a church garage sale for $1 each.

FinneousPJ

I found this weird game called Neverwinter Nights in the bargain bin... been hooked to fantasy ever since.

Eudaemonium

I found this game called Neverwinter Nights and I stopped playing Bioware games for around a decade! XD

Seriously, I never liked that game. I think it was the massively reduced party size.

Corvino

I think I bought my original copy of BG1 (now gathering dust in a box under my bed) secondhand at a computer fair about 6 months after it came out. CD2 is now so scratched as to be unusable, thankfully I have a backup DVD edition. I only went there for some speakers.

Zarakinthish

My earliest days of PC gaming were almost all shareware stuff because of how poor we were before my mother met my stepfather. There was one title though that I (ashamedly) ended up pirating from someone we knew, which introduced me to CRPGs: The Dark Queen of Krynn, a Gold Box engine game set in Dragonlance. That game holds a special place in my heart, and I would love to see that game (and the two before it in the series) remade with a modern engine in all of it's turn based, grid goodness.
As for my first copy of Baldur's Gate, I received the combo pack with Tales of the Sword Coast as a gift Christmas of '99 (I think). I still have all the discs, but the manual is a bit warped due to me spilling root beer (if I recall correctly) on it many years back.

nano

@Zarakinthish Oh wow, I remember that game! I played its predecessors, but I can't remember if I ever finished it. I'd love to see a remake as well. Maybe even a BG mod?

Zarakinthish

@nano
There are several problems I see with bringing it to Infinity engine. First, Infinity engine isn't a true turn based engine, and neither is it based on a grid. Second, there is a section of Dark Queen of Krynn where you help sea elves underwater, which makes several spells work either differently or not at all. (A good example is that lightning bolt acted like a slightly smaller electrical version of fireball in that section of the game.) Getting that to work would be a royal pain. While I (regrettably) have not played Temple of Elemental Evil, from what I have heard it would be the best base if such a project was ever taken on.

Drugar

About ten years ago, I got a new videocard and with it came Freelancer, a space game where you played (shocker) a Freelancer. Expecting free games with a video card to be crap (because otherwise they wouldn't be free) I ignored it for months until I found myself out of games to play and thought "Fark it, let's give it a shot".

I spent a month locked to my PC, taking odd jobs, dodging pirates, dodging the law (it depended on how much I was paid who I was dodging really) and getting involved in a plot about interplanetary corruption and alien artifacts.
It's still one of the best games I've ever played and it was freeeeeee!

FinneousPJ

Eudaemonium said:

I found this game called Neverwinter Nights and I stopped playing Bioware games for around a decade! XD

Seriously, I never liked that game. I think it was the massively reduced party size.

Hehe, well, it was certainly different when I moved onto trying older BioWare games after NWN. I love both styles of gameplay.