God I miss Working Designs!!! anyone else?

jeffx

an RPG light gun shooter. i'd say that genre is wide open for entries, no? XD

i took a vacation to Hong Kong circa 1999, drinking my plum flavored wine in the middle of the mall :) checking out the game stores; my god, so so soooo many original titles you'd NEVER find state-side - this game reminds me of those days heh...(sigh)

F22

Gaming press should be there to get info for the gamers not to score swag.

Lixie

Not a shred of my being remembers this game. I'll have to agree with Candlejack. Life before games.

ArgentAngel

*tears running down cheeks* I remember my Working Designs Collection for PS1. I owned every Working Designs game for the PS1 ever. Sold the whole thing so I feel your pain.

I still own the Elemental Gearbolts soundtrack though. Not giving that up. I think I still have some Silhouette Mirage swag lying around from E3 1998 as well.

Masters PPD

*drools* Oh, that looks totally awesome. I'd love to get swag like that.

Salen

It was an amazing game with an even more amazing soundtrack.

Veltis

Nice, very nice. I hold onto all my swag now except for the truly common crap like keychains etc. Theres a very healthy collectors market forming for this stuffand its only going to get bigger.

Cell9song

You can't do this to yourself Fahey. If you are like me and live in small expensive abode, you have a cost to carry. Think of all the junk people horde with the crazy idea it will be worth something -when it rarely is. As it is the return on your $500 is incalculable, $0 down and a return of $500 in any time period = probably the best investment return you'll ever receive. Additionally you sold it for funds when you needed it. You didn't cash out some of your 401k to get money for an expensive car to become a thousand dollar millionaire.

You made the right call at the right time for the right reason.

Punkateer

$500 in 1998 must have been good then, but imagine how much it would go for now? You did good, forget the nostalgia, always wonder how much more you stand to gain from the loss. This reminds me of a certain article on Kotaku -- [kotaku.com] -- about a certain game that's coming out on the DS.

Trowble (XBL/PSN)

@victor-hvgo borges: I only use crack because it makes me look cool!

Mike Fahey

Nerdgasmic!!!

Wow.. that's nice swag. Sure beats the typical t-shirts, wrist bands and baseball caps that a lot of other companies seem to be dishing out lately.

goddessakasha

stupid fahey.
now why dont you reveal the truth about the money?
anh, anh?

crackhead...

victor-hvgo borges

@HaydenTenno: I'd probably take something limited like that to my grave but granted, sounds like a mighty nice compensation and in the end, there's always the time when a collection needs a new owner.

Currently slowly giving up on my PS1 collection just because they really do nothing but stand in the shelf taking up space, but whenever one sells in the $80-100 range, can't help but smile a little. They weren't an investment to begin with but if they've turned out to be such, can't complain.

EldonTLH

JOYGASM! Man that thing ic fucken cool! What a great game, man I miss Working Designs sooo much Lunar, Vay, and so many others..sad panda :(

-EDGE-

$500 for a game that you probably wouldn't play today. I'd have done the same. Although had you held onto it, might have been worth more.

You basically trades a PS1 game for a PS3.

MonkeyBiz

Excuse me, $1300 >_> Not sure why I thought 4K

SwimOdin

Ouch. Former EGMer Chris Johnston sold his for over 4 grand on eBay.

SwimOdin

wow, sounds pretty cool.

i miss working designs though. the only thing i ever got my hands on from them was that smexy Lunar 2: Eternal Blue box set for the PSX. still even have all the little cardboard standees and the Lucia necklace too.

ChibiKyKiske

@Candlejack: lies, games=life

aspasticninja

@anglon: Oh I never said I didn't get the Capcom swag.

Mike Fahey

I'm with hondo there: fret not, Mike. It's not such an amazing bit of schwag. What would you do with it? Display it? Otherwise, you've got an embossed cheap metal case (foam-cutting is not rocket science) with a gold-colord light gun. No biggie.

You did good! $500 is a lot of money and it made your life a lot easier, I'll bet. Keeping this thing in the back of a closet or on a shelf to admire once in a blue moon isn't such a benefit.

mariospants

Oh my god, "Elemental Gearbolt"! That name brings up some sweet memories.

+ Watch video

Never arrived in Europe, of course.

Shiryu

@ Mike Fahey

Did you not get the capcom swag and this is a subtle way of asking for it?

anglon

@Rika Aiuchi is SeXXXy: Me too. I've been wanting to replay Time Crisis 1 for ages now, it's one of my all time favourite games. Sadly I don't have a single screen in the house that can put out a picture the GunCon can use. I've even got a prototype GunCon for the occasion but no screen to play with it. I can't find it in the arcades either... :(

photoboy

$500? You did the right thing.

HaydenTenno

It's just a thing and doesn't make you a more complete person in the end.

hondo

Elemental Gearbolt is an on-rails shooting game similar to Time Crisis and House of the Dead. It features fully voiced anime cutscenes, the ability to level up your character, and three ammunition types. Instead of firing a gun, you instead fire magical rounds, the elements being fire, ice, and electricity. Unlike Time Crisis and HotD, you never have to reload your "gun". The fire spell is a single heavy shot with a bit of downtime, the electricity is sort of a shotgun style shot, and the ice is a machine gun. The game itself is a blast to play, and I highly recommend getting it, either through a legit source, or one a bit more shady.

LordAxle

Aw...You did what you had to do, Mike. Life over games!

Still, awesome swag.

Candlejack

Dude. I remember this game. My cousin used to play this on our Crappy 32" CRT when we were younger. From what I remember it was a pretty good Light Gun Game with some RPG sprinkled in. -_- I wish old Light Guns worked on Flat Panels or the new sensor based guns work with older games..

Rika Aiuchi is SeXXXy

My god....its....beautiful

excel_excel

Go to hell! You go to hell and die!

DO WANT

NorthernAvengeR

Oh man... i LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED that game!!! even with the hilarious blooper reel and whatnot.

That's one gorgeous piece of swag!

Desfunk

Yeah, things like this are a shame. Thanks to my old work, I once had a blue development PSone that played everything AND a chipped Saturn that played everything... sold them both for about £50 each. What a mistake-a to make-a.

Still got my laser engraved 10th anniversary Sonic statue though. NEVER going to sell that.

UnkleBuck

never heard of the game but would love that swag!!!

Maj1nX

@yournewbuddy:
No idea, but lightguns + fairies = automatic awesome

Numanoid

Elemental Gearbolt? What is it?

yournewbuddy

Hey! I'm the guy (Joshua Parker) that won the open tournament! I still have mine prominently displayed in my gaming room, no way I'll ever give it up.

A minor difference, but in my set the memory card is also gold plated.

Mooseferatu

@Shinamano:

What's this you say!? Vay for iPhone!??! Do most iPhone games work on iPod touch?

Keeko_ca

Are the Lunar PSOne boxsets worth anything? I still have Silver Star Story Complete and Eternal Blue Complete in my parent's attic.

Rob_Velocity

Working Designs was a great company...I so miss their stuff. (Never played this one though)

True story my buddy was telling me about an iPhone game he was liking and it turns out it was Vay...when I found out and saw it in action I have thought about picking up an iPhone for it...and the Lunar remake that is coming as well.

Shinamano

Looks like you were 10 years too early to sell that thing, some might call you avant-garde!
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I wont though, I mean, it WAS a pretty dumb move.

nikolaj

@FadedSpark: Stop being presumptuous.

Lixie

I loved WD and its games. However, maybe things like this, compounded with constant delays in titles, made for bad business judgment and led to the company's downfall.

StupidDufus

Well, even though I still have some of my Working Designs stuff (namely Lunar 1 and 2 for the PSX, and the Ghaleon puppet ^_^), there are a load of titles I have had over the years I totally regret getting rid of (Popful Mail, Vay, Lunar 1 and 2 for the Sega CD, Cosmic Fantasy II for the Turbo CD, Iron Storm and Dragon Force for the Saturn). Oh yeah, I still have Raystorm for the PSX.

Yeah, I miss Working Designs for the games. Vic's attitude? Not so much (seriously, did we need real-world politics in Sega CD Lunar II? Nah).

relic1980

Remember for tax purposes you have to declare the swag's fair makret value.

Tyrannical

Working Designs...

:,(

...I miss you.

Keeko_ca

I purchased EG on a whim and it's my all-time favorite shooter, probably because it's not an endless series of people in funny costumes that you shoot.

I second missing Working Designs.

aimaisan

@Lixie: Who frigging cares? Honestly, as long as I hear one thing cool, I could care less who gets swag. Free shit is free shit, stop being crotchety because you missed out. <_<

FadedSpark

I won my mint copy of Lunar: The Silver Star Story: Complete on a bet... NEVER EVER GOING TO SELL.

Conversely, there are many a game that I sold that I had no real reason to, or plenty of opportunities to purchase games that I really should have taken.

Solaricide

i'm just happy to have picked this up (disc only) for a cheap price awhile ago.

i can't believe you sold a unicorn.

subterfunk

You... SOLD it?!?!

CukyDoh

I never get why you guys give away your sweet swag sometimes. I can understand the crap like teeshirts and posters, but cool stuff like that, or the E3 360 faceplates. Maybe Im just a greedy collector?

Altima NEO

@Mike Fahey: I am SO NOT jealous of you right now. No, not at all.

Spoony Bard

A friend of mine bought Elemental Gearbolt for me back in the day. This game had an excellent soundtrack. Anybody know where I can grab it?

Barbara

@Keeko_ca: Actually it was on the touch not the phone, but I assume it works on both...i have neither, but Vay and Lunar may force my hand.

Shinamano

+ Watch video

Yeah, someone's happy.

Gaff

I used to have that game. It was SWEE~T! Never beat it though. It was kinda hard. Yep, I miss Working Designs too.
Don't worry though Mike. We all have to live in the moment. There are times when we have to let go of belongings to move forward. I have sold and rebought my favorite game (Xenogears) twice now. Sold Suikoden II and rebought it at four times what I sold it for. Of course it was a dumb move in retrospect, but I wasn't using it, and I needed the money. Of course, the steady stream of reminders must get annoying after a while.

AllegraStreit

Anybody else here have the Ghalleon punching puppet that came with preordering Lunar:EB?

yoagner

Hot Damn! First off that's an awesome swag bag my friend. Secondly it also happens to be from one of my favorite odd titles.
I used to purchase random ass titles on the holidays for my friends. Something not quite popular but at the same time appeared to be much fun. I always had success finding titles that were exceptional. The Christmas I bought that for my friends we had one crazy party time the next day.
I think Elemenetal Gearbolt is one of the most underrated titles on the Playstation. An odd assortment of RPG and Gun Game!? WTF!? How come more of these awesome ideas didn't pop up.
Well, granted you COULD, in theory, get horrible mashups like Wartech. Which sucks only in execution, the idea seemed fine.
Elemental Gearbolt, I stand yet again a decade later, envious and jealous of your magnificence.
-Adam

ApocalypseVII

I have a bottle of ps2 water from E3 04 that worth anything?

Elsmooth

I also seriously miss WD. Lunar:EB is one of my all time faves, on SegaCD and PSX. I used to email Vic Ireland from time to time, and he would always write back.

It's a shame that they could never release ANYTHING on time. It became kind of like a running joke, but it was really just bad business. Atlus seems to have filled the quirky Japanese game localization niche rather nicely, though.

yoagner

I wouldn't beat myself up too much over it. I once passed the chance to buy one of those Nintendo World Championship carts (the SMB/Tetris/Rad Racer one) several years ago. It would have cost all of my savings at the time, since I was still a kid, but I still regret it since I probably ended up spending that money on some really awful games.

We have all sold things and regretted it or passed up a great opportunity, but I think that most of the time, you probably never think about this. You were really hard up for cash for a while and you didn't have the space for everything. Would you buy this for $500 now, even with inflation adjustments? It would be nice to have, but you already did have it and you probably didn't feel significantly different when you owned it. We were all young and stupid, but you actually made a really rational decision at the time, more rational than most of us. Some of us wake up after being an adult for way too many years realizing that we are surrounded by Beanie Babies, Hummels, and Happy Meal toys and wonder why the hell we have so much clutter.

Regret the friends who you lost touch with, miss the ones who died too soon, and let yourself sort of miss the romance that ended, but don't let this eat at you.

kingofallcosmos

Ohh lawd how could you sell this!

Its like the best swag ever.

Its like "I really want it but I dont know why"

but I guess if you have to go you have to go!

fagelpadda

This topic also reminds me of E3 2002, which IMO was the apex of shwag excess. Agetec just gave games away if you bothered to show up to their 'booth' and chatted for a few minutes. If you were media and scheduled a booth tour with Namco, you ended up with at least one Xenosaga statue, and a Japanaese-made Xenosaga t-shirt where the image felt like it was dyed and not ironed on. You can make at least $700 of eBayables if you visited each booth at least once that year.

normalmode

@yoagner: Yeah I do. Except I bought mine at a local EB. I guess it was left over from the pre-order deal.

gcZanmato

@yoagner: I did, though I sold that on eBay.

normalmode

Oh seriously that game is freakin cool, it's much better then 90% of other games like it. I was working in a video game store and we had plenty games with light guns, I tried them all...and this is the only one I ever came back, again and again. Warning, it's hard, you need strategy to win this not only aim. I think I will get this setup on my pc and play with my mouse. Oh and, it's possible to play 2 players and you don't absolutely need a light gun to play!

GodKiller0

@Mooseferatu: If true, you should really follow the link and let those guys know as apparently they've never found proof of any gold plated memory cards.

Solaricide

I have an official E3 Nintendo ds stylus that flashes blue. Got it for $12, at one point i saw it going for £50.

Broken_Hands

I still have mine, and it's still in the box.

Powerlurker

@ Mike Fahey

jealous.

anglon

@Shinamano:
Seriously! I could nto have cared less about the iPod touch until you had made mention of this game being available. I've been pricing one out now! LOL!

Keeko_ca

That... At least you're happy where you moved to?

shini

Woah! Sweet comments. Anyway... That really sucks :(. You should just keep ANYTHING that's exclusive.

spyker3292

It so sucks to be you mike I wouldn't have given that up u'd have to pry it from my dead corpse :D

HitokiriX

how much is it worth?

mascot1063

its cool, fahey. i once sold a newish copy of Suikoden 2 to pay my rent, and still regret it.
the outdoors arent that bad, when you think about it.

TheIrishNinja

It's completely cool Fahey. There are days when I think about selling my signed copy of FF7 so I can eat a little better. I probably wouldn't even get much for it. =/

Channing

@Gaff:
LOL at last, now we know what was in the case!

Yeah this kind of swag is just way too awesome to give up. I'd find something else to sell off before getting rid of something this unique.

jelloman581

@TheIrishNinja:

When I was much younger, I sold my NES and all of my games (including greats like bubble bobble, vindicators (the tengen version), gauntlet (the tengen version) etc).

To buy a super nintendo with super mario world and zelda.

lordargent

@TheIrishNinja:

when i sold off suiko2, i didn't feel bad at all. i had already beat the game like 1000000 times, that i doubt i'd ever play it again anyways :p

Desfunk

You do all know that Working Designs was just a publisher, right?

LordAxle

This is the kind of thing for which E3 used to be good.

discoron77

I can't get rid of stuff. It's awesome to have cool things, but they clutter up everywhere. Such is the life of a packrat...

Speaking of awesome schwag, my manager brought down a whole bunch of stuff from the manager's conference. I got a Persona 4 shirt! Whoo-hoo!

Fierfaerie

Team Sonic jacket from Vegas,will never sell!

bigbot

Great game. I still have a copy of the normal version. But that is just flat out beautiful. This reminds me of a quote from Kill Bill: "You hocked a Hattori Hanzo?!"

psychobaka

Shame, shame, shame.

You sold your gaming soul, and for what? A move across the country? This entire country looks the same. I was almost tempted to sell both my Lunar Sega CD games (also published by Working Designs) on Ebay to help finance my PS3, but did I? DID I? No ...instead I pestered mom and got a 360.

LP4600

Oh, Working Designs

I miss you. Altus is good but just doesn't throw the add-ons like WD did.

Look at Lunar for PSX...it came with puppets!

OtakuboyT

@Mooseferatu: I was wondering if you were going to mention that. You had it proudly displayed in your cubicle for awhile. That gives mad game cred.

jimmy0brien

I miss Working Designs. They were awesome.

agncolem

What a work of art. I love Gearbolt. I'd kill for that thing. Granted, I'd not pay $500 for it . . . but I'd could score killing implements for under $10 . . .

This sad tale reminds me of the time I sold my Saturn, Genesis, and about 40 games total, in a moment of adolescent tomfoolery, for enough cash to pick up a Playstation, the original "Crash Bandicoot" and the first "Bushido Blade." I still have a bitter taste in my mouth when I think about the palpable feeling of loss that sunk in about two weeks after the dirty deed was done. Sure, the soon-after death of the Saturn, and the existence of FF7 and myriad other titles eventually showed me I did the right thing, and I've since re-purchased 95% of those beloved games; however, the memories of there being a time when the urger to play "Night Warriors" struck me, and I simply could not do it haunt me to this day.

The closest thing to parting with something actually hard to replace would be the time I disposed of my Onimusha 3 Soul Controller. The thing was practically useless though, I never used it, and I put the money toward a JPN region Neo-Geo AES . . . so I don't miss it very much.

MrGilder