Buying before they are gone

Hello all,

As most of you may know the next generation of portable consoles is on the horizon (PSP Vita) or already out (3DS) and publishers are already moving towards supporting these formats.

While I am not a big portable console fan there have been games on it in the past which I liked and there are still several games out there I would like to play.
Thing is, usually when such a transfer takes place the games of the old console in time become very difficult to find and very expensive when they are offered on Ebay.

I am not really in the mood yet of playing these games as I have other priorities or wish to buy other games, it seems to me that if I ever want to get these games for a normal store price that I should buy them now and I should buy them fast.

I have in the past looked for old GBA games which technically are not that old yet but already fetch hefty prices because they simply can not be found in stores anymore (or complete)

Thing is, should I postpone the purchase of any older PC, Amiga, and console games when I am in the mood (and have money) to purchase these portable console games now?

Games I would still like to get are:

Advance Wars Days of Ruin
Mario and Luigi Partners in Time and Bowser's Inside Story
Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Sonic Rush Advanced (I think its called that)

And probably some others game that I can not think of right now

Are you more interested in owning the original copies and their packaging for a game or playing the game?

If you just want to play the games then don't panic. The PSP is very easy to software hack the firmware then you can run any game ISO from a memory card and don't need to buy the original game. This means all games ever released for the PSP are easy to get hold of. I'm never quite as quick to endorse this for a platform that is still in production with games selling well, but the PSP is now getting quite old in its life cycle, and with the Vita being released in less than 3 months time the PSP will then be out of date. I think Sony will continue to make and sell the PSP for some time though, as it always does with its larger consoles when they release a new one, but they will be concentrating on the Vita, as will developers, so I then see no harm in playing older games on older platforms for free.

however if you want to own the original copies of the games then you probably will have more trouble. This is made worse by the fact a lot of newer PSP games are download only and not released in great numbers on physical UMD discs, so you would actually never own any physical packaging or game because it is all digital.

As for the 3DS, I would forget the system. The Original DSi was a great success, and there have been a load of nice RPGs on the system. Many of these are already harder to find, but the DSi is even easier to load game roms onto compared to the PSP. Just buy a flashcart, load the games onto a memory card and play them. Roms are easy to find online. Again, I have no problems doing this as the DSi has been around for years and has really had its day. To me the 3DS is a poor update to the existing system and its 3D is a gimmick that most people get tired of after 30 minutes, reduce it down and never use it again.

So yeah, if you only want to play the games then just grab the hardware and download the games for free. If you want physical copies of games you will have problems, especially for ones also digitally distributed.

DS games are ridiculously easy to acquire online.

Whilst finding 'DS games' in a shop is easy, finding a specific one is much harder because the DS was nearly buried under an avalanche of My Pet Pony's Pop Star Wedding* style shovelware.

*I stole that from someone else, possibly kindly uncle Stu.

Well Harrison and T J,

I found a compromise, I got several of the games I mentioned second hand instead of buying them new.
While not all are in the condition as I would have treated them it at least cost me less than the full store price.

And yes, there is a lot of awful shovelware like the movie, television and pop culture tie in junk.
I only want games that I would still play even years from now when I am in the mood.