Keep Circulating the Tapes/Video Games


 * Every Fire Emblem game before the seventh is virtually impossible to get outside of Japan, being that the entire franchise before the seventh instalment was a case of No Export for You. Unsurprisingly, the series is very frequently pirated and subjected to Fan Translation.
 * Doug Ten Napel's The Neverhood, an ingenious point-and-click adventure game made entirely in claymation, has been MIA since the mid-Ninties and copies are quite scarce. When it's easier to get the soundtrack CD to a computer game than the game itself, there is no hope for humanity. Or so it seemed, but this statement has mentioned that a rerelease on mobile platforms is in the works.
 * After its unfortunate initial performance in 1995, Earthbound has never been rereleased in America, not even on the Virtual Console. Its Masterpiece demo in Super Smash Bros Brawl was even explicitly removed from international versions of the game! Even Japan, where it did well, it is seemingly affected too - its only re-release was on a 2001 Game Boy Advance Compilation Rerelease of dubious quality, and it's not on the Japanese Virtual Console either, which makes its presence as a Masterpiece demo in the Japanese version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl all the more confusing. Rumours abound as to why this is so, the most common ones involving legal issues over its music, but nothing has ever been confirmed by Nintendo and there are plenty of arguments against those theories too. At any rate, it's actually pretty rare to find someone who actually played the game on a console rather than just emulating it. Being a very famous game that sells for anywhere between $80 and $200, it's an exemplary and significant example of this trope in action.
 * Similarly, the sequel Mother 3 hasn't ever been released internationally. As time passes, it's quickly slipping the same way as Earthbound, with prices on it hiking ever further up.
 * Virtually every Licensed Game, due to the publishers and/or developers either no longer existing or no longer having the licenses. Thankfully, there's been some aversions to this in recent years, in particular when it comes to still-existing major publishers:
 * Ubisoft rereleased (and in one case, remade) some of Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games on the XBLA and the Virtual Console, despite not having anything to do with them besides currently holding the TMNT video game license. Unfortunately, we're back to square one as of January 26, 2012. The TMNT NES game is no longer available on Virtual Console.
 * Konami wrangled with Activision for a deal to port the X-Men arcade game to XBLA and PSN.
 * Capcom ported their Mickey Mouse/Minnie Mouse/Donald Duck and Aladdin SNES games to the Game Boy Advance.
 * Lucas Arts also put up the Super Star Wars games and Indiana Jones Greatest Adventures on the Virtual Console (though in that example, they always held the Star Wars and Indiana Jones licenses).
 * The Lunar games, remakes, and extra Feelies. The first two games were released on the Sega CD, which made them tough to come by in the first place. Lunar: The Silver Star, is actually not too difficult to find, but Lunar 2 Eternal Blue certainly is (it doesn't help that Eternal Blue had low sales). The remake of Eternal Blue is also a hard find because it was released during the twilight of the PlayStation era. Silver Star Story and all subsquent remakes of The Silver Star are not hard to acquire, though.
 * Conkers Bad Fur Day, natch. Given its mature rating in a cutesy setting and zero promotion (and it was released during the Nintendo64 twilight-in fact, it was released the same year the Game Cube would debut), it was hard to get then, and it sure as hell is even harder to get now.
 * Past-generation Pokémon titles. Finding used copies isn't difficult at all, given Pokémon's status, but Nintendo has unusually never shown any inclination to rerelease any past game. This is probably one of the rare cases where no-one minds this at all - ease of finding secondhand copies notwithstanding, given how more Pokémon are added with each generation, and the constant fixes and revisions to the game mechanics with each new generation, rereleasing the games in their original form would have been somewhat unfeasible. Instead, remakes ensued.
 * Note that if one does obtain a copy of Gold/Silver/Crystal, there's a good chance that the game will be unable to retain its save data, due to the fact that the backup RAM and the real-time clock share a battery, which the latter eats up within about six years. This also applies to Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald to a lesser extent, especially if the bug that causes the battery to die prematurely isn't fixed by FireRed and LeafGreen or the Game Cube games. The games store their data on flash memory (which doesn't require power to retain its data), so they can still be played without the save feature failing to work properly, but the cartridge still uses a battery to power the real-time clock, so difficulties can ensue (though certainly not insurmountable ones if one has enough patience). Note that the clock problems do not exist in every generation after III, as they can only be played on systems that have a clock built into the system itself, which the games make use of instead. (Of course, the main problem mentioned above will likely be an issue in the future, but at least gameplay will function normally.)
 * It is possible to replace the batteries in at least Gold and Silver versions without destroying the cartridge, so the playability can be restored... for another six years at a time.
 * The straightest examples in Pokémon are Pokémon Yellow (unlike Crystal, none of Yellow's differences were incorporated into FireRed/LeafGreen) and quite a few of the spinoffs, most noticeably Hey You Pikachu and the Pokémon Stadium games, the former of which uses a peripheral exclusive to the Nintendo64 and the latter of which have both that problem as well as the gameplay of both games highly depend on connectivity with Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.
 * This led to a bizaare situation in which Yellow's most famous feature, Pikachu following the Player, was added into HeartGold and SoulSilver, along with Crystal's additions to the game's plot. It was expanded- now any Pokémon could follow the Player, not just Pikachu.
 * Much of Rare's game library predating the Microsoft buyout, such as Golden Eye 1997, Battletoads, the Killer Instinct games, and the original version of Diddy Kong Racing, which may also have copyright issues regarding the T.T. theme (which is based somewhat on the Celebration song), and the characters Banjo and Conker (who now belong to Microsoft and thus did not appear in the DS remake; the latter has also been shifted into a Dead Baby Comedy character). They can only get a XBLA Updated Rerelease rather than a VC release since, save for Diddy Kong Racing and GoldenEye (which is also entangled by the James Bond game license being currently held by the controversially greedy Activision on top of all that Console Wars hooplah), they are now all Microsoft properties. On the plus side, this did allow for the implementation of Stop 'n Swop after the constant teasing for years...
 * This also entangles Nintendo's Donkey Kong 64; the Donkey Kong Country series and characters are owned by Nintendo, but the game contains Rare's own Jetpac, which is now a Microsoft property and has an Video Game Remake on Xbox Live Arcade; the latter is the reason holding the game back, for it can't be simply axed. Why? Because it's a mandatory Embedded Precursor; completion of it is necessary to fight the final boss!
 * Speaking of Jetpac, the home computer games produced by Rare's original (1983-1987) incarnation, Ashby Computer Graphics / Ultimate Play the Game, have their distribution denied as well. This means titles that revolutionized the European videogame industry such as Jetpac itself, Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf, and Knight Lore.
 * The full version of Commander Keen 6. The developer went under, so the only way you can get it is to buy it from the secondary market. Good luck with that; the original floppys are impossible to find and the compact disc collection it was packaged with is incredibly expensive and out of print. It seems odd that a company can go bankrupt without signing over the rights to their property to someone else, but there you go.
 * Technically it seems to be FormGen Corporation -> GT Interactive Software Corporation -> Infogrames Entertainment -> Atari. And it seems they aren't using the game, nor can Apogee/3D Realms buy it back.
 * Many of the games up to the fifth generation of home video games (PSX, N64, Sega Saturn) are now available with ROMs and emulators downloadable from the internet with even cursory searching.
 * Downloading of ROMs is illegal (though very debatable as to the morality) under the most common download circumstances ("I can't find the original!"). However, it does have some arguments to be made for it being legal if one owns an original game copy, but not the hardware, particularly on game consoles that any patents on would have long since expired.
 * Copyright law lasts so long that it could very well outlive you.
 * Patents do not, however. Nintendo has already lost exclusive patent on NES hardware in most countries, meaning anyone can manufacture equipment for it now.
 * The problem here is that such games, with the exception of some N64 titles on Virtual Console or PSX titles on the Playstation Network, are rather slow in becoming available for those who may wish to acquire them legally, but never had the chance to get one or more of the 5th-gen systems (or a copy of the game for the one(s) they had).
 * And some can be downloaded... but aren't playable in an emulator (such as Indiana Jones and The Infernal Machine and Star Wars Rogue Squadron).
 * This actually seem to be a contributing factor to a generalized decrease in No Export for You in RPGs, especially in the last few years. Square Enix is a good example; previously, they allowed many of their major releases in Japan in the 1990s, such as Seiken Densetsu 3, Dragon Quest V and VI, Front Mission 1 and others to go unreleased even once ports were made to newer consoles. Around 2003, though, SD3 was translated by fans...and thus played by hundreds of thousands of people. DQV and VI, FM1, and a raft of other "back-catalog" titles then got similar treatment and all exploded all over the Internet. This seems to have led to a number of Updated Rereleases of many of the aforementioned games, which then got translated and sold officially in the US market. SE guys have even acknowledged that fan translation played a part in proving that fans wanted certain games. Of the games listed in this example, only SD3 hasn't gotten a release in the States at this point.
 * Sadly, the DS update of V has become a scarcity due to a limited print run that resulted from disappointing sales of the preceding IV rerelease. The worst part of it is that V is considered the highlight of the series by diehard fans, and is already hard to find and increasing in value on the aftermarket. Neither the overseas success of Dragon Quest IX nor the finally released in the west remake of the sixth game will have much effect; those two were published overseas by Nintendo, while the fifth is still under the grip of SE, which doesn't seem interested in doing non-GH reprints.
 * Occasionally, though, V will go on sale on Amazon (usually around the holidays).
 * Star Trek Starfleet Command III. Shortly after its release, Activision filed a lawsuit against Viacom claiming that the studio had allowed the Star Trek franchise to "Stagnate And Decay", and that this had negatively affected Activision's stocks (or something of that nature). The debacle ended with Activision splitting, and production of the Starfleet Command III discs (as well as the other Star Trek titles made by Activision) halted, just a short time after the game's release. In fact, there are so few copies of Starfleet Command III that they generally sell online for anything from $85 to $144! Activision should have just held off until the 11th movie then...
 * Transport Tycoon and its Deluxe version. Designer Chris Sawyer doesn't own the rights. Original publisher Microprose sold the rights to Atari, and they claim not to own the rights and they don't feel like trying to resolve the issue. Chris Sawyer eventually released a spiritual sequel, Locomotion, which didn't do very well. Fortunately, the fan community has rallied around the open-source Open TTD.
 * Unfortunately, until recently a copy of Transport Tycoon Deluxe was required to play Open TTD. As of Version 1.0.0, open-source replacement graphics/sound sets are supported.
 * Doujinshi games are exceedingly difficult to find outside of Japan (or even in Japan, unless you know where to go); while doujin manga usually only has a niche market, doujin games are usually quite popular. Pressing CDs, however, is expensive, so not very many copies are made at a time. While the games usually only sell for about 1,000 Yen (a little over $10), the limited print run means it can be difficult to find any copies after the fact. Touhou is by far the biggest example, with enormous popularity worldwide and very few ways of actually buying the games.
 * Emulators and clones of the classic economics game MULE have always been around, but the original game itself has long been out-of-print. Noises are semi-currently being made about a reissue of some sort.
 * Noise no longer - thanks to hard work by Blue Systems and the Bunten estate, you can now play an updated version of MULE (complete with online multiplayer!) for free at Planet MULE.
 * The Game Boy Mega Man (Rockman World) series, including the well-regarded 5th game. A Game Boy Advance version of Mega Man Anniversary Collection was planned, but cancelled. Plus, you're out of luck if you don't own a GBASP or earlier (or a Game Boy Player for the Game Cube), as Nintendo handhelds from the DS onwards ditched classic Game Boy support. Just hope for a release on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console...
 * Currently, the first installment is on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console. No word on the others yet, though.
 * To be fair, the Japanese versions are easy to find and aren't expensive either. Thank God for the Game Boy being region free.
 * The Sega Saturn games aren't a walk-in-the-park to find. They can race anywhere from $40 to $80 at minimum, if you manage to find them.
 * The 1990s Humongous Entertainment games have not been rereleased in any form, with the exception of Freddi Fish: Kelp Seed Mystery, Pajama Sam: Don't Fear the Dark, and Spy Fox in Dry Cereal, which are all available on the Wii (after the rights were sold to Majesco), plus Backyard Baseball and Backyard Soccer, both available on Real Arcade.
 * Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, and Spy Fox on the Wii are no longer available, because Majesco used Scumm VM (without complying with the GPL) and didn't bother fixing well-known errors in the rendering.
 * System Shock. Considered one of the very best PC games ever created, regularly topping halls of fame. Had mouselook modded in as a fan project in 2009. Not on Steam. Not on Good Old Games. Not for sale anywhere save second-hand copies on eBay if you're rich and lucky. "Portable" abandonware versions drift across the internet; somewhere, a rightsholder is being clueless.
 * The same applies to its sequel System Shock 2. Hailed as a cult classic years after its release. Has topped various "best-of" game lists by Gamespot, PC Gamer, IGN and several more. Still has mods released years after it was made (to the point of a fansite, Sshock2.com, garnering music contributions from the game's composer, Eric Brosius). Rated even higher than the original by community votes on Good Old Games. Created Spiritual Successor games in the form of Bioshock and Dead Space. Also unavailable, despite EA renewing the System Shock trademark in 2006.
 * The VHS promotional tapes given out to Nintendo Power subscribers in the mid-1990s. The tapes promoted the Nintendo 64 and games like Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo-Kazooie, and early Pokémon games, as well as gave interesting behind-the-scenes looks at the making of these games. With the advent of DVD, the practice simply stopped after one release advertising the Game Cube, and the tapes are now highly valued by collectors and traders.
 * The Breath of Fire games are an example of an entire franchise (right down to Comic Book Adaptation treatments and artbooks) that is a victim of this due to a variety of reasons:
 * The licensing of at least the first Breath of Fire, and potentially the entire series, is complex because of Capcom having farmed out localisation to Square and apparently also granted it North American distribution rights. Square apparently has enough pull in its contract that it may have US distribution rights to not only I but quite possibly residual licensing rights re the franchise as a whole.
 * This is a major topic of recent speculation as to why the Breath of Fire series is the sole Capcom property that has never been subjected to a Capcom vs. Whatever (for Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Word of God is that the series is too cultish for a mainstream game aimed at Westerners; indeed, there are Breath of Fire cards in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3's Heroes and Heralds mode. Outside of that case, fan speculation is that licensing issues in the US, specifically Square's joint licensing, may be holding things up).
 * There have been recent announcements to the effect that Square will be remaking I and II for the Xbox 360 (to be announced at E3), further muddying the situation of the licensing of the series in the US.
 * The series as a whole has been in Development Hell for seven years running, with Capcom giving little acknowledgement that the series ever existed outside of Japan until very recently and no real formal acknowledgement from 2003-07 within Japan itself.
 * This is speculated to be due to a very Broken Base that resulted in North America in particular when the fifth game of the franchise, Dragon Quarter, was released.
 * The first game of the franchise was subjected to extensive Woolseyism in its North American release, including names of most characters changed seemingly at random. Worse, the GBA port changed nothing (even though Capcom released it; this may have been due to the licensing situation of I with Square, though). The only way to play the game with the original Japanese names is via Fan Translation of Japanese Super Nintendo ROMs, itself of dubious legality.
 * The second game of the franchise is, despite Getting Crap Past the Radar to a truly historic degree, considered more than a bit of a translation trainwreck and also neutered multiple abilities of characters. Even worse, the GBA version changed nothing. The only way to play the game with a readable English text (versus Engrish) is via a Fan Translation of the Japanese Super Nintendo ROM — again, of dubious legality, especially with Square planning a possible re-release and possible re-translation.
 * The third game was planned to be re-released in North America for the PSP but ran into a serious roadblock — Sony Entertainment US has a rule requiring 20% new content for re-releases, and the re-release of Breath of Fire III was seen to not meet this requirement despite new bonus art and features unlocked in the game. (Of note, Sony Entertainment US is the sole territory where the PSP is sold to have a "New Content Rule". It apparently even hits games never released in the US, as it was one of the factors in Atlus USA not translating the PSP port of Devil Summoner.) The only way to obtain III at this point in North America is either via grey-market imports from Europe for the region free system (where the PSP re-release was sold, with English text!), finding the game on Ebay, or the use of copied IS Os (of extremely dubious legality). The game also has never been re-released on Playstation Network, either.
 * The fourth game has been rereleased on PSN, but only in North America. The Windows version and all international versions were subject to severe Bowdlerisation (in one case ending up in a frank Aborted Arc); in addition, a character's special ability was neutered from the game. The only way to play the game in un-bowdlerised fashion is to either find someone selling a Japanese version (quite rare now) or use an ISO of dubious legality — and there is no Fan Translation so far. The only way to play the Windows port in North America is via import from Europe (hard to find nowadays) or via downloads of very dubious legality; the only way to find the game as released in the US is to find someone reselling it (Ebay is probably the best bet nowadays, as the game was released in 2001) or to download an ISO of dubious legality.
 * The fifth game (Dragon Quarter) is out-of-print, has been out-of-print for over seven years, is now (thanks to the Broken Base it caused) apparently not really acknowledged by Capcom as having existed, has never been re-released in any format including Playstation Network, and one's only real hope of obtaining it at this point is via used game stores or (again) IS Os of dubious legality.
 * Literally all artbooks, with the sole exception of the compilation Breath of Fire Complete Works, are out-of-print and have been for years; the only sources are online import companies selling them at high expense (and of dubious authenticity), or via scans of the artbook done by fans.
 * All derivative works (including soundtracks and Comic Book Adaptation treatment) with the exception of the recent Comic Blade Avarus Comic Book Adaptation of IV are long out of print and generally only available from extremely-expensive online sellers or through internet downloads of dubious legality. (This is especially the case if you want an English version of any Comic Book Adaptation or spinoff/side-story; literally all save for the Comic Blade Avarus manga are No Export for You outside of Japan.)
 * Unless one speaks French or Cantonese, even the Avarus manga adaptation of IV counts — the only sources are three online sellers (Amazon Japan, HMV Japan, and Kinokuniya) or the Fan Translation because it's still not licensed in English (and it's not a sure thing it ever will be licensed in English, even with Mag Garden producing it and even with licensed versions in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and France).
 * The fact the manga is licensed in Hong Kong but not mainland China has led to a particularly interesting case where a Chinese Fan Translation group (in mainland China) is continuing to produce a scanlation of the Avarus manga adaptation of IV despite the manga being licensed in Hong Kong SAR.
 * The arcade version of Double Dragon was rereleased on Xbox Live Arcade for a while, until Empire Interactive went bankrupt, also erasing hopes of a rerelease of the second game. Good luck finding the arcade machines, or you can illegally play them on MAME. Similarly, all of Midway's XBLA rereleases were delisted when they folded and were purchased by Warner Bros.
 * This applies to many other old-school arcade games, especially those that were equipped with suicide batteries or whose source code has been lost (i.e., no chance of a legal downloadable rerelease).
 * Kojima half-admitted that the reason why any version of Snatcher hasn't been released on the Virtual Console yet (even though stuff like Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake and Castlevania Rondo of Blood had been released already) is due to the fact that the game's imagery and its numerous visual nods to Blade Runner and Terminator almost border on copyright infringement, making it hard to re-release without heavy alterations. It's not much of an issue in Japan, where the PC-Engine version is common to find on the second-hand market, but English-speaking players who want to experience the game have no choice but to pay ridiculously-high prices for the game on eBay or illegally download it off the internet.
 * If you're a fan of old-style text adventures (from Infocom and other companies), you're pretty much limited to downloading it from the internet these days, as most games (especially less-popular ones) haven't been available for sale for at least 10-15 years. Worse yet, many of Infocom's games (such as Zork Zero) included "feelies" to prevent piracy (extra material, such as a guidebook, that was needed to solve the game's puzzles) — even if you could find a rare used copy, it's doubtful you could find the "feelies" (although we suggest looking around eBay). Hence, internet downloads. The legality of this is questionable (it depends on whether you accept "abandonware" as a valid excuse), but it's pretty much the only way to get them anymore. This goes double for even older games. Luckily, most new games are released for free, as there really aren't any companies commercially producing text adventures anymore.
 * Now that Sega has released Thunder Force VI, it's exceedingly hard to find the opening movie from Tecnosoft's original Dreamcast version, or the promotional movie from Factory Noise + AG's doujin attempt Broken Thunder. There's only one site on the Internet that still has the Tecnosoft TF6 intro (scroll down to the teaser video link). As for the Broken Thunder opening video, it used to be available for download on Factory Noise's website, but their site is dead now. Segagaga Domain has a low-quality version of the video on Google Video, but there is absolutely no place to download the original high-quality version of the video anymore. It's a real shame, because both videos — the Broken Thunder video especially — are well-done pieces of CG.
 * The Super Robot Wars series of video games, due to their Mega Crossover plots involving dozens of different mecha anime franchises, will likely never see release outside of Japan. The only exceptions have been the two Original Generation games, which — as their name suggests — use only original characters and mecha designs.
 * Harvest Moon 64 is this as of now. It is a Cult Classic and considered the best Harvest Moon game by many however it has yet to have a Virtual Console release, an enhanced remake (a la the PS 1 games to GBA), or a port release (like the PS 1 games). Only the original SNES game has had a Virtual Console release. It's an expensive game, too — compared to other games from the same time period, you'll usually find it for $35 at cheapest.
 * A recent interview with a Natsume executive reveals that problems with the source code has prevented any possible remake or port, even sadder by the fact that this game was supposedly one of the first they planned for a Virtual Console release.
 * Which makes no sense, as the VC is simply an emulator, so they'd just need a game ROM.
 * Tell that to SEGA. Sonic CD was originally supposed to be on Sonic Mega Collection, but due to emulation problems (I.E. tossing out the original schematics and design documents for the Mega CD/Sega CD as well as somehow losing the original game's source code) ultimately, it was not included. The version on Gems Collection is a hack of the PC version, made to run on consoles under a PC emulator, if memory serves me correctly (This is noticeable in how the debug menu works, and the water in Tidal Tempest being clear; PCs of the era had issues emulating the water effects, so it was scrapped.), and the 2011 rerelease was completely recoded from scratch.
 * All Harvest Moon games before Friends of Mineral Town generally count as this, especially the Game Boy and Color ones. As said the original SNES game is one of the rarest titles for the console (it rivals Earthbound), but has gotten a Virtual Console release.
 * Shantae, a very-late-release (2001!) Game Boy Color game by Way Forward Technologies. It sold less than 100k copies during its release (only about 77k, if numbers are to be believed), but word of mouth (and reviews) spread stories of the game's excellent quality. Copies routinely go for over $100 on eBay! To add insult to injury, if you attempt to play the game through slightly cheaper methods, the most common Game Boy emulator doesn't even run it correctly.
 * Lampshaded on official Risky's Revenge soundtrack release video. WFT has apparently been working on getting the game on DSiWare / 3DS Virtual Console though.
 * Pretty much the entire Commodore 64 software library falls into this category. Other than a handful of games released for various virtual consoles, the entire rest of the catalog is available almost exclusively on the internet as disk images that can be played using a C64 emulator. Thankfully, rights holders are either nonexistent, having disappeared decades ago, or simply don't care that the images are available, so they're very easy to find.
 * The entire Shadow Hearts series. You can probably find From the New World, and maybe Covenant somewhere in a used game store, but the first Shadow Hearts game, as well as Koudelka? Good luck!
 * The Ogre Battle games The Knight of Lodis and Legend of the Zenobia Prince for Game Boy Advance and Neo Geo Pocket Color can't be had on current consoles.
 * Albion is a good example of this as well, given that copies show up on Ebay only rarely and in small numbers. When they do appear, they fetch prices of $100, at the very least.
 * Castlevania Chronicles, the PlayStation upgrade of the X68000 version of Castlevania, had a very limited production run, and thus is more expensive than crack, though it is available on the Playstation Network for only $5.99.
 * Good luck finding The Red Star for the PlayStation 2.
 * Ever heard of the game Oddballz by P.F. Magic? It's a virtual pet game with weird and wacky pets, and it's fun. REALLY fun. Good luck finding it! Okay, there's a demo out there, but you can't use all the toys or turn out the lights. What? Someone found out how to turn the demo into the full game? Well, you still don't get the Web Fun Pack... what? Someone posted that online? Oh, but...you still can't get the full version legally!
 * There was a LEGAL reprint of the game, BUT it comes without a serial number. FAIL! Granted, you could Google the game and find one, but still, it would save people a lot of work if they bothered to include the serial number.
 * Any Data East game that wasn't rereleased on Data East Arcade Classics, including Night Slashers, Midnight Resistance, Vapor Trail, and Thunder Zone (aka Desert Assault, the spiritual successor to Bloody Wolf). Many of these weren't ported to consoles either, so they can only be played through illegal emulation.
 * It's nigh impossible to get a physical copy of LSD Dream Emulator as it was only released in Japan and even there a copy goes for the Yen equivalent of about $500. It did get released as a PS One Classic on the Japanese PlayStation Network in August 2010, but it's unlikely it'll ever get released on the American store since it wasn't released in America the first time around. Even so, it's still possible for those outside Japan to make a Japanese PSN account, purchase a Japanese PSN card online, and download it that way.
 * The dream journal the game was based on (Lovely Sweet Dream) and the soundtrack (LSD & Remixes) that came with the special edition of the game are even harder to get since only about 50 copies were made. There was another CD, Lucy in the Sky with Dynamites, which was basically like supplemental soundtrack featuring different mixes of the songs that was also released only in Japan.
 * Of course, as you can guess, you can download the game's ISO, both CDs, and scans of the dream journal online for free. The developer, Asmik Ace, doesn't seem to care about it since the game isn't even listed on their website.
 * Are you sure it's not gonna get released due to the last of a first production...or due to the name? Think about it for a second.
 * Osamu Sato, the creator of the LSD game and writer of the dream journal it's based on, had created an even more obscure game called Eastern Mind: Lost Souls of Tong-Nou. That game had an even more obscure sequel entitled Chu-Teng. There's info on and footage of Eastern Mind, but there's literally nothing known about Chu-Teng aside from the fact that it existed.
 * Virtually every Starfy game except for The Legendary Starfy - none of these games have been released in Europe or the U.S.
 * Games from consoles outside of the 'main' four, and the consoles themselves. If it isn't on a Sega, Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony console expect it to be near impossible to find. Even Atari games are hard to find, and they were the king of gaming.
 * The first Gubble game has seen a few re-releases, but looking for the second game? Good luck.
 * An extreme case among video game instances of this trope is anything distributed via the Super Famicom's Satellaview broadcast system. Even if you manage to track down ROMs of the broadcasted games, they're almost certainly incomplete - the streamed audio and voice acting was not saved with the rest of the game, so a very sizable portion of the games' contents are quite possibly Lost Forever. To date, the only Satallaview games which have been officially remade or rereleased in any form are the Fire Emblem ones, remade and included as bonus missions in New Mystery of the Emblem.
 * Want to play Pikmin 2 but don't own it? Got 60 bucks? That's the lowest price it runs for. There was a port made for the Wii but for some reason it's harder to find than the original. It's not that the game didn't sell well, it's that it was such a great game that nobody wants to put it up for sale. This unfortunately leaves the people that didn't originally own it having to spend some extra money.
 * The Wii version was delayed for the US and then never released. To top it off, the European version is unplayable even with a full-hacked Wii, so, either you get a European Wii (and game) or learn Japanese to play that version.
 * The fan game Super Mario Bros X thanks to creator Redigit "getting a cease and desist from Nintendo", a story which many are pretty sure is fabricated because Redigit "didn't like the community".
 * Panzer Dragoon Saga was not only released in limited quantities during its short life on the Sega Saturn, Team Andromeda no longer exists, and the original source code is lost.
 * Apparently, Nintendo ran into problems emulating the SNES's Super FX chip on Wii Virtual Console releases, which would explain the lack of Yoshi's Island and the original Star Fox. However, the former's Game Boy Advance Updated Rerelease is getting a Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console release (though Nintendo currently only has plans to release it to members of the Ambassador program) and the latter's Continuity Reboot is available.
 * The original monochrome release of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening had some bugs (often Good Bad Bugs) that the Updated Rerelease, Link's Awakening DX, ended up fixing. Since the DX version was the one chosen to be released on the Nintendo 3DS's Virtual Console, second-hand copies are pretty much the only way to get the original version.
 * They stopped producing Rune Factory Frontier games in America after a year or so, so this is the only way to buy a title.
 * The original, unpatched version of Ultima VIII: Pagan.
 * Want to find the Eyewitness series of educational video games from the '90s and early '00s? Well, you can't go to the store and buy it. You can order them from places like Amazon and eBay, or find a torrent. Otherwise, you're doomed.
 * This seems to be the case with various Nintendo games that use the Tetris branding but aren't actually Tetris games (such as Tetris Attack), due to the stricter trademark licensing from The Tetris Company, because so far the only Nintendo game with "Tetris" in the title to be released on the Virtual Console service is the Game Boy installment (and for some reason, unlike Links Awakening above, it's the original version and not the DX release for the Game Boy Color), released on the Nintendo 3DS. It got this treatment when the Wii was very late in its life, which never got a VC release for Tetris Attack. (Note that the Japanese release does not have this issue; the Japanese release doesn't hide the series it's in and calls it Yoshi's Panepon.) Fortunately, in the case of the Tetris Attack/Puzzle League series, sequels dropped the Tetris branding and Pokémon Puzzle League did not have this problem and got a VC release, which means there wouldn't be a problem doing the same with the portable Pokémon-based game in the series, Pokémon Puzzle Challenge.
 * PC games in general fall into this, especially pre-2000s games. Games are known to quickly become incompatible with newer systems and can be rare to find.
 * Sonic Shuffle is one of the few Sonic games to not be rereleased.
 * The Living Books series has unfortunately fallen under this for a long time. Firstly, they have not been known to age well when it comes to compatibility with modern computers. The three Dr. Seuss titles are the only ones that have had an update to combat this, and even then, they're Mac-exclusive. Then there's also the fact that four of the games have long gone out-of-print mysteriously (what's more, they're still included as demos in the still in-print games). If you want The New Kid on the Block, Sheila Rae the Brave, or either Berenstain Bears title, you better grab a tank load of money. Especially with New Kid.
 * Not technically a video game example, but Mario Golf's official soundtrack only consists of half of the tracks from the game, and some of the ones that are included have background noises. Good luck trying to find recordings of tracks missing from the soundtrack, as well as recordings with the background noises removed.