Keep Circulating the Tapes/Video Games: Difference between revisions

{{Video Game Examples Need Sorting}}

 

* Every ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' game before [[Fire Emblem Elibe|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 [http://www.facebook.com/NeverhoodMobile this statement] has mentioned that a rerelease on mobile platforms is in the works.

** 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 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:

* 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 re-released.

* 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''.

* Matayan has released exclusive characters for ''[[Kinnikuman: Muscle Fight]]'' that are available only to those the developer trusts. Basically, these characters are hard to find on the Internet.

* Due to an issue with its shadow mapping system (which was ported straight off the Xbox release and thus no longer works properly on newer hardware as well as those running on ATI/AMD GPUs), the Windows release of ''[[Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell|Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow]]'' remains the only ''Splinter Cell'' game to be pulled out of circulation. As ''Splinter Cell''{{'}}s extensive use of light and shadow is integral to its gameplay, the shadow mapping issue makes ''Pandora Tomorrow'' extremely difficult if not impossible to play on modern hardware.

 

{{tropesubpagefooter}}