What games have you paid NOTHING for (NOT by stealing or for X-Mas or B-day)?

[DOMINATOR912]

Well I got a few when I was young, but today my manager gave me his Kingdom Hearts. He said he bought it when it first came out and just never got around to playing it. He didn't want it anymore and GAVE it to me! It's even complete and in pretty much mint condition. Aside from that, I also got the LOZ Collector's Edition for free from Nintendo for submitting some codes online. What about all of you?

[Gameboy415]

I got a few games through the buy 2 get 1 free deal at Toys R Us. Most notably, GTA: Vice City.

However, I absolutely HATED the game and I was able to sell it at Gamestop for $30 credit which I used towards Dot Hack Infection (which I loved and just completed the series about a week ago).

[Dok Diamond]

my friend gave me some scratched up games that barely work

Re:cv
Re 3
Nfl 2k2
crazy taxi

[Pezdro]

During the CC time, I suckered a CC employee to give me Clone Wars/Tetris for a penny. Beat that!

Oh, in middle school, friends left FF II, Yoshi's Island, and Super Metroid in various incidents.

[scsg75]

Well, over the years, my girlfriend has bought me several games for no reason other than to get them for me. I suppose that's the only "free" games I have recieved, but not really, because I buy her dvds and other things for no reason, so it all works out to be the same as if I just bought myself the games.

[sj41]

I've gotten several games from friends and family. I've given some away too.

[Howeraing]

My friend gave me Simpsons: Hit and Run because he got an extra copy.

[Nirvanaguy777]

i got batman returns for free from a friend in middle school

[DiscoDuck8k]

Hmm.. a friend gave me Zelda OoT complete for GC. That's about it, I think.

[Jaket]

atv power quad racing 2, madden 2004, champions of norrath and one other i cant remember off the top of my head from football here on CAG. i should be getting them in the next few days.

[YoshiFan1]

Zelda Master Quest disc from K-mart and I didn't pre-order or buy Wind Waker.

[jbroush99]

2 Copies of the GC Zelda Collectors Edition disc from Nintendo. I was supposed to get 1 copy but they sent me 2!!

[vatochewy111]

My friend gave me these ps2 things:

GTA: Vice City
NBA Live 2002
MVP Baseball 2003 (let someone else borrow and he sold it...lol)
I also got a free network adapter and logitech headset.

[SevereTireDamage]

A friend of mine who wasn't into games gave me a free promotional copy of Tony Hawk 4 for PC a few months ago.

[Kaijufan]

One of my relatives cleans out trucks after the drivers quit. She said from now on she will give me any games she finds, and so far she has given me the Game Boy port of Donkey Kong.

[sj41]

One of my relatives cleans out trucks after the drivers quit. She said from now on she will give me any games she finds, and so far she has given me the Game Boy port of Donkey Kong.About 5 years ago I got a Kirby's Dream Land on the origanal Game Boy from my uncle that exact same way. I sold it a year ago for $8.

[anonymouswhoami]

I got Buffy TVS: Chaos Bleeds for $10 online, but with a $10 rebate, came out even.

[Zmonkay]

My friend gave me Super mario World and Zelda on GBA, and I could have gotten a Wavebird controller at Walmart today for free, but my conscious took over. They had a display with Double Dash and a wavebird, and while the Cube was sealed (the game couldn't be taken) the wavebird's security thingy had been removed, and the reciever on the cube was also free (I even unpluged it from the system and changed the frequency) I SOOO could have, but I would have felt too guilty

And on a side note, my dad's friend got about 10 PS2s for free when they first came out, and was selling them for 50 bucks, cuz they fell off a truck near his house. He sold out before I could get one.

[SneakyPenguin]

I got Far Cry for free last week, and Half Life Platinum Pack 2, both with cmputers.

[dracula]

got some zelda discs, a copy of dragon warrior NES, those were both nintendo giveaways.

I have done the bogo and buy 2 get one at eb and gs and tru as well. i would have to check the receipts to see which games were counted as free tho.

[magilacudy]

My parents think gaming is evil, so they would never buy me games. I think the last game they got me was Sonic Spinball for Genesis.

The most recent freeness I've received was my first trade on TGN. This one guy had 100 or so positive feedback, but when I traded with him it took him over a week to send because of some problems with school or something. Anyways, when I get the package, he had thrown in Quantum Redshift and Rallisport. Not too shabby.

[DigitalSpace]

Last year, a friend of mine gave me Jurassic Park and Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story for SNES, along with Need For Speed: High Stakes for PSX.

Years ago, I got Super Mario RPG for free from a kid down the street, although it was probably to make up for the $20 he owed me when I sold him my first copy of Donkey Kong Country. I regretty sold Mario RPG in high school a couple years later. This spring, a friend of mine gave me another copy, for free. And I'm not going to let it go this time around. :lol:

My cousin used to leave SNES games at my house for months, sometimes even up to a year during the heyday of the console. Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Chrono Trigger, Super Baseball 2020, Wario's Woods, Secret Of Evermore, NBA Live '96, and F-Zero. He eventually took everything back to sell for N64 stuff except Super Baseball 2020 and F-Zero, which I still have (I have copies of everything else now except for Secret Of Evermore and Mystic Quest).

Also, my brother used to have a Genesis and sold most of his stuff to buy an N64 during its heyday. For some reason, he had a copy of Rocket Knight Adventures that likely was lost when he sold the rest of his Genny stuff. He found it while cleaning his room shortly before I bought my Genesis. I asked him about it and he gave it to me for free.

And as I recently posted, I won Arc The Lad: Twilight Of The Spirits for PS2 in a contest.

[asaraa]

Splinter Cell when I purchased Prince of Persia

Tonight picked ToS & Batman/Sin Tzu @ EB. With $15 rebate, Batman will be free.

Zelda Collector's Edition from Nintendo.

[dracula]

oh i am also getting the free green xbox deal. that is a good deal imo.

[coolcps]

I know .01$ isnt nothing, but when CompUSA had their Windows XP launch I got Unreal Tournament with Unreal 1 for that price. Great deal.

[1SwtDeception]

wow everyone been getting some free games huh.. should send me on to start off. but anyhow it was superman on 64.. i guess for obvious reasons now

[kristianator]

when i was real real young (as in kindergarten and first grade), all my friends had either atari or nes systems, but i personally never asked my parents for these things. i was a lot more into riding my bike than anything else, so i was real surprised when my parents bought both for me out of nowhere. no catches... they just came home with it and thought i might like it.

then, when it first came out and i was in 7th grade... my mom picked up chrono trigger for me from toys r us for a whopping 70 something bucks. i didn't even ask for it. she just saw that i kept reading about it and looking through tons of game magazines for anything on that game. i just came home from school, and bam, there it was on the dinner table.

the downside was that she gave away my dog that day, haha. so i guess that one wasn't free, huh?

[epobirs]

I'm inclined to disqualify BOGO or B2G1 as free. To my accounting if you had to come up with any cash that disn't come back to you in some form like a rebate, you did not get it for free. If I do a BOGO with two $30 games that really translates to getting those games for $15 each. If you believe anything in that deal was free then Sony has a free MMORPG they'll give you with the purchase of a overpriced hard drive.

As for really free, when the N64 was launched NOA had a trivia contest that a friend and I collaborated on. Between us we had a perfect score and his entry got picked for one of the Second Prize positions, which was a free copy of the then brand new Wave Race. Since he was fanatical about getting all of his stuff from Japan he already had the Japanese version and gave me the free US version.

Aside from that, I've been on a lot of reviewer lists over the years. Most of the time this meant I received everything published by companies I didn't care for all that much, like Psygnosis. Still, there was a fair number of titles I would have eventually purchased in those shipments.

[dopa345]

I won a copy of Ghost Recon and Rogue Spear: Black Thorn for PC in an IGN contest a couple years back which was sweet, never won a contest in my life until then.

I also got Tomb Raider: AOD virtually for free after a $9.99 rebate if you count that.

[lordopus99]

my manager hooks us (employees) once a year. Made out like a bandit.
the others were totally free. some were after rebates. I didn't list any from free after trade-ins.

zelda master quest/orcania of time
zelda collectors edition
bmx xxx (xb)
bloodrayne(xb)
dead to rights (XB)
fuzion frenzy (XB)
eternal darkness
resident evil zero
hitman 2 (PS2)
burnout 2 (PS2)
grandia xtreme
Jedi Academy (PC)
Homeworld 2 (PC)
etc

[LV-426RS]

Got Futurama from RSG. Have yet to open it, probably won't. At least not for a long time.

[YoshiFan1]

As for really free, when the N64 was launched NOA had a trivia contest that a friend and I collaborated on. Between us we had a perfect score and his entry got picked for one of the Second Prize positions, which was a free copy of the then brand new Wave Race. Since he was fanatical about getting all of his stuff from Japan he already had the Japanese version and gave me the free US version.


I remember that contest. Did you enter it on Nintendo's AOL area back when it still existed? I started trying to get all the answers but towards the end of the contest, I went to Canada for a vacation so I missed a bunch of the questions (but in Canada, at Ontario Place park, they had a N64 area and I got to play Mario 64 and got a N64 shirt from Nintendo so I guess it all worked out)

[sblymnlcrymnl]

A friend gave me the original NES TMNT a few years ago, that's about it.

[racerman8]

Everquest Online Adventuree, won it from raffle in store.

[RimShot28]

Sony sent me Twisted Metal Black Online a month ago.

[mousin]

my friend gave me halo, complete, and a bunch of ps1 games in my tradelist. :P

[dustyeff]

Well, over the years, my girlfriend has bought me several games for no reason other than to get them for me. I suppose that's the only "free" games I have recieved, but not really, because I buy her dvds and other things for no reason, so it all works out to be the same as if I just bought myself the games.

Well that's not very romantic, now is it?

[sleepydumbdude]

I got like 30 games from that eet and ern giveaway a couple of years back. I had them all sent to friend's and family's house. Also I got a game genie free from a radio station, they had something going on and I was like 6 and they asked me a question about batman and gave me a game genie.

[QuiteBitterBeing]

I ordered a game off of Amazon.com, the seller accidently shipped 2 copies of the game.

[smalien1]

I got a few games through the buy 2 get 1 free deal at Toys R Us. Most notably, GTA: Vice City.

However, I absolutely HATED the game and I was able to sell it at Gamestop for $30 credit which I used towards Dot Hack Infection (which I loved and just completed the series about a week ago).

Youd didn't really get GTA for free, one could say you got either one of the other two for free instead

[epobirs]

As for really free, when the N64 was launched NOA had a trivia contest that a friend and I collaborated on. Between us we had a perfect score and his entry got picked for one of the Second Prize positions, which was a free copy of the then brand new Wave Race. Since he was fanatical about getting all of his stuff from Japan he already had the Japanese version and gave me the free US version.


I remember that contest. Did you enter it on Nintendo's AOL area back when it still existed? I started trying to get all the answers but towards the end of the contest, I went to Canada for a vacation so I missed a bunch of the questions (but in Canada, at Ontario Place park, they had a N64 area and I got to play Mario 64 and got a N64 shirt from Nintendo so I guess it all worked out)

No, right through the web proper. I can thankfully say the only time I've ever had to deal with AOL was when I was being paid to fix somebody else's system. Since AOL bundled RealPlayer for a long time the chnaces of the machine neededing to be fixed was greatly increased.

[epobirs]

Everquest Online Adventuree, won it from raffle in store.

If it's a subscription driven game, can it still be considered free? Or is it free if only if you don't exceed the 30-day introductory period?

[rywateska]

I won Rallisport Challenge for the Xbox back in the day when it first came out. EB had some contest where you had to get the fastest rally time of the day on a track. I got a friend to practice with me for a half hour on the OXM demo and I took first while he landed fourth...not too bad.

I got SOCOM off a friend to pay off for driving his girlfriend around in my car with the boys for a night...not too bad either.

Another friend just forgot Command & Conquer 64 was left at my house years ago. He never asked for it back and he owes me money and won't pay me back...I sold the game off soon enough to get that money back though.

*edit*

That NBA Jam from TRU on Amazon got me a nice in store credit as well...$5 shipping but at the actual cost of nothing, does it count? I'm not sure...

[schultzed]

I got Splinter Cell free by buying Prince of Persia . . . I don't think this counts but . . .

In my case, I bought PoP when it was released in late Nov. When the free SC was announced in January I was pissed. Then I noticed that Best Buy had extended returns for Xmas. So I bought Prince (it was even on sale that week $39.99) at Circuity City and returned it to Best Buy and saved $10. I used the $10 to Beyond Good and Evil for PS2 at CC.

So, in my mind, I got SC and BG&E for free that day!

[OILYWATER]

About 2/3rds of all my post-1998 games I've gotten for free from game companies. I've been doing full-time, part-time, and freelance game reviewing ever since. It's about 350 games, where I've reviewed only about 100. So would those 100 games count even though I technically worked for those games? It takes me about 2 hours to write each one. The remaining 250? I was never obliged to review them because 1) My co-workers at the time already reviewed it, using their own copies or 2) They were 'gifts' from the game companies.

[schultzed]

About 2/3rds of all my post-1998 games I've gotten for free from game companies. I've been doing full-time, part-time, and freelance game reviewing ever since. It's about 350 games, where I've reviewed only about 100. So would those 100 games count even though I technically worked for those games? It takes me about 2 hours to write each one. The remaining 250? I was never obliged to review them because 1) My co-workers at the time already reviewed it, using their own copies or 2) They were 'gifts' from the game companies.

And you feel a need to rub our noses in this fact because . . . :D

Seriously, where could we read your reviews?
and can you send me your castoffs?

[Scorch]

Riddick, Full Spectrum Warrior, Psi-Ops and Breakdown.

[OILYWATER]

Ok. I'll stop. That was excessive. I should say though it's surprisingly easy to get free games/anime/manga/CDs/concert tickets from the companies' PR divisions if you have simple website with decent traffic (at least 300,000 visits per month) or a college paper.

Well here's some reviews that rottentomatoes.com logged in for my work at TechTV:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/gauthor-6944/

Actually getting to the full versions is tricky right now because of TechTV's move into G4. But I think they are archived in the G4Techtv site.

This comic book site also has some of my 2003-2004 reviews:

http://www.wellredpress.com/Gaming/gaming_archive.htm

Note I'm not responsible for any of the paper & pen reviews, just the video games. My excess games (the ones i have zero interest in owning) usually end up on ebay. My ID is koalacrimson.

[pimp_daddy_smurf]

i got MOST of my SNES/genesis games from a gamestore, it was a local gamestore and i would usually get free games when i went their cuz i got to me on really good terms with the owners and i always get games that never worked from their, thus getting that game that was broken (a new copy) and tons of other games

[peteyrose]

Ok. I'll stop. That was excessive. I should say though it's surprisingly easy to get free games/anime/manga/CDs/concert tickets from the companies' PR divisions if you have simple website with decent traffic (at least 300,000 visits per month) or a college paper.

Well here's some reviews that rottentomatoes.com logged in for my work at TechTV:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/gauthor-6944/

Actually getting to the full versions is tricky right now because of TechTV's move into G4. But I think they are archived in the G4Techtv site.

This comic book site also has some of my 2003-2004 reviews:

http://www.wellredpress.com/Gaming/gaming_archive.htm

Note I'm not responsible for any of the paper & pen reviews, just the video games. My excess games (the ones i have zero interest in owning) usually end up on ebay. My ID is koalacrimson.

I'm in the same position. We get a ton of free games, though it's divided amongst other staff members.

[guessed]

Riddick, Full Spectrum Warrior, Psi-Ops and Breakdown.

Wow, nice haul :wink:

[captainfrizo]

I've received 007 Nightfire for the PS2 for free because of a shipping screw up.

I've also received the Zelda Collector's Disc for free from Nintendo.

One of my brothers was given copies of Mortal Kombat 3 and Pokemon Colliseum from a friend of his.

[FriskyTanuki]

My uncle gave me an extra copy of ATV Offroad Fury when he found two copies of it in the case he bought from BB.

[smalien1]

I got Metal Gear SOlid 2 for Chanukah, you said not X-mas or b-day, that is neither of them

[enlightenedgamer]

I got 2 Zelda Collector's Editions, too.

[pimp tyranny]

over 30

[Michaellvortega]

I got FFXI with the HDD for PS2(beta tester) and Pirates of the Caribbean(won a contest) for xbox all for free.

[deathcabforcutie]

splinter cell pandora tomorrow and the xbox dvd remote kit when i bought my xbox for 150 if that counts...

nfl 2k from a friend, halo from a friend, and one time i traded some cds i found at the beach with a friend for 007 n64 if that counts...

[rawer]

Shadow of the Ninja (NES) -- won it in a contest
Torchic GBASP + Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire -- won them in a contest
Zelda Collector's Disc -- free for registering codes at Nintendo.com

[KrazyKefka]

I got Haunting: Starring Polterguy for the Genesis from a contest in a Gamepro magazine. I also won a year subscription to Gamepro and a Gamepro Tip tape along with the game.

[kaw]

Zelda Collector's Disk and Dragon Warrior from Nintendo Power promotions. Twisted Metal: Black Online with the purchase of the broadband adapter. My friend at work gave me a brand new copy of F-Zero X because he said he'd never play it. And another one of my friends gave me Wizards & Warriors and Battle of Olympus for the NES because he didn't want them in his collection any longer.

[bowsernieb]

At a jounalism convention in Dallas last year, I got Zelda: The Wind Waker and WarioWare Inc. for free.

Can't think of anything else that I got TOTALLY free and clear.

[zewone]

My uncle does appolstry for cars and this guy brought his car in to get his seats done. He had Final Fantasy 2 & 3 for SNES in his backseat we took out all his crap and worked on his car. When the guy came to pick up his car we were like "Oh heres your games back." And he said my uncle could keep em. He just gave em to me though. This was about 6 years ago.

[Scorch]

Riddick, Full Spectrum Warrior, Psi-Ops and Breakdown.

Wow, nice haul :wink:

http://engr.smu.edu/~kaytaz/65.gif

[thatstoobad]

i've gotten crash bandicoot, crash bandicoot: warped, devil may cry, and most recently espn nfl football (2k4). sure, it's last year's football game, but i figure this will let me grow accustomed to the current generation of football games (i haven't played any since one of the early ps1 maddens) and help decide if i should pick up 2k5. and it was free.

[rebenns]

I've gotten a couple of games through TRU's buy two, get one free deal. I also got an Activision Classics game free from CompUsa's mail in rebate (I did have to pay tax and postage, though). I also got some gaming peripherals that way, such as a PS2 controller and a DVD remote, and an XBox controller. I also got a CC Jampack for 1 penny, which the clerk paid for himself. It was pretty crappy - I had full versions of five of the ten demos on it, but you can't beat the price.