10 Times You Bought The Wrong Video Game INTENTIONALLY

Have you ever bought a game... for a totally different game?

Well, sure, I once bought this... er... game in Ann Summers for my ex, and I ended up spending the night playing a completely unrelated game (ha, it was so funny, she called it “why would you think I would even like this?!”, and it involved throwing crockery at me whilst she sobbed), but I’m not talking about traumatic life-events.

I’m talking about times where you intentionally purchased a video game because it included, unlocked, or otherwise facilitated you getting to play an entirely different, much more preferable game.

Maybe you bought that generic platformer because, upon completion, it allowed you to play that studio’s more recent, more exciting playable demo for the latest next big thing. Hey, no shame, here - we’ve all done it, ploughing through fifteen levels of Bland Land 64 in order to get even just a taste of Super Duperbloke 3: This Time, There’s Three Duperblokes.

(Man, that series got dark after Duperbloke 2 murdered that nun.)

So, while it might be a pretty questionable practice overall, there are many times we've bought the wrong game... on purpose.

Strider is one of Capcom’s strangest franchises.

Each of the releases seems to have a completely different direction to the others, right down to the protagonist, Hiryu, himself - a ninja from a dystopian future who sometimes looks like an anime antihero, and occasionally (such as on the MegaDrive’s western covers) like Michael Flatley, Lord Of The Dance.

Its sequel (well, the official one) appeared on the PlayStation to very little fanfare, possibly due to, as the magazine EGM noted at the time, “2.5D visuals that appear dated when compared to full 3D titles [also available on the console]”.

However, one thing that did get the attention of fans was that it came packaged with a full remaster of the (far superior) original game - the best version of that game to date. Collectors cottoned onto this and started hoarding the 2-disc set, increasing its rarity.

Now, getting a hold of a copy of Strider 2 is infamously the best way to defeat the Russian parliament centipede mechs and giant robot gorillas of the original game, with some eBay auctions seemingly unaffected in their £70+ pricing should the Strider 2 disc itself be missing from the bundle.