Back in my hometown in California, I had a job at GameStop. It was one of the good ones, though, with a helpful staff, a fun manager, and good customers. My good friend Tim and I used to even hang out there when we weren’t working and just talk games. He even introduced a concept to me that I thought was awesome and worth sharing: The “Unicorn Game”.
The Unicorn Game isn’t a game with literal unicorns, mind you. What the Unicorn Game is, according to the wise master Tim, is a game that is so rare and sought after but rarely seen. You know, like a mythical creature.
I was introduced to this concept by Tim who was telling me about his Unicorn Game, Valkyrie Profile for the PlayStation. He had been looking for it for years, but everywhere he looked it was far too expensive and usually incomplete. eBay was even more ridiculous, with most auctions weighing in at over $100.
That’s the thing with Unicorn Games, though. You can always find them on eBay, but usually at inflated prices. To truly hunt your elusive Unicorn Game, you need to scour used game shops, garage sales and the homes of relatives.
One of the great things about working at the store that I did was that our manager was awesome and let us do a few things that she technically wasn’t supposed to. One of those things was when people would bring games in for systems that we no longer sold, we were allowed to buy them for ourselves with money out of our own pocket.
One Sunday Tim and I were working and a guy comes in with a shoebox of games to trade. The guy was obviously a “Madden gamer” and most of the trades that he had were just obsolete versions of various sports games. There were a few PlayStation and Nintendo 64 games mixed in as well.
As Tim processed his trade, I sifted through what we didn’t take to see if there was anything that struck my fancy. Underneath a copy of Madden 97 that wasn’t even in its original case, I found something very notable. I swear the “get item” noise from Zelda played out loud.
Valkyrie Profile. Complete.
It was time for me to be the gamer equivalent of a wingman.
I kicked Tim behind the counter to get his attention. “Hey man, I’ll give you $5 for this,” I said, testing to see if he even knew how much it was worth.
“Sure,” he said, not really paying attention.
We had him on the line. Time to reel it in.
“I’ll give you $10,” Tim piped in.
“Okay, he gets it,” he said, handing the game to Tim and happily pocketing his bounty.
After he left the store, I could swear that I almost saw tears form in the corner of Tim’s eyes. “I have it. I finally have it. For $10. I don’t have to look anymore.”
You see, searching for a Unicorn Game takes a certain mental toughness. You have to be willing to endure disappointments for years as your prey eludes you time and time again. When you get lucky, though, and that long search comes to an end, it makes it all worth it.
We’re all gamers, but some of us are collectors. We hang on to games that we probably won’t ever play again because they remind us of things in our past, or because we like to own all games made by a certain developer, or simply because we want to have a bigger collection than everyone else.
I’ve spent years looking at every hole-in-the-wall used game shop for my two Unicorn Games, Little Samson for the NES and Project Justice for the Sega Dreamcast. The funny thing is, I haven’t played either of them in so long I don’t even remember if they’re any good. That’s not what it’s about, though. I know I’ve been looking for them for a long time, and I won’t stop looking until I have them.
For those of you that are collectors, what’s your Unicorn Game? What is that one magnificent, elusive game that you yearn to own?
