There are some expensive innovations in video game history that must have seemed brilliant until the moment they bombed in stores.  The classic Nintendo Entertainment System had plenty of gaming money wasters such as the Twister-like floor mat Nintendo hoped would encourage people to run for racing games, or the eighty dollar Power Glove that made gameplay as intuitive as shaking your fist while wiggling a pinky and moving your ring finger and thumb in counter-rotating circles against your middle and index fingers.  And who could forget Rob the Video Robot, a pricey little robotic E.T. that was totally unnecessary when you discovered the NES came with two controllers? 

More recent innovations that eat a hole in your wallet included expensive vibrating chairs have been designed to help you "feel" the game better, but actually just shake a bit.  Give me a combination toilet/refrigerator/easy chair and I'll use that to play video games.  A subwoofer inside a plastic chair just won't get me to buy it. 

There have been some quality peripherals released though.  Once you have a wheel mouse and discover how your games support it, you'll never want to go back.  FPS games and Homeworld really shine with the addition of the simple wheel.  And although force-feedback is an excellent addition to racing games and vehicle simulations, it may be rearing its pricey head in places where it doesn't belong. 

The Logitech force-feedback mouse is supposed to shake whenever programmers decide the occasion calls for it.  But when should that be?  When you're a Team Fortress sniper lining up the perfect shot, and then WHAM!  You're hit!  This would definitely add to the realism, but having a mouse vibrate while you're trying to make a good shot will actually penalize anyone with a high-tech mouse.  Realism has its place (and force feedback actually helps in menu-driven games), but not when it unfairly hampers its users. 

I'm not quite certain how the Act Labs GS gun system will change standard FPS games either.  Although it will be interesting to see new games come out to test targeting skills on the PC, I seriously doubt the gun will catch on as intended in the recent Quake II mod.  How do you move your character or select weapons with that thing? 

My first instinct was to say "well you can combine it with the keyboard" but then that really doesn't make things easier, does it?  It really just replaces the control you'd get from a mouse's lookspring.  It's nice but you might not get your money's worth. 

Well I'm happy to say that there are many ways to stretch your 3D gaming dollars.  For those of you who looked at the "revolutionary" 3D controllers that boasted options that make the circle-strafe maneuver a breeze, remapping your controls can revolutionize the way you play without spending a dime.  My personal FPS movement setup is the one from Thief: 

walk forward: w 
walk back: s 
turn right: d 
turn left: a 
strafe right: c 
strafe left: z 

There!  Now all you have to do is press 'a' and 'c' and you've got an automatic circle strafe with two fingers.  When Thief players realized they could put all of their movement control into one hand's reach it probably put a lot of those "alternative" control makers out of business.  Why this wasn't the default key configuration in EVERY FPS game I may never know.  It's just so easy to use! 

So now that you've saved money from the 3D joystick and vibrating mouse you planned to buy, it's time to pick up some games.  Luckily, you can save money and increase the value of your purchases while you do so.  The simple key is patience. 

Just like you could spend seven dollars per person to see a new film in a movie theater or save money by waiting until it becomes a 99 cent tape rental, waiting on video games lets their prices drop.  There are additional benefits, though.  Aside from better pricing, there are comprehensive reviews available - every magazine and web site will have given their opinion of every game, and a game stinks, you'll know it won't smell much rosier at half the price. 

When waiting to buy an old game it's also nice that you won't feel like a beta tester.  After the first couple months a patch will invariably be made for every game and that'll help keep it at peak performance.  Also, if you are playing the game with newer hardware, you'll be thrilled that the game will run as smoothly as intended.  It's much easier to keep a new PC above the recommended requirements of year old games than current games. 

Finally, after a year of success, popular games come back at lower prices and in newer packaging with special bonuses.  Half-Life was repackaged with the downloadable Team Fortress Classic, patches and other benefits, Tomb Raider games always have the special "Gold" levels, and even my pick for best 3D action game of all time, Thief, has new levels in the Gold version. 

This is all well and good, you may say, but what if you're so stingy that Scrooge himself would tip his hat when witnessing your buying habits?  To take it a little further, what if you don't want to be a "Time Traveler" by buying old games at bargain prices?  That's when it's time to whip out the big gun.  It's the biggest gun you've got...comparison shopping. 

Many stores have price matching deals to keep up with the competition, but if they're like Office Depot, you'll be able to make things even better.  Office Depot won't just match another store's price.  If a competitor has a lower price, Office Depot will match it and lower the price by 55% of the difference.  It's a great policy to show customers how confident they are in their bargain pricing, but it's even greater when other stores undercut them. 

Here's an example of something I did last year.  Circuit City ran an advertisement where they had a special deal to take $20 off Half-Life's price, reducing it to $30.  Not bad.  Then I took this ad to Office Depot and compared it with their $55 Half-Life price.  They dropped it to $30, and then reduced it by 55% of the twenty dollar difference ($13.75) to take it down to $16.25.  How's that for a cheap deal on a new game? 

Well if you aren't saving money hand-over-fist with these new software shopping tactics, you can try applying them to your hardware purchases as well.  Even if they don't have AGP slots, old computers can be given new life with PCI 3D accelerator cards.  With the recent announcement that S3 and Micron will make 3D accelerators specifically for laptop machines, business users won't have to invest in a separate machine for the video games, and that could save quite a bit of cash that might otherwise be spent on a Playstation or Dreamcast. 

So there you have it, thrifty readers.  With all the spare change you've saved you'll be sure to find extravagant uses for it.  I bet someone's selling a Power Glove on Ebay that'll be a perfect fit for you... 

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