Cruise Elroy

Tonight I grabbed the Humble Indie Bundle, a collection of five computer games from small independent developers. It’s a fantastic deal: you can set your own price; all of the games are compatible on Windows, OS X and Linux; half of the proceeds go to the EFF and Child’s Play (or more, if you wish); and there’s no DRM. I hesitated — briefly — because I already own two of the games in the bundle, but after a moment’s consideration I pulled the trigger.

That small hesitation got me thinking about games that I’ve purchased (or received as gifts) more than once, and why that sort of thing happens. Here are the ones I could think of:

• World of Goo: One of the games in the Humble Indie Bundle. I had bought it from Steam shortly after it was released, and then bought it again as part of one of MacHeist’s bundles. It also one of two games that I actually own three copies of, the other being…
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: In addition to the original Nintendo 64 cartridge, I have digital copy from the Wii’s Virtual Console and the emulated version on the GameCube Legend of Zelda: Collector’s Edition disc. I bought the former because I was at college in Boston and my Nintendo 64 was in my closet back in New York, and I apparently had an irresistible urge to replay Ocarina immediately. I bought the latter for Majora’s Mask but never got around to taking it out of the box for some reason. That was all right, though, because…
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask: I also bought Majora when it came out for the Virtual Console last year (though I didn’t start playing it until recently). My main justification was that Wikipedia had listed some problems with the emulation on the GameCube rerelease, but if I’m honest I probably just didn’t want to deal with the GameCube controller.
• Aquaria: The other Humble Indie Bundle game I already had, from a Steam sale. Aquaria holds the dubious distinction of being the only game I’ve bought twice and never actually played!
• Mario Kart 64 and Sonic the Hedgehog 2: I own both of these games on their original consoles and on the Wii Virtual Console, for reasons similar to Ocarina: I wanted to play them right away, and the original consoles weren’t immediately available. (Boy, did Nintendo ever hit the sweet spot with their pricing.)
• Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy!: I played the hell out of the shareware episode, and vaguely remember convincing my dad to get me the non-shareware one for Christmas when I was seven or eight years old. A couple of months ago, I saw that the entire series was up on Steam for five bucks.
• Soulcalibur II: I have this for both GameCube and Xbox. The Wii was the only current-gen console I owned for much of this hardware generation, and I jumped on a bargain bin copy.
• Civilization IV: Mac and PC. I played the Mac port for a while, but it felt buggy and slow. I caved once the collector’s edition of the PC version went on sale.
• Myth: The Fallen Lords: Two PC copies — one standalone, and one as part of the Total Codex collector’s edition with Myth II. Between the expansion pack and the user-generated content, I didn’t feel so bad about buying the first game over again.