Ok, I have bought alot of game in my day. I have bought so many broken games its not even funny, most of them from video game stores. They seem to have more broken games than working. Well I just bought Sonic Adventure for the Sega Dreamcast from Amazon and it came the other day. I just got a chance to play the game, opened up the case and I noticed it had a bunch of scratches, I thought "well they said it was in good condition but oh well.", so I popped the game into my Dreamcast, got the Dreamcast logo and it froze. I then thought "my Dreamcast has been stored away for a long time, maybe something happened to it." so I got another game out of my collection, put in it and it worked just fine. I cleaned the Sonic game, but still nothing. Long story short, I am now waiting to get a message back from the clowns who sold it to me, if they don't take it back they are gonna get an ear full but enough of my drowning on.

Tell me your broken game story/s.

GenesisJunkie : Ugh I feel your pain man, let's just say I officially hate GameStop or as I prefer to call it Lame/ShameStop since the games I get from them are usually broken (except for PS3 because those are hard as heck to break). The game I've had the most problems with actually working without having a disc error every 10 minutes is Super Smash Bros. Melee, my goodness what do game stores do to this game that cause it to never really work?! They didn't even let me return the game nor even give me a refund of my money back...I just told them I'm never shopping over there again and anyone that I see buying a game I'm telling them to buy it elsewhere unless they want a handful of hassles.

That's why I always stick with Like New or Very Good condition. Did you try cleaning the disc? That could potentially help but if it doesn't, you should contact the seller and try to get a refund.

I've had a lot of cartridge games that didn't work but after cleaning them, the majority of the time that does the trick.

In my day, I've had bought a couple of games that would work fine for the first couple for days and then they would stop working. Or the same thing where the game would kind of load and then freeze, it was always a pain trying to fix this but most of the time I had been able to clean the disk up so it would stop freezing all the time.

Davideo7 : Yes sir. I cleaned the disc and the console but it still didn't work. It was in a "good" condition on Amazon and the seller had a pretty high rating so I didn't think it would be all scratched up. I have contacted him/her, we  will have to see what happens, what stinks is I have payed the shipping already (5 bucks) now I will have to pay it again to send it back to him/her.

Carts normally don't work because they are dirty or dusty. I have cleaned a million of those and they work fine after, so you are very right about that. Carts seem to be much more hearty than discs, you can throw a cart through the wall and they still work but if you frisbee a disc it is pretty much done for.

All I know is the dudes case isn't going to be in the same condition before he sent it to me, I kinda kicked it across the house after trying to get the game to work.

Gosh, I sometimes blame the owners of the game owners for this kind of stuff. It really sucks because I have about 30 games that doesn't work so I guess it doesn't count for my game collection. Some don't even give me a refund so I guess I had to deal with it. I didn't want to be mean and just sue them or anything.

I also tried cleaning some discs but they never worked for me. :/

Once it doesn't work, it never works for me. o:

I tried all that I could do.

Ugh, yeah. That's exactly why I'm always more inclined to buy from the New shelves in stores, and I don't usually buy from the internet. I don't like to spend money on something broken... I bought FIFA 07 once from the second-hand shelf. That was the worst... ^^'

OrdannonsX : I don't know if you know this, but Gamestop can sell a game as "New" even if it has been tested by employees and taken outside of the plastic. So sometimes new is not always the best option, as you'll be paying the price of a new game for a used game. Now, if you don't shop at Gamestop, disregard what I said, but I've faced this problem in the past.

Back onto nonworking games, I've purchased multiple nonworking games when I was little from, who else, Gamestop. Unfortunately, being a younger me, I was always taken advantage of and was unable to do anything to stop it as I was forced to keep the nonworking games without so much as a refund. I have since learned from my mistakes, and I will only buy a used game that I know is in working condition, or I will at least make sure that I can get a refund or trade it in if I can't ensure it's functionality. Otherwise, I buy new, or, if it's from Gamestop, I buy "unopened". Asking for an unopened game is the only way to pretty much ensure that the game will work and that it is truly new. 

Reasons why I try to stay away from used games....

#1 : This thread topic

I can't even count how many times I've bought games that weren't in top condition, thinking they'd be alright, to be disappointed by a game that couldn't pass a loading screen.

Funny story. I actually bought a copy of Sly Cooper 2: Band of Thieves off ebay, and it literally came to me in two pieces. No joke. The game was broken in half. 

Long story short. Haven't used ebay for a looooong long time.

NVTaks : You know, I have had alot of trouble with eBay but not that much with Amazon. They are going to take the game back, I just got an email from them but that is not the point. I will be paying 10 dollars for nothing (might not sound like much, but that is alot of money for me) because they sold a less than acceptable product.

GenesisJunkie : Agreed. Ebay is problematic. I've been cheated out of my game or money, many a time. And you have to jump through so many hoops to get your product/cash back. It's insane.

That's unbelievable.
Things like this make me say, "Damn, the internet is really a sad place for cheats and scams".
Then I tell myself all the great things that come from the internet, like Wikipedia, or Vizzed.
Anyways, more on topic, that really, really sucks. It sucks even more that someone would even try to offer a product damaged like that.

Yeah, it's pretty annoying when that happens. It hasn't happened to me with video games very often, since I almost always get the games from a game store (and a very trustworthy one, it's called Game Crazy). But I remember when my mother surprised me with an N64 since I was really angry when my brother took it when he moved. We got a memory card for the N64 that was... CORRUPTED. And guess what?! THE MEMORY CARD DOESN'T WORK. Yeah, no big deal, but that renders Buck Bumble nearly unbeatable.

TheFadedWarrior : We had a Game Crazy years ago but it went out here. For a long time all we had was Game Haven and they are just con artists that sell over priced junk and Packers (or something like that) and they also sold nothing but junk, I seen a Sega CD game there that was covered in dirt and scratches and they wanted 30 bucks for it. Both of those stores went out of business not too long ago here. Now we just have CM Games. Some of there stuff has a good price but I hate the people working there so I never go.