I've got a growing pile of bargain bin crap that I either had brief moments of insanity in buying or which came bundled with collections of games off eBay. You know the sorts of games - derivative stuff you get off discount supermarket shelves, one-euro shops - and I think every country has them. I'm not talking about triple-A titles that have sold poorly. I'm talking about the derivative rubbish rushed together by amateurs in a matter of weeks. And most of it really is shit. Anyone know Call-A-Pizza Dude? SAS Anti-Terror Force? Meteor Blade? I wish I didn't.

Out of sheer boredom I've just given some of my untested ones a try and a couple of them have really pleasantly surprised me. Certainly not GOTY candidates, but good fun for a couple of hours in a way you wouldn't have expected.

One of the games was something ominously titled "Mini Racer", which I picked up out of a morbid curiosity for 50 cents from a one-euro-store. It languished on my shelf for about two years until I decided to give it a crack today. It was...pleasantly surprising. It's a fairly basic affair, no multiplayer, eardrum-crushingly bad music and fairly basic graphics, but there are 10 fairly well-designed tracks with a decent amount of variety, the cars handle well in that Ridge Racer-like arcadey way (and drift quite satisfyingly), and as basic as it is, it's remarkably entertaining.

Another was a fairly basic puzzler called "Trembling Towers": Someone's actually done a Let's Play in German on YouTube of this It's a fairly simple premise - stack up bricks on a platform - but it's remarkably addictive.

Anyone found bargain bin fodder that is better than its reputation would deserve?

Though it's not technically bargain bin material BUT Prey... Game sold this for years for £3 and my friends always told me it was a terrible game. I needed to finish a 4 for £10 and bought Prey. Turned out it was a great looking, strange and very fun shooter.

Thats the closest I ever got to bargain material! :D

If you don't mind digging anyone can find treasure in a bargain barge. A few years ago I found a still sealed copy of "Delta Force 2" (the game not the movie) in a bargain barge.

Movie barges are loaded with them too and I've found too many gems there to list.

I almost forgot, the bargain bin is where my parents found me.

NHL Open Ice for 2 €.

If you've never heard of it, it's like NBA Jam in an NHL-setting. I had played the game in an arcade before, but never knew it had been released for PC.

Here's some gameplay footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTNP3jTfGUA

I don’t know whether they qualify for your definition of “crap” but two games I picked up in bargain bins have impressed me.
Stars (£0.25) is amazingly good for the cost.
Pax Imeria: Eminent Domain (£0.99) is one of my favourite space rts games. Think MoO 2 in real time……

Speaking of Torment, did you (as GOG) try to get a 10K pledge on TToN so you would be included in the opening credits?

Love the question mark :P
No worries though, it was mostly a "Wouldn't it be cool if" thought.

Well, I don't think I ever bought one of the really amateurish looking unknown games from the bargain bin, but last year I discovered Kult - Heretic Kingdoms among them, sold off for 3-5 bucks, and I bought it on a recommendation from Fenixp. It turned out to be quite nice, worthy of a GOG release (it's a bit annoying that you have to change your desktop resolution on Vista, in order for it to work, so if GOG would find a way to make that obsolete, I'd buy it again).

I also enjoyed a lot of the so called "budget editions" that I bought back in the days without knowing anything about the games in question, just because they looked interesting and didn't cost much, e.g. Rage of Mages and Planescape Torment. When I bought Torment, I didn't know it's a D&D game and I didn't know that it uses the Infinity Engine (I probably didn't even know what the Infinity Engine was), I just looked at the screenshots on the back and read what was written next to them and thought it sounded fascinating, like a game I might like. I had played a bit of BG before, but gave up on it because I got bored; but Torment drew me in right from the start and immediately became my favorite game ever. This was the type of BG RPG that I really wanted to play, and I had discovered it by accident.

I purchased that same double pack, but I did it for Planescape: Torment (which I'd heard of but "missed out" on actually buying when it was first released.

I don't think I've ever stumbled across the OP's definition of bargain bin games.

However, some games I have found in the retail stores bargain bin...

NOLF - $7.00
System Shock 2 - $14.00 (this was quite a while ago ;) )
Lord of the Rings Online (during SoA) $5.00
Half Life 2 - $5.00
Chaos Theory - $9.99 (was later restocked for 29.99)
Gun - $7.00
Condemned - $5.00


The two most surprising to me were NOLF and Condemned. I only tried them based on price and boredom... they are two of my favorite games now.

GUN is an under rated game, but closed thing PC gamer have to RDR

Wish NOLF & Condemned would come to GOG. But back on Topic Advent rising got hyped for it at launch then got caught up in life. Eventually found it in the bargain bin for 10 bucks and i say 10 bucks well spent. I really enjoyed it.

I bought Wizardry 8 for around 3,30€, you can envy me now. :P