I’ve been thinking about games that have been released, but you can’t play without paying an arm and a leg.
Paprium
A homebrew beat-em-up game for Genesis/Mega Drive that got released in a very limited run. Unable to be emulated (EDIT: It’s been figured out!) due to it relying on a custom processor on the PCB. Ports to other platforms were announced but so far no sign of them has appeared.
Kraut Buster
A homebrew run-and-gun Neo Geo game, released in a very limited run. Not dumped, because allegedly it has some form of anti-piracy chips inside the cartridge. Never released as a port to any other consoles. A reprint was announced but hasn’t surfaced.
Tempest 3000
Jeff Minter’s sequel to Tempest 2000 for Jaguar. Only available on Nuon DVD players, which are incredibly rare.
Thirty-one games were made for the Pioneer LaserActive, a very rare game console that combined LaserDisc movies with video games. Two modules were available, a Sega Mega Drive module and a PC Engine module. These games are unable to be emulated and discs are rare and susceptible to disk rot.
Are there more games like this? Games that were made and exist but you just can’t play them without the original hardware?
I played it once at Pax, a group brought 4 machines with 4 controllers, the guy leading each session was talking to us like we were about to drive some go-karts at a theme park “remember to hit the eject button if you tip over, because if you die in multiplayer we have to make a new account for the machine and it takes 5 minutes”
