As the Sony PlayStation 2 remains the highest-selling console of all time, it should come as no surprise that it’s home to some of the best-selling games in video game history.
It’s also received a wildly interesting collection of offbeat, strange, bad, and sometimes great games that, for one reason or another, never sold very much and are now extremely rare and valuable. Let’s look at the PS2’s biggest rarities, shall we?
10. Wild Arms: Alter Code F
The remake phenomenon is in full swing nowadays, but the concept of game remakes isn’t as young as many would like to make you think.
Wild Arms: Alter Code Fis a rich PS2 remaster of the original PS1Wild Arms, featuring heavily updated 3D graphics and new characters. Despite its awesomeness and name brand, its success didn’t quite carry over to the new version. Was it because people were unimpressed by the upgrades? Because they’d simply rather try out new stuff instead of going for a shinier version of something they knew? Because publisher agetec’s masterplan was to have the rarest games on the system (you’ll see what I’m talking about)? Who knows. Whatever the cause, nobody seemed too confident inAlter Code F, as it didn’t even come out in Europe. The result is a rare classic that’s worth over$300 nowadays.
9. .hack Quarantine
.hackwas a very popular RPG series back in the heyday of the PS2. Even before the release ofWorld Of Warcraft,.hackwas already telling a tale regarding the possibly negative influence a super-popular MMORPG could have on the populace.
.hack Quarantineserved as the culmination of the four-game series, but, likely due to the rule of diminished returns,.hack Quarantineended up becoming a harder title to get than the other games in the series. Though it’s not the most expensive game on this list, it’s quite peculiar to find a game from aonce-popular series at over $300.
8. Obscure
Don’t let the name fool you.ObsCure‘s original take on survival horror saw us play as a team of teens trying to survive a mysterious monster attack on their high school, and it proved surprisingly popular upon release. Still,ObsCurecame out just a year beforeResident Evil 4took horror games — and a large part of the gaming industry, really — in a new direction, soObsCureultimately lived up to its name. you may get an unused copy ofObsCurefor a little over $330.
Interestingly,ObsCuregot a sequel in the end, but copies ofObsCure 2are far more common than those of the original game.
7. Echo Night Beyond
This is one of the few titles on this list that I only learned about when researching, and there’s a reason for that.Echo Night Beyond, a sci-fi tale where the player’s choices matter, only featured a very small print run, and, even out of it, relatively few copies ever got sold.
Nowadays,Echo Night Beyondis one of those games that mostly just collectors know of and care about, even though it’s seemingly not bad at all. I’d love to give it a try! Too bad I’m not about to shell out the internet’sminimum asking priceof $300.
6. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
This is a surprising entry becauseSilent Hill: Shattered Memories, the original remake of the firstSilent Hillgame, was actually quite a hit… on the Wii.For some reason, even though the game caused a huge splash on Nintendo’s console — and Sony’s consoles are the place where moreSilent Hillfans tend to inhabit —Shattered Memories‘ PS2 version had a very limited print run and its copies are now perhaps just as elusive as the titular town itself.
Even though it’s part of an extremely popular game series, you’ll be lucky to get a copy of this game forless than five hundred bucks.
5. Haunting Ground
UnlikeShattered Memoriesabove,Haunting Grounddoesn’t carry the name of a huge franchise, but it’s still the spiritual successor to the once-popularClocktowerseries. This one’s rarity might be due to mismanaged marketing — sometimes you should really make use of your brand names, Capcom.
Haunting Ground’sapparent lack of commercial success might also have come about due to the game releasing right about when the paradigm-shiftingResident Evil 4was coming out, so that’s already two ways in which Capcom might’ve accidentally causedHaunting Groundto become one of the rarest and —at over $700 for a new copy— one of the most expensive games on the system.
4. Blood Will Tell
I don’t know about you, but I always find it so appropriate when the rarest games belong to the mystery or horror genres, and the PS2 has that in spades.Blood Will Tellis a cult classic from Sega where a samurai teams up with a thief to — I kid you not — retrieve parts of the samurai’s body.
Despite its grisly premise, that’s not whyBlood Will Tellhas become so rare. It is just not that good of a game and was also probably too niche to become a mainstream hit, so it became a cult classic — and, at over $500 for a new copy, avery expensive one at that.
3. Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Plot twist time: games belonging to popular franchises don’t tend to show up on these lists, even more so when they’re extremely good and popular.
To this day,Marvel vs. Capcom 2remains one of the most talked-about fighting games of all time. Still, its PlayStation 2 version is exceedingly rare and expensive. Why? Because of copyright shenanigans between Capcom and Marvel that took place shortly after the game’s release, the game had a limited print run. That’s why you may have to shell out $900 if you want a sealed copy ofMarvel vs Capcom 2today.
2. Rule of Rose
If you’re a video game collector,Rule Of Roselikely pops up in your mind dozens of times a day. Another horror classic that became the stuff of legend, this time likely because its psychological horror elements were deemed too insidious and thus prevented the game from even getting distributed in most places. While it’s true thatRule Of Rosefeatures some rather disturbing themes, I’d say none of it justifies turning the game into a cursed artifact.
Rule Of Roseinitially sold most of its very limited stock, so any sealed copy is expected to set you back byover eight hundred dollars.
1. Kuon
Here it is, the final boss of rare PS2 games.Kuonis, guess what, a survival horror game. This time, however, we’re not talking about a game that owes its rarity to disturbing themes that prevented uncourageous publishers from localizing the game and trying to sell it overseas, but rather just bad marketing.
There are no surprising or even possibly haunted elements to this tale.Kuononly ever had a very limited print run and barely had any marketing from US publisher agetec — which you probably only know from this list because, well, it was seemingly way more discrete a publishing company should ever be.Still, they inadvertently managed to create the legend ofKuon, whose new copiessell for over $1,100now, so congrats, I guess.
