Fatal Frame Found to be Frequently Forgotton

Last week I decided to pick up Fatal Frame 3, since I really enjoyed the previous two games in the series. My local game store chain had never heard of it, and I couldn’t find it at the local big box store either. But it wasn’t until I found that even Amazon.com doesn’t carry new copies of this game that I realized that it has become incredibly hard to find. There are a few used copies on ebay, a few copies available through Amazon Marketplace, and you can buy a copy direct from the official site (for $57, ugh), but otherwise it’s nowhere to be found. Ebgames.com has a pretty neat feature that allows you to see which stores carry a specific game, and according to them, there’s only about three copies left in the entire San Francisco Bay Area.

Since the game has been out for almost a year, I was hoping that it would have dropped in price. Instead, it seems like Tecmo decided not to press any more copies of the game after its original run. I guess this means that it must have sold terribly, because I think it is pretty rare for a company to only make a single run.

In the end, I found a store about 45 minutes away from home that was selling it for full price, so I picked it up there. Since it was so hard to find, I really hope it’s a good game.

16 thoughts on “Fatal Frame Found to be Frequently Forgotton

  1. My local games store has never heard of it…

    I think that rings true for every Game outlet in the UK. In Japan I asked for the Silent Hill 4 soundtrack in HMV and despite having 2 and 3, the girl claimed SH4:OST was never even made.

    This is why I work in admin jobs…

  2. Fatal Frame is a pain in the arse to buy around here, too. The first one is real hard to find, the second one goes for almost sixty bucks Canadian, and I saw the third one for 40-something bucks in Wal-Mart, but that’s the only time I’ve seen it.

    I think I’m fairly content just to stick with other horror franchises, and just forget about Fatal Frame.

  3. I bought that game from a Buy-Back game store full price. HATED it. You literally repeat scenes from previous Fatal Frame games. It had a cool Sirenish vibe with the abandoned houses but I didn’t finish it.

  4. Its pretty shocking actually, Project Zero 3 hasn’t been out for too long in the UK and already i’ve seen places drop it to 9.99, it just doesn’t look like its selling very well at all! I think its popularity in the US is even worse, which is a shame for such a great series. IGN recently had Fatal Frame 2 high on their list of great PS2 games that never sold well…

    I guess i should pick a copy of Project Zero 3 while its still pretty common over here.

  5. Yeah, there’s a lot of UK copies in just about every Game and Gamestation at the mo. I wasn’t a fan to begin with and this one didn’t really have good reviews, so I’ve left it alone. A lot like everyone else it seems.

    Expect the same for Siren 2 soon enough.

  6. http://spooky.ms11.net/index.html
    I liked FF 1 and 2, but I’m not so fond of 3.

    I have a copy of FF3. I started it and haven’t finished it (this was like a year or more ago). I got my copy at ‘Fry’s Electronics,’ and I got it in person and the brick and mortar store, not on-line.

    I got to a point in the game where I couldn’t figure out where and what I was supposed to do next (and the online walk throughs didn’t seem to help), so I gave up.

    At some point in life, I plan to try it again.

    I don’t know if I cared for the dream world vs. reality – seemed too much of a “Freddy Kruger / Nightmare on Elm Street” kind of approach. I understand the makers were probably trying to add something new for interest, but it didn’t seem to work.

    I found it somewhat annoying to finish one stage in “dream world” (in the spooky locales), to have to wake up, run down to the other room and develop photos, etc.

    Anyway, I think for the first few months after FF3 was out, I saw copies at local Wal-Mart stores.

  7. really? that hard to find? i went to gamestop and they had it on display brand new with a lot of other games too. i assume they have plenty anyways, they usually do.

  8. How about this I haven’t found a place to buy ANY of them. Guess I’ll have to purchase them off of ebay.

  9. The only problem I’ve found with FF3 (got it release day, still haven’t finished it) is that you have to walk over the right pixel to trigger the right event so you can see the right thing and fight the right ghost. If you miss that pixel, you’ll just keep wondering around and around…

  10. I’ve got FF1&2 for Xbox, but I initially held off on FF3 thinking an enhanced Xbox release might eventually be announced. (I guess not. . .)

    Anyway, the only place near me that seems to carry the PS2 model is Toys R Us, and they are still asking the full $50 US release price. (I don’t want to pay full price unless I have to.)

  11. http://www.xanga.com/cloroxman
    I really enjoyed FFIII. Infact, the second run had my nerves pretty shaken up. There were some intense scares (first run in with the crawling woman) and some game effects later on in the game were pretty slick.

    My Fiancee’, a first time gamer, actually begged me to finish the game each night because she enjoyed the scares.

    However, it does leave something to be desired, I really wish there would have been more “cat out of the closet” type of scares in the slower part of the games.

    On that note, don’t you agree that all three of these games really could have had more ghost saturation? Not just cat-out-of-the closet scares, but just small things that you normally wouldn’t notice.

  12. Not really a fan of the third. The first was great- I couldn’t stop playing! Second was good (but impossible to find in NZ- apparantly it was never released here! I got it thru ebay in the end)

    The third has really let me down. I didn’t have any trouble finding it (I got it new on a local auction board for about $20-ish) Not really a fan tho- it looks really slick, but I find the controls frustrating and I can’t change them.

  13. http://www.cameraslens.com
    I’m not sure about the US sales of the game, but the game sold well enough in Japan that it made Playstation’s Best of the Best list over there. (Of course, every game in this series has made that last).

    The third game is a tossup. I know people who have absolutley loved it, and absolutely hated it. It’s incredibly easy to get lost, and unlike the first two games, the notes aren’t really important to the gameplay as they are to the overall story. So since a lot of gamers are no longer ‘forced’ to read notes to get clues, they miss the concept of what the heck is going on?! 😉

    I still like it. It’s a good game in my collection, there are a few places where you are redoing areas from the first two games, but they’ve been majorly altered so the situations are different. (So even if you’re one of those brave souls who has memorized Himuro Mansion or Minakami Village down to the last doorway, you’re still going to have to ‘find’ your way in this game.

    As for the game never going down in price, Tecmo almost only does 1 pres run with this game series in the US and UK. So that’s normally why the price never drops (until years…and YEARS later) It is also why that when gamers WANT to find the older games, they’re not easy to find.

  14. I got it the day it came out, so I really didn’t have any problem, though I do not see it around these days in my frequent treks to the game stores.

    Ironically, Disgaea is even harder to find. I found a copy in my state finally for $60!@.@ Bought it though…

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