SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – A copy of Excellent Software’s oft-forgotten Super Baseball Brawlers 3 – a game so forgotten, so thoroughly obscure, that it lacks a Metacritic score AND a Wikipedia entry – sits in a basket frustrated. The sixth-generation game remains adamant in its desire to one day be bought, even if it’s by complete accident. “I don’t care if it’s a short-sighted relative trying to pawn off a small child,” the game said off the record, “I just need to be bought right now. Like right now, now. I don’t want to be reduced to the status of a copy of The Da Vinci Code or 50 Shades of Grey, or a Fast and the Furious knock-off. I like to think I’m better than that.”

The game takes in a long puff of a stray cigarette. It is quite an impressive feat for any inanimate object to accomplish, especially when it’s a video game disc from the early 2000’s. The interviewee notes the irony with a dry chuckle. “I tell you, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. When I was fresh off the factory shelf I thought it was all waiting for me. Now look at me – I’m lucky if I’m held for more than a few seconds at a time. All I feel is constant rejection. Not rejection from a games console, the bad kind of rejection.”

Note: The majority of this interview was conducted alongside the bargain bin of a local EB Games, which earned me several odd looks from customers, complaints from staffers and – on one occasion – being arrested by local authorities. If that’s what it takes to bring a human interest story to light then so help me God I will endure the fury of a thousand EB Games employees until the Truth is revealed.