The South Wales Rule of Rose Mystery

Has anyone heard of the PS2 game Rule of Rose? If you have done, it might be because it was withdrawn from sale after a hysterical campaign of misinformation across Europe. Newspapers claimed that it featured a "burying alive" mechanic (it didn't - there was just a cutscene where someone was buried alive) and that the object of the game was to torture and murder a child, which was also completely wrong. This was around the time when Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto was being blamed for all sorts, from knife crime to disputes in supermarkets. The Video Standards Council called the complaints about the game nonsense, but that wasn't enough to save the game.

Or you may have heard of it through what happened as a result of the game's "banning." It became one of the most high-priced PS2 games in existence. A boxed copy will set you back around £500, a massive pricetag for a PS2 game.

I have to admit I had never heard of the game myself until Friday, when I was mooching around in the Cardiff branch of CEX and saw not one, not two, but four copies of it in their window and various cabinets. I wouldn't have paid it any notice, despite the rather nice cover, if it hadn't been for the £500 sticker. I thought it was pretty weird that they suddenly had four copies of whatever this expensive PS2 rarity was, but I promptly forgot about it when I left the store. Then today I was in the Newport CEX, and they had another two copies behind the till. I asked the staff, and they told me that apparently someone had found a box of them. There are more around Wales - The Barry, Carmarthen, and Cwmbran stores all have two copies each. Many of them are mint and sealed, which is rare for CEX in itself. However, the Newport staff told me that they opened one sealed copy, and the disk was scratched, so perhaps there is some kind of fraud going on. The copies of the game are still coming into Welsh stores, and spreading into England, with multiple copies appearing in Merry Hill and Dudley. They are apparently not always brought in by the same person, although they all say they got the games from an Italian man, so Wario is a suspect.

Is this interesting to anyone else but me? A box of such a rare game should be considered quite a find, shouldn't it? The fact that it was "banned" fits, because when they were taken off shelves, I can imagine copies being shoved in a box in a store room and forgotten about. Or could they have come from the original developers? Rule of Rose was developed by 505 Games, an Italian games developer. The Italian man could be someone either currently or formerly of 505 Games who swiped a few boxes of this rare game to distrubute to the CEXs of Wales.

Whatever the explanation, if you're sitting on a copy of Rule of Rose hoping to use it to retire on one day, I'd sell it now because dozens of sealed copies flooding into the market are surely going to tank it's value.

I've heard of it. I was working on gamesTM when it all went down, and my friend Dan was doing the PR on it at the time. I seem to recall him sending me a promo copy of it, but I couldn't tell you where it is now.

Further investigation reveals the possibility of an ebay seller selling sealed copies of the game for less than what CEX pay when you sell one to them. So perhaps someone is just exploiting that. The seller seems to be in Italy. It seems likely that some of 505 Games' stock which would have been due to go out onto the shelves has turned up. For something considered rare, it's certainly pretty easy to get hold of multiple sealed copies of this game, if you are so inclined.

This sort of thing happens from time to time. Stock of rare items turns up in storage lockers. When I told this story on rllmuk, someone had heard a story of loads of old sought-after vinyl records being found in a storage unit that belonged to a record label. What's interesting to me is how it is localised in Wales, and I find the detail of the mysterious Italian Man entertaining.

You can get it for significantly less than £500 online (unless its price is already cratering), so it's peak CEX to be overpricing for a rare, yet readily available item.

I don't have much to add, but a lament for when CEX, GAME, Blockbuster and all the other second hand stores began to use centralised pricing systems in the early 00s. Before that it was a joy to walk around Edinburgh buying and reselling poorly priced games or hardware, either to other second hand stores, or online for a tidy profit.

I wonder why they moved to centralised pricing cav?

I'd like to think I was a small part of it. I was an thought influencer, even back then.