Shops! Oh, how many virtual registers we’ve rung over the years. Imagine a role-playing game without one – you can’t. It would be sacrilege. You simply must visit a new shop in every town and have their wares be slightly more powerful than they were where you came from. Everyone knows that. But there are so many shops, it’s often hard to remember a single one.
It’s not just RPGs. I remember ogling the superbikes for sale in Road Rash and then crashing them when I eventually saved up enough money to buy them. I remember spending ages shopping for shorts and T-shirts in a knock-off GAP in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. And I’ve probably spent more money than I should have on costumes in Fortnite, which is hardly my fault when they sell such silly costumes, is it?!
Oh, and all the hours I spent looking through the Auction House in World of Warcraft, particularly when lavishing rare gifts on my muck-about character. I wish I could do the same now WOW Classic has launched.
A spot of retail therapy for a Friday, then. Here are Five of the Best shops in games, according to me. I want to hear yours below.
What do you call a cat with a huge sack of goodies slung over his back? Santa Claws! Ha ha ha! No, don’t be silly, he was called Neko and he might be the first merchant I really remember from video games. Helped that he kept turning up all through the game. Discovered a new cave? No problem – here’s Neko. Lost in an obscure new part of the world? Don’t worry, Neko’s here.
I loved his wares, too. I played Mana quite recently but even before then, I could picture the little radial menu of items spinning around – the giant walnut, the jar of honey, the Cup of Wishes. Mana didn’t have a lot of items to choose between and maybe that’s why they’re so memorable – maybe today we’re spoilt by choice. That or it was such a formative experience in my game-playing life it’s seared into my mind.
Or, perhaps, it was Neko’s brilliantly awful wordplay. “Purrfectly priceless items available!” Oh to be back in the ’90s. Simpler times.
In Ultima Online, you actually had to talk to merchants for them to interact with you. As in, you had to type “vendor buy” to trigger them opening their selling inventories, and you had to do similar for the bank and summoning guards. It inevitably led to macros. “Vendor buy guards bank,” was the gist of it but people got very creative riffing around the key words. “Vendor, buy me some guards for the bank!”