The bizarre package

My son bought Spore, via eBay. It came, about two weeks later - from India! The "envelope" was cloth, hand-stitched and sealed with wax. Amazing!

It worked fine and was a totally legitimate copy for the Indian market. Ben didn't like the game in the end, and we sold it on Amazon Marketplace.

The middle of that story was a huge hassle. The game requires an internet connection to install, and the computer we tried installing it on is not hooked up to the internet. I spent the better part of four hours that Saturday, trying to get it on-line. I would have thought that an HP computer that is about a year old would have no problem getting on-line. Wrong. Qwest, our ISP, were no help. After each of my three hours on the phone with them, they ended up saying I needed to talk with HP. I refused to do that, as the computer is long out of its warranty period, and it would have cost a huge amount to have HP maybe help. So we installed it on another computer - only to find that Ben didn't like the game.

Oh well.

ps The Amazon user reviews average 1.5 out of 5 stars for the game. I'd say you would do well to not buy the game.