An unopened copy of GTA: Vice City. It was bought on the day of release, which if you can read that sticker there, is 10/3/02. I'm almost positive that the day I open the game, the universe will end. Why did I never open it? I had just started a new job, and didn't have the time for it, and I felt really guilty that I snagged the last one whereas a co-worker didn't get his and threw a major tantrum about it. But that was 8 years ago. Here's what's sitting on my dead pile now.
Game: Chrono Trigger
Reason Bought: Chrono Trigger is one of those games from the SNES era that the people who picked it up fell in love with and wanted to see more. Unfortunately, this one never hit my radar and when it was released as a DS game, I couldn't resist.
Reason Stopped Playing: It didn't captivate me like the Final Fantasy games did. There's plenty of gamers who say that Chrono Trigger surpasses Final Fantasy VI in every way, and I'm a little sad to think that had I picked up this instead of FF VI, I might feel the same way about what I call one of the best games ever made.
Will I ever return to it: It's hard to say if I'll ever pick up my DS again, let alone return to Chrono Trigger. The iPhone does everything I would want out of a portable system, which its real detraction. So, probably not.
Game:Bayonetta
Reason Bought: Claimed to be an awesome action game, but with poor voice acting and cheesy over the top scenarios and game elements. Also, it was on sale.
Reason Stopped Playing: I couldn't get past a boss. I felt that the game didn't really teach you enough as you went on to overcome some of the challenges it threw at you, and the difficulty ramped up too fast. Also, combine not being able to beat a boss with VERY long load times every time you die, and it was too much to take.
Will I ever Return to it: Probably not. The time I spent with it was fun, but there's way better games that I'm playing and actually get a sense of accomplishment out of them.
Game: Borderlands
Reason Bought: My friends wanted to get into this game as a group, and we were able to do a buy two copies and get one free deal through Toys R Us. It never really struck me as something I wanted to play.
Reason Stopped Playing: I only ever played with my friends, and we stopped playing together, so I stopped playing the game. I never liked the idea of leveling up on my own and being this uber powerful guy who knew about everything there was and had all the best stuff while they didn't.
Will I ever Return to it: I'd actually like to. Borderlands is a fun game, and I want to see if I can get some more out of it.
Game:Demon's Souls
Reason Bought: Had just bought a PS3 and wanted a good game to go with it. The wife liked the concept of it, so we picked it up to try to play. Glowing reviews didn't hurt either.
Reason Stopped Playing: This game is effing hard. Super intelligent me started playing the game on Halloween last year, which is when all the zones were black and hard to fight in. I don't think I have the patience for it, the online strategy guides are terrible about explaining all the nuances to it in simple terms, and you can't buy a strategy guide to go with it because it was only available in the collector's editions. When I searched for it on eBay, the guide by itself was worth twice what the game was.
Will I ever Return to it: This is another one I'd like to try again, but I want to understand what I'm doing in it, and I can't do that without a lot of research. I just don't think I have that kind of time, and with the servers supposedly going down next year, I don't think I'll ever get around to it in time.
Reason Bought: B Movie Zombie Survival board game with scenarios? Yes, please.
Reason Stopped Playing: The humans cannot win. I've read the reviews on Board Game Geek and on forums saying it starts that way, but soon the human players learn how to play and then it gets more fun. Nope, never happened for us, no matter how many times we've sat down and try to figure it out, the zombie cards create too large of an advantage for the zombie players and it just cannot be overcome.
Will I ever Return to it: Nope, never. Give me the normal Zombies!!! 2nd Edition
any day of the week. 
Game:Mad World
Reason Bought: Found it on clearance for $15, and X Play gave it good reviews for it originality and interesting game play, decided to give it a chance.
Reason Stopped Playing: The game play is neither original or interesting. Once you beat the first level, it's essentially a grind on to each boss battle, which actually are at least a little interesting. Too much repetitiveness on this one, Sega.
Will I ever Return to it: Not likely. The announcers were interesting to listen to for a bit, and some of the killing methods were fun in a disturbing sort of way, but there's not enough here to warrant the purchase, even at $15.
Game: Mod Nation Racers
Reason Bought: When you see a Kart racing game, you have to think Mario Kart, and the thing that the wife and I did was play the cups in that over and over against each other. We saw this, and came home to enjoy a night of racing against each other.
Reason Stopped Playing: Except that's not how it went down, I was immediately thrust into the single player game and only after racing a game was I able to get the wife in to play along, and then it was only one race at a time. The long load times when trying to select a new track and no way to keep track of who was on top made us pull the disc and go back to Mario Kart.
Will I ever Return to it: A solid maybe. This is an excellent game, but it isn't Mario Kart. The computer AI can be painful to race against, and it's really hard to pull off some of the goals in the game, but if I ever feel like racing by myself, this isn't a bad option.
Game: New Super Mario Bros Wii
Reason Bought: The wife actually wanted this one. She liked the idea of us playing a game together and she was a fan of the New Super Mario Bros that was on the DS.
Reason Stopped Playing: You can't play this game with other players, despite that "Up to 4 Players!" statement on my cover. For reasons for this, see my article Single Player or Divorce Mode?
Will I ever Return to it: This is an okay game, but it just doesn't hold my interest like Super Mario World did when I was a kid. Maybe it's just me, maybe they actually don't make them like they used to.
Game: Tomb: Cryptmaster
Reason Bought: We loved the original Tomb board game and wanted to supplement it with a new board, new characters and new monsters.
Reason Stopped Playing: Never in the history of our gaming group have we had a game that made us hate each other as much as Tomb: Cryptmaster ever did. The inclusion of the Cryptmaster cards which made already difficult encounters even more difficult, along with the poorly written (and later errata'd) mercenary rules, and feeling of hopelessness you get from running into losing your entire party 30 minutes into the game, has earned this game banned status in the house.
Will I ever Return To It: Banned. Seriously, we had to ban a board game because it was ruining friendships. There's playing a competitive game, and there's being complete #!@#% to each other, and this one brought out the worst in us.
So there's my gaming Dead Pile. There's actually a lot more to it, there's another couple GTA games that are sitting in it, but we'll save those for another day. If you have some games in your Dead Pile or something you've had to ban in your house, share it below in the comments, or send me a tweet @videogamingat30. Happy gaming, and may your dead pile always be small.
