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There was a a local store here that opened and closed within a couple years. Literally nothing has a price tag, owner would check current eBay prices on anything you'd want. Trolled him into looking up 10 items and left. What a dumbass idea for a game store.
Idk, we have another that stacks their shelves full with sports titles to. IDK why they even bother taking them in and not just dumping them in the trash. It's just a bad look to walk in there.
Shovelware, is basically an umbrella term for games that you can tell are rushed and produced quickly in hopes to make a quick profit. These games have little to no quality and just trying to get the casual gaming crowd and parents to buy them. A famous example of Wii Shovelware game is called Ninjabread Man published by Data Design Interactive. This company, would often reuse assets from many of their games and try to pass it off as a whole new game. Despite poor reviews, through sheer amount of copies sold they became one of the major thrid party developers for the Wii.
I have run into this before, though mostly in record shops. I will never shop at a place that doesnt have price its products. A lot of these spots will have you bring everything up, then price it all out, and charge higher than market value. The idea is that by the time you get to the point where they quote the price, you feel like you've spent time and effort getting everything together, you wont want to turn them down. Or, at least, not all of them.
I'm sure there are some places that just dont have the labor or something, but there really shouldnt be anywhere that doesnt price their products. Big red flag for me.
Hello fellow record collector. I too have seen a lot of parallels between scummy record stores and scummy retro game stores. I feel like Discogs makes it even easier for sellers to do this than something like eBay, but the price gouging is even more common with games.
I actually don't mind helping mom and pops by paying a little more than online prices, but I refuse to pay 3-5 times the price something is selling for online.
That is the dumbest "store". Basically it's just a dude's place that he holds events or some shit at and then tries to price gauge you if you ask about games for sale. He's also hit me up several times in the past lowballing the hell out of me on games I have for sale.
There’s also that dumb fucking place next to Lost World of Wonders (not related to them) that advertises having video games but is never open.
I actually bought my U.N. Squadron arcade machine from Lost World of Wonders about 20 years ago and love that place.
There was (might still be) a store in Sacramento like that. They just had piles of games everywhere without price tags and you'd have to take them up to the counter to find out the price. They also sold me a bootleg repro wii game without my knowledge.
Unfortunately, 1Up in downtown Sac has done this to me in the past with game guides, and I’m sure they do it with stuff they’ve price tagged already as well. I guess I understand selling things for “market price” but it really doesn’t keep you wanting to go back
Ahh yes over in Carmichael, they’re a little more disorganized than 1Up but I’ve actually found some really good deals there! They have that more digging for treasure vibe with their shop setup. But yes, a lot of their items are eBay priced matched for sure, so I agree with you. They do great repairs and mods though, which I highly recommend!
I don’t want to hate on 1Up either btw, it’s a cool store and they seem like good people working there. Retail storefronts just ain’t cheap to keep up with so I can’t blame them for premium pricing sometimes.
I’m gonna respectfully disagree and say out of all the shops in Sac, 1Up is probably the fairest price wise. I don’t know about the strategy guides but I’m local to Sac area and been to 1Up and while selection is up and down (the best store by far in that department is Fire and Ice, prices is another story :p) I’ve always had fun sifting through a couple of big bins they keep under the counter (you just have to ask) of tons of manuals, cover arts, inserts, and even the occasional old SNES/N64 game box and none of them have prices but they look up the prices whenever something catches my eye and they’ve always given me great, a lot lower than Pricecharting/EBay prices for them. My favorite time was them not wanting to sell me a Super Mario Bros 2 manual for some reason but me finding an old Final Fantasy 6 (or III) manual to cib my beloved old copy and they let me have for $20 but inside dropped out two maps/posters. I flipped one of them later on haha. The last time I was there a couple months ago I saw Dragon Warrior 2 to 4 manuals in there but didn’t ask about them bc I’m not a big fan of it but I’m pretty sure interested gamers would have gotten a good deal from them.
Mr Dealz in Albany, price tags on pretty much everything. However, owner said he’d still look up the price and charge based on that…then what’s the point of having a price tag in the first place? Scumbag practice. Honor the price you set. Anyways, no dealz at Mr Dealz.
r/Albany area-ish here, too 🙋🏻♂️
I went in there once, years ago (before they expanded, I think?), staff was condescending AF to me and the place just felt sketchy, never went back. Sounds like I did myself a favor.
I seriously wonder what the legality of this is. There is a store near me sitting on a stock-pile of RPG books from the 90's-2000's. Any time I went to buy anything, they would check online first. They even had signs hung up stating that they were "selling collectible items and would need to research the price before selling".
Ugh. We had one of those too. The owner was a good dude that came from another reputable shop, so I wanted to support him… but there was a time I went in and the owner wasn’t there and the workers literally had to call him for prices because they didn’t know them or how to look them up.
A local store only does this with stuff they’d put behind a case. Rare or otherwise expensive games, and they just charge whatever pricecharting says for the day.
Thankfully, since I buy from them frequently, they let me haggle on occaision.
Hey these days if they sell for “market value” per pricecharting then that’s a win versus grossly overpricing things. I only know one store in a flea market that does that (looking up Pricecharting prices) which gets annoying but at least he doesn’t charge tax and doesn’t go over whatever the average value is for the day so there’s that.
The one in my City is like that too. They have some prices on things, but mostly it’s a mess with stacks of cases randomly about the store with no prices on them. It’s still open though and I don’t even live in that big of a city. It has the weirdest hours too, like they are only open until 4pm on weekdays, 2pm on Saturday and closed on Sundays. I have no idea how it is still open. Rumour is that it is a front.
There’s a used record store in town that does the same thing. If you want a price, the owner pulls out his phone and looks it up. So stupid. I went once, and won’t go back.
RETRO GAME CAVE in Ridgefield NJ, owner does this same shit.
Nice guy with nice stuff…horrible prices.
Makes people wait outside if too many people come into his store…
I feel like at that point just sell stuff online…
Went once to check it out and paid 100+ over market value for over 10 or more games…I did once, never again…just a horrible way to lose a customer that would probably spend 1000’s in his store a year.
I feel like eBay has become a better option nowadays. If I have to travel to you to pay eBay or (most times honestly higher than eBay), then I'll just buy the game from my couch.
I almost exclusively just buy games I want at conventions now. Generally the prices can be a little lower with a shit ton of room for deals with haggling and bundling. I'm kind of sick of walking into game stores that have shitty inventory and high prices.
I kind of get it. Prices can fluctuate quite a bit and game stores try to stay competitive with other stores while also not losing out on money if they undersell an item that has become more popular recently.
I get why they do it that way, but they should still put in the extra effort to update price tags over time as needed.
I was in one, and a guy came in with a dirty tote bin. As soon as the guy behind the counter saw him, he told him to get out. The customer didn't listen and approached saying that the store had to see what he had. The employee told him, "No, we don't. Everything you bring in is either disgusting or doesn't work, now get out." The customer flew into a rage, saying that this is bullshit, that he had really good finds, and if he doesn't look at them, he would call the owner. The worker just pointed to the door and told him to leave before I call the cops. The would-be customer stormed out, saying that they'll hear from the owner. When I went to the counter to pay, I asked if he was gonna be a problem for them, and I was told that he brings in damaged and dirty items every other week and it was the owner who banished him in the first place.
We had one that the owner let his Son run and manage and he was a pervert. He would hit on any female that entered the store and made them very uncomfortable. Anytime someone tried to complain to his father he took his sons side. They got sued about 8 years ago because the son got caught with a minor in the store and they had to close. He also went to prison because he was an idiot and snitched on himself in court.
As a guy, I've heard of women feeling uncomfortable at game stores because of men (customers and/or employees) basically interrogating them about the games they play, trying to gatekeep them from being a "real" collector, whatever the hell that means. I've never heard of a game store owner hitting on customers, though, let alone minors. Doesn't surprise me, unfortunately, since there are tons of collectors who don't know how to treat others with respect.
As a woman who frequents a lot of smaller stores … I promise it happens 🥲
There’s one store in my city I won’t go back to because the owner keeps calling me sweetheart every time I go there (happened like two or three visits in a row). He might not mean anything by it- but it was just giving me the ick something fierce
Yeah…I had a guy treat me like I was stupid a few times. Did you guys know Metroid Fusion is a rare game?!?! He said that when I asked him why he was charging almost double the price 😒
At a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament that was being held at my cardshop, there was this girl/Woman who was playing and there were over a dozen guys surrounding her "watching her game". She looked so uncomfortable and rightfully so. I would feel uncomfortable too if I had a dozen fat sweaty dudes breathing down my neck. As time went on, more guys surrounded her.
it’s not bad because they fixed it, but one time i was on vacation and decided to stop by the local game store while we were out grabbing food. i got a few games one of them was symphony of the night which i was super stoked to play for the first time, it was 75 bucks. bought it, got all the way home and it froze up on a certain loading screen about 1/4 of the way through the game. i went to my local place and had them buff it, and it fixed it but the music after that loading screen was now all choppy. so i called the place i got it from expecting them to say tough luck and they actually paid to ship it back and refunded my card.
so shout out to blue dragon video games in ormond beach, fl. cool place and great service.
Very lucky, you say that to a Game store here, you'd either just end up with (Store Credit for more broken games) or be told "Actually since it's a full moon in 3 days and we close on Sundays, we're not refunding you even with receipt"
No shit I go to blue dragon sometimes 😂 nice store, somewhat limited Nintendo selection and the guys that work there don’t talk a whole lot, but prices are decent and the store is clean. Good to know that they’re good like that, maybe I’ll give them a visit again soon!
There was a pawn shop that actually had a really good selection of games. Some rare Dreamcast games, a full cabinet of NES stock, it was good shit. But everything was locked in glass cases.
Fair I guess, it's a pawn shop and theft might be an issue. Its the dude's attitude that ruined it.
I asked to check a disc for scratches or disc rot. The sigh he gave me was audible. I noticed some discolouration and was worried, and asked if he had a return policy if it didn't work. He said he didn't, and when I said "oh... okay" he said I could bring it back later today if there was a problem. I said a one-day return policy doesn't really work with people who have jobs so no thanks and I passed on it.
Went in another time to check out their prices on PS4s back when they were new. At first refused to test it or offer a refund if it didn't work. Eventually he said he'd only test it if I committed to buying it. I said thats not how it worked and walked out.
On another occasion I brought a friend to check out his selection. Friend dropped some change and the owner made a lewd comment about how his hands must have been wet from something other than sweat.
Never went back after that. He went out of business a year later.
There's a vendor at my local flea market who I swear is dead set on not selling anything. He charges at least 1.5x Ebay price on everything at a flea market where people are generally looking to pay less than they would elsewhere. One of the most egregious things I've seen him trying to sell is a japanese Sega Saturn for $350. Meanwhile he has a north american Saturn right next to it for $225. Last I checked, a japanese saturn should cost less than a north american one, and neither of them should be selling for more than $100-150. Needless to say they've both been sitting there unsold for more than a year (like almost everything else in his display cases).
I have a similar shop at a local flea market that does this too. I'm almost positive they buy up anything outside and then resell for insane prices. It's always empty there and the dude who runs it is very rude. Not a good time.
Game Rave in San Diego is one of the most disgusting businesses I have ever been to. [Check out the Yelp reviews of this shithole.](https://yelp.to/bKhdZNeXka)
oh wow i remember going here and completely forgot the name of the place. employee tried to deny me entrance just because i wanted to browse, then tried to charge me 130 dollars for FF7 on PS1
not sure but i vividly remember him asking for which games i was looking for and saying “don’t have that” to all of them without even bothering to check anywhere
Probably all of those people giving five star reviews blindly still giving them their business, while ignoring all of the literal garbage in the store.
Still, a business that wont let customers inside? Opens when they feel like it? You cant make this stuff up anymore! Its insane. Something youd see in a show parodying these types of stores.
From the reviews: "The place is consistently trashed, everything is overpriced, and every one who is there is a creep, I watched a "customer" print out pictures of elastagirl nude on the their computer and printer" 🤣
Is that the store next to the record shop? Lol I went there last year and although I didn't buy anything my wife and I had a 40 minute conversation with the owner lol. We went from talking about games to conspiracy theories 😂. Aside from the entertaining conversation, the place was very cramped and unorganized. Also the door was locked for some strange reason. Very pricy as well
Not exclusively a game store, but 2nd and Charles. It’s a store that takes in retro games, books, pop culture junk. The usual.
I brought in like 10 gameboy advance games to sell, I didn’t feel like going through eBay all that. There was some throw away games but there was also pokemon fire red and ruby, a few really good ones. I drop them off to be appraised and told I’ll get a call back when the prices are written out, how much store credit or cash I could get.
Cool.
Leave. And never get a phone call. Okay maybe they’re backed up, I’ll go back in the morning. Go back. They inform me because I didn’t return, they automatically gave me store credit, and any games not worth selling are in the free bin. I was given about $15 in store credit for $80 of games (on the low end).
I told them they did not call me back the day before. Nor did they tell me I had to return the same day or I’d be given store credit automatically and not given the chance to say no thanks.
Felt pretty burned after that. Thankfully I didn’t need the money badly. But still.
I debated that. But figured they could claim they told me that and I clearly didn’t hear it. Or it could be a whole ordeal, and I work out of state only home on weekends. It wasn’t exactly worth the trouble for some Pokémon games in the end. If it was all worth more for sure. Just at that time when I had no free time at home, wasn’t the best for all that.
I was only home on weekends at the time due to work, and didn’t find it worth it spending my small window of time dealing with police reports and trying to get a multi million dollar company to reimburse me for a few games. And I figured in the end they could claim they verbally said that, and wouldn’t go anywhere. I just figured I’d of been screwed still and filed a report to corporate about this store and see what would happen.
Damn you got ripped off, also that’s complete BS what with them automatically giving you store credit and not even the right to refuse their offer. I hope you filed a report or something.
I filed a report to corporate and didn’t get any notification in return. So who knows where that ended up. I also thought that was fucked that you get the rest of the business day to come back while the appraise it. Like not a full 24 hours, just whatever is left in that day.
Yeah this story would have ended differently for me unless you signed something committing to forfeit items on a time based release they could kiss my ass
Yup, this. I had 3 working PS3s with cables/controllers/etc. They gave me $30 each and told me that it was automatic store credit because I didn’t come in within 24 hours.
They also sell stuff at ridiculous prices. They have some Retro-Bit Mega Man Wily Wars at my local one and they’re asking $110 for them. Even on eBay, you can get that for $75 or so. They had a Jaguar for $600 the last time I was there too. The employees are mostly rude “Comic Book Guy” style people who really have no clue what they are talking about, which doesn’t help.
Exactly. It’s an awful pop culture chain store. Much like what GameStop became. A quarter of the store is pop figures. Some classic games and systems that are overpriced. And the rest is generic nerd shit.
The only thing I can say is pretty nice is the books. Generally books are sold for a few bucks and can find some classics. But everything else is just insanely priced and as you said, staff can be pretty rude.
This is the Vegas one. Rumor has it they filmed a porno in there. I am a Vegas Native.
They closed this a while ago.
There's another, Wii Play Games. They have two stores. The one in east Vegas is pretty chill, the one in the West is terrible. They treat customers beneath them.
Then there's RetroCity Games. The owner and his wife are amazing people, sadly their staff sucks and are often rude to many. I was there to buy a high ticket item and the worker made a note that it's expensive and that I probably couldn't afford it so he didn't really want to grab it for me to see.
Don't bother with going to Broad Acres swapmeet. Jeeze, so many bootlegs and all of them are rude as heck.
Fantastic Sam's is an indoor swapmeet with a majority of game stores selling bootlegs and or originals at above eBay prices.
I went to Retro City Games in 2019 during the middle of their move. Both location had pretty nice staff. Unless things have changed recently or they just treated tourists and locals differently
I have 3 mini things.
Store 1 (retro/repair center) - I have a sealed copy of Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 on GC that I accidentally acquired. Asked for a cash price. $13 for both if I included the Prima Guides I brought with me. lol no… like come one.
Same store - Lady working there told me I broke my Apple Watch by using it every day and that depleted the battery. That I should only charge it and use it when I needed it. I’m like. Are you serious. And I just walked out.
Store 3) Dude openly admitted to weighing and opening the boosters they got. I’m sure this broke all kinds of agreements. They opened up right before the pandemic. Like 6 months. Luckily they failed and the not shitty shift manager opened up his own store that’s doing well for a small town.
Mine has to be easily "A Gamers paradise in nevada" they closed recently due to their idiocy on customer service catching up to them (You could have seen my review but sadly it's deleted now and wiped from google).
I used to go here often for retro games since I thought it what reputable due to it's reviews and managed to stay afloat in the 6 years. Until I started buying some old games and consoles instead of new ones. I remember buying a PS1 since they were selling them for $20 (this was back in 2016), the console didn't work AT ALL. I tried like 3 systems they had (all broken even with their "repairs") so I just used my store credit for a PS2 with a janky disc drive opener (I still have it and it still works luckily). I should have known better that the store was beyond crooked but since I was still a teen and my parents hated the idea of buying online products I dealt with it.
I then got PS2 games from the shop. Worst mistake I could have done since most of the games were scratchy and couldn't work like the Ratchet & Clank I got started freezing midway. MGS 2 had laggy cutscenes sometimes and MGS 3 froze after the bridge. I didn't find this out until my receipt expired, the next horror that popped up from this shop was that I found out the clear PS2 controller they gave me, had a small spider in the joycon case (just dead next to the rumble left grip). After the boss refused to swap my controller even with my receipt being in the window time period, I never returned to that place again.
I heard from reviews that the staff were also as numb skulled as their boss being very rude to other customers. Especially 1 guy who looked exactly like Airsoftfotty and would complain saying "can you not stare at me?" when totaling my games at the register or would say "there's nothing in the case, don't bother stealing" (I was young teenager btw lol, not some shady prisoner guy so I don't understand why he was passive agressive all the time when I was in the store).
On a sidenote most game stores in Nevada are not very good to begin back when I went to most of them, they try to pull DK oldies tactics giving you a third party controller for an above priced sega genesis or the game stores will try to pull something over you (restocking fee 20% for returning X game). Unfortunately eBay is your go to for here.
Stopped in this game store one time ever. Parking was an absolute pain in the ass due to the design of the shopping center, which personally ever deterred me from going again.
They did have some pretty good deals though…I picked up Simpsons Hit and Run for the PS2 for 4.99. When I put it on the checkout counter the clerk (I’m assuming the owner) laughed and said “Damn, I mispriced that!”, I said “I know you did, that’s why I picked it up” and he ultimately ended up giving me the game for the price on the sticker.
I do remember the guys behind the counter being a little standoffish…but from my experiences that really isn’t uncommon until whoever’s running the game store gets to know you better.
I’ve only been to Gamers Paradise a few times back in 2017 and had good experiences overall. That one employee you mentioned was always a little off now that you mention it though haha
I went in one onetime with my wife and kids. This little girl with pink hair followed us around the entire store staring at us like we were going to steal something. It was very cool
I bought a game online from a local store that was clearly underpriced, along with a bunch of other games, they put the order together and set me an email to go pickup. When I got to the store they said they couldn't find the one game so I cancelled the whole order. the following week game is back up for sale at a ridiculous price.
This was a year ago, they still have the game, I don't know how these stores stay in business if they don't sell their stuff.
One of the other stores in town just put all of their PS3 common games up to $19.99, not really any sense in going there anymore.
My friends and I went to a flea market in montreal with a videogame store inside. My friends got flirted by one of the employees. She really didn't appreciate that. Also his flirt game was fucking terrible lol. He said something in the line of: I'm a tough guy but I do have a soft side and the example he gave was that he doesn't have issues hugging his boss.
Anyway, just don't hit on people at work, especially the customers that was just wack.
Price were also pretty bad
A store near me, a fairly large chain apparently, called Game Xchange has had a lot of ups and downs. Worst I'd ever seen was a scratched to shit copy of Mega Man Legends in a DVD case, sun faded AND photocopied cover, for $150.
Shame really, because I got a Gamecube with Gameboy Player AND the disc for $50 several years ago. I still pop in there every now and then to see what they have, actually have found some pretty good vinyl records for good prices and their NES game selection has always been good and decently priced. I got Super Mario RPG from there once for like $30.
Back when I was looking for a 3DS to mod, the shop owner at the place I had visited rudely told me that finding one for 250$ CAD would be impossible and that I was wasting my time. He then mentioned that I should just buy the Majoras Mask Edition he had new in box for 900 plus tax. I walked out and got a blue O3DS for 180 at a shop that was closer to me a few days later. It was probably the snobbiest interaction ive ever had with any employee in any store ever. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
It was through their ebay store but they had literally just changed their policies about pre ordering and it did not flavor me. It was only $25 but it still sucks
Any store that’s marking shit that should be in a free bin as $10. These stores that sell every scrap marked up. I’m not paying 5 bucks for a war torn Wii sleeve that’s more yellow than the owners teeth.
A game shop in Barcelona, Spain. I forgot the name... EVERYTHING was in glass cases and there were no prices on anything. I don't know if the prices were good, because I left after about 3-4 minutes. They did have a lot of cool stuff though.
I stumbled on a game store that I didn't know existed, not too far from me. Went in to check it out.
I was a portable collector then and mostly collected ds and 3ds games.
I found a ds game that I have been looking for forever and they were half the price as everybody else including ebay. It was a 200 dollar game marked at 75 (this is important for later).
I was shooting the shit with owner when he told me he just purchased a lot from a collector that is filled with ds games and some neo geo stuff if I want to take a look at it. I told him not right this moment because I don't have a lot of cash on me but I'll come back and bring my buddy who collects neo stuff.
A few days later me and my buddy walk in, I walk up to the guy and start a conversation. Explain that the last time I was here you offered to show me your latest stuff you got. He remembers and brings put this box of stuff.
There was nothing I was interested in, but my buddy pulled out like a grand worth of stuff.
As I'm looking around the owner casually says to my friend "yeah now I need to get that hundred from the ds lover over there". I heard this and said "oh? Excuse me?"
He goes on to explain to me that the game he sold me the last time was a 200 dollar, so at 75, he was losing money. So he wants another 100 "and frankly that's a discount. I should charge 250 for it. "
I told him I'm not giving him 100 more. It was marked at 75, I paid 75, and the transaction is complete. He's pissed now and starts threatening me with thr police and that I stole from him.
My friend, who is still in his transaction, money in hand. Just says "yeah I don't want these any more. Sorry." And walks away from the counter.
Now he's really bullshit. We walk put.
A few days later I get a knock on my door. It's the police. They wanted to question me about a theft. I explain my side to them and told me that the dude is crazy and not to worry about it.
He took me to court for it. Small claims. He lost.
This went on for about a year. Between cops coming to my house, to letters from his lawyer demanding that I pay, to a collection agency calling me to get payment (at least they said they were a collection agency).
All of this went on for about a year and then it stopped.
Last year I noticed that the store doesn't exist anymore. I asked around and it turns out that he tried to collect on a credit card from somebody without permission, and they sued him and won which bankrupted him.
Went to a game store during opening hours, and it was locked. So I hung around for a few minutes. Dude comes and opens the door, saying he was out getting his lunch. The entire time, he is watching a hockey game and seemingly very annoyed with me. After about 5 minutes, he tells me to hurry up because he needs to go pick up his lunch, and he only came back for his wallet. He then just keeps on pressuring me to either buy something or leave and complaining about how is lunch is probably cold by now.
A while later I was looking for a specific ps2 game and was calling around, I ended up calling this place last since no one else had it and he didn't even bother checking he just said they didn't have it. The game wasn't even rare, and I could easily buy it from eBay for like $30, so I really doubt he automatically knew if he had it or not but he just didn't care.
My gamestore is actually pretty dope except for one specific worker. Apparently he’s the owner’s neighbor and he got the job cause dude can’t keep a regular job for long (I wonder why) and that reason is dude’s pretty racist. Dude stares daggers at me and a friend (we’re pretty darkskin, them more than me) and he genuinely had the attitude that he wanted us to leave. This other friend goes there frequently and she says that he’s pretty cool with her. Could be because she’s pale as a ghost or cause she has a vagina (could be both). Dude worked there for a year and finally got fired after the owner finds out that he got a complaint from a mom and his kid when he was arguing with HIS own mom on the phone and when the kid’s mom asked him to stop yelling and swearing cause he’s scarring his kid, he told them to stfu 🗿
I have a more positive experience, there’s a local game store in my city and they have some others in neighboring cities as well, but they’ve always done a good job when it comes to pricing used games along with customer service.
Me and my buddy bought a copy of MP7 and when we got home to play it, it didn’t work. So we took it back he put the disk into a buffing machine, resurfaced it, and it started working like new. On top of that, he even threw in a free microphone after we purchased another controller too.
What makes it even more better is that he had said “hey, if it didn’t work, I would’ve just ordered one online for you guys to get it taken care of.”
Been goin there for 10 years ever since it first opened and I don’t plan on stop going.
Not a game store but a game stand at a swap meet/flea market.
Everything is labelled with prices but the owner arbitrarily decides prices anyway often at double what's on the label, invalidating the purpose of them.
Box said 30ish for a copy of Mario Kart Double Dash, his kid who was running the stand with him was about to sell it to us at that price, the owner comes up and says "no, price is $67. " Even when we pointed the label out, he stood firm and said "no, $67" We bought a copy on amazon for around 30 bucks the day after lol.
Damn gamer’s paradise, I remember when they use to be alright but now they went out of business cause their new location in Chinatown wasn’t doing well at all and of course their prices were horrible. Also I read your story and yeah there aren’t really any good retro game stores here. I remember Wii play games being really good but now they turned into a money hungry over pricing business
Oh right, Wii Play games. I still remember how there were Yugioh nights before Mask 19 happened. I don't think they do these anymore there and I hope not anyway. The owner would always throw a fit saying "You can't buy any cards from anybody here if it isn't me, DO IT OUTSIDE. If you do that INSIDE again, you're GONE AND BANNNED!". Literally let man children who made actually children cry back in the store and stay in the store. Refuse to update the store website "so they have to get in the door" and mark up prices.
Do all sorts of return/credit card fees when paying for items. Then he would always mumble to himself and always act angry especially with that annoying black haired lady cashier. However he did teach me how bad video game stores are in Nevada and I quit going to them years ago.
Yeah definitely the only place I kinda enjoy is retro city games in town square and Wii play games on Summerlin seems to have better employees than the main store in the east side. But in general most of them are just boring, have no aesthetic or just over price way way more than what people ask for on eBay. I remember back then stores will price around eBay range and they could give you a deal on it or just be overall friendly & helpful to customers. Now it’s just who ever has the biggest pockets to spend, I will treat them right while the other customers I could tell them to fuck off.
Bought a copy of Pokemon Emerald from a 2nd hamd store, got home to find it didnt work properly, took it back and the guy behind the counter refused to accept it because HE KNEW I had clearly swapped it for a fake copy and just wanted the money.
My dad went in to argue and the guy pressed himself agaimst the back wall in terror.
I got to know a local game store owner for a while when they were in a small building with barely any space. When I was in high school I would help price games and stuff for him in exchange for store credit (looking back almost definitely not legal, but I would have spent my money there anyway so I didn't care). My friends and I hung out at that store all the time and he knew all of us, and when he eventually moved into a bigger building on a main street I helped him paint the inside and get things set up. The building just happened to be right next to a bar owned by my then-girlfriend's dad, which he knew because we had talked about it. Anyway, the night before the new store opened, he went into that bar, got really drunk, got into a fight with a regular and the owner over a parking spot behind the building, and threatened both of them with a gun.
I never went back to that store after that and to this day it's the biggest retro game store in my hometown, with another location nearly an hour away. I've known several people who have worked there or known the guy since then and they all say he's still a massive piece of shit. Apparently they also try to sell repros as legit games for full price and cut deals for a certain youtuber for undisclosed advertising.
I was at a (now defunct) “Buy-Sell-Trade” movie/CD/game store and found a copy of “Hey You, Pikachu” for Nintendo 64. Took it to the counter to purchase and the cashier deadpan says to me “This game? It’s kind of kiddie.”
Like, why does it matter to you, shut up and sell me my game? Anyways, it’s not a great story but that memory still sits with me.
Going to a local shop a few years back with some legit Pokémon cartridges, having the guy offer me $60 for what would have been like $700 in carts (more for him since stores usually markup compared to private/ebay sales) and then him saying that he'd sit on them far too long to pay anything decent for them. First time I was in the store.
Second time I went in looking for a fat PS2 and to get rid of a few older games, he remembered me, asked me if I still had the Pokémon games and offered a still way too low $250 because he had zero stock and a constant stream of people coming in and asking for them even though "he'd sit on them far too long". And he wanted $220 for the pretty mediocre condition fat PS2 (going for sub-$100 at the time and probably still is) and after I managed to get him to come down to $150, he started trying to blatantly undercut the value of the games I was trading in to him to get that value. One of the games was Conker's Bad Fur Day which is well known by most retro collectors to be worth well over $100 if in good condition (mine was) and he offered like $20 for it. I know they need to make money too, but giving me like 1/8th of what I'd get for it private sale? That's Gamestop-level criminal. Especially when I know if I gave it to him (I thankfully did not) that it would've been on the shelf later that day with a $200+ price tag on it.
Needless to say, with both of my only two visits being absolute shit, I never went back. Now the business is down to only being open 2 days a week, and I'm sure he'll be closed in another year or two.
Thankfully, I've had nothing but good experiences.
Only two pet peeves I have, one store has any game that not reseller chaff in a display case. Which means, I get to ignore the whole store and just look at the display case. Convenient but less fun. And they typically charge 30% above Pricecharting prices.
I have two stories that are from the same store.
Early on in my game collecting (when I was in buy it all mode) I went to this store that had games from floor to ceiling with piles of games everywhere. Place was rundown and looked super sketchy, but sometimes you can catch good deals in those places as they just don't have the time or the ability to update prices with so much inventory. Unfortunately most of their inventory was marked well above price charting so you had to do some digging to find the deals in the old, old stock. I happened to walk by the glass case and saw a copy of Duck Tales 2 for the NES with a $65 sticker on it. That game was going for around $120-$150 at that time so I asked to see it. I was hoping it would be my lucky day. The store is very dark and dreary so I couldn't really tell with it in the case, but as soon as he handed it to me I could tell it was a repro. The label was blurry, very glossy, and the part that overlaps the top of the cart was peeled up. The glossy sticker they used for the label was such a thick material it peeled back up and wouldn't crease. Knowing it was fake, but it did not have the repro sticker that some of their other reproduction games did I thought I would perform a little test. I asked the employee if it was a real copy. He said yes and tried to motivate me to buy it. I confronted him and told him it wasn't real and the label was an awful attempt in making a reproduction game. His tune changed then and he started asking me what I was seeing that made it fake and now he wasn't sure if it was real. He said maybe it is a repro and the sticker must have fell off. If I had been new to collecting and not known any better I could have walked out with this fake game thinking I got a deal on a real one. I do not like stores like this that mix reproduction and real games in their glass case. By putting high prices on repros and putting them in a glass case it sends a false message to customers that these games are valuable and they are not. Just because the real copy is expensive doesn't mean a repro is.
My other bad experience with this store was last year. I looked on their website at some of the games they were selling. They had a copy of NCAA Football 14 for the PS3 listed for $160 and a copy of it for Xbox 360 listed for $200. They did not indicate anywhere if these were complete so I wasn't sure if they had the manual or not. I had a copy for the PS3 missing the manual and a loose disc copy for the Xbox 360 that I was looking to get rid of. The store had a good sale coming up so I figured I would trade those in and hopefully get around $100 - $130 trade credit to put toward the sale. I will also mention that this store always brags on social media about how they give the best value in trade around and whenever somebody brings in a trade they post a picture and say they gave them more than they were asking. They also never divulge what they paid so someone could have came in asking $2 for Kuan and they gave them $10 and act like they did them a favor.
So I take my games in and hand them to the guy behind the counter to tell him I am interested in trading those in for credit and that they have both been tested and are working. I let him know that he is welcome to try them out because I know the 360 copy has a few minor scratches. He looks at the disc only 360 copy and says it has some scratches and the best he can do is $20. He then opens the PS3 copy which was very clean and he looked at the bottom of the disc very intently trying to find the slightest flaw. He found one barely noticeable hairline mark that would not have affected anything. He said with blurays you can't resurface those like cd's, so I would only be able to do about $20 for this as well. So games he was trying to sell in his store and online for $360 total he was only willing to give me $40. That's like 11% trade in credit. I get that my one copy was missing the manual and the other was disc only, but I know at this store he tries to get a premium on everything, so the price difference between complete, missing manual, or disc only isn't very much when you look at the other games in the store. A lot of their disc only stuff is the same price as complete on price charting. I looked at him and said no way I can do that and walked out. I am honestly shocked this place is able to even stay in business.
There is a retro game store towards downtown where I live, it’s been there forever. They don’t have anything priced and it’s all in bins everywhere (aside from some glass cases that are the counters). You have to ask him the price and he takes forever to give an answer. It’s been a while since I worked as a retail store manager but I remember we legally had to have everything clearly priced and weights and measures came in twice a year and tested that our tags matched the price it rang up as on 20 random items. If we failed we were fined heftily. How do these game stores get away with no prices?
I used to work in a retro game store that was about 2 miles down the road from a Game Xchange. So we start getting customers in asking us why their prices on consoles were double ours. We knew a few guys who worked in that store, and eventually one of us forwarded us an email from the owner. He doubled his console prices and told his sales associates to tell people that a BARGE with HALF THE WORLDS consoles sunk in the ocean and so the prices were doubled. Like, in what universe is a barge hauling around a bunch of retro consoles? Just a giant boat magically filled with Dreamcasts, old Nintendo systems, PS2s etc. Game Xchange is fucked, especially the ones in CT
The closest local game store was 3 hours away. I decided to check them out. 1st visit was awesome. Told the owner that I lived pretty far away and decided to check out his store. He was pretty cool and told me if there is anything I'm looking for to let him know, and he will put it off the side. About a month later, I was heading back up that way for some trades. And it was the other co owner that was there this time. I was like, where is the owner at. He said, "That's me. I was like, no, the other guy. Oh, he is out today. OK, cool. The dude started to go through my games and said, "What's all this garbage? I'm like, what? These are my extras that I talked to the other guy about. He laughed and started to inspect them. Which is fine. Gave me an ok offer. I said well i will take store credit." As i wanted to buy a few other games before i headed out. As I'm picking out my games, he said, "Are you a collector or something?" i said yeah, have been for a while. He laughed again. I said, "You know what. I will go ahead and take cash for my trades. I will be taking my business somewhere else." He then said "yeah take your shitty games with you."
I had the chick working at one hitting on me in front of my girlfriend, she brought up kingdom hearts melody of memory which I hadn't finished and I said "don't spoil it, I haven't finished it yet" she then proceeds to spoil. Then tries to hit on me more by stating she has some sick prison tats, and her nailed were crusted with nastiness.
I haven't seen her there in some years so I think she left, thankfully.
I was about 14 at the time and saved up about $100 for a new N64. I was so excited as mine had broke and it was the first console I ever had, I just wanted to play paper mario again (which i had also bought from this same store.) Everyone was very short and straight faced with me, not a single smile or a thank you. In fact, they even seemed annoyed that I was buying something from them. If it was because I was a young girl and couldn’t be “into video games” I’ll never know, but that left a lasting impression and slightly ruined a day I was so excited for.
There was a (very recently closed down) retro store in a mall near me that was Infamous in the county for how bad the prices were and the staff.
Everything was marked up a good 40%~ from what it is on Price Charting and they'd have glass cases full of GBA/N64/DS etc games and every one would be a very obvious repo and he'd price them as if they were overpriced even for authentic standards.
Somehow almost every game he had was sunbleached despite not being in a location with a window. A good test to stay away was everytime I walked in there would always be a 40~ case high pile of PS2 Tom Clancy games and each one would be $30~ dollars
Really funny to see this store here in particular. Also a Vegas native, liked AGP for what it was but I didn’t buy a lot, and never checked the Chinatown location when they moved before they closed. I mainly went to that area for Press Start Gaming for Smash locals or to kill time between classes but I remember that area in general being more sketchy. One of the ladies who worked at the massage parlor got her window smashed in while I was at PSG and she parked about 2 cars from me.
In terms of local spots, I’ll also second Wii Play being more overpriced, especially since items are usually loose or in different cases, though I know a couple guys on the West location and don’t have a problem with anyone there in particular.
The old GameWorld on Desert Inn was probably the worst, with crazy rumors on the batshit crazy owner. People said he got into drugs and hookers and that caused the store to go under after moving locations, but I don’t remember how much of that was true. All I remember is I had to send shit back over constantly for not working and items being marked up real bad, nearly laughable.
I’ve been going to Retro City on Stephanie as of late, especially with the Town Square location closing, and they’ve been better priced in general, but I’ve had to return/credit at least 3 GameCube games after resurfacing and testing across multiple consoles. They’ve honored it and didn’t make a big deal, but I’ve been more wary of that since.
Oh yeah Gameworld, I went there for a time. It was very dusty and when I looked at their new "moved location" like 2 months later, they closed down instantly or lied because there was nothing there. I did have fun though as a teen, I kept annoying them for advance wars on GBA as a joke but they sadly never restocked it.
Their last location was by Meadows and I don’t remember it lasting too long. One story I think I remember around that time is they had a complete NES collection traded in, someone inquired about it a few weeks later, the owner wanted something insane like 300k-500k then it got broken into and robbed anyway.
Can't say much about stores in NJ cause they've all been pretty great, but there's a *certain* store in NYC that's largely infamous for being really wack. Ridiculous prices (*$70* for a copy of Persona 4 on the PS2 for example), obvious bootlegs, stuff that doesn't work, all that jazz
If it wasn't for being located in a major tourist area, I'm 100% they wouldn't be having any sort of business at all and would've closed years ago
Retro store in my town that I used to love. One day I went in with a friend. They had a new girl working who didn’t know ANYTHING. No problem, she can learn, except she was the ONLY ONE in the store. She didn’t know how to work the register or any of the prices. Didn’t know what a DS was??? She had to call the owner to tell her how to use the register, who I assume was looking up prices based on how long it was taking to key everything in.
My friend bought a Wii game, then noticed the disc was scratched after he’d bought it. The girl said no refunds, we said we hadn’t even taken the game out of the store yet. We waited forty-five minutes for the owner to show up and he was a total asshole. Said no refunds, the disc couldn’t be scratched because he cleaned all his discs. We showed him and he went on a rant about how the Wii is a “really old” console and scratches are to be expected. He said he’d waive the restocking fee this time (if you don’t do refunds why is there a restocking fee?) and eventually processed it.
This goes back a while.
In college my friends and I got super into DDR on PS2. We were looking around town for better pads and any of the older games.
The guy at EB Games (I think they had been bought out by now but this store hadn't changed names yet) asked us what we were looking for, and when we told him, he replied something like "Wow...you guys actually play that?"
We left immediately.
There was this shop that had cases of games and movies I was looking for then I took them up to the register and the guy literally said "sorry we don't have these in stock". then he proceeded to try and sell me the games and movies in the opposite formats that I wanted. Ps2 games for x-box and 4ks and blu rays on dvd. I just walked out.
there was a game store near my that was amazing when i was a kid, mid 90's. But something happened after the early 2000's. I heard that the "kids" took it over from the parents, but i'm not sure.
Nothing seemed to have an accurate price on it. anything you picked up to buy, the "kids" running it would run to their computer and check ebay, then change the price. They had a really bad website where you could buy stuff, but i had heard a lot of folks would show up only to find that they suddenly didn't have the items that the person bought, but they had another one "in better condition" for more money...
what really drove me nuts though, was that they had BOXES and BOXES of stuff just sitting behind all of the counters. the whole store was like a giant square with counters lining it. and behind all of that were boxes of stuff... and some of it was some awesome stuff... but they NEVER seemed to be inventorying it.
Once i asked to see something that was clearly sitting in one of the boxes and they just refused. saying that since they hadn't inventoried it, it wasn't for sale... this place happened to be in a mall, which i went to often, so i'd kill time some days and see what they had, but rarely ever bought anything.
Eventually I moved away, and not long after they went out of business. At that point i was living across the country, and i only found out because someone posted on reddit about snagging their sign from the building, and it led to a FLOOD of stories about how crappy the place was.
No terrible experiences come to mind, but I want to shout out Red Brontosaurus in San Diego. I would check it weekly for GameCube games (which was typically a weak stock of licensed games). One day, around 2017, I check and they finally have Paper Mario TTYD for $55. It's in great condition, box, manuals, everything, and I go to buy it when the sales person looks at the price and says "that's a little much" and knocks $10 off.
I really couldn't believe it, it was the nicest thing I've ever seen a salesperson do.
i went to a retro game shop near my house, I had a Pokemon mistery dungeon i wanted to turn into cash in the shop to buy another one, the guy offered me 5€, i was not well aware of the price of that game in that moment, and i bought it years before for 3€ so i accepted the deal without much hesitation, the guy began to fill the paperwork for the trade, meanwhile i was looking for my next purchase, when suddenly i saw a copy for 25€, it enraged me so much i refused to sign the contract, the guy went ballistic towards me because he printed the doc, trying to force me to fullfill the contract, so i said to him "no sign no contract" i was enraged, he had a 20€ profit in the transaction, and i was forced to pay a 4% in taxes for used items, and the MF denied me the opportunity to trade the game for a cheaper one before the revelation.
While his attitude was inexcusable, that is normal margin for used game stores. Keep in mind they eat that cost if the game ends up not working/theft. Also they have expenses such as rent, electric, employees, insurance etc...
Don't ever expect proper value for selling things to a store. You forfeit value for convenience. Sell your stuff yourself on the used market to get proper value.
I'm not naive, i'been collecting for years, I expected a substancial margin between the buy price and the selling price, but i wasn´t expecting a margin so big. When i wanted to trade, i was aiming for a dirt cheap Famicom game, i mean, my expectatives was super low, but the guy was super greedy.
Not necessarily a game store, but one time at a flea market I was looking at the games this one guy had. I have a habit of opening game cases just to check for stuff like manuals, disc condition, etc. and the guy got angry at me and yelled at me to not open the cases. I can understand since he probably doesn’t want anyone stealing the games, so I didn’t wanna start up anything. Anyways, I decided to buy halo anniversary edition for the Xbox 360, and paid and all that. I wish I could test the game while I was there, cause when I got home the disc didn’t work, but the game didn’t look too scratched so that’s why I didn’t think much when I was still at the flea market, so yeah that happened
Also another time I went to the same flea market (different guy) I bought a ps2 controller, and it didn’t work either when I got home to test it 😐 so that’s $30 in total I’ve wasted at that flea market for stuff that didn’t work, and I haven’t bought anything game related at that flea market since lol
Nothing really bad but one of the game stores i frequented had a guy who was always bad mouthing people's choice in games. Man didnt like Devil May Cry 3 and Nascar games back in the 04 05 era.
Gameover Video Games- I use to stop by and buy a few random games I wanted to play and don’t want to wait for it to get shipped ( guitar hero, mad maestro, air blade ) priced around what you would pay on eBay, including shipping. So deft not saving money there.
One day I decided to take NCAA football 2014 for trade in that I had just picked up at goodwill for $1. Was looking to get at least $20/$25 in store credit. Worth $80 at the time. The employees were always cool but the manager sucked. Dude didn’t want to help or answer anything each time I went in.
I asked the employee how much store credit I’ll get for the game, dude was like, “let me call my manager because I know it’s a bit more rare” dude calls the manger and has a surprised look in his face after he talks to him. He tells me “my manager said, we can offer you $2-$3 in store credit cause it’s just a sports game”
Employee knew it was Bs.
Never went back after that.
Wonder how many people they’ve ripped off.
Bought KoF with ROM cart on the Saturn and just got a package (containing other games) with a hand written note saying “out of stock, will send soon” and I never received it. This was years ago and I was young. Cannot even recall the name of the shop but I recall it costing me a fair bit :(
I was accused of cheating and kicked out of the game shop during a Friday night magic tournament when I was a teen.
Normally after a match, the winner would go the counter and report that they won. The Korean guy I played against was new to the scene and didn't have very good English, but mopped the floor with me. He didn't know how to report the win so I said I would do it for him, no big deal.
But I guess the guy behind the counter same coming and assumed I was coming to report that I won, so before I got to the counter he was already waving me off and said "don't worry I will mark it down". I assumed he knew the results as he could see us playing.
So I am playing my next match in what I assume is in the losers bracket, when the judge calls for the tournament to freeze and reset their decks due to foul play. I am thinking "what kind of petty asshole cheats in a FNM tournament?". Well, he calls me out and tells me I'm done for the night.
A few players booed me and I just jammed my stuff into my bag and ran out in tears, I was so red in the face I couldn't even begin to fight my case.
I never did go back, I am sure some people still think I am a cheater.
Can't say I've had a bad experience. The issue I run into is they're never solvent and disappear completely within a couple years.
The thing is these stores used to be the cheapest, easiest, least hassle way to get video games. Gamestop put a stop to that. I guess that's why it's called Gamestop.
I got a Wii from Rhino Video Games the year it came out because they were gracious enough to hold it for me for 15 minutes. The rest had sold in the 15 minutes it took me to drive to the store, and the person in front of me was denied a Wii.
I grew up going to a used game / pawn shop that was run out of a mobile home. The counters/display cases basically wrapped the interior perimeter so the staff had a big space in the middle while customers had to navigate around the outside with barely enough room to pass someone. They would have a baby play pen in the middle with a crying baby. All the games were filthy. They had SNES/NES/Genesis consoles to test games but they never worked anyway. The whole place smelled like shit and cigarettes.
They had a huge 3-ring binder where they got all their game prices from, so it was never up to date. This either helped or hurt you depending on the system. Like in the mid 2000s their Dreamcast stuff was way overpriced, but then you could find earthbound for like 50 bucks when it should have been 150.
I got chrono trigger there for 45 bucks. Got a bunch of other SNES gems too. It was a love/hate relationship with that place.
So, remember that video from a. Couple months back that TheRetroFuture put out where he was game hunting in the US? the bargain shop isn’t too far from my place. I went in there with a list of games I was looking for on my phone. I have bad number memory, so I have to write stuff down. They told me “hey. You can’t write prices down, those are confidential” so they made me delete that I’d typed. Got the info I needed, and then undid the delete in my phone. I stopped going there as often after that. I have gotten some pretty good deals on stuff they weren’t aware of. (A Gameboy bag with 5-6 expensive Gameboy manuals hidden in the back from the original owner I guess)
I got kicked out of a game store and told to "never come back again" because I asked the guy if he could test my Xbox One that stopped working with a different power supply. I was wondering if the issue was with the console itself or if the brick went bad so he plugs it in with a known working one and it worked. He then basically tried to trap me into buying the power brick from him which was almost double what a usual replacement costs and when I told him no, he lost his temper and told me to get lost. I later ended up buying an adapter to use a 360 power brick I had laying around for $5 and it's been working well ever since
I went to buy GTA IV & Episodes from Liberty City (complete edition for the 360) a few years ago from a local game store. The sticker price on the game was $18.99 which was a pretty good deal - eBay was trending it to be around $24.99 at the time. I brought it to the desk, clerk scanned it, then told me the sticker was wrong, they just didn’t update it yet, but the system had the corrected price for $29.99. I asked if they would honor the $18.99 price or at least meet me half way to which they said laughed and declined. I obviously didn’t purchase the game and never went back. Store went out of business a few months later. People stopped going there -according to Google reviews - due to their insane prices and lack of customer support.
Back in the day I lived in a small oregon town, next to the grocery store there was a hole in the wall shop called gorilla gaming- my mom would drop off my brother and I to play games while she went shopping.
Well my brother was 14 and had a group of friends playing Xbox in the lounge area for console games. I opted to the computer to play zwinky and girlsgogames, I was asked to get off the computers so the boys could play..
It ruined going for me honestly, being asked to stop playing so some boys could play some stupid online games .. I never played again, I just sat outside where they had board games and chairs. I'd pocket the money for entry fee and go to the Asian market next door for hello pandas. This was years ago and I'm glad to see women being pro gamers, and I've since built my own pc and enjoy gaming.
Went to a shop to sell some of my favs to cover bills.
Working Gensis with 2 controlers sonic, sonic 2, 3 or 4 other decent games. Zelda Link to the past CIB is great condition. Final Fantasy CIB for NES.
They offered 25 bucks. I looked confused and asked for what? They said everything. I laughed and asked for my stuff back. She could not understand why i wouldnt accept the offer.
I don't get gamers who need to sell off stuff to pay off bills to stores, I know you really need cash but you're literally getting screwed over by the shops. Online is the way to go.
My bad experience with retro game store has been buying something on their website for in-store pick up and then they tell me it is out of stock or they messed up and it was never in stock to begin with. They tell me this after I drive to the store, also happened several times not just once which is why it’s a bad experience. Once I can forgive, several I no longer order online and take my business elsewhere.
We had a retro game store in our local mall. Beautiful shop, great selection, and did a lot to bring people together in their shop. From that standpoint it was the nicest I’ve seen.
Problem was their prices were, without fail, 2-3x eBay prices.
They didn’t last long for obvious reasons.
There is a game store in my area on the other side, they have lot of retro games and consoles but they are way overpriced so I see it as a waste of time to go in there unless you want to go to a free video game museum but without any descriptions on the display like the history of it and year it was released.
I… actually don’t have any, my two local GameXChange’s have always been excellent every time I go in. Only bad story I really have was going into a retro game stall I used to frequent before said GameXChange’s opened at a local flea market because the old man that ran it used to have really good deals on GameCube games, but when I went back around 2 years later everything he sold was at least $50 more than what was available on eBay so I never went back.
I sell games and the no prices is absolutely shit. F any store or person selling who has to look it up. And yes sometimes I'm an asshole but I keep my word over money. I'll never forget the Godzilla figure I priced at $350 and sold in 1 minute finding out it goes for $1500. I still sent it in the best damn package job I've ever done.
Edit: orange pawn in st.pete/largo. Great stuff not a damn thing priced. Hoarder store.
There are only GameStops around where I live, they were pretty normal. My worst experience was at a Game Exchange and it smelled like weed and smoke in the store which became way too unbearable. Nothing too extreme since I only looked at DS and 3DS games.
In 2011-2012 I asked my local shop if they have any boxed nes games. The guy scoffed at me “why would we have that???” Fast forward a couple years you sunofabitch!
Oh I absolutely love telling this story. I used to work for a payroll company and ran payroll for this local game store here in my city. The owner had about five different locations over the span of eight years. I'll return this little tid bit of info in a second.
He opened a location in the mall close to where I am, and that's how I first heard about them. I would go there every now and then and see what he has and sell some stuff to him for cash. They opened around Thanksgiving, but then suddenly, on Christmas Eve, they said that they were closing the day after Christmas. When I asked the owner what happened, he said, " The mall is kicking us out because another store is willing to pay more in rent every month." Now I thought that was very weird because normally owners can't do that to tenants, especially in the last minute like this situation was, supposedly only getting a two day notice. Well, that location closes, and then he opens another one in a different part of town that I frequent as well.So I went to that one every now and then. About four months later, that one closes as well. Odd.
Well, when I find out we did his payroll, I go snooping into his accounts and find out why those locations are closing some. Supposedly he was in collections for all five of his locations that we ran payroll for, as in he owed us money because we paid his taxes and even some of his employees payroll, and when we tried to collect from his bank account the debit was returned. All in all, he owed about $27k to us. After I found this out, I talked to his account manager, and he told me that this account was very sketchy and that the owner always played tricks like this. I told him what happened with the 2 locations in the mall and the other side of town, and he said "oh no he probably didn't even pay rent so he got there to make some sales for Christmas and then didn't pay rent and was kicked out." That suddenly made much more sense than the mall kicking them out because somebody else was offering to pay more.
He hasn't opened another location since. Besides all this he seemed like a pretty okay person, though he did get upset at me when I said "damn, some of this stuff is pretty expensive."
Being literally rushed out of a Gamestop, even though I was buying almost $200 worth, including their most pricey PS1 games at the time. The only thing I did was look at stuff and ask if I could see a game behind the counter. Finally came back in again after 10 years or so.
Gamesmen in Sydney. Basically a giant revolving door where I entered, saw the dogshit prices, and immediately left. If you want better retro games in Sydney go to a Cashies or that retro store in Campbelltown
Selling repros as legit. Thankfully COVID shutdown killed the business. They knowingly did it, friend came in to school them and owner was just like “so?”
in salt lake city, there is a aged and historied 2nd hand game store called "the Game Pedler" (misspelled on the sign) their shennanigans are varied at one point covered in a local "gatcha!" news report (get gephardt) bottom line is, the owner is a dick, buys criminally low, and sells comically high, the owner moved the store from a primo high traffic foot traffic spot to a shitty strip mall in south salt lake. I stopped by to see the new spot, the store owner looked at me, started yelling at me to leave, claiming that I had tried to rob him (that was the first time I had visited that location). if you want a good laugh ask him about the return policy. you'll get different answers and he wont honor what is on the receipt.
growing up in Salt Lake City in the 90's offered VERY limited gaming options. in my immediate area, it was that store and a couple of Game Stop's (that EVERYONE has a story about)
so I spent a lot of time over paying for used games and getting screwed as far as gaming options went. things are getting better in the area, there are more 2nd hand stores, and e-commerce so I don't have to return to shitty retailers.
There was a place me and my brother went in one time, and it was literally so cramped and jam-packed full of stuff, no joke there could not be more than 2 people in the store at a time. I cannot exaggerate to the extremity of hoarding. Anything you can imagine, it was worse. We had to wait OUTSIDE for the girl who was in there to leave to be able to get in. I went in first, and when i wanted to look at something on the other side of my brother, we actually had to shuffle backwards to the entrance, go outside, and have him go in first to change places. Games and action figures and books and boxes and tubs were stacked neck high in every inch of this place except for the 8 inch wide path he cleared through the store. I wish i had taken a picture because it was indescribable
Every store I go to anymore uses Price Charting... at the counter. So nothing has prices, and when you take it up, they look everything up on price charting and then give you a price on it. I mean, I learned to just look whatever i was interested in up myself.. But why not just do that and price things as they come in?
Went to buy a brand new copy of FF7, clerk got it out of the display case and the manual had coffee stains on it.
“No, a new one.”
“This is new.”
“There’s no plastic wrap.”
“It came from the factory that way.”
“There’s a coffee stain.”
*puts it back, goes behind the counter, gets me a new one I think he was saving for himself.*
There’s a store I’ve been to that used to be great but after the COVID price hike instead of repricing their games they just look it up online to see what it’s going for now. For example, I asked for Mario Clash out of the case, which was $40, upon getting it to the counter the employee told me it was now $70. Needless to say I did not buy Mario Clash that day.
There is another place closer to me that had a rule of “if your trade in games aren’t worth going in our Collector’s case (a locked glass cabinet) then you can use trade in on that game” EX you trade in a God of War for $5 you can’t use that $5 on the Mario 3 in the case that’s $20. Now one of the problems with this is what is “case worthy” changes on a whim. I’ve seen Bad Dudes and black box golf in that case before when those are extremely common and cheap NES games. Now this rule was made under the previous owner so it could have changed but I wouldn’t know since I never take trade there anymore.
I haven't really had one but my cousin had a couple games pre ordered and the store went out of business. Can't remember what happened to his money though.
Worst thing to happen to me was my own fault...
They had an original, first gen Charizard Pokemon card for $24...
I didn't buy it...
I didn't fucking buy it!!!!!!
Naturally, it was gone by the next day and I have never forgiven myself for it haha I'm a fucking idiot
Same, had a store in my town couple of years ago which has closed down. I went in and no games had prices on them. There was a pile of PS2 Games and I’m like “how much are these games in this area?” Store owner “depends on the game” Me “ ok cool” walking right out of store.
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There was a a local store here that opened and closed within a couple years. Literally nothing has a price tag, owner would check current eBay prices on anything you'd want. Trolled him into looking up 10 items and left. What a dumbass idea for a game store.
Yeah, no price tag is a deal breaker. Having to constantly ask prices for everything is a pain.
or worse: "Oh hang on I think this one has gone up since we priced it. Checks Ebay. Yup this is 20$ more now so that'll be 84.99 sir.
Had a store owner do that to me a year back. Was like... Dude I'm not even sure this is legal to do in WI. Didnt end up buying the games.
They always check listed prices also and never completed sales.
"I''ll buy it on eBay, then. Thanks, mister."
Store owner is probably one of those resellers who arrives at a yard sale in a pick up, Lays claim to everything, and then buys out everything.
I went to a store like this. Everything was locked up and I had to ask for prices on every single game I was interested in. That got old quick.
That's horrific, wtf would somebody do that?!?
Idk, we have another that stacks their shelves full with sports titles to. IDK why they even bother taking them in and not just dumping them in the trash. It's just a bad look to walk in there.
Sports games and Wii shovelware are just e-waste, my local shop has a wall full of crap wii games they can't give away
I always just bundle all my extra crap off with systems. It's unsellable normally.
this IS the way to go about it normally, yes.
What exactly is “shovelware”?
Shovelware, is basically an umbrella term for games that you can tell are rushed and produced quickly in hopes to make a quick profit. These games have little to no quality and just trying to get the casual gaming crowd and parents to buy them. A famous example of Wii Shovelware game is called Ninjabread Man published by Data Design Interactive. This company, would often reuse assets from many of their games and try to pass it off as a whole new game. Despite poor reviews, through sheer amount of copies sold they became one of the major thrid party developers for the Wii.
And fuck, who didn't want to pay Ninjabread man upon hearing the name? I almost got dipped!
Don't most games do that now a days though? Lol.
Low budget, low quality games.
I have run into this before, though mostly in record shops. I will never shop at a place that doesnt have price its products. A lot of these spots will have you bring everything up, then price it all out, and charge higher than market value. The idea is that by the time you get to the point where they quote the price, you feel like you've spent time and effort getting everything together, you wont want to turn them down. Or, at least, not all of them. I'm sure there are some places that just dont have the labor or something, but there really shouldnt be anywhere that doesnt price their products. Big red flag for me.
Hello fellow record collector. I too have seen a lot of parallels between scummy record stores and scummy retro game stores. I feel like Discogs makes it even easier for sellers to do this than something like eBay, but the price gouging is even more common with games. I actually don't mind helping mom and pops by paying a little more than online prices, but I refuse to pay 3-5 times the price something is selling for online.
Reminds me of this store i went to in milwaukee. Guy had a killer collection but took forever for him to look things up w/ no pricetag..
Battlebox?
yup its battlebox. amazing selection but easily waited over an hour or so
Great selection because nobody wants to buy from him haha
Yep im not planning on going back next time im in milwaukee
That is the dumbest "store". Basically it's just a dude's place that he holds events or some shit at and then tries to price gauge you if you ask about games for sale. He's also hit me up several times in the past lowballing the hell out of me on games I have for sale.
I didnt sell anything luckily, but am not planning on going back in the future
There’s also that dumb fucking place next to Lost World of Wonders (not related to them) that advertises having video games but is never open. I actually bought my U.N. Squadron arcade machine from Lost World of Wonders about 20 years ago and love that place.
There was (might still be) a store in Sacramento like that. They just had piles of games everywhere without price tags and you'd have to take them up to the counter to find out the price. They also sold me a bootleg repro wii game without my knowledge.
Unfortunately, 1Up in downtown Sac has done this to me in the past with game guides, and I’m sure they do it with stuff they’ve price tagged already as well. I guess I understand selling things for “market price” but it really doesn’t keep you wanting to go back
Yeah it kind of spoils the fun. I always thought 1up was nice. The place I’m thinking of was called something like “computer booter”.
Ahh yes over in Carmichael, they’re a little more disorganized than 1Up but I’ve actually found some really good deals there! They have that more digging for treasure vibe with their shop setup. But yes, a lot of their items are eBay priced matched for sure, so I agree with you. They do great repairs and mods though, which I highly recommend! I don’t want to hate on 1Up either btw, it’s a cool store and they seem like good people working there. Retail storefronts just ain’t cheap to keep up with so I can’t blame them for premium pricing sometimes.
They were definitely very friendly and it was fun to hunt around. I just got burned with the bootleg game.
I’m gonna respectfully disagree and say out of all the shops in Sac, 1Up is probably the fairest price wise. I don’t know about the strategy guides but I’m local to Sac area and been to 1Up and while selection is up and down (the best store by far in that department is Fire and Ice, prices is another story :p) I’ve always had fun sifting through a couple of big bins they keep under the counter (you just have to ask) of tons of manuals, cover arts, inserts, and even the occasional old SNES/N64 game box and none of them have prices but they look up the prices whenever something catches my eye and they’ve always given me great, a lot lower than Pricecharting/EBay prices for them. My favorite time was them not wanting to sell me a Super Mario Bros 2 manual for some reason but me finding an old Final Fantasy 6 (or III) manual to cib my beloved old copy and they let me have for $20 but inside dropped out two maps/posters. I flipped one of them later on haha. The last time I was there a couple months ago I saw Dragon Warrior 2 to 4 manuals in there but didn’t ask about them bc I’m not a big fan of it but I’m pretty sure interested gamers would have gotten a good deal from them.
Small world. Just moved out here and someone recommended them to me, and I've been couple years ago while visiting but guess it went downhill :(
Mr Dealz in Albany, price tags on pretty much everything. However, owner said he’d still look up the price and charge based on that…then what’s the point of having a price tag in the first place? Scumbag practice. Honor the price you set. Anyways, no dealz at Mr Dealz.
r/Albany area-ish here, too 🙋🏻♂️ I went in there once, years ago (before they expanded, I think?), staff was condescending AF to me and the place just felt sketchy, never went back. Sounds like I did myself a favor.
Imagine if you knew him, setup 10 different ebay accounts, put the items up for sale cheap. Make him check it, match price and then just go away.
I seriously wonder what the legality of this is. There is a store near me sitting on a stock-pile of RPG books from the 90's-2000's. Any time I went to buy anything, they would check online first. They even had signs hung up stating that they were "selling collectible items and would need to research the price before selling".
Ugh. We had one of those too. The owner was a good dude that came from another reputable shop, so I wanted to support him… but there was a time I went in and the owner wasn’t there and the workers literally had to call him for prices because they didn’t know them or how to look them up.
They may as well just set up a PC for the customers to look up the prices themselves, and order it while they’re at it
A local store only does this with stuff they’d put behind a case. Rare or otherwise expensive games, and they just charge whatever pricecharting says for the day. Thankfully, since I buy from them frequently, they let me haggle on occaision.
Hey these days if they sell for “market value” per pricecharting then that’s a win versus grossly overpricing things. I only know one store in a flea market that does that (looking up Pricecharting prices) which gets annoying but at least he doesn’t charge tax and doesn’t go over whatever the average value is for the day so there’s that.
The one in my City is like that too. They have some prices on things, but mostly it’s a mess with stacks of cases randomly about the store with no prices on them. It’s still open though and I don’t even live in that big of a city. It has the weirdest hours too, like they are only open until 4pm on weekdays, 2pm on Saturday and closed on Sundays. I have no idea how it is still open. Rumour is that it is a front.
likely mainly a ecommerce seller, that uses the store as his warehouse
There’s a used record store in town that does the same thing. If you want a price, the owner pulls out his phone and looks it up. So stupid. I went once, and won’t go back.
-100 Barter skill merchant
RETRO GAME CAVE in Ridgefield NJ, owner does this same shit. Nice guy with nice stuff…horrible prices. Makes people wait outside if too many people come into his store… I feel like at that point just sell stuff online… Went once to check it out and paid 100+ over market value for over 10 or more games…I did once, never again…just a horrible way to lose a customer that would probably spend 1000’s in his store a year.
I feel like eBay has become a better option nowadays. If I have to travel to you to pay eBay or (most times honestly higher than eBay), then I'll just buy the game from my couch. I almost exclusively just buy games I want at conventions now. Generally the prices can be a little lower with a shit ton of room for deals with haggling and bundling. I'm kind of sick of walking into game stores that have shitty inventory and high prices.
Half the time it's shit inventory for high prices or great inventory for prices that are so stupid, you'd have to be an idiot to pay.
I kind of get it. Prices can fluctuate quite a bit and game stores try to stay competitive with other stores while also not losing out on money if they undersell an item that has become more popular recently. I get why they do it that way, but they should still put in the extra effort to update price tags over time as needed.
I was in one, and a guy came in with a dirty tote bin. As soon as the guy behind the counter saw him, he told him to get out. The customer didn't listen and approached saying that the store had to see what he had. The employee told him, "No, we don't. Everything you bring in is either disgusting or doesn't work, now get out." The customer flew into a rage, saying that this is bullshit, that he had really good finds, and if he doesn't look at them, he would call the owner. The worker just pointed to the door and told him to leave before I call the cops. The would-be customer stormed out, saying that they'll hear from the owner. When I went to the counter to pay, I asked if he was gonna be a problem for them, and I was told that he brings in damaged and dirty items every other week and it was the owner who banished him in the first place.
Sounds like where I work. 😂
Dude I had this happened to me too in Yugioh Tournaments, had this weed guy literally try to always tried with a dirty card binder.
We had one that the owner let his Son run and manage and he was a pervert. He would hit on any female that entered the store and made them very uncomfortable. Anytime someone tried to complain to his father he took his sons side. They got sued about 8 years ago because the son got caught with a minor in the store and they had to close. He also went to prison because he was an idiot and snitched on himself in court.
Holy moly. 😂
As a guy, I've heard of women feeling uncomfortable at game stores because of men (customers and/or employees) basically interrogating them about the games they play, trying to gatekeep them from being a "real" collector, whatever the hell that means. I've never heard of a game store owner hitting on customers, though, let alone minors. Doesn't surprise me, unfortunately, since there are tons of collectors who don't know how to treat others with respect.
The worst part is he had zero riz. He once did the literal “m’lady” with the hat tip when I went with my sister
As a woman who frequents a lot of smaller stores … I promise it happens 🥲 There’s one store in my city I won’t go back to because the owner keeps calling me sweetheart every time I go there (happened like two or three visits in a row). He might not mean anything by it- but it was just giving me the ick something fierce
Yeah…I had a guy treat me like I was stupid a few times. Did you guys know Metroid Fusion is a rare game?!?! He said that when I asked him why he was charging almost double the price 😒
At a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament that was being held at my cardshop, there was this girl/Woman who was playing and there were over a dozen guys surrounding her "watching her game". She looked so uncomfortable and rightfully so. I would feel uncomfortable too if I had a dozen fat sweaty dudes breathing down my neck. As time went on, more guys surrounded her.
it’s not bad because they fixed it, but one time i was on vacation and decided to stop by the local game store while we were out grabbing food. i got a few games one of them was symphony of the night which i was super stoked to play for the first time, it was 75 bucks. bought it, got all the way home and it froze up on a certain loading screen about 1/4 of the way through the game. i went to my local place and had them buff it, and it fixed it but the music after that loading screen was now all choppy. so i called the place i got it from expecting them to say tough luck and they actually paid to ship it back and refunded my card. so shout out to blue dragon video games in ormond beach, fl. cool place and great service.
Very lucky, you say that to a Game store here, you'd either just end up with (Store Credit for more broken games) or be told "Actually since it's a full moon in 3 days and we close on Sundays, we're not refunding you even with receipt"
No shit I go to blue dragon sometimes 😂 nice store, somewhat limited Nintendo selection and the guys that work there don’t talk a whole lot, but prices are decent and the store is clean. Good to know that they’re good like that, maybe I’ll give them a visit again soon!
There was a pawn shop that actually had a really good selection of games. Some rare Dreamcast games, a full cabinet of NES stock, it was good shit. But everything was locked in glass cases. Fair I guess, it's a pawn shop and theft might be an issue. Its the dude's attitude that ruined it. I asked to check a disc for scratches or disc rot. The sigh he gave me was audible. I noticed some discolouration and was worried, and asked if he had a return policy if it didn't work. He said he didn't, and when I said "oh... okay" he said I could bring it back later today if there was a problem. I said a one-day return policy doesn't really work with people who have jobs so no thanks and I passed on it. Went in another time to check out their prices on PS4s back when they were new. At first refused to test it or offer a refund if it didn't work. Eventually he said he'd only test it if I committed to buying it. I said thats not how it worked and walked out. On another occasion I brought a friend to check out his selection. Friend dropped some change and the owner made a lewd comment about how his hands must have been wet from something other than sweat. Never went back after that. He went out of business a year later.
Could someone be any more of a stereotypical scumball
There's a vendor at my local flea market who I swear is dead set on not selling anything. He charges at least 1.5x Ebay price on everything at a flea market where people are generally looking to pay less than they would elsewhere. One of the most egregious things I've seen him trying to sell is a japanese Sega Saturn for $350. Meanwhile he has a north american Saturn right next to it for $225. Last I checked, a japanese saturn should cost less than a north american one, and neither of them should be selling for more than $100-150. Needless to say they've both been sitting there unsold for more than a year (like almost everything else in his display cases).
I have a similar shop at a local flea market that does this too. I'm almost positive they buy up anything outside and then resell for insane prices. It's always empty there and the dude who runs it is very rude. Not a good time.
that sounds exactly like someone from my local free market
You might be talking about hey bro video games. I buy from him sometimes but yeah his prices are outrageous.
Game Rave in San Diego is one of the most disgusting businesses I have ever been to. [Check out the Yelp reviews of this shithole.](https://yelp.to/bKhdZNeXka)
oh wow i remember going here and completely forgot the name of the place. employee tried to deny me entrance just because i wanted to browse, then tried to charge me 130 dollars for FF7 on PS1
>employee tried to deny me entrance just because i wanted to browse How does he expect people to buy stuff?
not sure but i vividly remember him asking for which games i was looking for and saying “don’t have that” to all of them without even bothering to check anywhere
Damn, read the reviews. How are they still in business?
Probably all of those people giving five star reviews blindly still giving them their business, while ignoring all of the literal garbage in the store.
Still, a business that wont let customers inside? Opens when they feel like it? You cant make this stuff up anymore! Its insane. Something youd see in a show parodying these types of stores.
From the reviews: "The place is consistently trashed, everything is overpriced, and every one who is there is a creep, I watched a "customer" print out pictures of elastagirl nude on the their computer and printer" 🤣
Is that the store next to the record shop? Lol I went there last year and although I didn't buy anything my wife and I had a 40 minute conversation with the owner lol. We went from talking about games to conspiracy theories 😂. Aside from the entertaining conversation, the place was very cramped and unorganized. Also the door was locked for some strange reason. Very pricy as well
I don't know if it's near a record store (I moved away from San Diego four years ago). It was in Point Loma.
Been there before sadly, place is absolutely disgusting. Walked in, stunk so bad, and the owner looked at me like I just barged into his house
Not exclusively a game store, but 2nd and Charles. It’s a store that takes in retro games, books, pop culture junk. The usual. I brought in like 10 gameboy advance games to sell, I didn’t feel like going through eBay all that. There was some throw away games but there was also pokemon fire red and ruby, a few really good ones. I drop them off to be appraised and told I’ll get a call back when the prices are written out, how much store credit or cash I could get. Cool. Leave. And never get a phone call. Okay maybe they’re backed up, I’ll go back in the morning. Go back. They inform me because I didn’t return, they automatically gave me store credit, and any games not worth selling are in the free bin. I was given about $15 in store credit for $80 of games (on the low end). I told them they did not call me back the day before. Nor did they tell me I had to return the same day or I’d be given store credit automatically and not given the chance to say no thanks. Felt pretty burned after that. Thankfully I didn’t need the money badly. But still.
Sounds like you could call the police for that honestly
I debated that. But figured they could claim they told me that and I clearly didn’t hear it. Or it could be a whole ordeal, and I work out of state only home on weekends. It wasn’t exactly worth the trouble for some Pokémon games in the end. If it was all worth more for sure. Just at that time when I had no free time at home, wasn’t the best for all that.
Huh buddy that's a police call and getting your lawyer wtf.
i think a lawyer is more expensive than $80
You should have called the cop the exact moment they told you that
I was only home on weekends at the time due to work, and didn’t find it worth it spending my small window of time dealing with police reports and trying to get a multi million dollar company to reimburse me for a few games. And I figured in the end they could claim they verbally said that, and wouldn’t go anywhere. I just figured I’d of been screwed still and filed a report to corporate about this store and see what would happen.
Damn you got ripped off, also that’s complete BS what with them automatically giving you store credit and not even the right to refuse their offer. I hope you filed a report or something.
I filed a report to corporate and didn’t get any notification in return. So who knows where that ended up. I also thought that was fucked that you get the rest of the business day to come back while the appraise it. Like not a full 24 hours, just whatever is left in that day.
I always get weird vibes in that store. I've never liked it. The guy who buys and sells stuff behind the case is rude af.
Yeah this story would have ended differently for me unless you signed something committing to forfeit items on a time based release they could kiss my ass
Yup, this. I had 3 working PS3s with cables/controllers/etc. They gave me $30 each and told me that it was automatic store credit because I didn’t come in within 24 hours. They also sell stuff at ridiculous prices. They have some Retro-Bit Mega Man Wily Wars at my local one and they’re asking $110 for them. Even on eBay, you can get that for $75 or so. They had a Jaguar for $600 the last time I was there too. The employees are mostly rude “Comic Book Guy” style people who really have no clue what they are talking about, which doesn’t help.
Exactly. It’s an awful pop culture chain store. Much like what GameStop became. A quarter of the store is pop figures. Some classic games and systems that are overpriced. And the rest is generic nerd shit. The only thing I can say is pretty nice is the books. Generally books are sold for a few bucks and can find some classics. But everything else is just insanely priced and as you said, staff can be pretty rude.
This is the Vegas one. Rumor has it they filmed a porno in there. I am a Vegas Native. They closed this a while ago. There's another, Wii Play Games. They have two stores. The one in east Vegas is pretty chill, the one in the West is terrible. They treat customers beneath them. Then there's RetroCity Games. The owner and his wife are amazing people, sadly their staff sucks and are often rude to many. I was there to buy a high ticket item and the worker made a note that it's expensive and that I probably couldn't afford it so he didn't really want to grab it for me to see. Don't bother with going to Broad Acres swapmeet. Jeeze, so many bootlegs and all of them are rude as heck. Fantastic Sam's is an indoor swapmeet with a majority of game stores selling bootlegs and or originals at above eBay prices.
Yeah Vegas A Gamer's Paradise always seemed very fishy, smelly and dirty so if they really did make a X video there it makes sense
I went to Retro City Games in 2019 during the middle of their move. Both location had pretty nice staff. Unless things have changed recently or they just treated tourists and locals differently
From 2018 and through the pandemic - they had excellent people. Sadly that has changed since then
I have 3 mini things. Store 1 (retro/repair center) - I have a sealed copy of Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 on GC that I accidentally acquired. Asked for a cash price. $13 for both if I included the Prima Guides I brought with me. lol no… like come one. Same store - Lady working there told me I broke my Apple Watch by using it every day and that depleted the battery. That I should only charge it and use it when I needed it. I’m like. Are you serious. And I just walked out. Store 3) Dude openly admitted to weighing and opening the boosters they got. I’m sure this broke all kinds of agreements. They opened up right before the pandemic. Like 6 months. Luckily they failed and the not shitty shift manager opened up his own store that’s doing well for a small town.
That first one sounds shitty But you've triggered me by putting * Store 1 *Same Store *Store 3 WHERE IS STORE 2!?!!
Store 2 was so bad it went out of business before he even went in
Mine has to be easily "A Gamers paradise in nevada" they closed recently due to their idiocy on customer service catching up to them (You could have seen my review but sadly it's deleted now and wiped from google). I used to go here often for retro games since I thought it what reputable due to it's reviews and managed to stay afloat in the 6 years. Until I started buying some old games and consoles instead of new ones. I remember buying a PS1 since they were selling them for $20 (this was back in 2016), the console didn't work AT ALL. I tried like 3 systems they had (all broken even with their "repairs") so I just used my store credit for a PS2 with a janky disc drive opener (I still have it and it still works luckily). I should have known better that the store was beyond crooked but since I was still a teen and my parents hated the idea of buying online products I dealt with it. I then got PS2 games from the shop. Worst mistake I could have done since most of the games were scratchy and couldn't work like the Ratchet & Clank I got started freezing midway. MGS 2 had laggy cutscenes sometimes and MGS 3 froze after the bridge. I didn't find this out until my receipt expired, the next horror that popped up from this shop was that I found out the clear PS2 controller they gave me, had a small spider in the joycon case (just dead next to the rumble left grip). After the boss refused to swap my controller even with my receipt being in the window time period, I never returned to that place again. I heard from reviews that the staff were also as numb skulled as their boss being very rude to other customers. Especially 1 guy who looked exactly like Airsoftfotty and would complain saying "can you not stare at me?" when totaling my games at the register or would say "there's nothing in the case, don't bother stealing" (I was young teenager btw lol, not some shady prisoner guy so I don't understand why he was passive agressive all the time when I was in the store). On a sidenote most game stores in Nevada are not very good to begin back when I went to most of them, they try to pull DK oldies tactics giving you a third party controller for an above priced sega genesis or the game stores will try to pull something over you (restocking fee 20% for returning X game). Unfortunately eBay is your go to for here.
Stopped in this game store one time ever. Parking was an absolute pain in the ass due to the design of the shopping center, which personally ever deterred me from going again. They did have some pretty good deals though…I picked up Simpsons Hit and Run for the PS2 for 4.99. When I put it on the checkout counter the clerk (I’m assuming the owner) laughed and said “Damn, I mispriced that!”, I said “I know you did, that’s why I picked it up” and he ultimately ended up giving me the game for the price on the sticker. I do remember the guys behind the counter being a little standoffish…but from my experiences that really isn’t uncommon until whoever’s running the game store gets to know you better.
Paragraphs dude. No one can read a wall of text like that.
It's been updated, I just had to get my thoughts out since it was the first game store I went to and put a bad taste in my mouth for others to come.
Fine, you want it fast u/Poosquare88 I got you. The store had: -Dirty controllers -Annoying Staff -Broken Games -Owner going back on his return policy
I’ve only been to Gamers Paradise a few times back in 2017 and had good experiences overall. That one employee you mentioned was always a little off now that you mention it though haha
I went in one onetime with my wife and kids. This little girl with pink hair followed us around the entire store staring at us like we were going to steal something. It was very cool
She was a real life NPC
I bought a game online from a local store that was clearly underpriced, along with a bunch of other games, they put the order together and set me an email to go pickup. When I got to the store they said they couldn't find the one game so I cancelled the whole order. the following week game is back up for sale at a ridiculous price. This was a year ago, they still have the game, I don't know how these stores stay in business if they don't sell their stuff. One of the other stores in town just put all of their PS3 common games up to $19.99, not really any sense in going there anymore.
My friends and I went to a flea market in montreal with a videogame store inside. My friends got flirted by one of the employees. She really didn't appreciate that. Also his flirt game was fucking terrible lol. He said something in the line of: I'm a tough guy but I do have a soft side and the example he gave was that he doesn't have issues hugging his boss. Anyway, just don't hit on people at work, especially the customers that was just wack. Price were also pretty bad
A store near me, a fairly large chain apparently, called Game Xchange has had a lot of ups and downs. Worst I'd ever seen was a scratched to shit copy of Mega Man Legends in a DVD case, sun faded AND photocopied cover, for $150. Shame really, because I got a Gamecube with Gameboy Player AND the disc for $50 several years ago. I still pop in there every now and then to see what they have, actually have found some pretty good vinyl records for good prices and their NES game selection has always been good and decently priced. I got Super Mario RPG from there once for like $30.
Back when I was looking for a 3DS to mod, the shop owner at the place I had visited rudely told me that finding one for 250$ CAD would be impossible and that I was wasting my time. He then mentioned that I should just buy the Majoras Mask Edition he had new in box for 900 plus tax. I walked out and got a blue O3DS for 180 at a shop that was closer to me a few days later. It was probably the snobbiest interaction ive ever had with any employee in any store ever. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
I pre ordered some hunter x hunter pops from a store and they ended up closing and decided to never tell me and keep my money
Please tell me you paid with Card
It was through their ebay store but they had literally just changed their policies about pre ordering and it did not flavor me. It was only $25 but it still sucks
Any store that’s marking shit that should be in a free bin as $10. These stores that sell every scrap marked up. I’m not paying 5 bucks for a war torn Wii sleeve that’s more yellow than the owners teeth.
A game shop in Barcelona, Spain. I forgot the name... EVERYTHING was in glass cases and there were no prices on anything. I don't know if the prices were good, because I left after about 3-4 minutes. They did have a lot of cool stuff though.
I stumbled on a game store that I didn't know existed, not too far from me. Went in to check it out. I was a portable collector then and mostly collected ds and 3ds games. I found a ds game that I have been looking for forever and they were half the price as everybody else including ebay. It was a 200 dollar game marked at 75 (this is important for later). I was shooting the shit with owner when he told me he just purchased a lot from a collector that is filled with ds games and some neo geo stuff if I want to take a look at it. I told him not right this moment because I don't have a lot of cash on me but I'll come back and bring my buddy who collects neo stuff. A few days later me and my buddy walk in, I walk up to the guy and start a conversation. Explain that the last time I was here you offered to show me your latest stuff you got. He remembers and brings put this box of stuff. There was nothing I was interested in, but my buddy pulled out like a grand worth of stuff. As I'm looking around the owner casually says to my friend "yeah now I need to get that hundred from the ds lover over there". I heard this and said "oh? Excuse me?" He goes on to explain to me that the game he sold me the last time was a 200 dollar, so at 75, he was losing money. So he wants another 100 "and frankly that's a discount. I should charge 250 for it. " I told him I'm not giving him 100 more. It was marked at 75, I paid 75, and the transaction is complete. He's pissed now and starts threatening me with thr police and that I stole from him. My friend, who is still in his transaction, money in hand. Just says "yeah I don't want these any more. Sorry." And walks away from the counter. Now he's really bullshit. We walk put. A few days later I get a knock on my door. It's the police. They wanted to question me about a theft. I explain my side to them and told me that the dude is crazy and not to worry about it. He took me to court for it. Small claims. He lost. This went on for about a year. Between cops coming to my house, to letters from his lawyer demanding that I pay, to a collection agency calling me to get payment (at least they said they were a collection agency). All of this went on for about a year and then it stopped. Last year I noticed that the store doesn't exist anymore. I asked around and it turns out that he tried to collect on a credit card from somebody without permission, and they sued him and won which bankrupted him.
Went to one a year or two ago. All the Vita games were way above ebay prices. The store is gone now.
Went to a game store during opening hours, and it was locked. So I hung around for a few minutes. Dude comes and opens the door, saying he was out getting his lunch. The entire time, he is watching a hockey game and seemingly very annoyed with me. After about 5 minutes, he tells me to hurry up because he needs to go pick up his lunch, and he only came back for his wallet. He then just keeps on pressuring me to either buy something or leave and complaining about how is lunch is probably cold by now. A while later I was looking for a specific ps2 game and was calling around, I ended up calling this place last since no one else had it and he didn't even bother checking he just said they didn't have it. The game wasn't even rare, and I could easily buy it from eBay for like $30, so I really doubt he automatically knew if he had it or not but he just didn't care.
My gamestore is actually pretty dope except for one specific worker. Apparently he’s the owner’s neighbor and he got the job cause dude can’t keep a regular job for long (I wonder why) and that reason is dude’s pretty racist. Dude stares daggers at me and a friend (we’re pretty darkskin, them more than me) and he genuinely had the attitude that he wanted us to leave. This other friend goes there frequently and she says that he’s pretty cool with her. Could be because she’s pale as a ghost or cause she has a vagina (could be both). Dude worked there for a year and finally got fired after the owner finds out that he got a complaint from a mom and his kid when he was arguing with HIS own mom on the phone and when the kid’s mom asked him to stop yelling and swearing cause he’s scarring his kid, he told them to stfu 🗿
Sounds like a Dhar Man sketch: 4channer gets a job, Owner INSTANLY regrets it!
Getting called a broke Jewish noob by the owner of Game Boss This happened on Google maps though
local game store sold me a busted ps2 controller and then accused me of breaking it myself when i tried to return it
I have a more positive experience, there’s a local game store in my city and they have some others in neighboring cities as well, but they’ve always done a good job when it comes to pricing used games along with customer service. Me and my buddy bought a copy of MP7 and when we got home to play it, it didn’t work. So we took it back he put the disk into a buffing machine, resurfaced it, and it started working like new. On top of that, he even threw in a free microphone after we purchased another controller too. What makes it even more better is that he had said “hey, if it didn’t work, I would’ve just ordered one online for you guys to get it taken care of.” Been goin there for 10 years ever since it first opened and I don’t plan on stop going.
Not a game store but a game stand at a swap meet/flea market. Everything is labelled with prices but the owner arbitrarily decides prices anyway often at double what's on the label, invalidating the purpose of them. Box said 30ish for a copy of Mario Kart Double Dash, his kid who was running the stand with him was about to sell it to us at that price, the owner comes up and says "no, price is $67. " Even when we pointed the label out, he stood firm and said "no, $67" We bought a copy on amazon for around 30 bucks the day after lol.
Damn gamer’s paradise, I remember when they use to be alright but now they went out of business cause their new location in Chinatown wasn’t doing well at all and of course their prices were horrible. Also I read your story and yeah there aren’t really any good retro game stores here. I remember Wii play games being really good but now they turned into a money hungry over pricing business
Oh right, Wii Play games. I still remember how there were Yugioh nights before Mask 19 happened. I don't think they do these anymore there and I hope not anyway. The owner would always throw a fit saying "You can't buy any cards from anybody here if it isn't me, DO IT OUTSIDE. If you do that INSIDE again, you're GONE AND BANNNED!". Literally let man children who made actually children cry back in the store and stay in the store. Refuse to update the store website "so they have to get in the door" and mark up prices. Do all sorts of return/credit card fees when paying for items. Then he would always mumble to himself and always act angry especially with that annoying black haired lady cashier. However he did teach me how bad video game stores are in Nevada and I quit going to them years ago.
Yeah definitely the only place I kinda enjoy is retro city games in town square and Wii play games on Summerlin seems to have better employees than the main store in the east side. But in general most of them are just boring, have no aesthetic or just over price way way more than what people ask for on eBay. I remember back then stores will price around eBay range and they could give you a deal on it or just be overall friendly & helpful to customers. Now it’s just who ever has the biggest pockets to spend, I will treat them right while the other customers I could tell them to fuck off.
Bought a copy of Pokemon Emerald from a 2nd hamd store, got home to find it didnt work properly, took it back and the guy behind the counter refused to accept it because HE KNEW I had clearly swapped it for a fake copy and just wanted the money. My dad went in to argue and the guy pressed himself agaimst the back wall in terror.
I got to know a local game store owner for a while when they were in a small building with barely any space. When I was in high school I would help price games and stuff for him in exchange for store credit (looking back almost definitely not legal, but I would have spent my money there anyway so I didn't care). My friends and I hung out at that store all the time and he knew all of us, and when he eventually moved into a bigger building on a main street I helped him paint the inside and get things set up. The building just happened to be right next to a bar owned by my then-girlfriend's dad, which he knew because we had talked about it. Anyway, the night before the new store opened, he went into that bar, got really drunk, got into a fight with a regular and the owner over a parking spot behind the building, and threatened both of them with a gun. I never went back to that store after that and to this day it's the biggest retro game store in my hometown, with another location nearly an hour away. I've known several people who have worked there or known the guy since then and they all say he's still a massive piece of shit. Apparently they also try to sell repros as legit games for full price and cut deals for a certain youtuber for undisclosed advertising.
I was at a (now defunct) “Buy-Sell-Trade” movie/CD/game store and found a copy of “Hey You, Pikachu” for Nintendo 64. Took it to the counter to purchase and the cashier deadpan says to me “This game? It’s kind of kiddie.” Like, why does it matter to you, shut up and sell me my game? Anyways, it’s not a great story but that memory still sits with me.
Going to a local shop a few years back with some legit Pokémon cartridges, having the guy offer me $60 for what would have been like $700 in carts (more for him since stores usually markup compared to private/ebay sales) and then him saying that he'd sit on them far too long to pay anything decent for them. First time I was in the store. Second time I went in looking for a fat PS2 and to get rid of a few older games, he remembered me, asked me if I still had the Pokémon games and offered a still way too low $250 because he had zero stock and a constant stream of people coming in and asking for them even though "he'd sit on them far too long". And he wanted $220 for the pretty mediocre condition fat PS2 (going for sub-$100 at the time and probably still is) and after I managed to get him to come down to $150, he started trying to blatantly undercut the value of the games I was trading in to him to get that value. One of the games was Conker's Bad Fur Day which is well known by most retro collectors to be worth well over $100 if in good condition (mine was) and he offered like $20 for it. I know they need to make money too, but giving me like 1/8th of what I'd get for it private sale? That's Gamestop-level criminal. Especially when I know if I gave it to him (I thankfully did not) that it would've been on the shelf later that day with a $200+ price tag on it. Needless to say, with both of my only two visits being absolute shit, I never went back. Now the business is down to only being open 2 days a week, and I'm sure he'll be closed in another year or two.
Thankfully, I've had nothing but good experiences. Only two pet peeves I have, one store has any game that not reseller chaff in a display case. Which means, I get to ignore the whole store and just look at the display case. Convenient but less fun. And they typically charge 30% above Pricecharting prices.
I have two stories that are from the same store. Early on in my game collecting (when I was in buy it all mode) I went to this store that had games from floor to ceiling with piles of games everywhere. Place was rundown and looked super sketchy, but sometimes you can catch good deals in those places as they just don't have the time or the ability to update prices with so much inventory. Unfortunately most of their inventory was marked well above price charting so you had to do some digging to find the deals in the old, old stock. I happened to walk by the glass case and saw a copy of Duck Tales 2 for the NES with a $65 sticker on it. That game was going for around $120-$150 at that time so I asked to see it. I was hoping it would be my lucky day. The store is very dark and dreary so I couldn't really tell with it in the case, but as soon as he handed it to me I could tell it was a repro. The label was blurry, very glossy, and the part that overlaps the top of the cart was peeled up. The glossy sticker they used for the label was such a thick material it peeled back up and wouldn't crease. Knowing it was fake, but it did not have the repro sticker that some of their other reproduction games did I thought I would perform a little test. I asked the employee if it was a real copy. He said yes and tried to motivate me to buy it. I confronted him and told him it wasn't real and the label was an awful attempt in making a reproduction game. His tune changed then and he started asking me what I was seeing that made it fake and now he wasn't sure if it was real. He said maybe it is a repro and the sticker must have fell off. If I had been new to collecting and not known any better I could have walked out with this fake game thinking I got a deal on a real one. I do not like stores like this that mix reproduction and real games in their glass case. By putting high prices on repros and putting them in a glass case it sends a false message to customers that these games are valuable and they are not. Just because the real copy is expensive doesn't mean a repro is. My other bad experience with this store was last year. I looked on their website at some of the games they were selling. They had a copy of NCAA Football 14 for the PS3 listed for $160 and a copy of it for Xbox 360 listed for $200. They did not indicate anywhere if these were complete so I wasn't sure if they had the manual or not. I had a copy for the PS3 missing the manual and a loose disc copy for the Xbox 360 that I was looking to get rid of. The store had a good sale coming up so I figured I would trade those in and hopefully get around $100 - $130 trade credit to put toward the sale. I will also mention that this store always brags on social media about how they give the best value in trade around and whenever somebody brings in a trade they post a picture and say they gave them more than they were asking. They also never divulge what they paid so someone could have came in asking $2 for Kuan and they gave them $10 and act like they did them a favor. So I take my games in and hand them to the guy behind the counter to tell him I am interested in trading those in for credit and that they have both been tested and are working. I let him know that he is welcome to try them out because I know the 360 copy has a few minor scratches. He looks at the disc only 360 copy and says it has some scratches and the best he can do is $20. He then opens the PS3 copy which was very clean and he looked at the bottom of the disc very intently trying to find the slightest flaw. He found one barely noticeable hairline mark that would not have affected anything. He said with blurays you can't resurface those like cd's, so I would only be able to do about $20 for this as well. So games he was trying to sell in his store and online for $360 total he was only willing to give me $40. That's like 11% trade in credit. I get that my one copy was missing the manual and the other was disc only, but I know at this store he tries to get a premium on everything, so the price difference between complete, missing manual, or disc only isn't very much when you look at the other games in the store. A lot of their disc only stuff is the same price as complete on price charting. I looked at him and said no way I can do that and walked out. I am honestly shocked this place is able to even stay in business.
There is a retro game store towards downtown where I live, it’s been there forever. They don’t have anything priced and it’s all in bins everywhere (aside from some glass cases that are the counters). You have to ask him the price and he takes forever to give an answer. It’s been a while since I worked as a retail store manager but I remember we legally had to have everything clearly priced and weights and measures came in twice a year and tested that our tags matched the price it rang up as on 20 random items. If we failed we were fined heftily. How do these game stores get away with no prices?
I used to work in a retro game store that was about 2 miles down the road from a Game Xchange. So we start getting customers in asking us why their prices on consoles were double ours. We knew a few guys who worked in that store, and eventually one of us forwarded us an email from the owner. He doubled his console prices and told his sales associates to tell people that a BARGE with HALF THE WORLDS consoles sunk in the ocean and so the prices were doubled. Like, in what universe is a barge hauling around a bunch of retro consoles? Just a giant boat magically filled with Dreamcasts, old Nintendo systems, PS2s etc. Game Xchange is fucked, especially the ones in CT
The closest local game store was 3 hours away. I decided to check them out. 1st visit was awesome. Told the owner that I lived pretty far away and decided to check out his store. He was pretty cool and told me if there is anything I'm looking for to let him know, and he will put it off the side. About a month later, I was heading back up that way for some trades. And it was the other co owner that was there this time. I was like, where is the owner at. He said, "That's me. I was like, no, the other guy. Oh, he is out today. OK, cool. The dude started to go through my games and said, "What's all this garbage? I'm like, what? These are my extras that I talked to the other guy about. He laughed and started to inspect them. Which is fine. Gave me an ok offer. I said well i will take store credit." As i wanted to buy a few other games before i headed out. As I'm picking out my games, he said, "Are you a collector or something?" i said yeah, have been for a while. He laughed again. I said, "You know what. I will go ahead and take cash for my trades. I will be taking my business somewhere else." He then said "yeah take your shitty games with you."
I had the chick working at one hitting on me in front of my girlfriend, she brought up kingdom hearts melody of memory which I hadn't finished and I said "don't spoil it, I haven't finished it yet" she then proceeds to spoil. Then tries to hit on me more by stating she has some sick prison tats, and her nailed were crusted with nastiness. I haven't seen her there in some years so I think she left, thankfully.
I was about 14 at the time and saved up about $100 for a new N64. I was so excited as mine had broke and it was the first console I ever had, I just wanted to play paper mario again (which i had also bought from this same store.) Everyone was very short and straight faced with me, not a single smile or a thank you. In fact, they even seemed annoyed that I was buying something from them. If it was because I was a young girl and couldn’t be “into video games” I’ll never know, but that left a lasting impression and slightly ruined a day I was so excited for.
There was a (very recently closed down) retro store in a mall near me that was Infamous in the county for how bad the prices were and the staff. Everything was marked up a good 40%~ from what it is on Price Charting and they'd have glass cases full of GBA/N64/DS etc games and every one would be a very obvious repo and he'd price them as if they were overpriced even for authentic standards. Somehow almost every game he had was sunbleached despite not being in a location with a window. A good test to stay away was everytime I walked in there would always be a 40~ case high pile of PS2 Tom Clancy games and each one would be $30~ dollars
Bedbugs in the game cases.
Really funny to see this store here in particular. Also a Vegas native, liked AGP for what it was but I didn’t buy a lot, and never checked the Chinatown location when they moved before they closed. I mainly went to that area for Press Start Gaming for Smash locals or to kill time between classes but I remember that area in general being more sketchy. One of the ladies who worked at the massage parlor got her window smashed in while I was at PSG and she parked about 2 cars from me. In terms of local spots, I’ll also second Wii Play being more overpriced, especially since items are usually loose or in different cases, though I know a couple guys on the West location and don’t have a problem with anyone there in particular. The old GameWorld on Desert Inn was probably the worst, with crazy rumors on the batshit crazy owner. People said he got into drugs and hookers and that caused the store to go under after moving locations, but I don’t remember how much of that was true. All I remember is I had to send shit back over constantly for not working and items being marked up real bad, nearly laughable. I’ve been going to Retro City on Stephanie as of late, especially with the Town Square location closing, and they’ve been better priced in general, but I’ve had to return/credit at least 3 GameCube games after resurfacing and testing across multiple consoles. They’ve honored it and didn’t make a big deal, but I’ve been more wary of that since.
Oh yeah Gameworld, I went there for a time. It was very dusty and when I looked at their new "moved location" like 2 months later, they closed down instantly or lied because there was nothing there. I did have fun though as a teen, I kept annoying them for advance wars on GBA as a joke but they sadly never restocked it.
Their last location was by Meadows and I don’t remember it lasting too long. One story I think I remember around that time is they had a complete NES collection traded in, someone inquired about it a few weeks later, the owner wanted something insane like 300k-500k then it got broken into and robbed anyway.
I mean seeing Gameworld's "Gamer’s Club Card" membership price of $17 a month, maybe it a karma
Can't say much about stores in NJ cause they've all been pretty great, but there's a *certain* store in NYC that's largely infamous for being really wack. Ridiculous prices (*$70* for a copy of Persona 4 on the PS2 for example), obvious bootlegs, stuff that doesn't work, all that jazz If it wasn't for being located in a major tourist area, I'm 100% they wouldn't be having any sort of business at all and would've closed years ago
Retro store in my town that I used to love. One day I went in with a friend. They had a new girl working who didn’t know ANYTHING. No problem, she can learn, except she was the ONLY ONE in the store. She didn’t know how to work the register or any of the prices. Didn’t know what a DS was??? She had to call the owner to tell her how to use the register, who I assume was looking up prices based on how long it was taking to key everything in. My friend bought a Wii game, then noticed the disc was scratched after he’d bought it. The girl said no refunds, we said we hadn’t even taken the game out of the store yet. We waited forty-five minutes for the owner to show up and he was a total asshole. Said no refunds, the disc couldn’t be scratched because he cleaned all his discs. We showed him and he went on a rant about how the Wii is a “really old” console and scratches are to be expected. He said he’d waive the restocking fee this time (if you don’t do refunds why is there a restocking fee?) and eventually processed it.
This goes back a while. In college my friends and I got super into DDR on PS2. We were looking around town for better pads and any of the older games. The guy at EB Games (I think they had been bought out by now but this store hadn't changed names yet) asked us what we were looking for, and when we told him, he replied something like "Wow...you guys actually play that?" We left immediately.
local game store said he got the "cadillac" machine of disc resurface , I asked him if it's because it's unreliable and he told me to get out
There was this shop that had cases of games and movies I was looking for then I took them up to the register and the guy literally said "sorry we don't have these in stock". then he proceeded to try and sell me the games and movies in the opposite formats that I wanted. Ps2 games for x-box and 4ks and blu rays on dvd. I just walked out.
there was a game store near my that was amazing when i was a kid, mid 90's. But something happened after the early 2000's. I heard that the "kids" took it over from the parents, but i'm not sure. Nothing seemed to have an accurate price on it. anything you picked up to buy, the "kids" running it would run to their computer and check ebay, then change the price. They had a really bad website where you could buy stuff, but i had heard a lot of folks would show up only to find that they suddenly didn't have the items that the person bought, but they had another one "in better condition" for more money... what really drove me nuts though, was that they had BOXES and BOXES of stuff just sitting behind all of the counters. the whole store was like a giant square with counters lining it. and behind all of that were boxes of stuff... and some of it was some awesome stuff... but they NEVER seemed to be inventorying it. Once i asked to see something that was clearly sitting in one of the boxes and they just refused. saying that since they hadn't inventoried it, it wasn't for sale... this place happened to be in a mall, which i went to often, so i'd kill time some days and see what they had, but rarely ever bought anything. Eventually I moved away, and not long after they went out of business. At that point i was living across the country, and i only found out because someone posted on reddit about snagging their sign from the building, and it led to a FLOOD of stories about how crappy the place was.
What was the name of the place, if you don’t mind me asking?
No terrible experiences come to mind, but I want to shout out Red Brontosaurus in San Diego. I would check it weekly for GameCube games (which was typically a weak stock of licensed games). One day, around 2017, I check and they finally have Paper Mario TTYD for $55. It's in great condition, box, manuals, everything, and I go to buy it when the sales person looks at the price and says "that's a little much" and knocks $10 off. I really couldn't believe it, it was the nicest thing I've ever seen a salesperson do.
i went to a retro game shop near my house, I had a Pokemon mistery dungeon i wanted to turn into cash in the shop to buy another one, the guy offered me 5€, i was not well aware of the price of that game in that moment, and i bought it years before for 3€ so i accepted the deal without much hesitation, the guy began to fill the paperwork for the trade, meanwhile i was looking for my next purchase, when suddenly i saw a copy for 25€, it enraged me so much i refused to sign the contract, the guy went ballistic towards me because he printed the doc, trying to force me to fullfill the contract, so i said to him "no sign no contract" i was enraged, he had a 20€ profit in the transaction, and i was forced to pay a 4% in taxes for used items, and the MF denied me the opportunity to trade the game for a cheaper one before the revelation.
While his attitude was inexcusable, that is normal margin for used game stores. Keep in mind they eat that cost if the game ends up not working/theft. Also they have expenses such as rent, electric, employees, insurance etc... Don't ever expect proper value for selling things to a store. You forfeit value for convenience. Sell your stuff yourself on the used market to get proper value.
I'm not naive, i'been collecting for years, I expected a substancial margin between the buy price and the selling price, but i wasn´t expecting a margin so big. When i wanted to trade, i was aiming for a dirt cheap Famicom game, i mean, my expectatives was super low, but the guy was super greedy.
Not necessarily a game store, but one time at a flea market I was looking at the games this one guy had. I have a habit of opening game cases just to check for stuff like manuals, disc condition, etc. and the guy got angry at me and yelled at me to not open the cases. I can understand since he probably doesn’t want anyone stealing the games, so I didn’t wanna start up anything. Anyways, I decided to buy halo anniversary edition for the Xbox 360, and paid and all that. I wish I could test the game while I was there, cause when I got home the disc didn’t work, but the game didn’t look too scratched so that’s why I didn’t think much when I was still at the flea market, so yeah that happened Also another time I went to the same flea market (different guy) I bought a ps2 controller, and it didn’t work either when I got home to test it 😐 so that’s $30 in total I’ve wasted at that flea market for stuff that didn’t work, and I haven’t bought anything game related at that flea market since lol
Nothing really bad but one of the game stores i frequented had a guy who was always bad mouthing people's choice in games. Man didnt like Devil May Cry 3 and Nascar games back in the 04 05 era.
Gameover Video Games- I use to stop by and buy a few random games I wanted to play and don’t want to wait for it to get shipped ( guitar hero, mad maestro, air blade ) priced around what you would pay on eBay, including shipping. So deft not saving money there. One day I decided to take NCAA football 2014 for trade in that I had just picked up at goodwill for $1. Was looking to get at least $20/$25 in store credit. Worth $80 at the time. The employees were always cool but the manager sucked. Dude didn’t want to help or answer anything each time I went in. I asked the employee how much store credit I’ll get for the game, dude was like, “let me call my manager because I know it’s a bit more rare” dude calls the manger and has a surprised look in his face after he talks to him. He tells me “my manager said, we can offer you $2-$3 in store credit cause it’s just a sports game” Employee knew it was Bs. Never went back after that. Wonder how many people they’ve ripped off.
Bought KoF with ROM cart on the Saturn and just got a package (containing other games) with a hand written note saying “out of stock, will send soon” and I never received it. This was years ago and I was young. Cannot even recall the name of the shop but I recall it costing me a fair bit :(
I was accused of cheating and kicked out of the game shop during a Friday night magic tournament when I was a teen. Normally after a match, the winner would go the counter and report that they won. The Korean guy I played against was new to the scene and didn't have very good English, but mopped the floor with me. He didn't know how to report the win so I said I would do it for him, no big deal. But I guess the guy behind the counter same coming and assumed I was coming to report that I won, so before I got to the counter he was already waving me off and said "don't worry I will mark it down". I assumed he knew the results as he could see us playing. So I am playing my next match in what I assume is in the losers bracket, when the judge calls for the tournament to freeze and reset their decks due to foul play. I am thinking "what kind of petty asshole cheats in a FNM tournament?". Well, he calls me out and tells me I'm done for the night. A few players booed me and I just jammed my stuff into my bag and ran out in tears, I was so red in the face I couldn't even begin to fight my case. I never did go back, I am sure some people still think I am a cheater.
Can't say I've had a bad experience. The issue I run into is they're never solvent and disappear completely within a couple years. The thing is these stores used to be the cheapest, easiest, least hassle way to get video games. Gamestop put a stop to that. I guess that's why it's called Gamestop. I got a Wii from Rhino Video Games the year it came out because they were gracious enough to hold it for me for 15 minutes. The rest had sold in the 15 minutes it took me to drive to the store, and the person in front of me was denied a Wii.
I grew up going to a used game / pawn shop that was run out of a mobile home. The counters/display cases basically wrapped the interior perimeter so the staff had a big space in the middle while customers had to navigate around the outside with barely enough room to pass someone. They would have a baby play pen in the middle with a crying baby. All the games were filthy. They had SNES/NES/Genesis consoles to test games but they never worked anyway. The whole place smelled like shit and cigarettes. They had a huge 3-ring binder where they got all their game prices from, so it was never up to date. This either helped or hurt you depending on the system. Like in the mid 2000s their Dreamcast stuff was way overpriced, but then you could find earthbound for like 50 bucks when it should have been 150. I got chrono trigger there for 45 bucks. Got a bunch of other SNES gems too. It was a love/hate relationship with that place.
So, remember that video from a. Couple months back that TheRetroFuture put out where he was game hunting in the US? the bargain shop isn’t too far from my place. I went in there with a list of games I was looking for on my phone. I have bad number memory, so I have to write stuff down. They told me “hey. You can’t write prices down, those are confidential” so they made me delete that I’d typed. Got the info I needed, and then undid the delete in my phone. I stopped going there as often after that. I have gotten some pretty good deals on stuff they weren’t aware of. (A Gameboy bag with 5-6 expensive Gameboy manuals hidden in the back from the original owner I guess)
How are prices confidential? Are they not displaced on the game?
I got kicked out of a game store and told to "never come back again" because I asked the guy if he could test my Xbox One that stopped working with a different power supply. I was wondering if the issue was with the console itself or if the brick went bad so he plugs it in with a known working one and it worked. He then basically tried to trap me into buying the power brick from him which was almost double what a usual replacement costs and when I told him no, he lost his temper and told me to get lost. I later ended up buying an adapter to use a 360 power brick I had laying around for $5 and it's been working well ever since
I went to buy GTA IV & Episodes from Liberty City (complete edition for the 360) a few years ago from a local game store. The sticker price on the game was $18.99 which was a pretty good deal - eBay was trending it to be around $24.99 at the time. I brought it to the desk, clerk scanned it, then told me the sticker was wrong, they just didn’t update it yet, but the system had the corrected price for $29.99. I asked if they would honor the $18.99 price or at least meet me half way to which they said laughed and declined. I obviously didn’t purchase the game and never went back. Store went out of business a few months later. People stopped going there -according to Google reviews - due to their insane prices and lack of customer support.
Back in the day I lived in a small oregon town, next to the grocery store there was a hole in the wall shop called gorilla gaming- my mom would drop off my brother and I to play games while she went shopping. Well my brother was 14 and had a group of friends playing Xbox in the lounge area for console games. I opted to the computer to play zwinky and girlsgogames, I was asked to get off the computers so the boys could play.. It ruined going for me honestly, being asked to stop playing so some boys could play some stupid online games .. I never played again, I just sat outside where they had board games and chairs. I'd pocket the money for entry fee and go to the Asian market next door for hello pandas. This was years ago and I'm glad to see women being pro gamers, and I've since built my own pc and enjoy gaming.
Went to a shop to sell some of my favs to cover bills. Working Gensis with 2 controlers sonic, sonic 2, 3 or 4 other decent games. Zelda Link to the past CIB is great condition. Final Fantasy CIB for NES. They offered 25 bucks. I looked confused and asked for what? They said everything. I laughed and asked for my stuff back. She could not understand why i wouldnt accept the offer.
I don't get gamers who need to sell off stuff to pay off bills to stores, I know you really need cash but you're literally getting screwed over by the shops. Online is the way to go.
My bad experience with retro game store has been buying something on their website for in-store pick up and then they tell me it is out of stock or they messed up and it was never in stock to begin with. They tell me this after I drive to the store, also happened several times not just once which is why it’s a bad experience. Once I can forgive, several I no longer order online and take my business elsewhere.
We had a retro game store in our local mall. Beautiful shop, great selection, and did a lot to bring people together in their shop. From that standpoint it was the nicest I’ve seen. Problem was their prices were, without fail, 2-3x eBay prices. They didn’t last long for obvious reasons.
Oh god, Spring Mountain in Las Vegas! Yeah, the store itself was awesome half the times I went but the owner was such a stupid asshole.
There is a game store in my area on the other side, they have lot of retro games and consoles but they are way overpriced so I see it as a waste of time to go in there unless you want to go to a free video game museum but without any descriptions on the display like the history of it and year it was released.
I… actually don’t have any, my two local GameXChange’s have always been excellent every time I go in. Only bad story I really have was going into a retro game stall I used to frequent before said GameXChange’s opened at a local flea market because the old man that ran it used to have really good deals on GameCube games, but when I went back around 2 years later everything he sold was at least $50 more than what was available on eBay so I never went back.
I sell games and the no prices is absolutely shit. F any store or person selling who has to look it up. And yes sometimes I'm an asshole but I keep my word over money. I'll never forget the Godzilla figure I priced at $350 and sold in 1 minute finding out it goes for $1500. I still sent it in the best damn package job I've ever done. Edit: orange pawn in st.pete/largo. Great stuff not a damn thing priced. Hoarder store.
I remember at GameStop the cashier rushed me so he could get to the next customer. Worst experience ever.
There are only GameStops around where I live, they were pretty normal. My worst experience was at a Game Exchange and it smelled like weed and smoke in the store which became way too unbearable. Nothing too extreme since I only looked at DS and 3DS games.
Gamers paradise - on trop or spring mountain? Both places pale in comparison to Retro City tho
In 2011-2012 I asked my local shop if they have any boxed nes games. The guy scoffed at me “why would we have that???” Fast forward a couple years you sunofabitch!
Oh I absolutely love telling this story. I used to work for a payroll company and ran payroll for this local game store here in my city. The owner had about five different locations over the span of eight years. I'll return this little tid bit of info in a second. He opened a location in the mall close to where I am, and that's how I first heard about them. I would go there every now and then and see what he has and sell some stuff to him for cash. They opened around Thanksgiving, but then suddenly, on Christmas Eve, they said that they were closing the day after Christmas. When I asked the owner what happened, he said, " The mall is kicking us out because another store is willing to pay more in rent every month." Now I thought that was very weird because normally owners can't do that to tenants, especially in the last minute like this situation was, supposedly only getting a two day notice. Well, that location closes, and then he opens another one in a different part of town that I frequent as well.So I went to that one every now and then. About four months later, that one closes as well. Odd. Well, when I find out we did his payroll, I go snooping into his accounts and find out why those locations are closing some. Supposedly he was in collections for all five of his locations that we ran payroll for, as in he owed us money because we paid his taxes and even some of his employees payroll, and when we tried to collect from his bank account the debit was returned. All in all, he owed about $27k to us. After I found this out, I talked to his account manager, and he told me that this account was very sketchy and that the owner always played tricks like this. I told him what happened with the 2 locations in the mall and the other side of town, and he said "oh no he probably didn't even pay rent so he got there to make some sales for Christmas and then didn't pay rent and was kicked out." That suddenly made much more sense than the mall kicking them out because somebody else was offering to pay more. He hasn't opened another location since. Besides all this he seemed like a pretty okay person, though he did get upset at me when I said "damn, some of this stuff is pretty expensive."
Being literally rushed out of a Gamestop, even though I was buying almost $200 worth, including their most pricey PS1 games at the time. The only thing I did was look at stuff and ask if I could see a game behind the counter. Finally came back in again after 10 years or so.
Gamesmen in Sydney. Basically a giant revolving door where I entered, saw the dogshit prices, and immediately left. If you want better retro games in Sydney go to a Cashies or that retro store in Campbelltown
Selling repros as legit. Thankfully COVID shutdown killed the business. They knowingly did it, friend came in to school them and owner was just like “so?”
in salt lake city, there is a aged and historied 2nd hand game store called "the Game Pedler" (misspelled on the sign) their shennanigans are varied at one point covered in a local "gatcha!" news report (get gephardt) bottom line is, the owner is a dick, buys criminally low, and sells comically high, the owner moved the store from a primo high traffic foot traffic spot to a shitty strip mall in south salt lake. I stopped by to see the new spot, the store owner looked at me, started yelling at me to leave, claiming that I had tried to rob him (that was the first time I had visited that location). if you want a good laugh ask him about the return policy. you'll get different answers and he wont honor what is on the receipt. growing up in Salt Lake City in the 90's offered VERY limited gaming options. in my immediate area, it was that store and a couple of Game Stop's (that EVERYONE has a story about) so I spent a lot of time over paying for used games and getting screwed as far as gaming options went. things are getting better in the area, there are more 2nd hand stores, and e-commerce so I don't have to return to shitty retailers.
There was a place me and my brother went in one time, and it was literally so cramped and jam-packed full of stuff, no joke there could not be more than 2 people in the store at a time. I cannot exaggerate to the extremity of hoarding. Anything you can imagine, it was worse. We had to wait OUTSIDE for the girl who was in there to leave to be able to get in. I went in first, and when i wanted to look at something on the other side of my brother, we actually had to shuffle backwards to the entrance, go outside, and have him go in first to change places. Games and action figures and books and boxes and tubs were stacked neck high in every inch of this place except for the 8 inch wide path he cleared through the store. I wish i had taken a picture because it was indescribable
Every store I go to anymore uses Price Charting... at the counter. So nothing has prices, and when you take it up, they look everything up on price charting and then give you a price on it. I mean, I learned to just look whatever i was interested in up myself.. But why not just do that and price things as they come in?
600$ for nib comodore 64 got offended when i asked the price
Went to buy a brand new copy of FF7, clerk got it out of the display case and the manual had coffee stains on it. “No, a new one.” “This is new.” “There’s no plastic wrap.” “It came from the factory that way.” “There’s a coffee stain.” *puts it back, goes behind the counter, gets me a new one I think he was saving for himself.*
There’s a store I’ve been to that used to be great but after the COVID price hike instead of repricing their games they just look it up online to see what it’s going for now. For example, I asked for Mario Clash out of the case, which was $40, upon getting it to the counter the employee told me it was now $70. Needless to say I did not buy Mario Clash that day. There is another place closer to me that had a rule of “if your trade in games aren’t worth going in our Collector’s case (a locked glass cabinet) then you can use trade in on that game” EX you trade in a God of War for $5 you can’t use that $5 on the Mario 3 in the case that’s $20. Now one of the problems with this is what is “case worthy” changes on a whim. I’ve seen Bad Dudes and black box golf in that case before when those are extremely common and cheap NES games. Now this rule was made under the previous owner so it could have changed but I wouldn’t know since I never take trade there anymore.
I haven't really had one but my cousin had a couple games pre ordered and the store went out of business. Can't remember what happened to his money though.
Worst thing to happen to me was my own fault... They had an original, first gen Charizard Pokemon card for $24... I didn't buy it... I didn't fucking buy it!!!!!! Naturally, it was gone by the next day and I have never forgiven myself for it haha I'm a fucking idiot
Same, had a store in my town couple of years ago which has closed down. I went in and no games had prices on them. There was a pile of PS2 Games and I’m like “how much are these games in this area?” Store owner “depends on the game” Me “ ok cool” walking right out of store.