I was in unknown territory today, but as luck would have it there was a Good Will near by. The store didn’t have much in terms of games, but tucked behind a pair of Rock Band Drums was a sealed copy of Populous! Nice! The floating head on the cover always cracked me up…
Earlier this week, I stopped by a retro game store to see if they had anything come in that would catch my eye. Upon pulling up, the only thing that caught my eye was the sign in the picture you see above. “Game-A-Palooza” will no longer be open.
“Game-A-Palooza” actually started out as a PLAY-N-TRADE, opening in the fall of 2009. It was the first new retro game store to open up by me with a 15 minute travel distance. I bought a ton of used games from the store because there was a unique amount of rare and fun games coming in for VERY CHEAP. MUSHA for $2.99? Yes please! Nintendo Game and watch for under 5 bucks?! Hell yeah! Nester’s Funky Bowling for $3.99? Yup. The owners caught on to this whole retro crazy though and prices started to increase.
How much you ask? How about $39.99 for a copy of China Warrior for TG-16! I laughed at the thought of someone even paying that price for the game. Good games were drying up at that point though and the staff service started to get pretty poor, so it was off my “always visit” list. The owners must have figured out that they had a sinking ship on their hands as well, because they eventually sold the place to another couple. The staff complained that the original owners were never there and that they liked their new managers much better. Good for them!
Not so good for them was the name: “Game-A-Palooza” It sounds like an STD you can get by touching someone’s dirty game controller.
The first major let down with this store was that they were not accepting the Play N Trade discount card that the previous store had. I had a friend who renewed his card two weeks before the store owners changed hands and now he couldn’t use it. The second was that while their were new owners, certain members of the staff could still care less about doing their job. What led to the store closure though? Was it due to the economy or did something happen to the owners? We may never know, but I believe this is just the start of retro game stores making an exit across the States.
What comes up, must come down…
Swung by another used game store today and was able to snag a couple of decent Sega CD games for about 3 to 5 bucks a game. I’m pretty happy that I picked up Monkey Island and Dragon’s Lair, though I’m curious on how diminished the quality is on Dragon’s Lair…
Decent day of pick ups on my way to the doctor’s office today. I decided to stop by one of the biggest retro video game retailers out in my neck of the woods and it seems that he’s finally coming down on his prices. I’ve posted videos about his location in the past, but stopped after getting tired of hearing that his items were over priced from viewers. All his Genesis, SNES, NES and Game Boy titles were marked down by 50 percent! This store has a nice selection of sealed or complete in box games, so I decided to pick up a few:
I got almost all of these for 8 bucks or less which was pretty nice. The PS1 titles ended being cheaper then marked which is always nice. King’s Field 2 and G. Darius fetch a nice price on eBay for being factory sealed, so I came out like a winner with just those two games. Now if you want my honest opinion, I don’t think he’s lowering prices to compete with the rest of the retro game market, I think this is pretty much a sign that he’s calling it quits soon. After all, he’s been in the business for over 30 years.
Had to ship something out for work today, so I figured while I was out I would stop at the local Good Will again. My finds? Nothing as awesome as last week, but some decent pickups. I also had a Super Famicom game in the pile as well, but it didn’t boot up and I had to take it back.
Each was priced at $1.49. Nice!
In a continued effort to bring a diverse amount of content to the blog, I have decided to start a new little series called “Good Will Hunting”. Recently, a brand new Good Will store opened in my town and after visiting it for a second time, its pretty evident that some decent stuff is going to come into it on a semi regular basis. I think I may visit it twice a month or so, but every time I pick up something video game related; I’ll post my findings! Let’s begin:
I love boxed PC games. Especially when they are a $1.99 or less.
Today’s findings were quite nice actually! I picked up 7 different PC Games and all of them were boxed! All of them were priced at $1.99 or below. The games I picked up were Darkstone, Diablo, Quest for Glory V, Sim City 2000, X-Wing Alliance, Zork Nemesis and Nox. As of today, I’ve pretty much decided that PC games are a new area I can expand out my game collecting habits to, as I use to own a good chunk of them. I wish I still had my boxed Lucas Arts games…Out of the ones picked up, I’m excited to try Quest for Glory and X-Wing Alliance. Alliance is the only X-Wing game I never played in the series and I broke many a joystick with both the original X-Wing and Tie-Fighter. Ah, memories.
Last time I stopped in the store, they were selling an Atari 5800 with a few games and one controller. It was priced at $99.99 and I had very high doubts that it would sell at that price. The 5800 is one of the few consoles I don’t own, so I was interested in it at first glance. $99 bucks though? Hell no! During my visit today, I checked to see if the Atari was there and it didn’t see it. Hopefully it went down in price between my visits and some sucker didn’t drop that amount of cash on the console…