Anyone have any images of retail electronics departments in the 1990s?
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90s video game retailers
Anyone have any images of retail electronics departments in the 1990s?
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VGH...nostalgia for a time I cannot remember
Looks like a 2022 retro game store.
If you can’t remember big box pc games go back to Ganker zoomcel. JK but not really.
That store is also way too authentic to be some “retro bidya gaems” soishoppe.
I think there is a conspiracy. The same woman was in toys r us in 1999.
>pc games
Ew.
The oldest thing I can remember seeing in game stores is PSX games and accessories. Those were still on the shelves after the Dreamcast died.
>he doesn’t remember when pc gaming was magical either and is an out and out consoletard
stop talking.
Those Dreamcast launch day photos are apparently from my local mall (crossgates in guilderland ny). Pretty neat and slightly mind blowing. I think my mother ended up getting mine at Toys R Us in colonie.
You can view all of them here: http://www.videogameobsession.com/videogame/9-9-99/
The toys r us photos came be found here: https://archive.org/details/trunj9900/HANOVER-NJ-06.png
The only good retro PC games are doom and doom clones.
>“retro bidya gaems” soishoppe
>when im into retro games it's because im cool and authentic, when you're into retro games it's actually because you're weak and feminine
In my mind stores are still like that...it's just when I go to one, the timeline has oddly shifted.
I remember in mid/early 90s walking into what i believe was a chain of retailers owned and branded by Intel(i distinctlyremember their logo inside and outside). I remember a long rather then wide store, neon purple lighting inside, illuminating big box pc games along both walls as well as hardware. Id fricking kill to know if any pics of that place(s) are floating around to compare it to my distinctive memory of it. The one i went to was in south eastern Pennsylvania and would have been no later then 95.
Was it Software Etc. by chance? They had a neon purple theming.
Possibly, il have to look into it. I remember a lot of Intel branding, like more then just advertising, like a huge Intel logo behind the back counter so i had always assumed it was some kind of retail storefront for pc products that they operated.
Ok, no i doubt this was it, was this chain around during most of the 90s? This was definitely no later then 95, probably closer to 94 when i remembered it. Store also didn't have this EB Games style layout, it was literally like a hallway that stretched back, but wider, with games/pc hardware lined on the walls at the side and a counter at the far end from where you entered. I want to say it was somewhere around Philadelphia, not in the city, but the suburbs around it at a shopping center/near but not in a mall. Beyond that I just remember it being low lighting inside with a purple neon from displays and Intel branding. In some ways it reminds me of a modern Apple store, just not in shape, but kind of minimalist, "modern"(for the mid 90s) feel to it.
Many Software Etc. disappeared and became EB and they layouts were exactly the same if they occupied the same mall space. I went to a Software Etc locally that became an EB. The store was closed for a week, signage changed, employees rolled right over to EB. Also EB games was a later title for EB as they stopped selling Amigas, PCs and big PC components at point in time. My father bought an open box CDrom drive for our PC, from EB, he was going to order it from Tiger but we got the drive with an adlib card and a dozen games for the same price of the drive alone.
Are you thinking of CompUSA, anon?
Nope, i remember comp usa and this was not that. Looked nothing like a big box store, i can only compare it to the minimalist style of modern stuff like the Apple store or cell phone stores. Everything only on the two side walls, a single wide aisle from when you enter going all the way to the back of the store where the main counter was. It felt like it had a very trendy, 90s modern design to it instead of like a EB Games set up and it was all pc stuff only. I still have a strong feeling it was some kind of retail outfit made by Intel themselves. My dad would go there to get pc hardware. Only other thing i could think was it was a private buisness that just had a a lot of cash on them to go for that sleek design style.
we have to go back
Built my first computer from parts I got at CompUSA
I worked at a CompUSA right up until the crazy mexican guy that owned it closed the store. Thanks for the nostalgia. Was a weird job. If anyone cares AMA I guess.
tell some stories because we know you have some.
So unlike most other closeout companies CompUSA didn't actually go away because of lost sales(It was growing and doing enormous volume actually), the owner just sold it a few years before 2008. Everyone learned about it the day the liquidators showed up, they didn't even tell managers. I was Stock/warehouse because it was one of my first jobs ever. Which meant I was the work gopher. I'll greentext some weird shit I guess, so cont.
ok
>be me
>General Manager was a 60+-year old spanish(as in spain) man, total weirdo that owned a winery in Spain and shit, would gift wine to people in christmas, realized what was happening.
>For some reason, GM thinks I'm the hypest shit to walk through the door. Constantly tried to get me to bang/marry his daughters(I was interested but they weren't lmao, RIP for me.) for some reason.
>CompUSA sales people worked on a commission. This meant the sales people were lazy as shit and never wanted to do anything unless it was a high-commission item like a Tv/assembled computer/etc., which had 20-100 dollar commisions
>There's a commission for everything in the store though. Sell a printer? Get 2 bucks or whatever. Sell a video game? Get a dollar. Whoever sells the most product every month gets a four-day weekend where they 'pay' you eight hours of salary to take off. This is to lower salesmen numbers since friday is a big sale day.
>Help customers because it's easy when I'm on the floor stocking shelves and salespeople are constantly hiding behind the Tvs because they know black/spanish/poors won't be buying thousands of electronics.
>GM notices sales are up, but no one's claiming commissions. Realized what was happening when seeing me sell like 10 printers for the store while doing my daily shit around the floor. Have a butch warehouse manager that's one of those micromanage-types. Hates when I help customers even if it's part of my job and I get my shit done every day.
>tfw GM tells me I can get commission too. WH manager conveniently 'forgot' to tell me I do, while pocketing commissions for herself. Get a little ticker-tape machine, clip it to belt while working. Slap sticker on box when handing customer the item.
>TFW end up top sales person by volume and commission while collecting a salary. GM thinks this is hilarious, gives me the four day weekend.There's no one else besides me and WH manager for stock, so salespeople and WH manager have to do my job for four days. lmao
CompUSA used to have a tech support/tech repair area in their store. We had a bunch of Sikh dudes working in it. Some of the biggest bros I've ever met. I'd bring them stuff, they'd be working on people's laptops/PCs and laughing when they found porn or something weird(this was back when people were even dumber with the internet than they are now)
>One time they got a PC that was broken because it was just full of spiders. Like, thousands of spiders, most fried by the electronics.Had to carry it out to the dumpster, spiders in that shopping mall forever.
>One time they got a computer with drugs in it. Some little old grandma had dropped it off as a 'surprise' for her grandson by upgrading it.
>Hooked me up with free used parts for my PC since they knew I gamed.
I miss those Sikh bros.Nicest, calmest people I ever met dealing with screaming moron customers.
any more?
>suddenly and inexplicably remember RPs I used to do with a friend of mine over MSN Messenger
>I'd fantasize about working at a GameStop during the launch morning of Banjo-Kazooie or some shit
>I've tried to block out all the RPs I did with that guy from my memory
>pretty sure we basically cybered a few times
What was gaming like in the 90's? I was born at the tail end of the 90's so was never able to experience anything like the pics in the thread. The closest experience I have to stuff like this is going with my mom to blockbuster to rent Mischief Makers
The generational jumps between all the consoles were mind blowing up until the PS2 came out. Ps2 to ps3 was meh, and everything since has been meh.
My CompUSA is now a Harbor Freight (Ridgeland, MS)
I remember the Antec cases, and Macintosh section.
Is this EB Games in the early 90's? It looks like it
Babbage's.
Thanks, that makes more sense
KB Toys.
>See this pic
>Instantly recognize as a KB toys since I didn't notice the cashier at first
>Show it to my older brother
>Always assumed all this stuff closed down due to the digital age
>He explained to me how some company called Bain capital or whatever does leveraged buy-out bullshit with loans
>They killed KB, GT toys and Toys R Us like this.
There are some things I wish I never knew, this was one of them.
Thanks Romney.
Yup, it's a pump and dump scheme where you overleverage a company and then bail. The corporate raiding of the 1980s was the worst trend in the history of American business and we're still feeling the effects to this day.
KB toys keeping all the games behind the counter was so frustrating. I hated having to squint to look at stuff.
This was one annoying thing about Funcoland back in the day. All the carts were behind the counter in those generic Funcoland sleeves so you couldn't actually see what they had. Sometimes they'd give you a printout of their stock but lots of times you'd just have to stand there and ask them for a game. Then another game. And another. And it would be awkward since they would clearly get annoyed at checking for a half dozen games but it's not like there was any other way.
There seemed to be less corporate oversight in general back then. Different stores in a chain were often run entirely differently. It wasn't until the 2000s that you started getting a lot of top down directives that made everything uniform and robbed the personality from each location.
kb toys was based. got a bunch of dirt cheap nes rereleases there circa 96. mine closed around 2005 and they still had old genesis stock that i bought for the novelty of it.
looks exactly like my mall's babagge's in the early 90s
this anon knows
this one
is babbages for sure, likely in glendale gelleria, i know those walls.
Ah yes. Babbage's. The finest store I have ever visited.
My first real job. Loved working at Babbage's.
I can smell this picture
Imagine the smell.
I'll post a few
Is that 8bitfry?
Back when people still got excited about being photographed
wasnt no social media to tell us we were ugly
People were never excited about that
>ugh no I look terrible don't take a photo of me now
i know it's nothing special but to me this is an insanely comfy pic. love all the strat guides, some from even a few years ealier still sitting there, and that tiny anime section next to the door you can make out some kind of bubblegum crisis box set, and a Slayers box down low.
i wonder what the date exactly is, since it's clearly later 99 - he's got a Dreamcast shirt on so def past september, but it isn't like plastered all over the store.
The most conspicuous thing about that picture is the resolution. That girl would have been taking that picture with a 640x480 camera at best if the games on the shelf were current.
that was 2001 or later and there decent digital cameras and shit by that point. if somebody managed to fake that shot even with the old store in the background, id be impressed.
Could have been a traditional camera
Also could be a 3mp camera. I got my first high-res 3mp camera in 2000. Nikon Coolpix 990.
Schizophrenia much? The store has a PS2 section and the design of that front store behind her is clearly early 00s and not 90s. I’d say it’s a pic from 2002-2004 taken with a shitty digital camera that was the norm back then. I had one like that, I recognise the grainy look. Resolution matches up as well. She just pointed the camera at herself and took a photo. She is blurry because the camera was focusing on the background.
It’s photoshopped. You can see the feather effect at the edges of her body from when she was cut out from another photo. The lighting on her is also off compared to the retail light environment she’s in. The detail on her clothes is also more likely to have been picked up by a more modern digital camera. If this was taken with a traditional camera (disposable or otherwise) the focus would very likely be even as well, and there is a distinct blur on her and only her. A general noise or compression effect was used to blend her in. Not a bad shoop but the feathering will expose you every time. Look at the photo again and pay attention to what’s been listed here and you will see it’s dubious.
Where is this?
Looking at these pictures i imagine what it would feel like being transported there and how bizarre it would seem to walk around a world that doesn't exist anymore,like waking up from a bad dream.
I am honestly not sure, but it looks like a Sony store, maybe NY? Something like that
I feel bad for anyone who doesn't instantly recognize a Sony store, and it's pretty obvious, if you had any in your city
I still see places like this in my dreams sometimes. I miss it /vr/os
Not exactly the same, but maybe I could shed some light on your dreams.
Literally at least once every year for nearly 20 years, I've had a recurring dream:
I am in a toy store filled with Bionicles, and I get all the ones I want. I guess subconsciously, it is my true happy place, even if while I'm awake I fantasize about other happy places.
Everyone in the Bionicle fandom gets this dream, and it's just known as "the dream".
Last time, which was a few months ago, I was in some kind of storage facility where they had some leftover Bionicles that didn't sell.
Maybe it's not about owning the Bionicles (or owning the games in your case); there's no point to owning that many of the same thing. But it's about seeing them stocked. It's a reminder of the good times, when you could go to your favorite game/toy store (the happy place of just about every kid) and seeing all the things you ever wanted as a kid, and still being able to get those things for yourself.
Or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass and looking for an excuse to talk about my own dream. Idk.
damn bro, I've had those dreams for super nintendo
around 2010 when nobody even sold the games used anymore, I would dream I was in a store that had a full SNES section. It always looked like
You're definitely not alone, I've had "The Dream" multiple times (though oddly, it never included any sets past Metru Nui despite the fact I wasn't even into bionicle until Mahri)
Waking up was always the worst part of the day, and the entire rest of the day would be miserable until I forgot about the dream. Probably is just your brain trying to remember better, simpler times.
This has to be a sony store, I remember picking up some ps1 games insanely cheap in like 05 or 06
Very based, look at how it's a games console marketed towards trendy young adults instead of kids.
I disagree on that it looks like it's marketed towards young adults. The way I see it, this is marketed towards kids. Either way, I like it.
"Marketed towards young adults" makes me think of all the minimalistic crap they make these days, like Apple phones.
That's just the style of the era. The hyper sterile look of Apple and Ikea didn't take hold yet. Apple was still pushing their iMac to the odd mix of college students who needed a space efficient desktop and grandparents who just wanted to send emails.
That was sort of attempted with the CD-I but the PS1 is where it firmly found its footing. It makes sense if you think about it. Kids born in the early 70s and grew up with Atari were in their early 20s by then. It was the first batch of adults that were playing video games since childhood.
>Lunar: Silver Star Story on the shelf
nice!
That's what I was imagining, like bro, we got all these great choices and you pick blitz? It's fun I guess
holy frick look at his hairline bro he must be bald as shit now
She must have been hit on endlessly greasy nerd coworkers and customers.
How it should be, breasts or gtfo
Those Voodoo3 cards, I wanted them. They were unaffordable then, and now they are unobtainium.
Toys 'R Us used to upsell and increase their prices significantly because they were a specialized retailer. I remember the first 8 megabit (1MB) game on the Genesis was Strider, and they had it for $95.99, but it also bercame the GotY for EGM.
Yeah, prices were so much higher for games. They are now free and really inexpensive. I am jealous kids have it so much better now.
I paid $20 for that same game in the 90s. Ya should've waited like I did.
I think about this a lot when I see people in Physical Media threads getting mad about old games costing 40 bucks or something. Almost all games are worth less in real dollars then what I was paying at release, but for some reason the expectation is that all games should be dirt cheap.
Oh well.
It's because you used to be able to pick up this shit for like 3.99 in stores a year after release, or as used from shit like blocksbuster.
The problem isn't the retail price it's the used market being fricking shit because there's less places with people just hanging on to random-frick games in large volumes anymore. The only places left are target/walmart
>Toys 'R Us used to upsell and increase their prices significantly because they were a specialized retailer. I remember the first 8 megabit (1MB) game on the Genesis was Strider, and they had it for $95.99, but it also bercame the GotY for EGM.
toys r us was only worth buying games at if it was a game you couldn't get at walmart or somewhere cheaper like that
I miss having more brick and mortar options like that though, places that actually had room to keep a proper selection. Nowadays it feels like if a game isn't a major name, a guaranteed seller, or is remotely niche you're never even gonna see it on store shelves. I remember a little after the Switch released I wanted a copy of Cave Story+, went around to several Walmarts, Best Buys, Target, and even fricking Gamestops in my area, couldn't find it at any of them. After a couple days I had to just relent and order it from Amazon.
This is the most Ganker thing I have ever seen on /vr/.
It's like a bunch of degenerates waiting for their turn at a glory hole.
That's all I got unless you want more recent stuff like this or LAN party shots
Is it just me or is there nothing magical about the 00’s? It was a shit time and I (unfortunately) remember it crystal clearly. The 90’s in contrast are full of feel and soul and I only have hazy recollections of the physical spaces, even though I was 15 in ‘99.
Nostalgia isn't about the thing itself as much as it is about the thing's proximity to a certain time in your life that you remember fondly. I do have some nostalgia for that time period for that reason but by then I was effectively an adult so the relationship between consumer goods and that special feeling is diluted. There wasn't any waiting for Christmas by then. If I wanted something I drove to the store and bought it. But the time I spent playing with friends or certain games I was playing at the time still trigger the feels.
89pbp
>Is it just me or is there nothing magical about the 00's? It was a shit time...
>It was a shit time
2001 was the beginning of shit times, especially, for the U-S-of-A.
Since magical is a subjective term, what's magical to me is
>Halo CE, 2 & 3 (mainly its multiplayer)
>Grand Theft Auto series
>Multiplayer over the internet for home consoles - 7th gen was the peak imo. even then in my late 20s, being able to trade and battle pokémon over wifi blew my mind
>Star Wars prequel trilogy
>Cable/Satellite TV was still worth subscribing to
>Blu-ray making me feel old for still having a VCR and haven't upgraded to DVDs by that point
>Broadband became more common and affordable
>Spawn of YouTube
>Internet exploded with more shit than ever, and it was still the wild west
>Mid-late 2000s still had good fetish pr0n
there's probably other things that've slipped my mind, but none of the above makes me feel warm like the 90s. unquestionably because i was still young, and life wasn't so shitty and the games being made still had character.
In 2007 I had basically already moved from cable to YouTube as my main source of viewed entertainment. Who even cares when you can watch all 30 episodes of AVGN and this new Nostalgia Critic guy who makes funny Care Bears videos
I will just reiterate what another anon wrote: nostalgia is about a time and a place in your life. Not necessarily the things happening. Do I fetishize the early 2000s? Yes, because I was 16 and had no worries. Simple as.
the early 2000s was a shitty time but the PS2 era is my favorite gaming generation ever (I was born in 1989)
>one of the guys in this photo could be gramps
Whatever happened to him, anyway? I'd take his attentionwhoring over black countertop coomlector's any day
I think his trip got perma’d for spamming after the rule change
"off-topic, not retro" actually - and only from /vr/
And nothing of value was lost.
They had to add a whole extra generation since then just to keep the board from falling off the site
He was certainly much more useful than troonyleaf
Where did that guy go? Did the change on the board policy of what's retro drive them off? All it's done is open up vr got more games to discuss, mostly.
His legs probably got too fat to trick people with those gaming pics he used to take that showed him wearing striped thigh high socks in the background or reflected in his crt. I still see him sometimes on /x/ or rarely on Ganker, at least a couple years ago anyway.
There's a 41% chance we'll never see him again
lmao hi gramps, make a new trip so i can filter you
He's not gramps
Can we get rid of the guy who always posts timestamped images of his collection in random threads next?
Note guy is cool, he is always vague about any detail except being poor. I wish I could get some Adderall and comb thru the archives and compile all the info about him.
That Black person would quit being poor the second he liquidates his collection.
He's poor? Not surprising considering he's on Ganker and has all the games ever, but still kind of surprising. I like seeing his posts.
That's what he says or implies at time. Just pay attention to his posts, it'll start to add up some. Most of the games he got on sale he says.
It's also probably stuff he got a long time ago. Prices were a shit ton more reasonable 15 years back. Panzer Dragoon Saga was like $400 max and that was considered one of the most expensive games of all time back then. Back when Ebay was decent you could get a full NES set for $5000 if you were patient and bought lots and resold your doubles. Pat Contri said before that he would never get into the collecting game today because of how the market got so insane. You didn't have to be rich to get a collection, you just needed patience.
I liked old pat. I went through some real shit in 07 and avgn, pat and some other guy I forget really kept me company. Yeah prices were much different, I sold off my collection on craigslist for honest prices, but they were also collectors. God that shit was rough
I remember that Babbage's was always the third choice for games when we went on a rare ass trip to the mall. All those options and variety are gone now and it's really lame.
Bought my first copy of Doom II at Babbage's. Place was like magic. As was Software ETC.
God I remember this place... Got a NIB copy of Tiberian Sun when it first release as well as a copy of Fallout Tactics..
While I miss going to stores like this in the 90s and 2000s, and the excitement of getting import Game Boy games early and such (I still remember being blown away by a shop carrying the US Pokémon gold and silver before the UK release), it also makes me extra appreciative I have entire console libraries on everdrives now. More than an entire store on one cartridge. I will get called soulless or whatever but kid me would have gone nuts for my N64 ever drive.
gay
t. Zoomer with an antisocial personality disorder envious he was never able to visit these places when they existed
Someone working in a department store could afford a house and a car on their salary.
Now they cant afford rent or the bus.
we just need more free market capitalism. i promise our billionaire owners will pay us more. trust me bro.
I was born in 87 and most of these pictures feel completely alien to me. I have no memory of Super Nintendo games being displayed at retail despite owning one along with 15 games at the time. Be thankful if you have a functional memory.
I think it depends on the shops and regions. I see no game gear games in any of these photos, but i remember seeing more of those boxes in stores then i do snes.
I honestly miss Toys R Us, it’s a damn shame Amazon and their ilk basically killed them.
That's not very ergonomic.
They weren't supposed to be. They intentionally designed those things so you'd play for a few minutes max and either leave or buy something.
It always weirds me out that someone was standing behind me and snapped this picture.
Sure Brian
Got neckpain ?
it was probably the kids family that took the picture
demo kiosks were magical as a kid. We had smash64 at home but then I saw Melee at the store and it blew my mind
Is that 80 dollars for Phantasy star 2 lol.
It's not really surprisin., RPGs (especially SNES ones) used to be more expensive than your average game, at least where I lived (Massachusetts at the time).
Yeah, games used to have variable pricing from game to game. I paid 80 bucks for Majora's Mask at release.
They also had nebulous release dates. I remember when a game came out you'd sometimes would go to a store and they didn't have it yet so you'd hop around from store to store and find one that did. There wasn't a hard and fast street date. The game would ship and stores would put it out as soon as they got it. In fact, nobody actually knows the exact release date of Super Mario Bros. for this very reason. I'm guessing street dates came into existence because stores would get into arguments over lost business due to the fickleness of the mail giving competitors up to several days advantage.
Yeah. I had that with Pokemon Red as a kid. I just went to places until someone had it. Some were sold out, some didn't have it yet, eventually a Newberry Comics had a copy of Red.
The further back you go, the truer that becomes. The Olmec were a huge empire in Meso-America that influenced many of the cultures of Central and South American for thousands of years. They were an empire about the same time that Greece was dominating in Europe.
They didn't have writing though, and so our knowledge of them is limited even though they were a huge empire. Most things are forgotten, but I think that's okay. We're in a time of easy storage, and thus we overemphasize cataloguing everything.
I remember getting pokemon gold early because kb toys put it out early
You were a moronic kid. Game prices were fixed by then all N64 releases were $59 or less.
$160 adjusted for inflation
Y'all b***h about $60 games, I remember being a lad and trying to buy Illusion of Gaia for $70 in 1994 dollars.
that's why we mostly rented back then and only bought games that were a sure thing
That's 60 to 70 dollars for a new game back then. We're complaining about USED copies costing so much.
Toys R Us
Based
Also give me one Super Hydlide and a Herzog Zwei.
>Tommy Lasorda Baseball and Budokan sold out
Unsurprising that npc shitters we're around even back then.
Good God I want to go back. Anyone remember Sam's Club's giant tables of big box PC games all layed out face up? Or new psx games being 40 bucks vs 60 for a new n64 game?
>sams club big box face up tables
Frick yes i remember, thats where i got my copy of Lost Eden.
who the frick would pay 80 dollars for a weeb rpg?
Born in 84 here. These images just hit me with remorse that my 3 year old son wont ever have something like these places to wander around in and have endless hopes and wonder to fill his young captivated brain. I thought the future would be better as a kid and there's nothing today that matches the days of old. I think we need less nostalgia and start creating new awesome things for our younger generations to enjoy and feel powerful Nostalgia for when they are old. All they have today is our washed up and dead dreams that we cling on to because they were special to us for our own reasons. Its not as important to them since they didnt live it. I need to do something about this before it's too late.
>bro im so sad my son cant engage i consumerism like i did, instead he has to engage in consumerism that way his friends do.....VHG retvrn to tradition
Lol, but I get what that anon is saying: I, too, had a great childhood and recognize that a large—but not majority—portion of those good feeling were underpinned by mindless consumerism. I am simultaneously nostalgic for and repelled by memories of time spent lusting after certain games, counting down the days until one was in my hands. Thankfully my parents had strict limits on gaming, so I also have tons of memories and experiences based on meaningful things.
A modicum of that joy from consumerism is ok, it’s just got to be balanced out, and that’s what we’ve lost and started losing back when I was a kid. Honestly, I know I’m against a giant infernal machine, but I try to model that same balance for my kids. If at 15yo they play an hour of games but also read philosophy, I will feel good as a parent.
It was consumerism but not exactly mindless. We would flip through catalogs and magazines and learn about all the new games that were coming out. Today a kid will just ask for more Fortnite money for Christmas. There's a lot less of an exploratory attitude about gaming.
Plus we didn't have active shooter drills in the 90s so that's kind of a big difference, too. We were the last generation to actually grow up pre-9/11 so we didn't have as much bullshit hanging over our heads.
Yeah but for what purpose
everyone in my discord thinks this one person is a woman but I'm 100% certain they're actually a troony and I'm looking for pictures of him in his pre-troony phase and the only lead I have to go on is that he worked at a video games store in the late '90s
>1995
>walk into electronics boutique with my parents
>dad buys a video card for our brand new packard bell legend 406cd so it can run mega race
>mom says my brother and I each get to buy a game
>brother gets nba jam for snes
>I get tekken for my brand new ps1
Frick I miss the atmosphere.
shit taste runs in the family i see
>Megarace
WAY TO GO, ENFORCER!
>used to go to one local video store when I was a kid
>not some big chain so it got to do its own thing and thought it just had the coolest, most well designed look I ever saw
>closed up, like all video stores did
>nobody took photos
>nobody else remembers it
>all I have are my memories
I also went to an independent video store. Dude had his dogs walking around the store while you browsed, unbelievably comfy. Always wonder what he did after he closed up.
I think about this from time to time. There are old restaurants and shit I went to as a kid with my family that are long forgotten. Replaced by other businesses, if the building is even still standing. And in the 90s it wasn't expected that every business would have an internet presence. So all of these places are just...gone. No photos, no Yelp reviews, nothing. If it wasn't a chain then Google has no record of these places ever existing. The only evidence would be in some tax or property documents at City Hall or something or maybe an article in a local newspaper if you want to look through the microfilm. It's a real bummer because now I understand the stories my parents tell me about the places they went to as kids that were long gone by the time I was born. As a kid we'd be driving and my mom or dad would point at a Dunkin Donuts or something and be like "there used to be this shop there..." We're talking back in the 60s or 70s. And now I do the same thing about places in the 90s and for the first time understand the feeling of nostalgia they must have been feeling when they would tell me those stories.
Where I'm from went from rural, to a small sized city in my life time. I remember as a kid riding on dirt roads with my parents in places there are highways now, and living off a dirt road myself and an old highway going through farm land that became the center of the city with strip malls down it for miles. That's some transformation.
>Only good memories I have left are nostalgia related to the 90s. Slowly over the years watch all the good mom & pop stores closed. All the arcades closed. All the music stores like the Warehouse and electronics stores like Circuit City, Fry's, Radio Shack were out competed or went bankrupt. They were all replaced with shittier stores or restaurants. No fun allowed now you are forced to only buy shit online. Eventually now nobody goes to Malls except looters and since the businesses cant afford the extremely outrageous rent and cost of living in CA the entire Mall closed.
>After plandemic everything closed and its not even worth it or safe going outside anymore.
>Just empty abandoned parking lots everywhere. Forced to drive everywhere. Everything that was once local is now closed.
Klown world sucks. I want to go back.
we as a society peaked in the period of 1997-1999. i'd give almost anything to go back
A side effect of this isn't just making me miss these old stores, it's making me miss when malls were actually a thing people went to. The actual social experience of shopping is just non-existent anymore. It's either entirely online or purely utilitarian.
As I get older, I find I miss these things less and less. Looking at places like this I really can't get my nostalgia up any more.
That's like me except instead of a video games store it's a chick with huge breasts and instead of nostalgia it's my penis.
I’ve always wondered what happens to unsold copies of games. Do they just throw them out or keep them in storage?
Retailers would either discount them on clearance or if the contract stipulated they could return them, they'd send them back to the manufacturer for a full or partial refund. The actual manufacturer would store them until they could either sell them at a discount to liquidate (this is what a lot of late-gen promotions were for) or find a legal way to dispose of them if all else failed.
Stores i know of around me like 5below, Ollies, Big Lots and even Dollar Tree would get a lot of liquidated sale games for super cheap. 5below was great in the early 2010s for $5 new ps2 titles, niche stuff like Chulip. Ollies used to be the king of discounted big box pc games in the 90s. Also found a big stock of one of the religious Genesis games at one in the 2000s.
Genesis was the bargain bin king for a few years. I remember being in either Comp USA or Computer City and seeing one of those circular aisle bins filled with dozens of Genesis 3s. There was also a ton of certain SNES reprints, like Super Castlevania IV.
I kept finding TurboGraphics games at PicNSave, currently Big Lots, NIB. I didn't have a TG16 but I bought them anyway. Eventually I got a second hand TurboExpress in the very late 90s. The only games in the bunch I liked were Super Star Soldier and Valis. I didn't want to spring for more TG16 stuff since I didn't like what I had. And the things I liked in emulation was too expensive to buy on eBay. So I dumped it. I am ok with that too.
I got a bunch of cheap SNES games when walmart closed out theirs and had them in a huge bin in the middle of the electronics section
I remember we got some of those in high school, we got baked and played mega man x. That bin is burned into my brain.
>LARPing about going to the store.
I remember buying a Wanzer figure when Front Mission 3 came out. Idk why, but we had a second hand book store with a huge video game section. It always had super rare Japanese games. I was (and still am) a huge UC Gundam nerd. I bought MSG: Perfect One Year War before I understood about region locks. I paid $49 with birthday money to buy it. It was still cool to have on my game shelf but I never got to play it.
There used to be a store in my town called media play that was similar to a best buy minus the appliances. Will always remember towards christmas they would set up huge playable demo displays of each system. Instead of some hardwired game kiosk it would just be whatever console hooked up to a huge crt. Must of been 94 when I first went because I remember the systems on display being a Genesis playing I think was Road rash, a SNES playing DKC and a fricking Jaguar playing Doom. They would always have a huge bargain bin table on one side which is where I made tons of scores, new in box 32x for 19.95, Virtual Boy for like 29.99 and the games were like 2.99, Saturn games were slashed to like 1.99 right before Dreamcast launch. Sadly it closed up shop somewhere around 2002, the building is not even there anymore.
which city are you in? i spent hours upon hours in media play with my parents. the big box pc games were the very first thing in the front of the store along with the other games. i'd get lost in there looking at all the box art. then i'd make my way to the mid-back of the store where the big wall of tvs was where they'd play music videos and look at the shitty bc rich guitars. on to the cd aisles and ending over at the magazine rack to read all the gaming magazines.
>Instead of some hardwired game kiosk it would just be whatever console hooked up to a huge crt.
Brother, thats how i remember game displays in the late 90s early 2000s at Costco when they had both KI on the Snes where everyone else just move out to the N64, and they also had GoldenEye, and they also have them hook up to this giant rear display flat square TV.
Shit was dope.
I had a media play
I miss it immensely
I remember getting n64 cruis'n usa at media play when It first opened. The Media Play in my town ended up closing around 2007 because they got stolen from so much
in my city it was prolonged for at least a year or two because they were bought out by FYE. the store was more or less kept the same. they then closed down and came back as the FYE we know today... small mall locations that only sell funko pops and novelty energy drinks
>NES Action Set
>$99.99
This is what I really miss. People talk about how games were so much more expensive back then but they forget that the consoles were often pretty cheap and came with more stuff. The Saturn struggled at $400. Like that was expensive for a system at the time.
This, the idiots who created the "games were more expensive back then hurr hurr inflation herp a derp, psy the new high price for your retro vidya CERTIFIED", are just a bunch of tunnelvision grifters who forget one thing, people had MORE money back then, not many of us were broke.
Those were the same dipshits that enable "the usual suspects" that infiltrated our community and shit it up.
Those people also seem to forget that renting was a thing. You could buy a Super Nintendo for $200, it came with two controllers and a game so you were already up and running with just that one purchase, but then you'd go to the rental store and for $3-$5 you'd get a different game each weekend.
That's how I figure most kids were during that era. They only owned 10 or less games for the console but played a ton through rentals, borrowing, or going over to a bros house. This was before ebay and shit and you could eventually get a used game you really liked for a decent price.
In my personal experience I had like maybe half a dozen games for each of my consoles until I was a teenager and would rent games or just get loads of playtime out of Pokemon
In fact
The games:
N64
>Pokemon Stadium
>Super Mario 64
>Pokemon Snap
>Hey You, Pikachu! (2x)
>some wrestling games including WCW vs. nWo after I was given them by a friend
>eventually got Mega Man 64 and more wrestling games
Imagining a world where your only source of 64-bit entertainment is either WHAT'S THE MATTER TRAINER or playing even more Super Mario 64 makes me kind of sad
This was my sense. I admit I was a lucky kid who was given far more than my fair share of games for birthdays and Christmases. But even putting that aside, I was always renting games, borrowing games, loaning games, visiting friends and playing what they had, etc. I've beaten a ton of games that I never owned even to this day. And once Funcoland started popping up it became a pretty good deal. I traded some shittier Nintendo games for stuff like the Mega Mans and Metroid. And they weren't very expensive at the time. You could do a lot of damage with $20.
>Stadium Events for 99 cents
Could you fricking imagine...
My neighbor was the store manager of the Funcoland (96-99) near me, first dude I ever knew that collected video games. Told me that all the rarer NES games were constantly being traded in on the west coast while harder to find turbografx games were mostly on the east coast. He and two other managers would trade games across country via mail. He offered to sell me his whole set for $500 when he finally transferred from community college, I kick myself a lot.
I remember when gamestop had a huge bin of NES games they would sell for a dollar or less. Back in the early 2000s it seemed like no one gave a frick about NES collecting
Because of him I worked part-time at EB Games in 2001-2002, key holder so I made $7.25. SNES was gone by then but we had so many loose Genesis games, they sold for $1 and my manager just let me buy every Genesis item we had for $1 when we got the order to trash them.
Damn you could go in with $20 and have games for days.
Yup, this is why you can tell that anyone proclaiming gaming is so much cheaper today is underage. Anyone who actually lived through it knows that the retail prices was only a fraction of the story. Kiddos will see a picture of an $80 Genesis game at Toys R Us and run with that.
Japs still can.
This is starting to change. All those tourist trap game shops in the cities are starting to spread their influence and raising their prices to appeal to foreign buyers.
The Japanese don't use $20 bills you frickin goofball
Give it a few months
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=JPY&to=USD&view=10Y
I can't wait to see several banking systems to collapse in the very near future.
I like how much cheaper DQ1 was. Honestly Nintendo was smart with how they handled that. The US market deserved to be flooded with copies of Dragon Quest so they could have the stage set for more RPGs later on. It's the most basic fricking RPG ever so making it literally the cheapest RPG and trying to make it as widespread as possible was the best thing for it
Then once those kids get hooked on Dragon Quest they'll buy more Nintendo products (laughs in capitalism)
I got it for free with nintendo power
I still have a funcoland catalog or two laying around. I miss them!
the NES Action Set wasn’t $99 until after Genesis and right before the SNES dropped
>zoomer who never knew an optimistic pre 9/11 world
I hope I'm not getting nostalgic about a photo of a walmart xbox 360 aisle in 20 years
You will my friend.
You will.
Yea, remembering the smell of a game wrapped in plastic gets my dick hard.
I get a newsletter in the post and when I open it it's the same exact smell that my Majora's Mask manual had in 2000. it's great how smell can transport you back.
Also, my friend had a pink GBP in school. We mercilessly bullied him because of it.
Why does this Game Boy Pocket ad have a bunch of DMGs on it?
DMGs nuts
>getting nostalgic about a photo of a walmart xbox 360 aisle
I'm starting to get nostalgic but only for the for launch of the Xbox/PS3/Wii because it was really the last time I felt genuine excitement for new consoles and games.
the 360/ps3 era pretty much killed my enthusiasm for new games
Shit, I already get nostalgic for when I first played Oblivion.
Me too man. Oblivion for all its faults was a very comfy game and I'm nostalgic for those first few playthroughs
who never knew an optimistic pre 9/11 world
be somewhat thankful that you do not know.
i'm still in disbelief that two planes taking down some of the tallest buildings in the world, and one crashing into the pentagon, could change the world - forever.
the change was essentially day & night, only it keeps getting darker with no end in sight.
i wish i could go back to the before-times when things still made somewhat more sense.
From the 80s up to 2007 was the peak of humanity.
Take me back. Please.
A lot of retro game stores or even Gamestops still look like these.
It's modern day excess that makes the places of the past so attractive.
Like for instance, I was really into fantasy, in the early 90s I searched my school library and found a fighting fantasy book, and it was rare to see that, I had it out the library, and treasured it reading it over and over. Now within a few minutes I could download an untold number of fantasy books.
Just like going in a store and seeing a big box pc game, getting really excited, and if you purchased it, you'd scan the box all the way home, read the manual inside a handful of times, play the game night after night, well, you didn't have much else going on.
Now again, you have an endless supply of games you can just download.
It's why kids today have more than ever but are bored.
It's probably why those in power get up to crazy shit, as sex and drugs are not exciting, as they have had an excess of them, it no longer means anything, so they go further.
It's why a 2 guys telling a teen girl in the 80s she was pretty would make her smile, but now 2,000 a day say that to her online and it no longer means anything.
And so on.
You laugh but this was actually what it was like. Video games were a fairly compartmentalized thing back then. It wasn't the media empire that it is today and didn't have the same penetration in pop culture. So when something video game related appeared in your peripheral vision it drew your attention. Just being in the video game aisle of a toy store was special.
I can't even pretend to know how you interpreted that image.
I grew up in BFE Iowa, but I definitely remember renting SNES/N64 games from a regional video store. That and playing demos for too long at Target and getting a stiff neck.
>I definitely remember renting SNES/N64 games from a regional video store
It's odd to think that future generations (maybe even most zoomers for all I know) just won't know the experience of going to a video store. Makes me a bit sad. Obviously it's so much more convenient to just rent a movie through a streaming service on your 4K smart TV but there was something in rentals...
>only have game/tape for like 2-3 days and desperately try to get as much as you can out of it to justify paying $8 for the rental
>standing in one of the aisles staring at a shelf of tapes, agonizing over what you'd rather watch tonight
>plan for a week to rent a specific game and it isn't there when you arrive, rented already
>using fake phone numbers to rent a game and never return it
The video store in my home town started being half a dollar store by like 2006 and was just gone by like 2012. The Blockbuster and Hollywood I used to go to in the city are gone. The Blockbuster was demolished to put up a Walgreen's and the Hollywood Video building was repurposed into a dental clinic. What amuses me is that it still has the odd windows and doors from the Hollywood days, it still has a second outside door for that area you'd enter to buy games from (?) that was separated from the rest of the store. I drive by that place all the time since I live over there now
There was a "Family Video" in town up until like 2019 but I never got around to checking it out. Would have been for the novelty alone
They won’t understand how it felt when mom said you can pick a game and a snack on Friday night
newport beach or what
Nowhere close but I'm amused
i remember when i was a kid i knew about banjo kazooie because i had rented it, but at walmart they just had "banjo tooie" in the case. i wondered if it was the first game because i was frickin stupid
and i remember seeing the box for kirby 64 and wanting the game so fricking bad because i loved kirby in super smash bros, the idea of a WHOLE GAME about kirby blew my mind. again i was frickin stupid
i like hurt my neck staring up at a little crt with luigi's mansion on it because it had like the craziest graphics id ever seen
>hurt my neck staring up at a little crt
I'm still dumbfounded that having a screen at shoulder height wasn't prioritized until decades later.
Just the gameboy that had a busted screen 50% of the time was the only thing you could look down at.
>Just the gameboy that had a busted screen 50% of the time was the only thing you could look down at
that's why the other screens were up so high
This is basically just nostalgia for the media that was around when older millenials were children.
I have vague memories of Funcoland. Just remember piles of used games in the center of the floorspace. Considered buying Banjo-Kazooie once but I think it was like $29.99 at the time and it was a bit steep for a 7 year old
I remember going to this store (Computer City) with my dad in the late 90's. Pretty sure I got Math Blaster there which I actually have fond memories of being a fun educational game. I also remember seeing C&C Red Alert and really really really wanting it but he didn't get it for me even though I already had and played the original C&C a lot. He probably didn't want to give me more war game addictions as a 7 year old.
Anyone remember when unrelated stores just had video games for no reason? Shoe store, optometrist, book stores, electronics/photo stores etc. I remember going shopping for, I think shoes, with my dad and they had a shelf near the back of the store with a bunch of programs and games on it. I begged him to let me buy Heroes of Might and Magic 3 for ~$30 and after a while he relented. Read the manual in the car ride home and got to play one of the best games of all time.
Dollar stores, grocery stores, pharmacys(still kicking myself for not getting a copy of megaman legends they had at a cvs), clothing stores like Kohls(which actually still does sell them)
Here is something i haven't seen posted yet, the game island set ups from department stores like Macys, usually in the back of the kids clothing section, store employee in the center, demo kiosks and glass cases all around on all four sides.
I remember as a kid at a Sears I got to pick a game for good grades or some shit. I remember my final choice was either Wario Land or Sword of Hope 2.
I chose Sword of Hope 2 and still don't understand why I did that. Not a bad game though.
For me the choice at Sears was either Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers or Super Metroid. I made the right choice thankfully.
for me it was star wars episode 1 racer
I had a similar choice between two $5 games from a guy who had a store back in the day and would sell the snes games he bought when he was done with them for cheap. Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Wild Guns. Both are good, but fortunately young me thought the cover of Zombies was dumb compared to cowboys fighting a giant robot.
You definitely made the right choice but yeah they're both good. MMPR is actually an okay game too for the record but definitely not a first choice.
I noticed recently a weird quirk of game rarity and values that the Super Famicom version of Power Rangers is equivalent to like a $100 area game. I wonder if its literally just the Rangers version or if they altered the sprites to better match the original source material.
wtf anon, I never would've guessed that one would be worth more. they must have collectors of super sentai or whatever
There are a lot of weird western games like that. Plok, Mortal Kombat and fricking Lester the Unlikely super fami versions are all higher priced then most of the library. It will never not be fricking funny that Lester costs more in Japan then friggen Mega Man X3.
There are some odd circumstances though where a western release like Super fami Wolfenstein actually is significantly cheaper then the US cart. But generally, you will find our crap is more pricey over there and a good chunk of the stuff western snes players want, is worth under $10 over there.
zombies are my neighbors is way better than wild guns
Well i got it later on anyway so now i have both and as a kid i was purely going off of cover art.(but i like wild guns more regardless)
I pre-ordered my copy of resident evil 2 at Sears and got an RE2 promotional t-shirt with my pre-order.
I got syphon filter dark mirror on PS2 at a dollar tree a few months back. It's not as often but if you look sometimes you can still find dusty games in really odd stores.
Not retro, but that ubisoft starlink game had a bunch of ps4 copies show up at dollar tree. Not bad buy for a buck and you dont need the advertised toys to play it.
>Not retro, but i'm addicted to (You)s
I used to get random Wii and wiiu and PS3 and DS and 3ds games when Fred's closed down. Usually better games and prices than goodwill, that was just a few years back. Now goodwill wants $7 for Madden on PS3 lol
Goodwill use to be a good source for liquidation. That Aliens Infestation game for DS had tons of factory sealed copies show up at the stores in my ares for like $8. Wish i had grabbed a bunch of em.
Only in my mind
>would hang out at my local eb games giving unsolicited advice to people buying games
>manager told me to get lost because i was costing them sales
Still, I had fun
Actually it must've been an Electronics Boutique back then
Anyone remember playing on these in the 80s? In my local mall we had a Nintendo store parked in the middle of the walk way. Back then there were very few kiosks. But the Nintendo store probably had 4 or more of these machines and each one had different games. I think they reset after 10min. And the check out was a little gap on the side of the booth. The place was always busy. By the time SNES came around they slowed down alot and only had a few SNES consoles with games in them and it was one cart per SNES which seemed less impressive. Also their prices were worse than EB or any other store. But they often gave out goofy trinkets with a purchase.
>In my local mall we had a Nintendo store parked in the middle of the walk way.
Same here.
And for whatever reason, out of all the games, I vividly remember playing Yo! Noid and Superman.
Kept this on my keychain until it fell off, not it’s in my collection of trinkets
I was a stupid kid and I would hang around stores like these without buying anything all day back then. People fricking knew me. God I can't imagine what it'd be like right now if some little shit just came to my store like it's his own playground or something. Oh hey let me just hang out around Toys R Us for 3 fricking hours while being poor.
Same here but it was summer. No AC at home it was 110+. It was better to out yourself as a poor and have fun. Than sit at home with a wet towel infront of a box fan, doing absolutely nothing else.
The only experience that comes close to this now is a mom-and-pop used game store. I am not sure how many game store chains are left besides Game Stop and Game Xchange.
those mom and pop game stores sell shit for higher than ebay prices so frick them
Wish we could go back to better times. Playing Mario 64 for the first time was mind blowing and magical.
That console holder thing really brings me back
there was always a huge line at walmart when they put out the n64 kisok
>Playing Mario 64 for the first time was mind blowing and magical.
Only if you were a baby.
obviously you were not alive yet to experience the exponential jump from 2D to 3D Mario. I think I was about 7 years old when Mario 64 released and no I didnt have a Saturn or PSX yet as those consoles were unknown expensive risks. So Mario 64 was probably the first time I saw 3D gameplay.
Not him but I was fricking 25 when I played Mario 64 for the first time. I thought Nintendo had fricked up, bad, and it was over for the N64 and Nintendo in general.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that the mid-90s was the beginning of overhyping and shilling style over substance shit games and paying reviewers to give trash games a good score. Most reviewers, anyway.
Mario 64 is so good kys
Anyone who says games like fricking DKC, Mario 64, MGS, Half-Life, Halo, Metroid Prime, or fricking Sonic Adventure are good just does not have the ability to decide for themselves what a good game -- or likely, a good anything -- is, and thus should not be allowed to voice an opinion.
Those are the games that destroyed a fricking industry and why gaming is absolute fricking shit now.
Style over substance.
watch out we got a contrarian over here. No fun allowed not allowed to like popular things.
Just because something is popular doesn't make it good. Companies pushed these products hard at young new gamers at the time and for many old gamers who were insecure about losing "relevancy" in the new generation of gaming and went along with new bullshit gaming against their better judgement, as well as paying most magazines to give their shit games a good score.
>no fun allowed
No shit. Playing any of those games means you have zero fun. Just because you were fooled into playing style over substance shit and made to think it's "fun" because you were supposed to be having fun didn't make the games actually fun.
go back to playing boring text adventures grandpa.
Text adventures aren't games, kid. Neither are modern 99% storyshit trash "games".
>objective is to go from start to end and figure out how
>"not a game"
You're either senile or a underage larper.
He has no style
He has no grace
This kong, has a funny face
get a load of this homosexual.
I'm meh about MGS (which I still think deserves praise) and never played Metorid Prime, but all the other games I beat and love them all for different reasons. When taking nostalgia out of it, those games are objectively fun and well made.
Stick with your limited NES library then I guess. Or do you think Atari systems were the peak? Man get your head out of your ass.
sure if you were already jaded back then I guess most N64 games were mediocre kids stuff. But also remember most adult mature bloody games back then were also laughably bad except a few shooters like doom but most kids didnt own a PC and mom didnt let us buy violent video games. Mario 64 was like the first good 3D platformer and the controls are still good. It sounds like that reviewer critic just hated nintendo or was too stupid to get used to the controls.
as a kid I thought mario 64 was fun to play but not as good as the 2d games and I've never been a fan of marios voice. When I got my first n64 I had a choice between mario 64 and mario kart 64 as my first game and I chose mario kart
>u-u-u r not alive i r pooroldgay 7 projecting an no hib toys
Fricking embarrassing
So almost a full decade older than my oldest. And his mind wasn't blown. Dismissed as genetics?
It was a good game. Certainly shilled and hyped af at the time. Even more so later. I think more people would accept this if it weren't for the cult of nintoddlers doing that right here right now.
Not that anon but I was 13 when Mario64 came out it blew my mind. It was the first game that did real 3d platforming right.
I remember playing Mario 64 in 1996 at a Toy's R Us after Karate practice. I was legit blown the FRICK away. I couldn't believe what was on the screen tbh. Coming from purely SNES (Somehow I didn't know much about or care about the PSX at the time) was just magical. I envy zoom zooms that are growing up in this slop plastic post 9-11 world we live in now.
cool beta sonic boom box art. I wish I knew as a kid you could reserve games and get free bonus stuff. My family was poor so mom only bought us games around christmas time.
I got a cool poster for preordering pokemon stadium at walmart back then
We had a media play store in my town for a while. I bought Myst for the pc there. Also my first V:tM book.
Canadian bros, does anyone have what Superstore's electronic section used to look like? When it was dimly lit and the video game wall was so long, it wrapped around and came back down the middle wall display.