What do YOU want to see in the ideal game store?

[Hobie-wan]

Hell yeah, I love the junk bins! I found so many gems in those things.

The junk bins were awesome at the 2 Hard-Offs I made it to.

[Damm64]

As Breetai said take note of Japanese game stores. They do it right. Everything is nice, neat, alphabetal order and wrapped. Here are some pics I took in a typical game store that sells current gen and retro wares.

Now THAT is a video game store... end of discussion

Don't charge extra for stuff just because it's Mario, Zelda, etc. Charge the real worth.

Seriously why they do that?



btw; congrats on your engagement

[jay_red]

I had an idea about the legalities of charging to play consoles, what if there were just a charge to use the section as a whole, like a fee per hour to use what ever is in the section? Possibly use a hand stamp or something like that, even have the arcade cabs on free play.

Also, today I stopped into one of only 2 local dedicated game stores that have a decent retro presence. I have been here a couple times before, but not since I started thinking about my own store. First thing that got me was the horrible inconsistency of pricing, it seems that anything before the ps2 is a rare treasure retrieved from sunken ships at the bottom of shark infested waters! There are far too many examples, but the prices on "good" games was about $15-20 higher than high Ebay prices

But it seems that ps2/xbox/GC games are trash, because they were all priced very well for the most part, some even seeming below normal market value (not that im really complaining about this)

The store is about half the size of a normal gamestop, long and narrow. It is ok to be in, it feels like a legitimate store, unlike some other places I have been to. The problem though, is it still doesnt feel like a place I want to hang out in. I tell the employee when I walk in that I was in the area and would just like to browse, and 5 minutes later hes bugging me again. I bite and ask him if they have any AV cables for a Genesis, he proceeds to pull out a used cable and says $20 like it was a steal of a price and tells me that they are pretty hard to come by (maybe if you dont have internet).

[BurningDoom]

I had an idea about the legalities of charging to play consoles, what if there were just a charge to use the section as a whole, like a fee per hour to use what ever is in the section? Possibly use a hand stamp or something like that, even have the arcade cabs on free play.

The video store in my neighborhood growing up did this, I freaking loved it! It is the inspiration for my classic gaming collection, today. They charged an hourly rate. During the time you paid for you could play any console there and as many games as you wanted, that weren't already rented out, of course. It had NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega Saturn, and Atari Jaguars set-up. Never did play the Jaguar since they had a VERY small selection of games. Now that I'm older I'm kicking myself for never playing it.

[J T]

I think it would be fun to have a store that was divided into sections based on decades. One corner would decorated with 80s stuff and only sell games, movies, music, and products from the 80s. Another for the 90s, another for 00s, and another for new releases. You'd have 4 themes with iconography from the era like the 80s might have an old wood panel television, an old Apple II with Oregon trail, some neon colored posters, etc. The 90s might have some grunge music playing, some Doc Martin's in the window, a SNES poster, etc. You get the picture.

[vlame]

Cool idea in theory but that is way more than a game store in the way you envision it.

[Reprise]

My ideal game store would have:

- Fair pricing.
- Good retro stock
- Friendly, informative and knowledgeable staff, that understood their customers well. I get sick of constantly being bombarded in games stores being asked if I want to pre-order the latest shitfest of a game. Or staff trying the hard sell*
- Good condition stock, and pricing second hand items dependent on condition. I hate that a broken boxed, manual missing, scratched up game costs the same as a complete mint condition one. Particularly with rare/retro stock.
- Well organised, clean store.


* Example being, I pick up Banjo-Tooie for the N64, walk up to the counter.
- "Do you own an X-Box at all? We've got some great deals on 360 games at the moment if you're interested?"
- "Oh no, I'm ok thanks. I only own old and retro consoles at the moment"
- "Will you be interested in pre-ordering [insert latest FPS] for the PS3?"
- "I'm ok thanks, I don't have a PS3" (thinking, "what did I just say?")
- "And will you be needing any accessories today buddy? Any memory cards? Leads? Any controllers? Anything else?"
- "No, I'm ok thanks. Just the game please"
- "Ok, that'll be £4.99 please"
- (f*cking finally!)

I've been to some great independent stores, and the staff are really friendly and obviously know there stuff. It's a completely different environment to many of the corporate stores.

And about charging people to play consoles. My local games store used to do that when I was a kid and it was awesome. It was 60p for an hours play on the N64 or £1 for an hour on the Dreamcast. That was just per game, not per person (so if four people wanted to play multiplayer, you could and it would cost only 15p each or 25p for the Dreamcast). Also, if no one else was wanting to play, the staff would let you play for about an hour and a half sometimes if they were feeling nice. I never really trusted the legalities of it, but they did it for about 6 or 7 years till they shut down. Plus this was a shop where they used to smoke marijuana round the back, so yeah

[FerretGamer]

My ideal game store?

Not Gamestop.

[Croooow!]

Recognize potential repeat customers who would trade in quality games/systems and treat them well. Yesterday I was trading in a bunch of stuff at the local game store in town (the other one that's in town is a regional chain and everything but the prices suck). I told the person looking over my games that I wasn't sure on trading a couple particular ones in. She then proceeded to offer me an extra $10 for the two and said that they're allowed to negotiate with customers if they're obviously enthusiastic gamers. I really get the feeling that they care about games and gamers and she said whenever they get a trade in they remove any and all stickers because they want to sell a quality product. That right there has solidified my loyalty to their store even if their prices are around 10%-20% higher than they're competitor.

[k.vlaros]

Sounds like a great way to spoil a hobby and maybe a relationship!

My number one turn-off with nerd-centric retailers is dingy, disorganized, smelly environments. Clean, order, align, and illuminate and you'll be a step ahead. I'd pay up to half again more than online to "have it now". And if I didn't have my phone on me, I might unwittingly pay more yet. Especially if there is a return policy (store credit is fine). Schedule competitive events- I'd love to see something like that in this area. There is one retro store within a 75 mile radius of me that's continuously operated for about 20 years. They know their stuff and price accordingly. I paid too much for good CIB copies of Xenosaga and Valkyrie Profile 2 there recently. What's interesting about this place is their inventory is about 20% PS2, 20% N64, 15% current-gen and the rest split between NES and SNES. There's no Master system, Dreamcast or Saturn, no PC Engine, not much original Gameboy, nothing earlier than NES. And there's not a single import. As the store has managed to hang on so long (and my distinct impression is they exist on a thin thread indeed) , I'm sure this is because of actual supply and demand-- though I wonder which of those is the bigger factor. And location is absolutely critical. You aren't selling essentials, so you can't afford for people to go out of their way to reach you. A small strip mall with a shared parking lot of solid anchor between downtown and suburb along the main drag would be good. So somewhere people would pass all the time coming home or going to work. I wouldn't put it in an indoor mall with tons of kids crawling around, gunking merch up. Though you could probably find traditional mall space cheap these days. I wouldn't bother with sales or member programs. I would steal an idea I've seen: let customers register for specific games to receive emails or phone calls when those trade-ins arrive.

---

Edit,

I went to the store yesterday as I was in town on errands. Must correct what I said about their stock. Still nothing pre-NES, and Gensis is the ONLY Sega platform they carry (and a GameGear with about 10 games maybe). But what I didn't remember correctly was how much N64 they have. They have a ton of N64. Maybe that's as retro as young people today can stomach? I'm still not sure where the market falls between kids spending allowance / Orange Julius money on novelties, die hard collectors with checklists, and casual-gamer adults otherwise reliving their childhoods.