Video Game Store stories?

[What's His Face]

Who has a story or two that they'd like to share about their experience(s) working at or being a customer/visitor of video game stores? I have two that I recall off the top of my head to get the topic rolling:

1) A friend of mine back during our senior year of high school was crushing hard on a girl who worked at a Game Stop at the larger of the two local-ish malls. With a bit of encouraging from myself and our friends he finally asked her out, and they became very "close" after a few weeks. Full on lovey-dovey, etc. We figured that they'd be married before finishing college, if they could resist getting married (or becoming parents) before the end of their first year. That romance went crashing in horrible, terrible flames when, during our graduation ceremony, he (and the rest of our graduating class) discovered that they were

Spoiler

half-siblings - his father cheated on his mother with her mother. The explosion of that revelation is still talked about today. The last I heard, his mom and her mom became friends over a common enemy...and we don't discuss her when he's around. They were absolutely horrified and devastated.

No, this is not a "4chan green text" story. I wish it was. I still feel a bit guilty about pushing him to ask her out.

2) A mom-and-pop game store went under due to the owner being a jerk/idiot. The store was located in a different, smaller mall that didn't rate a Game Stop, and they were the only used game store for 10-miles when they first opened. They had fantastic stock (I bought so many games there that are considered rare and/or classics these days), paid decently for trade-ins, and would often sell Japan-only games (I bought DragonBall Z Super Butouden 2 & Shin Butouden from them, along with a few other fighting games and even a reproduction cart. of Seiken Densetsu 3...before it was re-titled, "Trials of Mana"). It was a great store with lots of hard-to-find games at fair prices, and continued to thrive even after both Hollywood Video & Blockbuster Video started their own game stores in town (anyone else fondly recall Game Crazy & Game Rush?). The only issue the store had was that the owner was an ass - he was very rude and condescending to his customers. And he didn't pay attention to the internet - he kept his prices even with Babbage's/Software Etc./Game Stop, not eBay.

Now, according to what other people told me (as I was a frequent customer and friendly with the clerks), the owner mouthed off to a kid, which caused what happened next, but I never got confirmation of this. What I can confirm is that the owner was contacted by a Hollywood location scouting agency who were needing to set-up a video game store for an upcoming movie back in 2016-ish. He had the products (games, posters, paraphernalia, even three SNES demo stations), but the store had a MAJOR open-face to the mall which was absolutely not suitable for shooting a movie. So, he sold a MASSIVE amount of stock to the agency at a bulk-discount price with the understanding that once filming was done they'd sell the lot back to him.

Instead, it was all a lie. There was no movie. They weren't location scouts. Allegedly they were family to that kid I mentioned earlier (but still can't confirm) and took their revenge by screwing him over, buying up a TON of games (including some seriously rare games), then turning around and using that stock to start their own store closer to the local schools. The new store sold games at higher prices than the original store but they also paid better for sellers. The original store slowly lost their customers (again, the new place bought at better prices - especially for rare games or titles they didn't have in stock) until they finally closed their doors for good...on March 1st, 2020.

 

[PSVitaForever]

Banalities, most of them, if compared with the shared stories above!
I was a almost-daily customer of the local Gamestop, because it was inside a mall with the supermarket, but 90%+ of the time I was only doing window-shopping.
Best things was when they were selling three Vita/psp/ds games at 9.90, I bought quite a bit of them and re-sold them on ebay (also I played some, I tried some other one I was curious about), and when they put lots of unboxed 3ds games at 3 each: a real steal, I found lots of hidden gems I would have not played because expensive or you could not found them anymore -3ds was not modded yet- (and also something I've sold on ebay later).

 

[Tsukishima]

These stories probably aren't terribly exciting, so please temper your expectations if you're going to bless my comment with a read.

When Blockbusters still existed, I was a regular there, and I was still living in a small town-like area away from the city, a worker of Blockbusters who I was 'essentially' friends with, we loved talking about Star Wars back in the day, discussing our favourite lightsaber colours, and commenting about the games I came to pick up. He was very fun to interact with, as with all the workers that were there. Back then it was really fun to try to get to know all of them.

That one I ended up 'clicking with' I found out lived in my area all the way forward when I was in college when the store depressingly no longer existed, Age definitely crept up on him, but he looked so peaceful walking his dog in the town, so I was so happy to learn that he was still okay and well even if I didn't talk to him then.

Fast forward to more modern videogame stores, I was buying a Switch in a GAME store in town, and it came to the conversation where I had a chat with the workers about nicknaming my console. He came up with the name 'Veronica' and it was my Switch's system name for the longest time and I never changed it. Coincidentally, I played Fire Emblem Heroes during that time, and I was most attached to the character also called Veronica. The name's kind of stuck with me for such a long time now.

 

[Isegrim]

I remember there was this video store that sold games and rented videos. This was when Super Mario Bros was the latest gaming craze. The store would sometimes let me play Famicom games in their store window so people might get intrigued, come in and buy or rent something. I remember bringing my copy of Doki Doki Panic, playing it there and people calling it a Mario game of some kind. This was before the U.S. version of Super Mario Bros 2 was released and looking it back now, almost seemed prophetic of what was to come.

The store did something novel at the time, they organized a Super Mario Bros. speedrun tournament and to qualify, you need to clear all 8 worlds in 30 minutes without warp zones.

I managed to make it in but the day of tournament, I was hopelessly outmatched. Everyone used that trick where they'd artificially boost their score and extra lives (score was also a factor for winning the tournament) by jumping on a turtle going down a staircase, a commonplace trick now but in those days without internet, I was hopelessly outclassed scorewise while every contestant knew about it. I still managed to get to fourth runner up and get a prize but only because the most skilled player had a panic attack and somehow messed up his game.

I consoled myself by playing Ghosts and Goblins repeatedly instead until I got to win it 1cc, fair and square on my real actual Famicom. That boosted my waning confidence in my gaming skills due to the tournament.

I was a lot more hardcore in my gaming back then. I'm too laid back now these days.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

The owner of the store my dad, sister and I always visited looked almost exactly like Santa Claus and often played the part for local children, something he would do until his very death (he passed away in 2023).

What I remember the most is that he was just as new to the world of video games as we were, so we kinda learned together — dude was just as pleased to receive a recommendation as to give it himself.

Now, granted, this was probably so he would learn which games were clicking with local children (and adults) the most and, thus, which ones to order more copies of... But it was still really cool to see.

 

[iamthemilkman]

The older manager at one of my local EB Games would always give me all of the extra pre-order bonuses that they had lying around. While there were managers in their 20's, this guy was in his 40's and super nice. He kinda looked like Kevin Butler from the PS3 ads.