I visited a retro GameStop. Yay?

On August 27th, 2024 — seemingly out of nowhere — GameStop officially announced via Twitter its plans to open what the company labeled as “Retro GameStops,” which inevitably allowed the internet to react with its standard levels of snark.

Before we proceed, a bit of background is needed on the situation. GameStop has been the leading video game retailer in North America (as well as Australia and Europe) for nearly thirty years at the time of writing this, and anyone familiar with the retailer surely has a plethora of opinions on the store, from the upselling that occurs at checkout to the infamous Gamestonk fiasco of early 2021, and even the popular genre of Youtube video that revolves around ex-employees airing their grievances (there are a lot of these videos and they are often an entertaining watch if you want to scratch a certain anti-capitalist itch). Clearly, the ever-opinionated gamers have a few things to say about GameStop.

Another important note for context is the retro gaming boom that occurred around 2020. As was the case for many other hobbies, when consumers were at home twiddling their thumbs during the COVID-19 pandemic, they took to the internet to spend exorbitant amounts of money on older video games because at the end of the day, no hobby is better for passing time in an incredibly stressful world-event than a bit of a nostalgia hit from your favorite child games. On top of that, we saw a massive shift in consumers buying collectibles en masse purely for the sake of profit (remember the Pokemon card situation?). This phenomenon combined with a plethora of questionable business practices by sellers resulted in prices of older games becoming considerably inflated, and it’s only gotten worse since. As a person who is passionate about retro gaming and game preservation, I’ve collected my fair share of older games for roughly the last decade. While it has always been a pricey hobby, the experience of entering a local game store in 2024 starkly contrasts what you would experience around five years ago.

GameStop has been selling games from older generations for as long as I can remember. In fact, when I was very young, I distinctly remember going to the local Gamestop in my small town and finding a big bin of NES games, and I still have the games that I picked up that day: Mario Bros 3, Zelda 2, and Megaman 2. And in more recent memory, you’ve been able to go onto Gamestop’s website and find a wide range of older games, from Xbox 360 to Nintendo 64 if you’re lucky enough. The only problem being that you never know what you’re going to get– the games might not include their original cases, might be in questionable condition, or in the worst case scenario, might be reproduction cartridges. This is exemplified in a Youtube series that I’m particularly fond of in which the Youtuber Retro Rebound orders heaps of games off of GameStop’s website to see what condition they arrive in– somewhat in russian roulette fashion.

As of August 27th, Gamestop has supposedly brought these retro games that were probably sitting in warehouses somewhere (or the forbidden drawers behind the checkout counter) into select locations. While their overall description is vague, they claim in their original tweet that “New retro GameStops are spawning near you,” which at first glance seems to imply that some locations are being converted or changed into a potentially remodeled store. You can find their list of retro stores here.

So, earlier today, on September 2nd, 2024, I decided to go visit one of these Retro GameStops that was conveniently close to my house to see what it was like. While the public’s initial reception to the news was skeptical at best, I wanted to answer the question: what the heck is a retro GameStop anyway?

DRUMROLL PLEASE:

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It’s just a GameStop with a case in the corner of the store that has some older games in it. Most of which do not have their original cases.

Okay, maybe I’m making it sound worse than it actually is. That being said, it’s really not too big a deal; it’s not some kind of grand move that the more optimistic collectors (me) may have been hoping for. In normal GameStop fashion, the majority of the games were not in their original cases, which may not be a huge deal for some people, but for the more hardcore collectors out there, it’s life or death.

On a more positive note, there were plenty of Xbox 360 and PS3 games, which is refreshing to see in a GameStop again. Ultimately, it’s ideal for both the consumer and the business for a game store to carry– well, video games! Not just the most recent, latest and greatest, but older titles as well, and it seems GameStop is finally waking up to that fact. Much like your local game store, GameStops are now carrying a little bit of everything, which is not a bad thing. Will they be putting your favorite local game store out of business? Probably not. At least, I certainly hope not. While the location near me may have been a tad underwhelming, I still encourage anyone reading this to visit their website to see if a retro location is near you. Game stores are sadly a dying breed, and for many people across the United States, GameStop is the only option they have for in-person shopping. At this point, I’ll take whatever I can get, even if that means all I can find is a rack full of Wii U games.

—9/2/2024