I hate game stores now.

So retarded.

I remember when I could go in and have a conversation about games. Now i go in and get asked four times while there if I want a pre order or if I have my game informer rewards card bs.

Is this what gaming is coming to?
Guess im just an old prick.

Go ahead and flame away.
If i didnt like actually getting product when I pay for it the same day, I would just go internet.
But something still calls me to the idea of browsing, researching in the store on my phone and buying/playing same day.

 

I hardly buy from stores anymore unless they're on clearances.

 

Oh stop bloody whining. Even in the 90's games shops asked for point cards or if you wanted to pre-order shit. I should know since I was a manger in one. Go to an independent game store and you'll be able to talk to the staff about games.

 

So true, I was never able to go into a game store without getting the used car salesman treatment, even in the 90s.

 

Yeah, it's not just games either. You can't go to any franchised store in America without getting the same BS, and it's been true for a long time.

 

There are not many indie stores in Australia at the moment. When I was in High School I found an Indie store and it was the best thing ever, too bad he closed the store

 

Yeah, this is nothing new. Back in the N64/PSone days, game pre-ordered was huge. The game informer card thing started at LEAST 13 years ago. AND they used to also push strategy guides with almost every game. "Do you want to get the strategy guide with this?"

Either you're trollin', or you're just too young to remember because it was your Mommy & Daddy at the register paying a few years ago.

 

Indie game stores are this close to white rhino status, franchises killed most of 'em

 

I remember that, but actually it happens still today. I was buying Mario Kart 7 and the guy says "OH! We have the player guide too! Want it?" I replied "Is it free?" "Ohhh no it's $30" "You fucking kidding me?" but anyway yes, EB still do this.

 

I think this all comes down to wanting one's hobby to seem socially relevant. Odds are you aren't going to run into a modern game shop and be able to talk about video games at the same level you can online. Outside of the net when anyone tells me they play video games, I don't even say that I play games too. They will go on about Skyrim or Call of Duty or whatever the latest thing is. I'm playing Super Hang-On right now. How can I even have a conversation with these people? It is a generation/interest gap. This is why we have the internet.

 

In canada (i now live in the USA but did not until 2994) we never had "game stores" until the early 2000s... EB games started popping up then.
Otherwise, we would shop at stores like zellers, canadian tire (canadian big box retailers there was no walmart until the mid - late 1990s) sears, or video rental stores.

So I would not argue you that they did that back then, i just never experienced it.

I am thirty-one, but as I stated there were no specialty game stores in the retail market I grew up in.

Ive been online a few years (since '95) and If i wanted to troll I would do better than this.
I love this forum, and dont want to f-things up for myself, sir.

 

Your choice of words is ironic a bit, because there used to be an indie chain called Rhino whose mascot was a white rhino.

They got bought out by Gamestop.

 

Yeah rewards cards have existed for years now, I guess there was just a stigma about working at a games store (ie it was for the nerdiest) and so only nerds took it. I guess people will work anywhere now and so you get less knowledgeable people working in them.

Not a matter for me considering thanks to the advent of Steam and online shopping places. I can't be arsed taking public transport into town (which can be a 40 minute trip there depending on how traffic is) then walking to the shop which is normally packed with screaming kids to pay more (Game was like 44.99 for a new game as opposed to Asda and the likes where its 39.99) for a game.

Call me anti-social if you will but I'm willing to wait a little longer to pay less (postage) and avoid the hassle.

 

When I do buy games, I tend to buy them in Japanese shops and you do not get that bollocks.

I did used to work for CeX back when they were good, when we could talk to people and had decent (and import) games around. I quit twice though due to management policies.

 

When I was a kid my games were purchased almost exclusively from Toys R Us which had a pretty good selection of nearly everything in the early 90s. At the very least I can recall them carrying SNES, GameBoy, Genesis, 32x, SegaCD and Saturn titles. I don't personally recall anything in terms of TG16, 3DO, CD-I, etc as I didn't own them (nor did I know anyone who did) and didn't bother looking.

Never really had a problem with them trying to hawk extra crap. You took your ticket to the register, paid for it, walked over to the customer service desk and some paid minion would go behind a locked door that looked like a cave of amazing to me back then and bring out what the ticket matched. No strategy guides to goad you into buying, no extended warranties, no bullshit "rewards" card. Then again every Toys R Us within a 45 mile radius closed a few years back and the only one I ever visit moved their games onto an open air shelving system but last time I bought anything nobody tried to get me to buy a strategy guide.

 

Man, those were the days. There was nothing like getting that ticket and taking it to the front and waiting for them to get your game. Too bad sometimes the game wasn't there... :mad-new:

And yes, Toys'R'Us had a nice selection of TG-16 games.


Now you take some crappy beat up case to the front (for a new game) and watch in horror as the clerk gets the game out of a paper slip case and places it in that POS case you brought up.

 

To be honest, I always had the opposite happen. Here's a trick I tried as a kid. Let's say Metroid for NES had no tickets. I would go in the small corner (where the games were kept) and say that I talked to an employee and to ask if they had any more of "said game" because they didn't put out the white tabs yet...

9 out of 10, they had the game hidden in the counter! Lazy fuckers...

 

Don't blame the people. Blame the company. The empoyees have quotas to meet every month. Sucks for them. Really.

 

There's one indie store I used to go sometimes ...... I have decided to abandon his store as a costumer because I tryed to put a order in of 12 ps1 games the the total was about 210 Australian dollars on the website which was slightly worse then eBay prices for each game So I called him up about walking into the store later that week for the games and he told me his website was outdated ..... And he told me that I will need another 120 dollars to get everything -.- Ripoff I can beat that any day on the net ! So he lost me as soon as the ok prices were hiked up by as much as 50%

 

Lucky for me there's a indie game store very close where I live and they have a very good amount of import games and never get hassled by them.