Amnesia Lane: Hunting haunted haunts
Trips back to the motherland always come with a touch of trepidation. For even without the trials of the pandemic, the economy of the state that birthed me has always been fraught with peril.
Part of each trip has always been checking the old haunts I had the opportunity to check to see if they survived while I wasn’t looking. And I gotta say, this whole process has really led me to reconsider my belief in object permanence.
This time around, I discovered that both locations of a wonderful mom-and-pop used game store shut their doors back in 2021. Video Game Exchange was a wonderful place that I came back to for years on end. It was a store that loudly announced itself with a giant Mario statue on the corner of a waterfront. It was where so many of the rarer games in my library were found at astonishingly decent prices. And also a place that had a pile of $9 copies of Gauntlet IV that I regret never pulling the trigger on.
My long association with the store involves — as many stories about my younger days do — Magnus. While I don’t know when or how he happened across it, he kindly introduced me the first time we happened to be traveling out that way together.
Not to make this a clip show, but Video Game Exchange assisted me though a number of gaming stories. They were the source of my copy of Pokemon Colosseum — with the Jirachi bonus disc. It was instrumental in building out my Playstation 2 collection, as I was more than 4 years late to that party. It built my Rock Band collection piece by piece. And that all still isn’t the half of it.
Perhaps there’s not much of a purpose in eulogizing a store that nobody who reads this blog save one person ever knew. Or maybe it pulls at your heartstrings because it reminds you of your own little game store that is also long gone. But I’m sad that death came like a thief in the night. I will miss it and all it did for my hobby.
Other purveyors of used video games have managed to hang on. The Bull Moose Music chain, where probably a third of my movie collection came from in addition to some games, is as full of life as ever. It even coughed up a copy of Ogre Battle last time I was home. If you’re curious about the vibe of this chain, you can draw a lot of conclusions from the way they organize their movies. They’re sorted into the two genres: Horror and not horror.
And a newer store has weathered the additional challenge of being in the decimated gravija’d Auburn Mall (seen just shy of 3 minutes in the video, but almost all of the stores shown on the right side of the walkthrough are already gone). I even scored a PS3 copy of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax there today. Perhaps it had absorbed the life force (and possibly inventories) of the stores that weren’t so lucky; the only other ones appear to be out there are the Gamestops that are themselves running low on extra lives all over the country.
Despite the local impact, I do worry that more old game stores closing than new ones are opening is a problem that reaches far wider than home. It makes me wonder just how much longer the concept of a gaming store can even last, especially when the time comes when publishers or console-makers truly go all-in on the digital future. As close as we are now, it’s still just flirting. While not having this particular store is a loss in the here and now, the very concept of it, too, shall pass someday.
About The Author
Drew
Features Editor | Drew started behind the 8(bit)-ball in the video game world. He first became interested in anime by chance exposure on the Sci-Fi channel. Drew's the creative force behind blog-wide features, works the movie and food beats, and pioneered Damage Control’s entry into video, podcasts and streaming.
