vintage gaming store displays

[raskar42]

 

They used to have their Archer and Realistic store brands, which was good stuff, but now they carry the same stuff that you can get off of Amazon, for less money than Radio Shack. I have a friend who works there. Now, Radio Shack is a glorified cell phone retailer. They seem to make most of their salaries from commissions for selling Sprint/Verizon/AT&T contracts rather than knowing what a diode or resistor is.

 

I go there, in a pinch, if I don't want to wait for an Amazon order. And I'd rather give RS my money than Wal-Mart.

 

right, they used to have all kinds of cool stuff, hobby kits, microprocessor kits, their own computer line.

 

comic books

 

now it's just sad

[Keatah]

 

You're welcome. I knew you guys would dig Plaid Stallions. I ran across it a couple of years ago. Yeah I think today's sales clerks are surly and don't want to be there, probably due to only making minimum wage with little to no bonuses. Whereas back then, they probably received bonuses for every sale. Crappy wages are no excuse to give poor service, but that's human nature I guess.

 

 

 

That is so unfounded. Crappy wages *ARE* perfect excuses for giving poor service. Nothing in this world is free, AND if you want *MY* expertise, you *WILL* pay for it. If not, go elsewhere!

 

You even said so yourself! They got bonuses, right there is an incentive to know your product. Top dollar attracts top talent. Sheese.. the ignorant muddy thinking of the general public + greedy Harvard Business philosophy reared its ugly head in this post.

[Midnight Synergy]

Thanks for posting those pictures - they're great!

 

I used to love going into Malls and Department Stores and just look through their game displays. You'd never know what games you'd find. I miss that - I get no thrill walking into an electronics section nowadays. I know exactly what I'll find, because it's excatly the same stuff as in any other store.

 

(maybe that's one part of the thrill of looking through thrift stores - it partly replicates the "you neverknow what you'll find" feeling?)

[high voltage]

It was a sad day in history when UK Tandy closed shop (well, sold to carphone warehouse, and then they gotten closed anyway).

[schuwalker]

I love seeing this vintage stuff!

 

I was born in '73 and lived in the Chicagoland area my whole so I saw my fair share of gaming items....Some stores I recall:

 

Sears- This store was the bread and butter of my 2600 collection. I also remember playing a TI99 kiosk there... I want to see some vintage photos surface of the Sears game asile...

 

Dominicks and Jewel grocery store- yes they used to sell them by the film section...

 

Kmart- Anybody remember when Kmart had a 2600 kisok there?

 

Some other notables.... Montgomery Ward, Toys By Rizzi, Woolco, Camelot music stores, K&B, Zayre and McDades....to name a few

[+save2600]

I love seeing this vintage stuff!

 

I was born in '73 and lived in the Chicagoland area my whole so I saw my fair share of gaming items....Some stores I recall:

 

Sears- This store was the bread and butter of my 2600 collection. I also remember playing a TI99 kiosk there... I want to see some vintage photos surface of the Sears game asile...

I don't remember our Sears having a TI kiosk, but that would have been awesome I bet! I do remember the Sears in Vernon Hills having these monstrous glass display cases. They took up and made the entire aisles back then. I remember standing in awe of the Atari 5200 and Vectrex displays.

[Ranthulfr]

Ditto: Time machine!

[Keatah]

Ditto: Time machine!

 

I used to love the sears in woodfield mall, and data domain just a few blocks away. Sears had these metal file cabinets on the floor just filled with cartridges. The black boxes in black filing cabinets looked cool. Especially with all the different colored labels and such.

 

Data domain had hundreds of bags of software, yes plastic baggies. And cool hardware, like bare circuit boards.

 

Today, the marketing departments insist on sterility, you better not see any wires!

[schuwalker]

I love seeing this vintage stuff!

 

I was born in '73 and lived in the Chicagoland area my whole so I saw my fair share of gaming items....Some stores I recall:

 

Sears- This store was the bread and butter of my 2600 collection. I also remember playing a TI99 kiosk there... I want to see some vintage photos surface of the Sears game asile...

I don't remember our Sears having a TI kiosk, but that would have been awesome I bet! I do remember the Sears in Vernon Hills having these monstrous glass display cases. They took up and made the entire aisles back then. I remember standing in awe of the Atari 5200 and Vectrex displays.

 

While I was checking out the 2600/colecovision stuff; my dad was at the TI 99 area. I stumbled open it by looking for him one day and he was playing Ti Invaders! So the ones I remember playing were Tombstone City, Blasto and TI Invaders....

 

This Sears was in Fox Valley mall in Aurora, Il. The same Sears that had a arcade and help me amass my vintage Star Wars Collection! It's still around today but it's not the same. Damn, I miss that place!

[Intellfan]

My game memories in stores are VIVID of Toys R Us with the paper tag you had to bring to the 'game window' where the crotchety old woman would saunter off out back to get you your game 10 minutes later.

 

I remember that. This is around the time i was getting a lot of the late release INTV Intellivision games from Toys R US.

 

I also have memories of a small store called Odd Lots that sold 2600 and Intellivision games

 

Our local Meyers sold games for about every retro system that was out at the time

 

I can recall this Toy Store at the local mall (can't recall the name, could of been KB or a store before KB). But that was where i got some of my TomyTronic Table Tops, Tron, Scramble, Pac-Man (the yellow one), Centipede (but it didn't work and we had to take it back)

 

I can't recall what games K-Mart sold. I guess that memory didn't stick. I do have a memory of messing with the TI-99 they had on display.

 

I even have a faint memory of Sears selling their versions of games, that really confused me as a kid. I only assumed the games would work on my system but wasn't sure. (of course now i know)

 

I'm trying to think really hard if there were any other stores in my area that sold games back then, but that might be it.

 

I just remembered 1 more. (I lived in a Detroit suburb Madison Heights). When we drove out somewhere around Troy or Clawson, there was a clothing store similar to a Khols, TG Max, etc. that had a wall of Intellivision and 2600 games. My mother bought me Baseball from there. I get home and the game won't fit in my system. It turned out someone stuck a 2600 cart in an Intellivision box. It had that funny M Network cart shape (which i was clueless of at the time)

 

Did Woolworths sell retro games? I remember there was a small one in a mall we went to a lot.

 

Oh i think Radio Shack sold games too, but i don't have any specific memories.

 

I think i just fried my brain remembering all that. I'm sure i'm forgetting something.

I bought my system at a small store I played Atari 2600 and intellivsion at sears i bought games at Sears ,Radioshack and at kb later on i even rented a few games back in the day when the games were 40 or fifty a piece I ordered all my INTV games threw a catalog like Commando, mountain madness skiing I wish I would of bought 10 coppies of spiker volleyball

[HatefulGravey]

What strikes me when I see stuff like this is we all regret not keeping boxes and books from old games as a child, so our children will never miss a thing. We will keep everything from now on.

 

Its like comic books. The old ones have value because most kids didn't keep them. People are now thinking about those values when they buy new books and in 50 years they will be worth next to nothing because there will still be tons of them.

 

I'm not complaining about these things, just noticing them. A lot of the hobby we all love will go away when we do. There trill of finding a CIB Atari 5200 in a thrift store will not be there, as the CIB XBox 360 will be pretty common.

[SlowCoder]

the CIB XBox 360 will be pretty common.

I doubt that. It's junk hardware (go ahead and bash me for saying it). It's not designed to survive more than a few years, and I think they actually have engineered obsolescence built in. The mechanical drives will fail, RROD. In 10-15 years, there will hardly be any working at all. And the generation that had them will be using newer hardware with downloaded games on solid state drive memory and no more mechanical drives.

 

This is one reason I've been primarily sticking to collecting cart based systems. Much higher lifespan. I do have CD based systems, but I'm not expecting or even hoping to keep them until I'm 60.

[Retro Rogue]

There was a TRS80 I think, that took MASSIVE floppy disks, inserted vertically.

 

 

8" floppies, maybe? I didn't know any TRS-80s had 8" floppy drives.

 

The Model II. I have one sitting in the basement with dual ones waiting for some.......

[Rik]

Weird feeling.I should've jumped at the chance and bought the games and stuff when it was available.Got to remember i was just a 12 year old back then and couldn't afford it anyway.Weird thinking how expensive the stuff was back then.Makes you realize how ridiculous the markup was on this stuff.