I hate Gamestop. With a passion. There is a strong reason for that - they’ve taken the retro out of gaming. They removed the NES, SNES, DC and Genesis games from their stores a while ago, but the recent upheaval of N64 and PS1 games leaves me feeling a little depressed. It’ll take some history to fully explain this feeling, so head inside for more…

I remember in my youth reading somewhat crummy EGM issues and spotting Funcoland ads buried deep within them. Being an avid NES-only owner (for 10 years, mind you…I was left out of the 16-bit war. Parents didn’t think I needed a new system, and at the time, I was pretty content with the NES and Commodore 64 that I used primarily for games. In ‘96 I caught up with the times and was given a N64 for Christmas, and I’ve tried to keep up ever since then), seeing so many NES games for sale made me quite excited.

Alas, there was no chance of me reaching one of these fabled retro heavens…until 6-7 years ago. A Funcoland suddenly appeared in the local mall. I was excited…elated, even. Several games in my retro collection were acquired there (Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, both Kid Icarus games, Final Fantasy III and Mega Man 2 stand out as some of my major finds). And then comes…Gamestop. Who bought their stores. And slowly but surely began the retro gaming annihilation. Suddenly, NES, SNES, Genesis and DC games are no longer being sold (and the worst part was that they replaced the DC section with the craptastic N-Gage…oy). On top of that, I didn’t buy new games from there after two purchases from the same store did not work properly - a DC Dream Pad that was completely busted, and a Dead or Alive 2 that glitched up often (and was glad to be rid of, to be honest…DoA is not my favorite fighter by any means). So by axing out the retro games they helped make me into a far more bitter man than I already was at their franchise.

And then, some friends of mine who were working there were fired for some lame reasons (which I won’t go into here). One of them had the courage to open up her own game store, and aligned with EB Games. And again, I was elated about this since EB was NOT owned by Gamestop and DID carry retro games. A few other great games ended up in my collection (Earthbound, Bionic Commando and Ninja Gaiden are the major stand outs), but it was not meant to last long. You see, Gamestop, who was not content with its near-monopoly of the videogame-only mall stores, decided to buy the final piece of the puzzle, EB Games. And yes, I do know that EB and Gamestop were talking back and forth about one buying the other, but I was really hoping it wouldn’t happen. But it did. And the NES, SNES, DC and Genesis games were once again cut from the store and would not be allowed to be sold back in.

BUT, the final break in the back is the recent N64 and PS1 purging. As of June 1st of this year, Gamestop and EB Games won’t buy back any PS1 or N64 games. I suppose that the stores are gearing up for the Wii and PS3 launches that’ll be happening later this year, but that was a tragic day for me. I just recently got a PS2 and have been quickly salvaging what PS1 titles I could before the fated doomsday of massmarket retro gaming. And I did do pretty well. Both the remade Lunars, Final Fantasy Tactics, Persona 2, Vagrant Story and Vandal~Hearts are all in my collection now. But man, there’s so many other PS1 games I’d like to try, but my options are now limited to dabbling in Ebay (which, to be honest, I don’t want to do) or hunting down consignment stores (I have found one that carries all kinds of retro games and picked up a few solid games, like Super Mario Kart and Waverace 64) and yard sales (which is far more risky than anything else). Which kind of sucks.

Gamestop has effectively and efficiently slaughtered the ties of retro gaming from the mainstream buyer. By removing all of the classics, they have limited gamers to only seeing the modern gaming world, which does have high points of course, but it’s only a small part of the overall picture. Gaming has affected the hearts of many people all over the world throughout time, and I know of gamers who only play the classic games because that’s all they want to play, and Gamestop has slammed the door in their face. I love many of the games of old as much as the new ones, and being able to choose from both is an option I’d like to be able to have instead of having it made for me. Thankfully, the Wii will have the Virtual Console loaded with classic NES, SNES, N64, Genesis and TurboGrafx options so I can spend time with it reliving the memories of legendary games that I’ve enjoyed or never had the chance to before…and I also hope third parties jump onboard, too. Then I can at least have the last laugh at this extinction attempt made by Gamestop and go, “look, there’s a grand market for these! Shame you stopped carrying them! Ha, ha!”

Well, I probably won’t do that, but I will likely chuckle a few times. I have a feeling Nintendo will.

Note - I mean no harm to the Gamestop employees. They’re just doing their job, and I respect that. It’s more the company itself that irks me.