Looking back at retro gaming stores!

xxalxx said:
Ahh the velcro'ed boxes stick to the walls .. Before they put the long counter in :)
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OMG! :eek: I remember that lol! :D

What was the small independent shop called on Lime Street, the guy who owned it had brown curly hair and a moustache? All the good games
were behind the counter and the Mastertronic games you could browse?

Thats all I remember!
 
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For those in the north east Charlies games up in wesgate road, they used to have a snake in a snake tank. was run by a woman called steph and her husband & family, then they opened the 2 stores in the green market. They were always good with prices, but just got more stupid, then grainger games opened their little stall and had better prices.

im sure in the 90s there was also mail order company that had a few stores in the uk and opened/or tried to open one newcastle but it was in some daft out of the main town area.
 
Antics in Stroud/Gloucester. They sold games, Amigas, PC Parts next to model railways, radio control cars, warhammer 40k and BB guns.

My favorite shop as a kid :(
 
In Brighton we had SoftCentre in Churchill Square and Gamer in East Street for computer games and ConsoleVania for Snes/Megadrive and console stuff.

Apart from that it was EB, HMV and Virgin for most of my PC stuff.
 
Most have already been mentioned (Boots, EB, Special Reserve, Virgin Megastore, WHSmith etc.) but also Beatties and round here independent shops like Computer Cavern.

I remember loads of random places having a carousel of C64/Spectrum/CPC budget tapes - like Newsagents, toy shops and even a pet shop lol.
 
I bought an ex-display overheating speccy 48k (rubber keys) from Holborn branch of WHSmith in the mid-eighties for 12 quid. I was in there every day chatting to the staff in the computer section which was in the back of the store, Leather lane entrance. Happy times.

More recently (well about 22 years ago) I worked in the Chelmsford branches of Software+.

Happy days.
 
Beatties in Milton Keynes used to sell pc games , boycotted the place though when they would not refund me for Battlecruiser 3000AD.
 
Elfmeister. said:
A place called "Special Reserve".
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I remember these guys very well, I started my career in computers with them 18 years ago, if you ever had one of their maxx pc range there is an extremely high possibility that it was built and setup by me, used to love that job as we would always get preview hardware ages before general release in order to OEM setup our new range......

Those were the days. Got my fist Voodoo 3dfx card from them. Ah the memorys.
 
darkgen said:
I bought an ex-display overheating speccy 48k (rubber keys) from Holborn branch of WHSmith in the mid-eighties for 12 quid. I was in there every day chatting to the staff in the computer section which was in the back of the store, Leather lane entrance. Happy times..
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One of my first jobs was just around the corner to that WH Smiths, I used to go and hang out in the computer section at lunch times playing with the (what seemed like at the time) dozens of different computers I couldn't afford :)
 
Used to have a Software Superstore in town where I used to spend all my time after school, first buying Amstrad games then onto Mastersystem and Megadrive. It was taken over by EB before it eventually closed down.
 
Ohh the memories!!

M first 'proper' pc was bought from Special Reserve. I remember playing plenty of decent games on the Atari and then the Amiga. By the time the pc took off, even back then the best prices were to be had from gaming catalogues. I guess that was before the internet really took off too.

I'm trying to think of the name of a shop in Peterborough City Centre that used to sell games. I remember visiting the shop every Friday and used to spend ages looking around at games I really fancied. Wish I could remember it.
 
in 1993 i went to wh smith in merry hill with a mate and he bought his super nintendo from there. i got mine and a dx4 from special reserve.

there was an independent game shop in blackwell street, kidderminster that i remember buying x-out from. i bought it because the artwork on the front cover reminded me of the predator but it was a great game too.
 
Soft Centre - Aylesbury mid 1980's. That was a proper old skool dive tucked away in a shabby corner of an equally shabby 60's concrete shopping centre. They must have sold games for everything from Vic 20's (and earlier) to stuff for the Speccy, c64 and CPC. No doubt they fell by the wayside during the 16bit revolution. I only remember one other independent store in my home town. I bought Fighter Bomber and Laser Squad from them, shame I can't remember the name as they were both properly awesome games. Then again it was 25 years ago. :eek:

Pretty much everywhere flogged cassettes/floppy discs back in those days. I'm starting to get all 'rose tinted glasses' at the memory of buying PC games for £44.99. :D
 
cm1179 said:
in 1993 i went to wh smith in merry hill with a mate and he bought his super nintendo from there. i got mine and a dx4 from special reserve.

there was an independent game shop in blackwell street, kidderminster that i remember buying x-out from. i bought it because the artwork on the front cover reminded me of the predator but it was a great game too.
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Special Reserve, haven't heard that name in a long time!
 
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