Boots was good.. all the tapes on the shelves. It used to be a pleasure just standing there looking at the front and back of the cassette boxes.. simpler times!
i miss computer stores
- Thread starter Evatron
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Boots was good.. all the tapes on the shelves. It used to be a pleasure just standing there looking at the front and back of the cassette boxes.. simpler times!
I'll be honest, aside from the odd bit of nostalgia I don't really miss these type of shops. They were usually expensive compared to mail order but you didn't really have much choice at times. Online is just much better, especially nowadays with fast delivery. That said, a few memories.
- Going in to play games consoles, e.g. Boots in Salisbury had Street Fighter 2 and F-Zero on the SNES, Game in Southampton had Fifa International Soccer on the Megadrive etc.
- Browsing the random collections of cassette games for the Amstrad CPC, annoyingly nowhere local seemed to stock disc games. A lot of my games back then were bought from places like Smiths
- A local independent games shop where the people running it were actually interested in games, they did trade-ins as well so you could buy and sell second hand games. Also got our first PC there, the guy brought it round to setup one evening and was using Quake to test the soundcard, accidently left it installed when he left. Strange twist of fate, some 24 years later it is still the main game I play online. At the risk of sounding a bit melodramatic I wonder how different my life would have turned out if he hadn't done that
- Going round all the different shops to compare prices on games... WH Smiths, Woolworths, Game, EB, Boots, Our Price etc so you knew you were getting the best deal
- Learning how VAT worked based on the fact that a £1.99 game went up to £2.04 and a £2.99 game went up to £3.06 when the rate was hiked to 17.5%
Associate
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- 17 Nov 2018
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Steam might be convenient but it has it's flaws (EG, once you ordr a game, you can't reorder it {either SKYRIM SE's stopped working on my laptop or it's probably something to do with the computer as I've removed all the mods, unistalled/reinstalled it but on;y get as far as the play game, load gane,
MODs quit game menu and it used to work all the time. Any deas as to what's going on?)
I would have also appreciiated a manual and ship recognition guide for Elite Dangerous.
MODs quit game menu and it used to work all the time. Any deas as to what's going on?)
I would have also appreciiated a manual and ship recognition guide for Elite Dangerous.
Yep, right next to that section in the Worthing one used to be a massive in branch photo processing lab.
Soldato
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Yep, I loved all that stuff. It never felt the same again when they started using plastic DVD cases. The closest thing I got in recent years that resembled the old school packaging was the augmented edition of Deus Ex: Human Revolution in 2011. I bought that purely for the box and accessories over the digital steam pre-order.
Fixed that for ya.
My childhood experience of this stuff was a bit later than you guys - late 90s/early 00s. For me, it was Woolworths mainly. Every Saturday we'd go shopping, and I'd stop by Woolies and have a look at their games sections. Good times.
Don
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I remember going into Toys R Us around Fireworks day, came out with Smurf on the Atari 2600 instead of Fireworks 
What do you mean by 'order and reorder' a game? Have you tried deleting all files in the steamapps/common folder?
Soldato
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I was just thinking the same thing. You can't get hold of anyone from B&Q, Halfords, Currys etc etc. If you do make eye contact, they usually run off.
I remember John Menzies being better than Woolworths. Then came WH Smith after John Menzies? I also fondly remember RS Mcoll in the 80s. Mad rush to RS Mcoll for Panini stickers on Saturday mornings.
Funny that.
"RS McColl, commonly known as simply McColl's is a Scottish newsagent company named after Robert Smyth McColl, who was a professional footballer."
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I completely forgot games came with tshirts.
I remember having a valve or halflife one now
A cap came with Half-Life 2 gold edition.
I bought my very first Home Cinema hardware from TCR way back in 1987. I last visited a couple of years ago & it has changed so much since then. High Rents & online shopping killed nearly all the hi-fi/Home Cinema business there like most places. There's the odd mobile phone shop but that's it. Other retailers have replaced them.
I used to like going to the west end of London (It was one of my duties for my 1st job as an office Junior back in the early 80's) not any more.
To keep on topic, I used to go regularly to local Computer Fairs in the 1st half of the Noughties. I self built my 1st rigs using parts from them, the odd part online. I started buying online all the time from about 2005 onwards as they stopped holding them locally. There's one or two still going in greater London last time I checked, but its the travel & there's no guarantee that said fair will have what you want. Plus you pay to get in & that puts off a lot of people.
Maplin was really the last bastion of the high street selling oddities unless there are any Tandy's still going. I was also very surprised at how Tottenham Court road is the last time I worked in London. Those TCR stores were rammed with stuff like you could go in and come out with everything needed for a warp drive project. Sad to see places becoming generalist and not carrying the breadth of stock like places used to.