I used to go to Best Buy weekly to look for new movies and games, but since they eliminated movies and scaled back games, I’ve been doing all that shopping on Amazon instead… I guess it shows who wants my money and who doesn’t.
Best Buy is going to end up being just another “Hey, remember Fry’s? Circuit City? CompUSA? Good Guys? Tower? Computer City?”
Oh yeah man, GameStop was at the forefront of what the industry as a whole is doing now. Acquiring, consuming, shitting out a husk.
I’m of 2 minds with GameStop nowadays. On one hand, it’s somewhat nice to still have a physical game store. On the other, it’s fucking GameStop and all the baggage that comes with that.
I don’t see much of a future for physical shops at this point. Especially with Best Buy, Walmart and Kroger phasing out retail space.
Soon we’ll have nothing but digital and subscription and I guess we’ll like it? I’ll hold on to my dragons hoard of physical games as long as I can (thanks Game Crazy for employing new throughout high school) but it’ll be painful the day I realize I’m no longer adding new stuff to it.
I remember software etc. They had a big event for the dreamcast being released. 9/9/99. I wore that free shirt with the date that I got there from playing sonic adventure for like 15 years
BestBuy has always sucked, and the only reason I’d ever go there is if I’m really hard up for something and I’m willing to get fleeced for the convenience. That’s it. They have:
crappy selection
bad prices (I guess they price match)
unhelpful staff (not their fault)
bad store layout (everything I want is hidden in the corner somewhere)
But it’s the only tech store in my area, aside from whatever Target or Walmart happens to have, so if I really need a SATA to USB cable or something, it’s my only option for same day stuff.
So I’d be a little sad about them going out of business, but not overly so because they completely suck. I can count the things I’ve bought there on one hand, because the shopping experience is awful imo. I purchased tons of things at Fry’s in the 2-ish years I lived near one and had money to spend. I prefer to buy at a brick and mortar (I spend a ton at Target), but BestBuy ain’t it. If a Microcenter opened up near me, I’d do all my tech shopping there, but I refuse to shop at BestBuy.
I only ever remember RadioShack selling prepaid phones, RC cars, and other consumer electronics, but apparently at one point in time they sold small-scale electronic components for hobbyists.
They did indeed, and the Radio Shack in my town was one the last ones I ever saw to still sell individual components although the selection did shrink rapidly in the final years. The other locations around and about seemingly all turned into basically exclusively cell phone stores, right around the time the cell phone boom was happening. The problem with that: So was every other retailer on Earth, but most of those other retailers also had other product lines to fall back on. The inevitable tanking happened shortly thereafter.
There are somehow apparently still around 500 Radio Shack stores still operating, I believe all of which are privately owned. I have seen a couple in my travels, all of them located far out into the sticks in Appalachia and the Midwest, presumably all locations that are not served well by larger competitors or the internet.
We had one in Minneapolis at the Mall of America when it opened. It had a great selection but I was still partial to Cheapo, Northern Lights, and Positively 4th St. Cheapo is still around and I stop in there a few times a year. The other 2 closed down a long time ago – possibly before MOA opened in the early 90’s I think,
I used to go to Best Buy weekly to look for new movies and games, but since they eliminated movies and scaled back games, I’ve been doing all that shopping on Amazon instead… I guess it shows who wants my money and who doesn’t.
Best Buy is going to end up being just another “Hey, remember
Fry’s?Circuit City?CompUSA?Good Guys?Tower?Computer City?”Jesus Christ, content warning for that body count you crossed off at the end there.
Fuck. I miss all those shops. Can I get a R.I.P. for Babbages, Game Crazy (pre-hollywood buyout) and Software Etc… while we’re at it?
No sense in not going totally dark here. Haha
Babbages, Software Etc., EB Games, and Funcoland all got absorbed into what is now Gamestop, but who knows how long they’ll hold on.
Game releases this year have been super light, unless there are some major announcements coming up, it’s not looking great for them. :(
Oh yeah man, GameStop was at the forefront of what the industry as a whole is doing now. Acquiring, consuming, shitting out a husk.
I’m of 2 minds with GameStop nowadays. On one hand, it’s somewhat nice to still have a physical game store. On the other, it’s fucking GameStop and all the baggage that comes with that.
I don’t see much of a future for physical shops at this point. Especially with Best Buy, Walmart and Kroger phasing out retail space.
Soon we’ll have nothing but digital and subscription and I guess we’ll like it? I’ll hold on to my dragons hoard of physical games as long as I can (thanks Game Crazy for employing new throughout high school) but it’ll be painful the day I realize I’m no longer adding new stuff to it.
I don’t know that I can forgive them for killing Think Geek. :(
As an avid Bawls drinker, I 100% agree with this sentiment.
You can still get Bawls if you travel to the US! In certain states. If the state has a Microcenter.
Aww man, good to know! I wish we had a microcenter nearby. Closest one is at least a state away.
Maybe they’ll ship it. Haha
I remember software etc. They had a big event for the dreamcast being released. 9/9/99. I wore that free shirt with the date that I got there from playing sonic adventure for like 15 years
BestBuy has always sucked, and the only reason I’d ever go there is if I’m really hard up for something and I’m willing to get fleeced for the convenience. That’s it. They have:
But it’s the only tech store in my area, aside from whatever Target or Walmart happens to have, so if I really need a SATA to USB cable or something, it’s my only option for same day stuff.
So I’d be a little sad about them going out of business, but not overly so because they completely suck. I can count the things I’ve bought there on one hand, because the shopping experience is awful imo. I purchased tons of things at Fry’s in the 2-ish years I lived near one and had money to spend. I prefer to buy at a brick and mortar (I spend a ton at Target), but BestBuy ain’t it. If a Microcenter opened up near me, I’d do all my tech shopping there, but I refuse to shop at BestBuy.
I only ever remember RadioShack selling prepaid phones, RC cars, and other consumer electronics, but apparently at one point in time they sold small-scale electronic components for hobbyists.
As well as the tools to go with them.
And almost every product or device you bought there had a schematic of the internal circuits printed in the manual that came in the box.
At one point it was a mecca for electronics tinkerers and hobbyists.
I still have a soldering iron and a couple spools on solder that I bought there way back in history.
They did indeed, and the Radio Shack in my town was one the last ones I ever saw to still sell individual components although the selection did shrink rapidly in the final years. The other locations around and about seemingly all turned into basically exclusively cell phone stores, right around the time the cell phone boom was happening. The problem with that: So was every other retailer on Earth, but most of those other retailers also had other product lines to fall back on. The inevitable tanking happened shortly thereafter.
There are somehow apparently still around 500 Radio Shack stores still operating, I believe all of which are privately owned. I have seen a couple in my travels, all of them located far out into the sticks in Appalachia and the Midwest, presumably all locations that are not served well by larger competitors or the internet.
lol yeah, in the 90s you could go in there and buy a couple resistors, a couple capacitors, and a couple (expensive, crappy) LEDs
I can see how that didn’t work out for them though
Tower Records was my cult. I miss that place the most.
We had one in Minneapolis at the Mall of America when it opened. It had a great selection but I was still partial to Cheapo, Northern Lights, and Positively 4th St. Cheapo is still around and I stop in there a few times a year. The other 2 closed down a long time ago – possibly before MOA opened in the early 90’s I think,