GameStop Goes Full Retro

By: Nick Gambino

Retro is in. You see it in fashion, you see it in music and now you’ll see it in GameStop. The brick-and-mortar video game chain has turned a select number of their stores into full-on retro gaming havens.

If you’re lucky enough to stumble upon one of these awesome spots, you’ll find a plethora of back-in-the-day consoles and games for sale. This will include all your favorite consoles, including NES, SNES, N64, Wii, Game Boy, Xbox, PlayStation, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn and more.

Titles for sale include things like Super Mario Land for Game Boy,  Ninja Gaiden for NES, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! for NES, WWF Royal Rumble for Sega Genesis and NBA Jam for Sega Genesis.

There’s not a ton of information on exactly what this retro experience will look like. Are they decking the whole shop in throwback fun? Are they only dedicating a couple shelves to bygone titles? Is this temporary or permanent?

GameStop hasn’t made this clear. For now, the best we can do is track down an example and see for ourselves. To locate a GameStop that’s engaging in this nostalgic flashback, you can use the company’s Retro Store Locator on their site. There are a handful in my area alone, suggesting they are implementing this in a ton of locations.

The iconic gaming store has had an interesting few years. Thanks to a world that has gone more digital and more internet, GameStop was a heartbeat away from a complete flatline. That’s when a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of online masses made them a meme stock and turned their fate around. The wild story that all started in the WallStreetBets subreddit was well documented in the 2023 movie Dumb Money.

Since then, they have stayed afloat and continued to offer gamers an in-person experience. It makes sense that a throwback business model would also embrace throwback consoles and titles. This may be little more than an attention grabber but it’s a marketing strategy that just makes sense when you think of GameStop.