So in my quest to locate the best spots for retro videogames in the city, I've visited most of what there is, and finally visited The Exchange today, a place with a good reputation that turned out to be a disappointment. Here goes:
Location: Wicker Park. Trendy and cool, sure, but impossible to find parking most of the time, and one of those claustrophobic neighborhoods where it feels like half the streets are always closed for repair and you're trying to figure out one-way traffic patterns while swerving to avoid bike messengers. I did it on a day off, in the middle of a weekday, to minimize the hassle factor, but even then it wasn't great.
Inventory: Good in terms of variety. They had lots of NES, SNES, and especially original GameBoy games (which hardly anyone else has). Also, their stock was alphabetical and shelved in cases, which meant the carts weren't being regularly tossed around, dinged up, scratched, or disarrayed by other customers, which is a big plus. Some of the stuff I pulled out of the cases was in mediocre-to-bad shape, but they do appear to have at least cleaned some or all of the games I looked at and I did buy a copy of Super Mario Land in very good shape for a reasonable price, so it's hit or miss. They also had a decent selection of systems and rarities, including a NES copy of Metal Storm, which I'll get to in a minute, but they got two stars instead of one from me purely on the strength of having their act together inventory-wise.
Prices: This was a big disappointment. I'd heard that cheap games could be had here from a large selection, and I didn't spot a single title of any of the systems I looked at that was cheaper than Pricecharting's listing for average ebay sales. Their games and systems were both broadly overpriced (some just a buck or two, and they do have a rewards card, but a few as much as $30 over what I've seen online or even in other stores in Chicago). Add in the $5 in gas it took me to drive down and back from the north suburbs, the $1 parking meter, and 11% Cook County tax and I was already feeling that good deals on prices were a must to justify coming here in the first place. Wretchedly, several games on my list were priced $5, $10 or more above their current market value. And I don't mean rarities or boxed games, I mean loose carts of popular things they printed millions of like Contra, Final Fantasy, and Super Metroid. These games in particular are already overpriced on the collector market, but instead of an already-absurd $30 Contra, which every kid in the 80s had, The Exchange was asking something like $40. Final Fantasy (usually $17-19 on eBay) was $30. I'm not a newcomer to the city, so I expected a "Wicker Park lease" markup, but again the reputation of this store is that you can find good games at good prices, and that's just demonstrably not the case. Bummer. They did, however, have that copy of Metal Storm, in reasonable shape, for $100 against an average online price of $95. I was interested, reached for my wallet, and had them unlock the case.
Customer Service: The most basic thing that every retro game collector knows is to look at the circuit boards of rare old cartridge-based videogames in order to confirm their condition and authenticity. This is just a given, and it's neither paranoid nor unreasonable to ask, even when you have no reason to think a game isn't functional and authentic. I was leery because Metal Storm in particular is a game that is frequently bootlegged, reproduced, or otherwise tampered with precisely because it's rare and valuable, which is why I haven't purchased one online and I was hoping to find one in person that I could check out before I bought it. So I assumed, wrongly, that a store known as THE place to go for retro gaming in the city wouldn't even blink at being asked to open the cart so I could visually confirm the board and check the condition of the connector pins. I was told flatly that they do not open any of their games. They offered to plug it into a system and boot it up (which wouldn't necessarily confirm its authenticity if it was a reproduction), and to take returns in the store up to (I think) 30 days, which is reasonable, but again: I deliberately have waited months to even go here because I dislike driving and parking in Wicker Park. I politely declined and passed on the game, and left disappointed.
Some advice for the bro behind the counter who clearly doesn't understand what it means to put a $100 price tag on a 30-year old Nintendo game and lock it behind a glass case: you MUST be willing to open these and let customers confirm their authenticity and condition. Not doing so is to fundamentally misunderstand both your own product and the customer you're trying to sell it to.
The verdict: Hey, if you live nearby, maybe it's better than nothing, but this is hardly the goldmine of retro gaming its reputation suggests. It's a used media store that's uncompetitive with eBay. No thank you. read more
