Game Stop

[TRJ22487]

Yesterday I was at Pheasant Lane mall in Nashua, NH... also has two GameStop's in the same mall. I imagine many cities and towns have two GameStop's, the original location, then the converted EB/Funcoland. I know my town is like that.

[TRJ22487]

Was digging through my wallet and pulled this out! Cant believe it was still in there! I got this back in 2004 and that was the last year I used it....EB lasted a few years longer

[GothicPrincess]

awesome!!! It's amazing the things people find in their purses or wallets. Great photos as well.

[gu4ever]

and before that it was Electronic Boutique!

Here's my old simcity box from the Electronic Boutique store.

[Marc82]

Sim City 3000. An okay game. Though I prefer the old school Sim City 2000. I guess I don't have enough memory on my system because Sim City 4 always crashes.

[gu4ever]

Sim City 3000. An okay game. Though I prefer the old school Sim City 2000. I guess I don't have enough memory on my system because Sim City 4 always crashes.

Liked the simcity 3000 graphics. Couldn't run sim4 either, never loaded correctly.

[ynkeesfn82]

Gamestop is opening in Walmart Plaza in Southington, CT.

[TRJ_22487]

I had saved many images from the defunct SiteRide.com that captured what was to me, the golden age of videogame stores, the late 1990's


Gamestop originally started in 1984 as Babbage's. Back in the day I had no idea they were the same company.
There were definitely Babbage's in New England. The one I frequented most was the Holyoke Mall in Massachusetts.
The walls and racks at that location were exactly the same as this picture, I'll never forget those staggered walls.
I also seem to recall those same style monitors against the glass, watching the footage from the mall hallway.
Back in the 90's up until 2004 that mall was a monthly visit for my father and I. I can remember quite well the first time we went in and Babbage's was gone. The year was definitely either 1996 or 1997. Unbeknownst to me, that must have been when they converted to Gamestop.



To my knowledge there were never any Gamestop's in New England until about 2000.
Here is the East Brunswick, NJ location in 1997. I never visited a store with this logo.
By 2000 they had gobbled up every major chain but Electronics Boutique.




My other favorite store as a child was Software Etc. Here are the Wayne & Woodbridge, New Jersey locations.
They were also in New England and had a location at the Holyoke Mall. I believe they were bought up by Gamestop in 1999.

Though they were mostly all in mall locations, some were standalone stores like these ones in New York.




My favorite all time was Funcoland. They specialized in non-current videogames, and the prices were CHEAP.
I was devastated when Gamestop bought them out in 1999/2000. The chain once littered the northeast in malls and standalone locations.





The head honcho of the 1990's was definitely Electronics Boutique. By the time Gamestop bought them out in 2005 as ebGames they just weren't even the same.
Here are the Brooklyn and Staten Island locations in 1997.

[JoshAustin610]

The dates on siteride are way off in many cases (for example the Gamestop in East Brunswick opened in early 2000, right before the Funcoland merger).  Here's the actual timeline:

1977: The first Electronics Boutique opens.
1983: The first Babbages opens.
1986: The first Software Etc. opens as part of the bookstore chain B. Dalton, just carrying software and books on software.  B. Dalton & Software Etc. are later acquired by Barnes & Noble.
1990: The first Funcoland opens.
1994: B. Dalton/ B&N sells Software Etc. to Babbages, which is merged into a new company called NeoStar (no stores were ever called that, the Babbages and Software Etc. chains were continued to be run separately).
1996: NeoStar almost goes out of business, with EB almost buying the company, until Barnes & Noble buys the company back, renames it Babbages Etc., and turns it around.
1999: Babbages Etc. starts opening strip stores called Gamestop, with the lower case rainbow logo.
2000: EB tries to buy Funcoland, but gets outbid by Babbages Etc., which later changes it's company name to Gamestop.  (Some stores around this time are actually called "Gamestop.com").
2004: Gamestop is spun off by B&N into it's own company.
2005: Gamestop acquires EB.

Those are the main four chains, but almost all of them had other sub-chains at different times:
EB had Games & Gadgets, EBX, Stop & Save Software, BC Sports, and EB Kids, and also acquired Waldenbooks' Waldensoftware chain in the late 90s, renaming them EB or EBX.
Babbages had a more collectible-oriented store called Planet X.
Software Etc. had a few stores in the early 90s called "The Game Stop", which was reused in the late 90s.
During the few years after Barnes & Noble had spun off Software Etc. and before they re-acquired them, they had stores called SupR Software, which were mostly next to B&Ns.

[AmesNewington]

I just noticed today that the GameStop in the Prospect/ShopRite Plaza in West Hartford has permanently closed. It was in a weird location in a seperate building in front of the plaza that also has a Dr. Dental. I suppose this was one of the 500 locations GameStop will be closing. I'm sure something will take its place. The rest of the plaza is occupied and booming. 

[JSIDA17]

Probably the worst national retail store still existing today. They are the rip off artists of this millennium so far...