I selected a GameStop well off the beaten path for me, out in Park Slope, Brooklyn, for my illicit Xbox trade-in. My plan was this: I’d unload the dirty-disc-error Xbox at this store, which I’d never been to before; then I’d bid so long to those suckers and head to one of my usual GameStop haunts and use the store credit to purchase a new (hopefully fully functioning) Xbox. Gamers are a relatively un-diabolical lot. For the record, this is about as diabolical as we ever really get. (more…)
One last GameStop story, then I’ll move on. The Xbox that I spent my final night in New York with wasn’t my first Xbox. My first Xbox came from the GameStop store in Hoboken, New Jersey. According to Google Maps, the store is still there, on Washington Street, in case you’re ever in the neighborhood. I had been dating a girl who lived in Hoboken when the original Xbox debuted in 2001. She lived in a tiny rent-controlled apartment that her dead grandmother had once lived in. She had inherited–or rather “inherited”–the apartment through some kind of illegal real estate…
Back at the apartment, I toss the hall closets, hoping there might be something, anything, buried in the effluvia of my old life here in New York that will allow me to play videogames for one night. Damn it all, there must a console of some kind in here somewhere, I think. (more…)
I’m standing in line at the GameStop and feeling ridiculous, which is basically how I always feel whenever I find myself standing in a GameStop line. Couldn’t this have been avoided somehow? I wonder. Was there really no other solution than to stand here and subject yourself to this terrible experience? And this line, which is not moving and might never move again for all I know, is not your average GameStop line. This is the “Two Days After Christmas” line. This is the “My Son Don’t Want FIFA 10” line. Frankly, now that I’ve had a few minutes to study…
After two weeks of cloudy, post-eye surgery vision, after not being able to do any sort of real gaming for what felt like an eternity, I suddenly experienced a craving to play something–anything. The craving was borderline primal. It would not be denied. All I wanted, more than anything else in the world, was to sit in my New York City apartment for one stinking night and consume vast quantities of videogames. Was that too much to ask? I didn’t think it was. Problem was, most of my games and all of my consoles had been shipped west months ago….
Though I still pay the mortgage every month, the apartment in New York no longer feels like it belongs to me. Maybe that’s because my bookshelves are almost empty now. My clothes are nearly gone. In the three ensuing years since I left New York, each time I returned I would ship another box or two of my belongings to Vancouver. The bulk of my stuff was there now, not here. (more…)
