VIDEO GAME HUNTING in Small Towns + PICKUPS By MetalJesusRocks

Hey everybody metal Jesus here and today I am taking you on a retro road trip. Yes, I am going game hunting, but the difference is: is that I'm going to visit towns and retro gaming stores that I have not highlighted yet on my YouTube channel now, as you guys know, I live in the Seattle area, and I'll be honest. I don't get out of the city as much as I should, but that's all changing today we're going to visit four of these retro gaming stores, plus some pawn shops all the way up to pretty much the Canadian border and at the end of this video, I'm going to show you everything that I picked up, and I got some good stuff all right. I loaded up the GTI, and now it's time to give her a bath and uh she's, looking all pretty and ready to go all right. So the first place we're gonna head to is Everett Washington. Now Everett is about 30 to 40 minutes from downtown Seattle, and it may sound familiar to some of you if you collect funk pops.

That is because the HQ of funk is in downtown Everett and, as you can see here, it is very popular. There was a line of people waiting outside just to get in and feed their funk pop addiction, but that's not where I'm going to go, I'm actually going to go about a block from there to a retro gaming store called next level games. I love how you're greeted at the store with a throne made of non-working consoles on one side I thought that was so hilarious and then on the other side, there is a tribute to vintage gaming. That's a good sign, I'm getting a good vibe here now. Unfortunately, this little store has been hit pretty hard by the pandemic.

They used to be known for hosting a lot of competitions here, but in the last year, they've kind of had to pivot a little and change the layout of the store, hopefully they're, going to get back to full power soon, but right off the bat. I noticed that they had an unusual amount of new games, and it turns out that actually, a local collector in the Everett area traded in their entire new collection and that included a bunch of rare and uncommon games as well as some unlicensed new games. I was pretty impressed also. These guys know that I'm into collecting big box PC games, and so from out of the back. They brought this box of PC games for me to take a look at uh everything from the late 80s to the 90s, and they sold me the entire box for 50, and they did that because they normally don't sell these here.

They don't stock PC games, but they like them to go to collectors. Like me, I thought that was pretty sweet. That's a good start to my retro road trip and by the way this box has so many games in it that I'm actually going to share it with some other PC collectors that I know so at the end of this video I'll show you which ones I decided to keep, but overall, I'm very happy to see that the store is still in business. While I was there, it had a bunch of people coming in and out it's basically the only retro gaming store in the Everett area. So if you happen to be traveling north of Seattle, you go through Everett.

You might want to stop and give it a look, because you never know what you're going to find moving on from next level game, so we're going to go north about 10 to 15 minutes to Marysville and visit another castle. Now I've talked about another castle, some of their other stores in other videos, but I don't think I've shown their Marysville location and that's a real shame, because this store is just as good as all the other ones immediately. You walk in here, and you see what makes these stores so special like the other locations, it's basically a mix of games, physical games, as well as their arcade and pinball machines, it's hard to say if this location has more games than their flagship, Edmonds location, but I would say it's pretty close, and they're different too. That's the cool thing about another castle is that they actually share the machines. They actually move them around.

So you don't get the same machines at every location. I think that's pretty cool, it's a reason to visit all of them. One thing that stuck out immediately, though, is that they had this collection of light gun games, and I don't really see that very often, it turns out that a local collector brought in their entire gun con collection, and they had them all. Here I was like wow, that's pretty cool, that's something you typically would only see like at a retro gaming expo now I did pick up one of these, but you'll have to wait till the end to see which one it was. The other thing I want to mention- and maybe you've picked up on it- is that a lot of these quote unquote.

You know, retro gaming stores have newer titles as well. Yes, they have all the previous older generation of games, but they also have a perfect selection of current gen stuff. You know switch PS5, Xbox series stuff, and often I mean it's true, but often they are better than GameStop they're less picked over, especially when it comes to switch man. You know you'll, see stuff in here that I had no idea. There was even a physical release for it all right.

Moving on from Marysville and another castle, we're gonna head north to Mount Vernon, so Mount Vernon is a small town has about 30, 000 people or so, and it doesn't have any dedicated, retro gaming stores. But what it does have is a bunch of thrift stores and pawn shops, and so this is definitely one of the places I stop when I'm heading north, because again it's not picked over like some other big cities, and you never quite know what you're going to find here. For instance, you see here that they have a box new classic edition and yeah that's about what they go for, so you're not going to get a. You know perfect deal here, but again it does look like it's in good condition. They also have some loose gaming consoles as well as handhelds handful of switch and DS games there, but overall, not a ton of stuff, but again it's worth stopping in.

If you happen to be in the area all right it's the next morning, and we're going to continue on the retro road trip up to Bellingham Washington now normally I would take the freeway. But this time I'm going to take a little of a detour, I'm going to take the scenic route, we're going to go on, checking it drive now. Checking that drive is considered one of the most scenic and beautiful drives. You can take in all of Washington state and I highly recommend it because it's this really cool, twisty and turn road that follows the waterfront. It's absolutely beautiful.

It's also a little dangerous. You have to be careful. You can't drive this very fast. Sometimes there are bicyclists on there, but it is so worth it, and so I'm taking checking out drive up to Bellingham Washington Bellingham Washington is the last big city before the Canadian border. It has about 90 000 people and, as you can see from this footage, it's absolutely beautiful.

It's its got so much here to take in and just marvel at. Furthermore, it's got the waterfront. Furthermore, it's got a small town vibe, but again it's got 90 000 people, so it's got everything you would want. Furthermore, it's got a really cool downtown area plus, and the reason why I'm here is that it has two really kick-ass retro gaming stores. The first store we're going to visit is called cosmic games now.

I have not visited this before, but I've heard a lot about it, and that is because it is a really cool mix of tabletop pen and paper games and video games and, as I walk in the door here, I'm blown away by just how big this is. So you know half of it is dedicated to tabletop pen and paper games uh. They also have rows and rows of card games Pok?mon as well as magic, the gathering they have tables over here. Where people can play you can just basically reserve a table. Do a tournament play with your friends and then over in this corner.

They have a bunch of games, both old and new. Now I'll be honest, I don't know that much about magic, the gathering and even less about collecting Pok?mon cards, and so I asked them I was like you know. What would people be really interested in what would be a really exciting for people to see, and they brought out these two brand new unopened Pok?mon card boxes that I guess were printed by wizards of the coast, so these are incredibly old and incredibly valuable, and so I asked them I'm like how much would these go for, and he was like thousands. Maybe tens of thousands I was like. Are you kidding me? I had no idea again.

You hear the Pok?mon, you know valuable and collectible, but I guess these are incredibly hard to find especially unopened, and so they just had rows and rows of single cards, pretty much anything that most people would want. I guess a lot of people from the Seattle area will drive up here just to help fill out their decks. So yeah. That was pretty interesting to see again, it's a whole world. I just know very little about and, as you can see, the video game side of it is no slouch either.

They've got a bunch of stuff again all generations worth they have a bunch of complete and box systems as well as a bunch of accessories. You see some Japanese imports there and then in the glass case they had a bunch of loose systems. There. You see a bunch of handhelds and then check this out. There is a Sega CD.

That is something that you don't see every day, and then they offered to show me what they call the dungeon, which is basically the back area where they keep all the extra stock in, as well as where they uh process their eBay listings and just some kind of random stuff that they sell. But you guys know me: I was really interested in seeing what they had as far as big box PC games. Now all of this stuff is listed currently one bay, that's what he said um. So if you see something here that you want, that is a way to get access to it. It's cool when some of these gaming stores do a lot of eBay, because I know a lot of you who watch this video you know, may not have the ability to come all the way to Bellingham Washington, but you can jump on this if you wish- and I did pick up two of these as well as some other stuff out on the main floor- and I'm going to show you at the end of this video, I had a good time at cosmic games, and now it's time to head over to reset games, which is just a couple miles away.

Reset games used to be an independent store, but it was bought by the owner of another castle, almost about I say 10 years ago, but they decided to keep the name because so many people were familiar with it here in Bellingham, but it's definitely part of the another castle family and has a very similar vibe to that, and they also share much of the same inventory. As a matter of fact, when you go into reset games here, and you're looking for a game, they can tell you if the other locations have it and vice versa, and sometimes also deliver it to those other locations. And, as you can see here, the store is definitely on the smaller side, but they told me that they actually have plans to expand it so, like the other locations, they're actually going to double the size here and start putting in some arcade machines and some pinball games. But there was a lot here that caught my eye, including this n64 dd. This is the floppiest expansion for the n64 that only came out in Japan for some reason they have one here up in Bellingham who knew as well as this custom game gear here that has the McGill LCD mod.

That's a very sweet mod. So if you are into the game gear, but you hate the original screen, this is the solution for you. I also love seeing all this retro themed vinyl records, that's becoming super popular in the last, probably like five years or so all right. Well, I did my shopping. I did my road trip.

I visited some awesome, retro gaming stores, but it's time to head back home and take a look at the pickups all right. The first thing I want to show you is a present. I bought my wife. I saw this, and I immediately knew that she would love it she's, a huge Witcher fan. She loves Gerald, and I was surprised to see this.

This is Gerald sitting in the bathtub with a rubber ducky. I can't believe they made this. This is so funny so yeah. I bought this for my wife, Rebecca she loved it. This is great.

I have a list of 3ds games, I'm looking for, and this fire emblem game is on that list. I was surprised to see it at cosmic games brand new unopened and uh the collector's edition or limited edition. Here I had to pick it up. It's got the pins. It's got the soundtrack uh.

Furthermore, it's got this really cool full-size art book, yeah, happy to get that I mentioned in another castle that they had all those lichen games, and I had to pick this one up: ninja assault with the gun. Con 2 for the PlayStation uh, yes, so cool. This looks honestly brand new. I mean that gun may be brand new at reset games. I picked up a couple DS games, including mega man ex.

This is a game I did not have in the collection as well as Joshi's island DS. Again, I've been on a hug eds and 3ds kick over the last year, or so just because they're they're getting so hard to find, and so every time I see them some of them that I don't have that I want. I have to pick them up out of that box of PC games. These are the ones I'm going to keep from my collection, including lighthouse, the dark bean. So this is a game published by sierra back when I was working there, and it's a very interesting game, because it's an adventure game similar to mist where it has those pre-rendered graphics, has that sort of puzzle based gameplay uh, and it didn't sell very well.

It's its got its fans, it actually reviewed fairly well, but it's just kind of a bit of a hidden gem. And surprisingly, I did not have a copy in my collection uh. So now I do that's very cool. Some of the games I pulled out of the box. I didn't have in the collection so far, including a couple microprose games, and I'm reminded at just how varied micro pros was as a publisher and developer they put out.

All sorts of games also have a SSI game there and also spring break uh spring break. Those were hilarious games too, but this was a game. I was very excited to see in the box dark lands by micro pros. So this is a RPG, that's very different from many of them at the time. You know at the time you had a lot of RPGs that were based on Dungeons and Dragons.

They'd have magic, they'd have orcs and elves, and all these magical creatures dark lands has none of that. It is a historical RPG. It's meant to be very realistic, and- and so in that way it stands out. Furthermore, it stands out as something very special, so I'm really excited to give it a try. Another game.

I was very excited to find and add to the collection is heroes of might and magic 2 and its expansion pack. I played this originally when it came out for months on end. It's such a great game and uh, for whatever reason I lost the physical copy years ago, it's great to have it back and then a couple handhelds I picked up, including this PlayStation vita slim. This is the light blue edition that only came out in Japan. I just thought this looks really cool.

I like the white on the top and then the light blue on the back and again only being released in Japan. Furthermore, I was really surprised to see this uh. You know finding this special edition. Visas is becoming very hard, uh very uncommon, so that was a great pickup, and then I recently did a video on all my Nintendo handhelds and many of you pointed out that I did not have an original DS lite. Well now I do, and I got it at a really great price.

It's a little used. You know it's a little grimy, but that's okay, I'll clean it up. It works fine! All right: well, that is my two day: retro road trip north of Seattle, pretty much all the way up to the Canadian border. I had a ton of fun doing this. I met some great people and I can't wait to go back uh.

You guys got some great retro gaming stores up there and honestly. I just love doing this kind of videos highlighting some smaller mom-and-pop stores up there. Hopefully, maybe get you guys, some more business. You know people traveling through the area, that's that would just be awesome and if you guys like these videos and would like to see me do more of them, please give this video a thumbs up. Please share it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that sort of stuff.

I would greatly appreciate it, and, as always, I want to thank you for watching my channel. Thank you for subscribing and take care.

Source : MetalJesusRocks