A (bittersweet) link to the past: My 2023 nostalgic odyssey to GameStop

wegotthiscovered.com:

Waking up this morning, I had planned on purchasing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in person. Something about the return to a previous ritual — walking into a store, molecules vibrating with excitement at the mere thought of playing the new game — enticed me enough to put aside my unfair apathy and finally purchase the game. My plan was thwarted, however, when I learned that my nearest GameStop was closed. Shocker.

With the domination of online shopping (thanks, Jeff!) and the growing reliance on digital storefronts, physical retail stores are at a clear disadvantage. People don’t have the time and patience to drive all the way to a store for a game, let alone wait for it to arrive at their doorstep. So GameStop struggles, closing stores in America and beyond all while laying off employees — even at their reputable magazine, Game Informer — in an effort to cut costs. Not all hope was lost because for a few brief, shining moments, the failing brick-and-mortar company found itself at the center of attention — just for all the wrong reasons. Back in 2021, some righteous Redditors stuck it to GameStop executives by causing a short squeeze, costing the company and their hedge fund investors billions. In its most recent attempt to make quick cash, the company went all in on cryptocurrency and NFTs, only to lose millions for their idiotic trend-chasing. 

It wasn’t always this way. Back in my childhood, also known as the mid-2000s/early-2010s, GameStop was the place to get video games in my corner of America. There was a skirmish in my local mall where an EB Games, Australia’s flavor of game store, tried to fight GameStop for dominance; it didn’t take long for the EB to become a Claire’s. GameStops were everywhere —