Cheap As Chips

Congratulations to our founding father Tomleecee, for finding Dreamcast goodness in his local Gamestation! I reckon you'd have more chance of finding skanky Amy Winehouse refusing a pipe full of rocks from Pete Doherty, or George Michael refusing a mouth full of rancid cock on Hampstead Heath, than you would finding another Gamestation that still proudly flies the Sega console flag...

However, for UK residents, there is an alternative to the neo-nazi game burning cocksuckers at Gamestation. And that, dear readers is Chips! boasting 36 stores up and down the UK, Chips is the Britain's largest independent video game retailer, established a respectable 23 years ago and still going strong. The company is a franchise operation, which means if you have a spare £30,000 you could set up your own! I've just decided that if I ever win the lottery, I'll do it as a hobby!

Not only can you still buy, sell and trade Dreamcast games there, but also peripherals and even the odd rarity. It's where I bought my MP3DC adaptor! On my most recent visit there was about thirty Dreamcast games in the stack and none of them the usual Chu Chu Rocket and Spirit Of Speed 1937 guff that used to pad out the Gamestation stock.

There was Daytona USA, Fighting Vipers, an unopened copy of Planet Ring complete with microphone, several copies of Soul Calibur and even the best ever football game, Sega World Wide Soccer 2000 (Euro Edition.)

In my experience, the staff (at my local branch) are extremely friendly, refreshingly knowledgeable about consoles and games from before the current gen and dare I say it, Dreamcast enthusiasts! The dude that I regularly converse with in my shop even gave me a burned copy of Rival Schools which plays perfectly in my Dreamcast. (In return I gave him a burned copy of Ikaruga - that's a beautiful non-capitalist exchange is it not?)

If that's not enough, you can also purchase games for your Master System, Megadrive and Saturn. Gamecubes go for about £20 and in my branch they've even got a Street Fighter Arcade machine imported from Japan. They're very tolerant of the local youth standing in the shop and playing their demonstration 360s and PS3s, which stops them from roaming the streets mugging pensioners, and you can even pick up a free Chips magazine which is reasonably decent... Have a look at their rather excellent website here...

On a side note, my recent Dreamcast related news is that I got quite stuck into Half Life for a while, but lost interest around about the point where Gordon gets captured by the grunts and thrown into a garbage crusher... I snagged a copy of Jet Set Radio Future for the Xbox off eBay for less than a fiver, prompted by Nebacha's stellar review, but then fucked myself up the dirtbox by getting all excited about buying a Japanese title called the 'Golf Game' which I thought was some rare Japanese golf sim I'd never played, but turned out to be Tee Off Golf with a different cover... Ho hum!

Dreamcast Game Price Drop...

I've already posted about this over at the Saturn Junkyard, but I'm a little traumatised by recent events over at Gamestation. To cut a long story short, previously Retro friendly Gamestation, has been bought out by Blockbuster and the much blander Game... The high street stores are now owned by Game and the ones nestled in the back of Blockbuster video stores have been bought out by Blockbuster...

Now, my local Gamestation was one in the back of a Blockbuster. It holds many happy memories for me, it's where I collected most of my Dreamcast software. Its where I bought Shenmue 2, when I knew nothing about it, only to be entranced by it for the following year.

It's where I picked up my Dreamcast steering wheel, keyboards, light guns and mouse... where I bought my replacement Saturn when the last one conked out, where I bought my entire Master System software collection and my Game Gear. Its been the mainstay of my expansive video game collection and a place I knew I could always go to browse and maybe score the odd bargain.

Now I know that Caleb recently scored an extensive Dreamcast haul from a major US videogame emporium that had claimed for years it didn't stock Dreamcast stuff. But what I saw on my last visit to 'my' Gamestation, that this place was now dead as a source of Retro Treasures. For there, in a lowly basket was every last piece of Retro kit that the shop had, just dumped and with prices slashed for a quick sale... No dignity, no display, just a random skip full of Dreamcast, Saturn, Megadrive, Gameboy software etc... Had you walked into the store a couple of months before, you would have seen a 'Dreamcast section' and occasionally amongst the mass of WWF games, the plethora of Chu Chu Rockets, the score of Tee Off Golfs and the host of Soul Fighters, you could pick up a pearl...

So what was in the basket then? Well uniformly priced at £1.99 was the following selection...

Loads of Virtua Striker 2, Pod Racing, Virtua Athlete 2K, Aerowings, Sega Bass Fishing, Tomb Raider: Last Revelation... But these weren't always in there boxes... Some were bundled in a plastic sleeve with an elastic bands wrapped round them... One of the interesting items was Aerowings at £1.99... In June that would have cost you £9.99... Now they have decided it is worth £8 less... Go figure!

Now I had been told by the shop's staff that Retro section would still be a feature, but when I saw the devestation layed before me, I was forced to ask what the future of Retro gaming at Blockbuster would be... The answer was that there would not be one... and for me that's just sad.

Sure there's Ebay... we can always go online and boost our collections... But for me personally that's not the same as going into a shop, checking out and thumbing through the selection and walking away with a much coveted title or a piece of hardware... For me it's the end of an era, and another nail in the coffin for our favourite undead console...

Even more worrying, is the fact that a similar fate has befallen the Dreamcast (and Saturn) at Chips, a smaller independent franchise, that previously boasted a Dreamcast and Saturn section, has now moved the games to a Retro cabinet, locked behind glass and unavailable for 'hands on' perusal... That means that in my town, there is no longer a shop where I can pick up Dreamcast goodies... And that's bad...

I know that both Tomleecee and The Gagaman(n) have enjoyed the bounties of Gamestation, but it seems that our shared experience is coming to a close... Let's kick a 40 oz to the curb in honour of our fallen hero... On a positive note, (I always look for a positive spin to any negative situation) on my last visit to Chips, I got a burnt copy of 'Rival Schools' from the nice guy behind the counter, in exchange for the burnt copy of Ikaruga that I gave him a few months before...

So its all good! This is Father Krishna signing out, and saying "Goodnight Children, Wherever You Are..."