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Where Do You Get The Games?
rafemonkey writes: "After nearly ten years, sysadmining has finally broken me. It's not the computers or the long hours, it's the freakin' users ... But, that's beside the point. In looking for an escape route, I settled on the idea of opening a used/classic video game shop. I'm fairly comfortable with busines plans, taxes and all the "mechanical" things, but the big question is: How do you get your inventory to start? Are there places you can get a bulk order of atari 5200 carts? Are there suppliers in japan who will wholesale you the really cool stuff? Or do I have to spend the next six months at conventions and lurking on eBay? TIA!"
Most used game stores I've come across are chains. You can probably get started the franchise route a lot faster than starting it yourself.
..we steal our games. Why bother buying them when you can steal the ROMs online? After all, copyright law is evil when it gets in the way of us getting free stuff.
I'm afraid your business model doesn't take into account the fact that people who are interested in your product are terrible thieves.
So I sez to him, I ain't givin' you no damn three-fity.
Get me Great Giana Sisters on 5,25" for C64, and ill buy it from you ;)
Just to get you a good start.
NumB http://www.engvig.net
Where you get everything vintage, of course: Value Village.
I've often seen piles of Atari 2600 cartridges in there, the odd Coleco, a few C64s, etc.
Unless you are going to be running a little kiosk or whatever using EBAY as a platform you are fuck'd, my friend.
The overhead starting this up, anywhere in meatspace where people will come and buy the stuff, is staggering.
That is why most games for "leet people" e.g. classic cult favorite games etc. get sold on the Net.
Niche market.
If you are selling the latest thing, then you have to compete with Best Buy.
I wish you the best of luck, though. Perhaps you can find a meatspace location where the little kids down the street have industrious, thrifty parents who have not yet upgraded from their SNES and Atari systems, and thus are looking for games for them.
Otherwise your market's folks who would be looking on the Net for convenience's sake in the first place. and they havent the overhead so their prices are lower too.
Goat sex free since 2001
this slashdot article was about a guy with millions of Atari games. :P
 
maybe if you still hurry, you can buy them all out and resell them
The only things that I've seen out there that might be easily available are old arcade machines. A lot of game distributors, especially small ones, still keep them on hand, and are often willing to sell you older ones that they'll never bring to a bar or wherever for a song.
For various cartridges, consoles, etc., there should be some large liquidators who have purchased those in the past and might have some on hand. Maybe you could contact the companies (if they still exist) to see if their sales records of old inventory are public.
Wish I could help more than that, but I think that you've got an incredible idea, and I'd be the first in line with a checkbook to invest.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
wait until you meet retail customers. Seriously, as a survivor of the retail business (3 looong years as a salesman and front-line face-to-face tech support), I'm here to tell you: You Ain't Seen Nothing, Yet (tm)!
:-)
Well, good luck, cuz you're gonna need it. I just wish I could see the look on your face when you have to answer the question for the seventh time in the same day (NO! C64's DON'T run if you snap off the cartridge inside the computer), and realize that users actually aren't that bad
Additionally, if you offered people 1 NQA for their old games, I imagine you would get hundreds of takers. Some of the games you get in might actually be saleable.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
The problem with owning and operating a classic-gaming shop is not going to be getting the games, I think, but competing with some of the very, very good game emulators out there.
/. in the past.
For example, I own an old Nintendo (Famicom) machine that I have kept in working order since childhood. Despite that fact, I play any Nintendo games I want to on Nesticle. Mario 3? Despite the fact that the Mario All-stars SNES (Supa Famicom) cartridge sits *on* my desk, I will load up SNES9x and play it, Zelda 3, Mario-Kart and all the other really great SNES games with my keyboard.
Older games, especially arcade boxes, have fallen into a kind of legal swamp because they're not really public domain but are treated that way anyway. They're even more easy to come by. Dozens, if not hundreds of really good Mame Rom sites exist on the net right now. They're very rarely shut down, SFAIK. YOu can get even more on Usenet, IRC, and Hotline. Build-Your-Own upright Mame box instructions have been posted to
Atari 2600-5200, NEC, and various other emulators are floating around out there. Considering the average speed and power of modern computers, they run the emulators easily while MP3's download in the background.
If you're going to sell Classic Games, I reccomend that you cater to collectors and arcades, people who are interested in *having* rather than *playing*. Otherwise, you're going to have a very hard time.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This was posted on /. a while ago, this guy has millions of old atari games for sale at a buck apiece in quantity. Get in contact with him.
Note that he also sells those styling oldskool orange Atari shirts. nice.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
If you're worried about where you are going to get your product to sell and don't have any reliable source to get the product from, then this probably isn't a safe business. As far as I know no one makes Atari carts anymore so you are not going to be garaunteed a source of atari carts from anyone. What happens in the middle of your business when you run out of carts?
Right now there is a limited set of cartriges out in the world. Everytime someone breaks one, looses one, stuffs one in the attic, the supply goes down, and down is the only direction the supply will ever go in. So the longer your business stays up, the harder it will be to get cartriges.
You could make your own cartriges if you had the right hardware, but who knows what kind of legal implications this will get you into. Companies are not making these catriges anymore, yet they still feel the need that they should get money for their sales.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
On Ebay and other online auction sites, it seems there is only a market for old games that are rare or were only produced in limited quantities. Since people can download an emulator and roms to play most of the old games, there is no reason for them to keep an old atari hanging around. Also, they can download the roms for free.
If you want to be profitable, you should try to obtain an inventory of only games that are collectors' items, and and old videogame memrobilia you can find. That's the stuff (along with old full-size game machines) that sells.
Lenny
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
If you want to stay in business for more than a month or two, I would suggest you focus your inventory on the newer systems as this is where 95% of the market is right now. PS2, DC, N64 are where its at. Or at least where the money is at right now. If you deal with systems like this you have the advantage of high demand and relatively low prices for inventory. Before everyone starts screaming at me, let me explain...
If you are a brick and mortar operation that buys stuff from folks who walk in, then you know that you'll be paying them probably 20% of what its worth (Don't agree with me? Try selling anything to funcoland or a used CD store). Plus there will be plenty of kids showing up with a pile of newer RPGs that they beat in a week who just want anything they can get for them. These are the same kids who want to buy the newer stuff, not the 5200 carts.
Not that their isn't a market for the older stuff. Its just that you need to realize that the vintage games will be a small percentage of your business. In reality, if you want to move rarer items (original Tengen Tetris for NES for example) you will probably have to sell on eBay to get the price you want. That is the reality of the Niche business.
Basically what I'm saying is that the bulk of your inventory (and $$$) will be tied up with the newer stuff. So don't worry about combing conventions for copies of Yar's Revenge with the missprinted label (no, I don't know if this exists)
For what its worth.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
I hear there's a place in New Mexico that has a horde of Atari games.
Of course... you'd have to bring a shovel....
O'Shea has a bunch of Atari stuff--they bought all the remaining inventory when Atari sold out a few years back (see related Slashdot article). I'm sure they'll cut you a wholesale deal.
Used Video Games, Video Game Liquidators...many of these places also do auctions on eBay; often you can contact them directly and get better deals than you would get from bidding, but the auctions themselves are a good way to find the wholesalers and their websites/contact info. Good luck!
__
props to all dead homiez
Also, there's about 10 million ET cartridges buried somewhere in southern california, look for a landfill shaped like that pile of dirt in Close Encounters ;-)
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
However, you have to be in a area with a interest in retro gaming (or lots of geeks...:). You can get (used) games often times at garage sales or flea markets; new games, usually, are rarer, and you really have to either be lucky, or go to eBay or something like that. Also, some advice, (not requested, I know) Funcoland doesn't follow this.....don't screw your customers. *ahem* I had some bad economic experiences with them. (warning, ramblings continue) Also, put up a website. (but you probably know that already) Alot of people would LOVE a reliable retro gaming site. (I know this gamer would :)
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This space reserved for valid arguements, not pointless ramblings.
Dude, you want to open a business, but you don't have the first idea about how to start it? Why are you asking Slashdot? If we knew, or if it was easy to do, we'd do the same thing, and probably put you out of business.
He's asking Slashdot because there are smart peope who visit the site and contribute positively to it, unlike some, DUDE. Why would you assume that nobody within the Slashdot community hasn't opened their own business anyway? With a positive attitude like yours, the ability to type like you speak and the unwillingness to take a risk, I'm surprised we haven't yet seen you on the cover of Fortune Magazine.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Since it seems that actually generating income from all of these classic games is going to be very difficult, why not re-direct your efforts (part-time, even) towards acquiring a complete "game-museum". Think how cool that would be--every single home gaming system ever made in one place, with every single title!
Not only could visitors learn about the history of notable systems and games, but they could *play anything*! I don't know about you, but I would definitely pay 10 bucks to spend a day at such a place. Now, start-up costs would be high, but maybe you could get official help from the games companies. Tracking down some of the older, more obscure stuff could be difficult. But if you love games enough, you could pull it off, with fantastic results...
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
In January, there was a story about a guy who at one point had 1 million Atari 2600 and 7800 games stored underground. He was selling them for about a buck each and he was even willing to help people locate the hardware to play them.
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
There are a few classic games that peple want, and would like legally. You could get into a niche by legally buying the rights to make copies of those classic games in the old formats. (of course paying a royalty, perhaps right to copy all their old games, and for every 10,000 in advance)
Don't expect to get rights to put a atari cartrage on a disk, but you can at least copy the cartrage (easy to do if you can find those old chips anymore). I would think that a compitent hardware designer could modify stella to read from the cartrage given an adaptor you design and sell. Of course you have to do more work this way, but I think if you can make it work it is more likely to be a viable business model. (And if you have that cartrage adaptor let me know, I want one!)
The old-technology (or "classic") used video game store is a great business to get into because there is never a shortage of inventory available from bankruptcy and going-out-of-business sales. Heck, you can probably get a whole business, with merchandise already on shelves, at a suicide estate auction.
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Average number of articles per day that you cannot discuss because the referenced site has been taken down?
1
2
3
CowboyNeal
/. is so overloaded?
OR how bout:
Average time it takes to post a message because
30 seconds
1-4 minutes
5+ minutes
Never been able to actually get a post to go through
CowboyNeal
In any case, my opinions are ignored anyways. Gotta love that moderation system. Only allow the Karma whores to moderate. That's akin to putting an oil cartel in charge of the EPA.
What about the rent-a-computer-lab?
A few blocks from me, sitting in the top floor of an old house which also houses an ISP, is a place called Springfield Powergames--sort of an Internet cafe without the cafe, a rent-time-on-a-computer center that offered a high-speed LAN and high-speed Internet connection with about 20 networked computers, for the purpose of playing first-person shooters or other network games against each other and/or other folks on-line.
It just went out of business. Apparently the older hardware it offered couldn't compete with the cablemodem and DSL connections rolling out here in Springfield.
Is there any market left for such a place? How would one make it profitable, what with the high cost of computer hardware and the ease of getting together in one's own home instead? There is something fun about playing in person--being able to hear the other guy swearing when you take his head off with a railgun--but how do you draw people out of their cablemodem-equipped homes and pay the bills at the same time?
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
If you have not bought at least a game or two for yourself, you probably don't know the market as well as the people who have been collecting these games for a couple years.
So the answer to your question is: Yes. Spend a few months getting into the game collector scene via eBay and other trading resources, as a hobbiest. After a few months of doing so, you might learn that there are reasons why nobody else has gotten rich doing this yet... or you might realize that it's a rich gold mine that few know about... or you might find a way to enter the business in a way that has not already been tried.
In short, know the market first, then think about entering it.
In the mean time, there might be something that you already know a lot about which you can use to start a business. Look at the guys at ThinkGeek. They turned a fondness for pithy little geek sig files into their own little T-shirt and bumper-sticker empire.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
M.U.L.E.!!! Now THAT was a game!!!!!
Remember F-16 Combat Pilot? ohhh, the flashbacks!
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Remember this article? Just write Saddam an email and ask him what he's doing with all the left-over games after he puts the PS2's interials into his SCUD missiles ;)
For some reason, they posted this one and rejected my very similar submission, which went:
"Hi, I would like to make lots of money running my own business (maybe with something fun and `geeky' like games, so I can enjoy myself and become more popular with my adopted community as I make my fortune), but don't know how. Would you thousands of slashdot readers please all get together and spend your own unpaid time and effort to figure out how to make me rich?"
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I hacked M.U.L.E. on my 64 so it would play past the 12th month and amazingly saw economic cycles manifest themselves. The original designers put more into the game than met the eye, my guess is Electronic Arts had them limit it to 12 months. Whoever decided that, it was really sad. The game really gets going about month 18.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
As other posters have said, doing meatspace retail for such a small market is difficult. Sure, sell old carts, but also old arcade consoles. There are a couple retro arcades here in Portland, OR, and kids love them - they're always packed. I like a good game of Tron every now and then :)
Have the consoles setup to play for a quarter, but have a sale price on them. You'd get some revenue from plays, but there's no shortage of dot-com yuppies with 80's nostalgia, and more money than sense. Hell, start building them yourself.
Get really nutty: sell espresso; have coin-op laundry; free 'net access. Above all, make your place attractive as a hang-out - regulars will do your marketing for you.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
But people like The Optimizer, drinkypoo, rapett0, bungelo, and JatTDB collect video games. The Optimizer has a huge collection.
See also jakdin's account of old video games lying around in Tokyo shops
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Make mine methylphenidate.
Not really. I don't order from 'net unless I have to. I want my stuff NOW and I don't want to waste HOURS calling Purolator to redirect package or going to their office in the middle of nowhere to pick up a package or hunting the corporate person at work to see if the package is in. Also, unless you live in US, buying over the 'net is more expensive, more taxed and less convenient. I prefer my local shop, which is cheaper than EB and also lets you put your old games on consignment where you set the price tag and they get 25% of that price when it's sold.
I'll offer my $.02 since I've had experience with this kind of business...
;).
;) but me and my friends still get nostalgic over good times we used to have just hanging out and kicking each others ass. So go forth and make one of these great places and open one in my area =).
There used to be a local place kind of what you described. It was called Battlestations. They had about 25 gaming optimized computers hooked up to a 100Mb/s network. This place was in the back room of some local company with the cryptic name "CPL". For some reason or another, CPL had set up this little room to generate cash on the weekends when the building was empty. There was no sign, no advertising, no nothing it was all word of mouth. CPL was hidden somewhere in the maze of office buildings called The Industriplex (or as my friend describes it, "the place where people with boring jobs spend their time"). If you didn't know exactly where to go and what you were looking for it, you weren't going to accidentally stumble upon this place.
Despite this not really being a business and CPL doing absolutely nothing to promote it, the place was *packed* every day it was open. Every high school kid who played games at home was more than happy to shell out $5 an hour to hang out with their friends instead of "i k1Ll3D k3NnY" at home playing the same games over the net, and when you're on a LAN with super high bandwidth who cares about ping? Fragged because of lag? I don't think so. Fragging your buddies and hearing them scream obscenities across the room is the most fun I've ever had playing any sort of game on the computer.
I remember driving over with my friends at about 7 one rainy Friday night to find that there were barely enough open computers for us. 2 hours or so later the room in general decided to order some pizza and we all chipped in to pay for it, you could buy Cokes from the high school guy who kept things running (read: takes money every hour and runs servers for various games on the server box in the corner). Some nights we wouldn't leave until after midnight, not because they were closing but because we had run out of money to pay for another hour. Most of the guys who hung out there on the weekends were regulars and the guys who worked there were awesome and so good at Starcraft it was scary (Ben Monkey owns me
In other words, how do you draw people out of their homes? Simple: offer a hangout spot. It's really that simple. Even though I've got a brand new computer at home with a bigger monitor and a cable modem I'd still go down to Battlestations with my friends so I could kick their sorry asses all over the place. Unfortunately, Battlestations is now closed for some unknown reason (maybe CPL needed that back room?
-antipop
Take everybody on Slashdot who's gone on that crusade to find that one elusive game and put all of their findings in one spot - this discussion thread. Now there's one place to look for what all of these people have found out. I think that's what "Ask Slashdot" is here for.
Most "Ask Slashdot" entries can be boiled down to somebody asking us all to help them with their jobs. Maybe it's a call for opinions on some software package, or the best way to implement a firewall... basically any info we give in response may be used by somebody to make some money. How is opening a video game shop different from using "Ask Slashdot" to help with a consulting job?
Since this is an open forum, everybody else visiting the site can benefit from the info just as much, so I don't see any problem with it.
-jah!
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Despite that fact, I play any Nintendo games I want to on Nesticle.
NESticle's accuracy sucks Big Floppy Donkey Dick; it can't emulate games that rely on precise timing. Use TuxNES or one of the better WinDOS-based emulators instead. The only reason I ever touch NESticle is to make sure NES software I write displays a warning message if it is run on NESticle; it takes only four lines of NES asm to detect NESticle, and from there I display an advertisement for LoopyNES.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The cargo capacity of a 747-400 is 24,952 cubic feet. You were using the cargo capacity of a passenger model, not a freight model. And you were told to never underestimate.
I also think that you miscalculated your 747 TB-m/sec. Did you forget to multiply km by 1,000 before dividing by 3,600 sec/hr to get m/sec? I got 1,622,745,002 TB-m/sec for the 747-400F. That makes the 747 equivalent to 24,965,307 T1s.