Play N Trade Selling Hacks/Reproductions For Outrageous Prices

[FrankSerpico]

I've never even seen a Play N' Trade. Are they a regional thing? I'm in Colorado.

[FieryReign]

"Guess what NES games I saw when I was in the store the other day?" is a line I haven't heard in real life in probably 30 years, I find it odd too once I think about it. Even with a niche hobby such as this people only mention game stores to either point out insanely high or ridiculously low prices.

Except they're not nes games. And that was the whole point, the prices of the bootlegs they're selling. Shit should be way cheaper.

[Greg2600]

Most retro game stores sell "illegal" game repros...

[Daria]

Most retro game stores sell "illegal" game repros...

Gamestop used to sell bootleg GBA carts. Nothing new here.

I liked Play n Trade when we had a couple stores in my area, but they've long since gone out of business.

[Bloodreign]

The Play N Trade here has been around 5+ years and continues to thrive. I know the owner by name and he knows mine as well as I've given his store plenty of business over the years. No bootlegs there thankfully, nor do I expect to see any. It's been my local go to place for games of old, but seems as though trade ins are few and far between there. Still manage to get some good stuff from the rarer times I get to go now.

There was a spinoff shop from a former PnT employee called Game Over (not the same franchise as those Texas game shops), he had some good shit there when he first opened (Duck Tales 2 and Chip N Dale 2 for $30 a pop loose, sure why not, I bought em, and SNES Mr Do for $7 loose), I bought a lot from him for cheaper than online. But sadly he eventually folded up his tent and got a managerial job with a local Gamestop store.

[SparTonberry]

Gamestop used to sell bootleg GBA carts. Nothing new here.

I liked Play n Trade when we had a couple stores in my area, but they've long since gone out of business.

I bought one before. I just took it back and told them like "It's not working for me. Sorry, but I think it's a bootleg." and they exchanged it for a different copy that I believe legit.
(was a Pokemon game but I'll give them them credit it at least looked like a real copy as all the information like the ESRB logo, etc. was there but positioned differently than a real copy. So it's understandable how they could mistake it.)

[Einzelherz]

Yeah there are tons of bootleg pokemon and final fantasy GBA games. I don't know that I can blame minimum wage college kids for accepting them.

Recently the local Vintage Stock stores have started selling repros labeled as such for $50, which to me seems as legitimate as it can be.

[Gameguy]

"Guess what NES games I saw when I was in the store the other day?" is a line I haven't heard in real life in probably 30 years, I find it odd too once I think about it. Even with a niche hobby such as this people only mention game stores to either point out insanely high or ridiculously low prices.

Exactly. Game stores made sense back before the internet was common, back when the only ways you could sell something was at a garage sale or through a paid newspaper classified ad, or directly to family/co-workers/friends that you knew personally. Or if you were looking for a specific title, you'd go to a store because you wouldn't know how to find someone who had a copy they wanted to sell. Stores were the middlemen providing a useful service. Today you can easily sell your stuff yourself for full value either online or through free classifieds, you can find anything you want at almost anytime online, you can order obscure rare items brand new online. There's very little reason to travel across town to visit a store anymore when the services they provide are basically obsolete, especially when their pricing is far beyond what's competitive.

Sometimes shit hits the fan and you have to shop your things around seeing what all of your options are.

If you're desperate for cash, instead of selling a game for full price on ebay(let's say for $20), you'll sell it to a store for $3-$5 instead? The Gamestops near me don't even pay cash for games, they only offer trade credit. I know people do this especially with pawn shops, but this is why so many people are also struggling for cash on a regular basis. Buy things at full retail rather than shopping around or waiting for a price drop, trade them in for pennies or just trash it as it's easier than selling yourself, repeat the process as you head to the payday loan shop.

I don't usually think of Gamestop as a game store, mostly because they only sell modern games and now cell phones and other non-games. It's like thinking McDonalds as a restaurant, it's a place that sells food but so does a gas station like 7-11.

[Steve W]

I've never even seen a Play N' Trade. Are they a regional thing? I'm in Colorado.

Not regional really, they're all over the place. Play N' Trade comes across as a good way for a person/group who want to open their own game store to get a solid start. All Play N' Trade stores are kind of independent since they're all licensed. But from what I've heard they don't give stores as much help as they need and keep raising the yearly prices on the license, eventually forcing them to go under or drop the license and do it on their own. Which is why Play N' Trade stores have such a short lifespan, they only stick around for a few years before they're forced to close because their sales don't go up as high as the license requires.

There was a spinoff shop from a former PnT employee called Game Over (not the same franchise as those Texas game shops), he had some good shit there when he first opened (Duck Tales 2 and Chip N Dale 2 for $30 a pop loose, sure why not, I bought em, and SNES Mr Do for $7 loose), I bought a lot from him for cheaper than online. But sadly he eventually folded up his tent and got a managerial job with a local Gamestop store.

I wondered what happened to that store. Last year I had the chance to go to Lafayette and was bummed out that the Game Over store was gone. I liked that place, the couple of times I was able to visit it. And I'm shocked that the Play N' Trade is still there, honestly. They normally don't last that long. There aren't a lot of retro game stores in Louisiana outside New Orleans, so it's sad when one closes. On the plus side, a new GameXchange has opened up in Alexandria. But on the minus side, by the time I find out about Next Player Video Games on Google Maps over in Jennings it turns out it's closed.

How's Buy Backs? I wanted to hit the place last year when I was in town but didn't get the chance. How's their pre-NES game selection?

[Bloodreign]

Not regional really, they're all over the place. Play N' Trade comes across as a good way for a person/group who want to open their own game store to get a solid start. All Play N' Trade stores are kind of independent since they're all licensed. But from what I've heard they don't give stores as much help as they need and keep raising the yearly prices on the license, eventually forcing them to go under or drop the license and do it on their own. Which is why Play N' Trade stores have such a short lifespan, they only stick around for a few years before they're forced to close because their sales don't go up as high as the license requires.



I wondered what happened to that store. Last year I had the chance to go to Lafayette and was bummed out that the Game Over store was gone. I liked that place, the couple of times I was able to visit it. And I'm shocked that the Play N' Trade is still there, honestly. They normally don't last that long. There aren't a lot of retro game stores in Louisiana outside New Orleans, so it's sad when one closes. On the plus side, a new GameXchange has opened up in Alexandria. But on the minus side, by the time I find out about Next Player Video Games on Google Maps over in Jennings it turns out it's closed.

How's Buy Backs? I wanted to hit the place last year when I was in town but didn't get the chance. How's their pre-NES game selection?

PnT used to get a lot of purchases from me, sadly I have slowed my visits as prices have gone up on things, that and they never seem to get any imports in, some Game Over thrived at at times. PnT has changed locations only once, closer to my workplace, every now and again they'll get something good come in (like Saturn games, but Area 51 and Tetris Plus being near $20 a pop has made me not touch those considering I have both on the PS1).

Dom was the cat that ran Game Over, he'd get his stock at first from Estarland, PnT got theirs from a little lady at a weekend swap meet (she gets her stuff from Florida she once told me, she is also horribly overpriced on even some common things these days). Game Over survived one move back into Lafayette from outside the city (where you visited them on your trip, and where I spent oodles of cash when they first opened), no longer got stock from e-Staland , and eventually the dude gave up. Really hit me in the gut that the one place I could count on for retrogames popping up in, including imports, went belly up.

(Side Note: Oh the memories of finding and buying KoF Neowave PS2 and Rockman Complete works 5 from there, but stupidly passing on a Rockman X3 on the PS 1 there still haunts me/makes me feel good these days. Encountered KoF Nests Saga for the PS2 there, $50 for a reprint version passed on it, few years later Amazon surprised me with a $30 first print issue listing I immediately jumped on, glad I waited on that one.)


As for Buy Back, they are very very hit and miss, and not always a bright staff working there. They once wanted $59.99 for a copy of the first Rescue Rangers. When I saw it, I made the girl working the counter immediately check ebay to see their error, she immediately pulled the cart off the display, said oops, put it in a drawer. Not sure if they ever repriced it to what it should sell for, or got some dumb sucker to pay $60 for the first game. Never seen anything truly hard to find there, have bought very few games from them unless it was something common that I wanted (like NES Prince of Persia, that damned thing never popped up anywhere else before then, or after). They tended to get stuff in I had trouble finding AFTER I already had bought the game online. They literally though have no pre-NES selection at all, they don't even have Gameboy stuff to buy which disappoints me.

[Steve W]

As for Buy Back, they are very very hit and miss, and not always a bright staff working there. They once wanted $59.99 for a copy of the first Rescue Rangers. When I saw it, I made the girl working the counter immediately check ebay to see their error, she immediately pulled the cart off the display, said oops, put it in a drawer. Not sure if they ever repriced it to what it should sell for, or got some dumb sucker to pay $60 for the first game. Never seen anything truly hard to find there, have bought very few games from them unless it was something common that I wanted (like NES Prince of Persia, that damned thing never popped up anywhere else before then, or after). They tended to get stuff in I had trouble finding AFTER I already had bought the game online. They literally though have no pre-NES selection at all, they don't even have Gameboy stuff to buy which disappoints me.

Dang, that sucks. I was bummed that I forgot to go there last time I drove through town - instead of hanging out in Lafayette last year I decided to make the drive to Baton Rouge and check out the game stores there and didn't find anything good. I guess it wasn't that big of a loss then. My nerd-liness, my nerd-itude, my nerd-errificness, has always been in the era that I fell in love with gaming, the pre-NES era, and it's always sad when a retro game store doesn't stock very much from that time period. I will go through phases where I'll collect stuff like Genesis games or Xbox games, but I always go back to Atari systems. It's the first thing I look for when I go into a new game store.


Play N' Trade stores always make the task of constructing a map of retro game stores so difficult. They tend to come and go so quickly. Somebody here put together a Google Map of game stores many years back, I'm sure most of those locations are long since gone. It'd be kind of nice if somebody revived the idea, and then kept revising it to keep it up to date. Maybe a crowdsourced mapping project is something everybody on this forum can contribute to.