Quote from: Seanchai;293844I've been visiting Attactix in Aurora, Colorado for over a decade now. Great shop. No specific memories surrounding it - other than discovering, much to my joy, that I lived just blocks away from a great shop.

Seanchai

Attactix rings a bell, I think I visited there shortly after it opened. Shadowrun comes back to me for some reason with that. I remember the dice pools and the apartments where we played near by. Only thing I remembered about the game though was it seemed their was too much arcane magic and not enough Gibson/Sterling style cyberpunk for my tastes.

The shop on Tejon street in Colorado Springs you are referring too opened in 85 I think. At first it wasn't even an RPG store. They sold board games there. I did score Twilight 2000 there around 92-93, but the other downtown FLGS store on Pikes Peak Ave. had already closed by that time, and that was the only shop that carried games in that area. I was pleasantly surprised that they had started carrying RPGs. Don't know if they are still open now though.

Quote from: GameDaddy;293822Bonnie Brae, In Englewood, Colorado. In the early days when we drove up for Ghengis Con (back when they held it at the University of Denver) in Denver every year it was a mandatory shopping stop. Still going strong...

Sadly, none of the hobby shops, or comic book stores, from the early days, survived in Colorado Springs.

I was also going to mention Bonnie Brae Hobbies. It was one of those terrific old shops (just down from the Bonnie Brae Tavern--terrific pizza) with material jammed in every nook and cranny of the store. That dusty, old-paper, used-bin smell. I miss that smell. Shops don't often have that anymore. Bonnie Brae has moved since then, but it still has that smell. I still have a lot of my favorite old stuff I bought there.

Colorado Springs has a number of stores, and a couple of them are great. But none of them are classic old stores. None of them smell right.


The chess piece logo shop is Compleat Games and Hobbies. They opened in 89 or 90. They had rpgs. But they have always tried to maintain a variety of stock. Lots of non-game stuff as well. They are still open, but across the street.

Was the old one on Pikes Peak Levine's? I don't remember exactly where Levine's was. It was a great old classic shop (the right smell) but I never got to visit it much.

hmmm.... I am going to have to work out a deal with the wife so that I can take a day trip to Colorado Springs, LOL!  Sounds like its jammed with shops.

The Last Grenadier in Northridge, CA was the first gaming shop I ever walked into... my first sight of D&D... but I was too young to get there on my own so I never got to hang out there.
Here in Vegas I spent lots of time at the Triple J Hobbies stores... which eventually got whittled down to just one shop. It was the last of the local stores that had any air of mystery about it... the owner was always trying out new stuff so you never knew what you'd find.
Not a huge place but it had a lot of variety.

The best store we've got going these days is a Hobbitown USA shop... which really doesn't satisfy.

Quote from: Drohem;293763Right on!  You know the Last Grenadier too.  Some of my fondest gaming memories are at that store.  I ran my 1st AD&D DragonLance game from that basement.  I used to work across the way at the used bookstore Book City.

I really wish those guys could of kept that location because It had everything you wanted  from a gaming room: a row of big tables, a shelf full of old figures and gaming props,  an old coke machine in the corner. I even liked how the stares spiraled down into the room itself. Do they still have their Northridge store?

Quote from: enelson;293783Dang! My grandmother use to live in Concord and I would visit her every other summer or so. Wish I know about this store then!

It was a very small place. There was even a sign with the title of Multversal Trading  with an image of a Phraint on it. Dave would of kept it going except that the city decided to shut down the entire street for renovations and put him out of business. Nice to see your local government giving a helping hand  

I generally buy my books from the Hairy Tarantula in Toronto. They've got a yank trans girl there who really knows her stuff and who provides good customer service, even though the owner's a bit of a nut. Good selection of stuff - It's the first place I look for anything I need. The prices are OK - they've got a high base prices, but frequent sales (this month it was 30% off everything) so you've just got to know when the sales are going on and you can save a whack of cash.

Back when I lived in Kingston during university, I used to go to Nexus, which was run by a guy named Mike. It was great, and I think he was doing pretty well, because the last time I saw the place, he'd moved into a huge new location in the basement of some storefronts. It's the largest game store I've ever been in - it was easily 100 ft by 60 ft. It had tons of room to move around in, which I prefer to the narrow, cluttered feel of many game stores. It was also very clean, and everything was a really well displayed. Kingston was sort of a hobbyist's dream though. Two universities, one college, an army base, somewhere around 20 prisons and jails in the county, etc.

Quote from: stu2000;293887Was the one on Pikes Peak Levine's? I don't remember exactly where Levine's was. It was a great old classic shop (the right smell) but I never got to visit it much.

Yup. That was it. It was a toy store. They also sold the Estes model rockets before they sold RPG's, but they had wargames (SPI & Avalon Hill), The General, and Strategy & Tactics from the time I first started shopping there in early 77' or so.

Mig Killers from Lou Zocchi I picked up in the nameless comic book store near where i lived.... . Wish I had that game now.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;293946I generally buy my books from the Hairy Tarantula in Toronto. They've got a yank trans girl there who really knows her stuff and who provides good customer service, even though the owner's a bit of a nut. Good selection of stuff - It's the first place I look for anything I need. The prices are OK - they've got a high base prices, but frequent sales (this month it was 30% off everything) so you've just got to know when the sales are going on and you can save a whack of cash.

Weird, I wasn't expecting to have actually been to any of the stores people mentioned in this thread, but I've been to Hairy Tarantula a few times on my various trips to Toronto for other things.  Pretty cool place, but has never had what I've been looking for at the time  :/  

The store in my old hometown, "Not Just Stamps", is/was a bit of a local legend.  I'm still friends with the longest-served member of staff, who ended up being the last manager.  People would come to the shop, and the Gaming club, from miles around, and everyone was really sad to hear that the shop had closed.  There was a hobby/models store that closed around the same time for the same reasons; they didn't earn enough profits to be able to take the rise in rates the council had put up to support the big new shopping centre they were building. -_-;  

In a way, the store I'm saddest about is the one I used to work at;  It was a bookstore which also sold CCGs and a small selection of RPGs, and they hired me to expand that side of things, which I did.  A friend of mine ran a games night there every Thursday, I slowly expanded the range of RPGs we stocked as best I could, considering they only let me use one supplier.  One of the regional managers had a big thing for "Roleplaying games" despite knowing little about them, which also included CCGs, board games, Tabletop minis etc, since one of the other stores the company owned was basically the only place on one of the Channel Islands that sold comics, RPGs, and other nerdy things.  Unfortunately, the friend who was running the games nights left, though someone else stepped up.  However, shortly after this I left the store to move to Japan for a while.  As soon as I left, they fired my boss and replaced her with someone who didn't care for the gaming side of things, and they did a big sale, selling off most of the games, and transferring the rest of the stock to the other store I mentioned.  It was a bit of a surprise when I went back to see how the place was doing last year; I'd heard from my old boss that she'd been fired, but I didn't know they were dropping RPGs entirely, made me sad.

Which location did you go to? The Hairy T out by Keele and Bloor is more collectibles and whatnot. The Yonge and Elm location is the better one for RPGs. But sometimes they split their stock, and it's worth it to ask if the other location has something if you can't see it on their floor.

For example when MongTrav was first released, the Yonge location didn't have any copies, but the Keele one did, so I dropped by there and bought it from them.

The biggest game shops in Austin in my youth were King's Hobby and The Game Player.  The Game Player was a pretty typical mall-based game store at the height of the hobby's popularity in the 80s.  I think that is the place where I got my first D&D book (The 1st ed Monster Manual).  

In high school I discovered King's Hobby, which had an amazing selection of games in the day.  In my mind's eye I still see all my favorites stuffed in spinning racks.  I ended up working there throughout college during the boom times of M:TG, but over the years since then the selection of games withered as the market weakened and another local store, Dragon's Lair, took over the position as Austin's largest game store.  I like Dragon's lair, but I just have such good memories of King's as seen through the rose-colored glasses of my geek childhood.

TGA

Quote from: The Good Assyrian;293984The biggest game shops in Austin in my youth were King's Hobby and The Game Player.  The Game Player was a pretty typical mall-based game store at the height of the hobby's popularity in the 80s.  I think that is the place where I got my first D&D book (The 1st ed Monster Manual).  

In high school I discovered King's Hobby, which had an amazing selection of games in the day.  In my mind's eye I still see all my favorites stuffed in spinning racks.  I ended up working there throughout college during the boom times of M:TG, but over the years since then the selection of games withered as the market weakened and another local store, Dragon's Lair, took over the position as Austin's largest game store.  I like Dragon's lair, but I just have such good memories of King's as seen through the rose-colored glasses of my geek childhood.

TGA

I've been to Kings Hobby several times when I was in college, even though I lived in Lubbock.

The big gaming stores in Lubbock were Star Books and Comics, and then later on, Mad Hatter's.

An interesting fact about Mad Hatters is I think I stole the Hatter's girlfriend when we were both college freshmen. Back before he legally changed his name to "Mad Hatter" (no lie), his name was Robert, and we were all three kinda friends.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;293983Which location did you go to? The Hairy T out by Keele and Bloor is more collectibles and whatnot. The Yonge and Elm location is the better one for RPGs. But sometimes they split their stock, and it's worth it to ask if the other location has something if you can't see it on their floor.

It was the Yonge/Elm one IIRC, but this was way back in 2007 so my memory's a bit fuzzy.  In fairness, at the time I was looking for Mekton Zeta, which is a pain in the butt to get through any means other than going direct to R. Tal.  Weirdly, and related to the thread, I found the other books I wanted a week later in Vancouver, in a little toy store on the "other" side of the bay, which had a whole load of older RPGs and board games.  They didn't have MZ but I did pick up a sealed copy of Ghostbusters 1E, and the Bubblegum Crisis books I was missing.  I wish I could remember the name so I could share it with anyone Canadian who'd be interested.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;293987I've been to Kings Hobby several times when I was in college, even though I lived in Lubbock.

The big gaming stores in Lubbock were Star Books and Comics, and then later on, Mad Hatter's.

An interesting fact about Mad Hatters is I think I stole the Hatter's girlfriend when we were both college freshmen. Back before he legally changed his name to "Mad Hatter" (no lie), his name was Robert, and we were all three kinda friends.

Dude, I remember that guy!  He ran a M:TG tournament for us at the first convention my friend and I ran back in 97 I think.  He had legally changed his name by that point as I recall.  He was an interesting character...

TGA

I found out that the Gaming store I had been going to, Game Towne, may be months away from closing it's doors. They're staying open until their 30th anniversary, than closing down. They always had a good selection of non D&D games there (and, everything D&D of course) including some incredibly oddball stuff (Ralph Bakshi's Wizards RPG is probably the strangest thing I've purchased there). I remeber buying my first RPG book there, Toon (my brother bought his first D&D stuff there too). The staff was incredibly nerdy and incredbly friendly. John, in particular, was incredibly knowledgable about absolutely everything they carried there.

They also had a great board game selection and a whole wall of paper chit wargames (which I never played). I hope they pull through this recession because I would hate to see them go!

This last year, though, marks the first time I'd ever purchased a .pdf. I guess that would be the new store for me

Quote from: KrakaJak;294061I found out that the Gaming store I had been going to, Game Towne, may be months away from closing it's doors. They're staying open until their 30th anniversary, than closing down. They always had a good selection of non D&D games there (and, everything D&D of course) including some incredibly oddball stuff (Ralph Bakshi's Wizards RPG is probably the strangest thing I've purchased there). I remeber buying my first RPG book there, Toon (my brother bought his first D&D stuff there too). The staff was incredibly nerdy and incredbly friendly. John, in particular, was incredibly knowledgable about absolutely everything they carried there.

They also had a great board game selection and a whole wall of paper chit wargames (which I never played). I hope they pull through this recession because I would hate to see them go!

This last year, though, marks the first time I'd ever purchased a .pdf. I guess that would be the new store for me

That's in San Dimas right?  I lived in Pamona for a while, right off the Indian Hills exit on the 10.  It was a crazy time, but I would ride my motorcycle to Glendale Community College daily, and pass the Old Towne mall all the time.  I frequented that shop while I lived in Pamona.