The Gamemaster's Realm — Attraction in Ambridge

Pros : Huge selection of video games, board games, strategy guides, memorabilia, etc. Has RARE finds. Talkative and knowledgeable staff. Free to play arcade cabinets. Sectioned off area of tables and chairs to play board games or D&D with your crew. Has snacks and drinks for sale. Takes a larger variety of items in trade than most places I have been to.... Cons : you will be hard pressed to find a nice, clean copy of basically any video game before xbox 360/PS3 era. Lots of RARE games, but I didnt want any of them because of how poor condition they were in. Simply not collection worthy stuff UNLESS you do not care about the condition of the cases/boxes/manuals/inserts. Some strategy guides are in immaculate condition (HOWEVER, they are priced basically according to what the highest asking prices are on eBay. You will not get a deal. I tried to get them to come down on something even mundane that would not be considered popular and even on that one they would not budge on the price.) Be forewarned, and it IS clearly advertised on the front door, that this location ONLY accepts cash. There is an ATM down the street, but bring a friend or two, as this is not located in a very safe town. I was warned by a local who has been living in the area for over ten years and reads/watches the news, so I am not just saying this and being judgmental. These are legit facts. You will not find Magic: The Gathering here. The manager appears to have some sort of beefy grudge with MTG...and he is not afraid to voice his opinion. He also seems to have a huge problem with Microsoft consoles. Of which I have owned many (I also have many other Nintendo, Sega and Sony systems) and all the problems he was going on and on and ON about to customers in the store and on the phone...either easily fixable, happens to more than just Xbox, or seems like a conspiracy theory found by being an expert Googler...

Basically, come here for the variety and rare stuff and expect to pay absolute top dollar for it, but be warned it will most likely not be in good condition. Bring cash. Bring friends or conceal carry (your choice). If you are allergic to dust or mold, consider wearing a mask. No pandemic pun intended or implied. Do not expect to find anything MTG related or Xbox One consoles.

Tips for the owners : clean your store. accept credit cards. take condition into account when setting prices.

Clearly your establishment is a needle in the haystack of this community, but it is by no means a diamond in the rough as it seemed upon initially walking into the store. Lots of things are great, but lots of things are also in need of work.

I wish you the best of luck in this...

I just want to start by saying ignor all of the Negative reviews .. they are complete non sence and just the vocal minority . I dont personally know brian that well other then visting his shop 2 or 3 times when he was at his 1st place and once at this new location ... be he strikes me as the type of guy that would give you the shirt off his back if you asked him for it . He is a very nice , giving person and very Knowledgeable and a great asset to the gaming Community .

Now to my personal review ... this was my 1st visit since hes been at this location ... and wow ... i thought the old shop was amazing ... but this is on a whole other level ..... hands down without question the best one stop shop for just about anything you could want . I go for retro games and systems ( wich he has the best selection there is ... at very very reasonable prices ) ... but he also has new stuff .... toys ... board games ... strat guides ... minatures ... table top stuff you name it .

Also i brought my two sons ... both are under 2 years old and i was a little hesitant ... because while they are pretty well Behaved . I wasnt sure how there presance would be recived .. cause some kids can be terrable so i would understand if a shop with valuable hard to find things in it wouldnt want small children around .... but not only did they seem just as welcomed as i was .... the owner also offered us all Lollipops for free and let both of my sons pick a toy from a bin to have for free ... wich was extreamly nice and he deff diddnt have to do that ... he also talked to them and had a converstation with the oldest about being a game master one day lol ....

I came in looking for a snes and got exactly what i wanted and got some good games and some amazing deals .... i had a few small extras to trade in ... and i was giving a fair price that far exceeds what gamestop or a pawn shop would ever give ... and that knocked off a nice chunk of an already Unbelievably priced snes and 4 games ...

People are quick to leave bad reviews or talk trash about Businesses but no one ever takes time to praise them when they do things right .... and i can tell you the game master is the real deal and a great place to go and i cant...

Heard about the first time customer 10% price reduction and wanted to give it a shot. I had a lot of games that I wanted to try to trade for other stuff due to being minorly low on funds and wanting more modern games when I had duplicate consoles or games I would otherwise not play. Walked in with my friend who's been there before and that seemed to remove the discount, which isn't advertised anywhere and the owner seems to haphazardly mention it.

I traded in several wii games, a few DS games, a switch game (Oddworld, so a decently big name), and an entire functioning Wii with a controller or two as well. All of that only gave me 80$, which I don't know if thats a rip off or not but to me it seems kind of cheap. Everything else I brought got belittled due to being for an Xbox One. Had to go to another store to trade that stuff in, of which gave me almost 50% of what I made here with trade ins from an old racing wheel alone (which got rejected because of it being for an Xbox.)

The owner talks way too much and tries to pressure you to speak about personal stuff. He talks people down on consoles to try to get them to sell them to him or otherwise, only talking up sony and constantly making every other brand apparently worthless. The stores disorganized, nothings priced other than posters, and the upcharges are insane. Got a 10 year old game for 25$ when gamestop would struggle to sell the game for that price. Some games don't even feel tested, as said game for 25$ didn't even want to run or install when I first got it. Its unclear if it will have to be sold elsewhere because of the stores shortcomings.

Best thing I have heard of this place is its DnD sessions. If you're coming here for those you'll go to the right place. Going there to trade or buy games is genuinely not worth it though, its a scam in...