Royal Empire Gaming — Attraction in Longwood

UPDATE - Sept 6, 2022 Reducing from 2 stars to 1. All Gen2 games are still priced way over market value, and have sticker prices that are up to 30% higher than PriceCharting (PC), which itself gives values up to 2X and 3X actual market value.) That, however, is not the reason for the rating reduction. Given their pricing methods as structured, an item with a PC value of about $100 (rolling 6-month average) would have a sticker price in this store of $130 or higher, however, if you were to sell the same item to the store, they would offer $25 cash, or $35 store credit, like they $25 they quoted me today for my $95 NIB game.

A 500%+ markup is thoroughly excessive. Based on my experience, every gaming store that sells retro games located within 100 miles of Orlando will both: Sell you the same item at a much lower price Buy that item off of you for a much higher price.

If you're making a transactions at this place for anything, you are throwing some money away, considering you can get anything they sell somewhere else within a reasonable distance for much less, and be offered a much higher trade-in amount literally anywhere else.

I gave this place a 2nd chance today, and they failed miserably. Friendly, attentive staff and a pleasing atmosphere is great, but isn't worth the unbelievably high prices. Obviously, there are a lot of people who are either willing to pay these grotesquely excessive high prices, or, are simply not aware of the value of what they're buying, because this place has doubled their square footage and remodeled the store within past 6 months. I can only assume they were able to do so because they're making bank on their customers' ignorance.

Seriously ... shop around for at least 3 minutes before deciding to buy something here. It's the longest amount of time it would take to find another place that sells the same thing at a fraction of the price.

And seriously-Combat for $5? Market value is about 25 cents. Laser Gates in extraordinarily poor condition for $50?!? You can buy the same thing in GREAT condition on eBay for $20 including a purchase protection guarantee. Unbelievable.

[Original review - May 2022] The prices on all of their 2nd Gen games that I looked at were extraordinarily high, so high that they disincentivized any purchase. There were a few Gen3 games (NES) titles that were reasonably priced, and I did buy one, but the Gen2 stuff (Atari 2600/5200/7800, INTV, Odyssey2) which include loose and CIB titles, was profoundly overpriced. I likely won't be returning to this store unless I discover they've reevaluated their pricing structure on their 2nd Gen games. Games with completely trashed/missing labels were priced the exact same as their counterparts with pristine labels. Labels and their condition are half the value. I can't imagine that this location makes too many sales on them. Tbh, even if they slashed all the prices in half, the prices would still be on the high end of barely reasonable. i.e. Atari 2600 title called "Crypts of Chaos" was priced over $20 (I could be wrong, but I think I remember seeing $24.99). The market value of this game is around $7 or $8. Even PriceCharting's bloated, flawed eBay scraping algorithm puts this game's value at $15, or almost double market value. This store is selling it at over triple market value. EBay BIN and PC are not good indicators of the market value of these games, and this is yet another retro game store that has either not figured that out -or- they, like many other retro game stores, are simply uninterested in selling their inventory of Gen2 games on their shelves. On the good side, the ambience within the store is great, the staff were very polite, and they have many games for many systems, having a much broader selection of games than most other retro game retail locations in Florida. It's just a shame they're priced way out of competitive range. Indeed, they are, on average, the absolute highest prices I've seen thus far out of the several dozen retro game stores Ive been to in Florida in the past...

What an awesome store! I went in to see if they had some retro games for my original XBOX and they not only had a few games, but they had a huge inventory of XBOX games. More than I've seen in one place. Not only that but they're priced really well. You would have a hard time finding anyone who could beat their prices.

They even had a big selection of Genesis games which blew me away. I would say they had hundreds of them and a quality inventory. They had the original Mortal Kombat and the original Madden. Talk about memories. I was tempted to pick the Madden and Pat Riley Basketball game. I was in heaven there.

The clerk was really nice and pointed out where they had more games, consoles, and even old-school computers.

The owner came over to help get all the discs for the games I had picked and I mentioned in passing that it would be nice if there was an original XBOX wireless controller. He goes on yeah, I have some that are 3rd party. I'm like that's not a problem. Went over and picked 3 for me to pick from. I'm just in amazement and happy.

I mentioned that I was looking for 3 individual games that I could not locate. Golden Axe and Streets of Rage for Genesis and I wanted SSX Tricky for the original XBOX. The owner goes to the shelves to look and doesn't find them. So he asks me to wait a moment so he can search his inventory. He comes out and says he doesn't have Golden Axe or Streets of Rage, but has SSX Tricky. He said the disk wasn't in good shape so he went in the back and repaired the disk for me and said if anything goes wrong to come back and he'll make good on it.

You can't get that level of customer service anymore. Truly a step above than anywhere I've been to lately. Great owner and a great employee. I was not only highly impressed with the owner and employee but also with their inventory. They even knew what games were and weren't compatible across the XBOX platforms and had a list for customers to check. This is the best place to go and get retro games and new ones. They go above and beyond to help you out. I just wish I could give them more...

This is my first and only time going in to the store. I'm an avid collector and have visited a lot of different video game stores. The first thing you notice when you walk in is how crammed the store is with merchandise. Normally you would think that is a good thing. When you look around a lot of the shelf space in the middle of the store that makes it difficult to walk around doesn't have anything good on it and could easily be pushed to the sides of the store to create an open space. Especially during covid and trying to practice social distancing I bumped into multiple people simply because of the lack of space. The next thing is besides being crammed in the store it is really hot in there. The owner doesn't really like to make conversation whatsoever. I tried making conversation with him and he is very short. I noticed that this wasn't just with me but other customers as well. I attempted to trade in a box full of games and asked him if he would be able to let me know a breakdown of what the game's value is on trade in as that's pretty standard when I go to any other store and he told me no that would be impossible because they don't have that kind of system in place and that if I want him to do that I should just take my business elsewhere. I'm already off put by the store itself and his lack of engagement. He eventually said that if I want to make a pile of games that I have questions on that he will look them up individually which was a fair compromise. After he was done he told me my store credit amount which was lower than I was hoping for so I pulled out a handful of games and asked him how much would I owe in cash if I take these games out and he told me that he already deleted the transaction and he's going to pass on the trade which was a complete waste of my time. I wouldn't recommend this...