The Game Room — Attraction in North Charleston

One star is overrating this place. This rating falls on the employees and not so much the product although that in itself is extremely over priced. I called this business asking if they would be interested in a recently released lego star wars set that had not been opened. The woman i talked to on the phone said that they cant really say what they would buy something for but if i wanted to bring it in they would definitely be interested (fair enough). So i drove an hour towards North Charleston to this business that isnt very easy to get to. I went into the black light lit store (also odd) to the counter where there was a woman arranging games in a case. I said i had just called a little bit ago about the lego set. She looked at me with a very glazed look and told me that they dont take legos, they only take gaming stuffs. In disbelief I explained that i had just talked to another person who it turns out was feet away and had not said anything yet even after hearing our conversation. This other female comes around to where i was talking with the other employee. Politely i again said that i had called and spoke to i assume her about the legos. She said yea you did talk to me but we dont take legos. Trying very hard to not let my emotions get the better of me i asked for clarification. She says that what she said was that if i was going to be coming in then I should bring the set with me and it would be something they would look at bc they were interested. Ok so are you going to look at it i replied. The first employee woke back up and repeated her monotone line again which was how they dont take legos, only gaming. I started to ask why in the world if they knew they would not be buying it did they have me drive all this way but i knew i would get absolutely nowhere with these two ladies. So i told them that they were doing a really good job and actually refrained from making either of them cry. So if you plan to visit this place do yourself a favor and save your money and save yourself a headache and go to another one of the many more competent places in charleston. Ive never left a review of anywhere i have visited....but after the experience i had here i just had to...

Visited with a friend since I was in the area and we wanted to check out some gaming stores. Had a good variety of both video games and anime figures/statues, and some of their stuff was very obscure like Atari home PCs from the 80s, which was cool. However the staff very much overdid their "checking in" on us if we needed help. I get the need for both customer service and inventory control when running a retail store, but we were both asked if we "needed help" about 20 times in the span of our 30 minutes in the store. 2 of those were within 5 seconds of each other lol.

The selection was good, but prices are high for what they have in general. Even taking the current "COVID" market into account. I don't get why a loose copy of Duck Hunt for Famicom is 50 bucks, when a complete in box copy can be had on eBay for under 40, for instance. Bought a cart of a game that was priced at 60 that averaged online for 40, and the owner very reluctantly dropped it to 55 after attempting to haggle saying 60 was the lowest price on it he could find. I ended up buying it anyways because it was a semi rare cart I hadn't seen previously but come on now lol.

Overall, good selection and some cool stuff but be prepared to be asked if you need help constantly and be prepared for higher than...

Do not support this place. Don’t be fooled by the modded, reskinned Game Boys behind the glass—this store is an overpriced slap in the face to retro game collectors. It’s so dimly lit you can’t properly inspect the condition of games until you walk over to the window and check under the sunlight, which feels almost intentional.

Prices are heavily gouged—many games are marked well above market value, and I’ve noticed inconsistent pricing even between identical copies of the same title.. The owner seems to hire young staff who appear more focused on the store’s anime-themed aesthetic than being knowledgeable about retro games. When trying to negotiate on the overpriced inventory, you’re told the staff doesn’t have the authority and that everything goes through the owner—this is not how a local game store should operate.

How this store manages to run a second location at Tanger is beyond me. At least that one has lighting, which isn’t saying much. The whole place could use one big disc resurface. You’re better off going online or driving a little further out to Palmetto Gaming in...