Critical Hit Games — Local services in Iowa City

Quick Note: Although my review says 5-stars, my personal rating is 4.5 stars, but Google Maps Reviews doesn't have that as an option for some reason, anyways, here are my thoughts:

Critical Hit Games is truly the ultimate nerd-zone! They have a huge board game selection. Shelf after shelf after shelf, full of the most iconic, and most obscure board games and tabletop RPGs that you'll ever find. They are also frequent hosts of Magic: The gathering tournaments, and Pokemon TCG tournaments. The establishment also has a collection of video games from all kinds of consoles. Wii, N64, PS2, GameCube, SNES, NES, PS1, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, GBA, 3DS, basically everything! The environment is equally nice at Critical Hit Games! The staff are smart, helpful, and quite respectful as well! It's hard to find a frowning face here, everyone is always having a blast!

One thing to keep in mind is that I mostly wrote this review on the arcade section of Critical Hit Games. While I don't know a ton about Board Games, Tabletop RPGs, and card games, I definitely know a lot about arcades. So although the first half of my review might not be perfect, from what I saw there, it matches up well.

The Arcade is very impressive at Critical Hit Games. It consists of 30+ games (Games list at the end of the review), the perfect blend between classics like Galaga, Dig Dug, Space invaders, and Hidden Gems like Zookeeper, Gravatar, and. Crystal Castles. The games were in great condition, well tended, but not ruined by unfitting parts. I only spotted a few issues while I was there, but most of them weren't harmful enough to ruin the game experience. Overall, very enjoyable, and the wide variety and great quality of both the cabinets and games themselves make Critical Hit Games a great place to be!

In terms of negative things about Critical Hit, there's only one thing that comes to mind. I feel like their arcade pricing is a bit too high, not implying that it's not worth it, but it does feel kinda steep. For the arcade, it's $10 an hour per person, and all of the games are set to free play/have credits pre-inserted. Now, I have no problem with this format, heck, I might just like it more than Traditional Quarter-Based arcades, because it encourages you to try new games rather than sticking to games that you are good at. I just feel like $5 to $8 is a more fair price range for an hour of game time, at any arcade.

Although I personally think the arcade price is too high, it's still a very enjoyable place, and I highly recommend it if you are looking for a classic gaming experience, or if you just want to try out some new games. Finally, here's the games list, at least as of July 1st, 2023:

Area 51 Site 4 Tron (Normal version, not working as of my last visit) Tron (Very rare cabaret version, working) Timber Root Beer Tapper Asteroids Space Invaders Crystal castles Centipede (Cabaret version) Dig Dug Donkey Kong Junior Mario Bros Galaga Ms. Pac-Man (Not working as of my last visit) Neo Geo MVS 2-game machine (With Puzzle Bobble - also known as Bust-a-Move, and Metal Slug X) Eagle (Extremely rare cabaret version) Zoo Keeper (Very rare) Multi-Williams Machine (Plays Joust, Defender, Defender II - Stargate, Robotron 2084, Splat, and Sinistar) Burgertime Track and Field Joust (Although it is on the Multi-Williams machine, they also have the original machine as well) Gorf Battlezone Road Runner Q-Bert Gravatar (Extremely rare) Tempest Street Fighter II Turbo - Hyper fighting Atomic Punk (Also known as Bomberman) And...

Super cool store. Drove in from out of town pick up a couple dice sets and some Dungeons & Dragons game played pieces. The dude behind the counter was pretty cool, answered all my typical Noob questions. All in all pretty cool store. There were people playing games while we shopped, not a bother. We actually dug through all of the figurines they had on the Shelf and was there for quite a while. Nobody said a word or even gave us a second look as we picked through and dug through shelves and shelves of different figurines looking for that perfect figurine that we needed for our game. Dice sets were priced Fair. If anything could be improved, it would be to have more figurines and stock. But, they had so many and sock already that I can't possibly think they could really carry anymore. The dude was really helpful and even tried to order exactly what we were looking for. The dude at the counter instructed me as to how to remove the shield from the figurine I bought answer, answered all my questions about painting and about people that paint other figurines. Showed me some of the Blind Box contents they keep in the glass cage. Explain to me how the Blind Box contents worked. Really overall answered any questions I had it was really helpful, even though I was probably annoying the guy. Super cool store super chill. Didn't smell like bad Bo like a lot of these game playing places do. Really...

All Pokemon products are priced at market or even worse which is fine, however it's not even the worst part about this shop. When I walked in to look at singles I realized they had a lot of desirable higher end singles, however I quickly realized why they still had so many nice singles left. The Pokemon singles they sell are horrendously and inaccurately priced. I inquired about a card and the staff went to look up the prices and told me it would be $80 in lightly played condition. The card I was given was very clearly played more than a lightly played card and would easily be considered moderately played by any collector. Additionally, after looking up the price myself on the same website the staff member mentioned, the previously last sold copies of the same card in NEAR MINT condition sold for roughly $85 on the high end and the lightly played condition sold for $65. On top of all this, the store advertises in their display that they buy at the best prices, upon asking they said that they buy at 50-60% of market.

Honestly would never go back to this shop after this experience unless something changes. I strongly believe that this shop is a scam and a waste of time unless you are heading here for one of their community events. If you are looking to buy singles or sell sealed products, you are much better off going to...