Al's Music Video & Games — Local services in Seattle

5 stars for the video game repair service. In October I brought my OG Xbox in for repair. My self-executed mod had expired after 7+ years and the machine wasn't booting. The team at Al's took all my nitpicky info down accurately and sent me a copy of my repair form. Alejandro, the technician who did the work for me, was very knowledgable, understood the importance of the device to me, and explained the situation. They provided me a shortcut fix that could get me back up and running, but when I asked about other options they were happy to explain different options. Their good communication and subject mater expertise earned my trust and convinced me to go forward with an improved modification. There was no way in hell that I was going to spend many hours re-ripping all of my collection off original discs so they gave me step-by-step guidance for how to back up my hard disk before I returned the device for the upgrade. When the mod was completed, they again walked me through how to restore all of my backed up content. As a result I had a better modded device and all of my original data intact. They charged a fair amount for the work and research required.

Again, I was grateful to Alejandro for their technical and communication skills.

Everyone can grow, and I do have some constructive feedback: it would be good if Al's could tell me where in the queue my device was for repairs. I expect this could make some customers nervous. If they could see how many were ahead of them, it could set expectations and soothe them. I like to think I was more patient.

I like...

Easily my favorite store for retro games and vinyl. Used to walk by thinking it was a pawn shop or something but stuck my head in a couple months ago and was blown away. Unlike Pink Gorilla down the street these guys buy and sell modded consoles. Prices seem to be pegged against eBay with a discount, so it's not garage sale bargains but it's cheaper and faster than what I could get online without some serious hunting. You've really got to spend some serious time in this store to take in the stuff packed into every square inch from floor to ceiling Not just records and retro games but random controllers, carrying cases, anime merch, collectibles, blurays, receivers, video game magazines, heck even MiniDisc stuff occasionally. Really the best store around for geek hobbies with friendly staff.

As an extra bonus Alejandro started working there in the last few months and is now their resident modder and repair guy. Any consoles they don't buy pre-modded are modded in house. I dropped off my Sharp Twin Famicom and NESRGB kit for installation since I didn't have all the tools needed to do it myself. He knocked it out no problem for an incredibly reasonable price and with no shipping it off to an online service. $100 after tax for the labor was far less than buying myself the desoldering iron. Easy to work with and you can chat him up on mods for almost anything.

Highly recommend the store and especially the...

The store manager called me and said they were interested in an interview. I talked to the manager over the phone and let them know I was already happily working at another record store multiple times. She still called me in, had me travel across the city, and interview for a half hour before telling me that because I was working at another record store it would be a conflict of interest and that it wasn't going to work out. I tried to convince her that it wouldn't be an issue, but she clearly didn't care. I was pretty frustrated having had my time wasted, this easily could have been resolved over the phone. I let her know that I was no longer interested, to lose my resume, that she didn't seem like she knew what she was doing, and said thanks for wasting my time. I didn't yell or cause a scene and there was only one customer in the very back of the shop. The manager then contacted my boss at Spin Cycle Records and made sure that I lost my job there. Thanks for being super unprofessional, wasting my time, and getting me fired. Terrible store and...