Retro Store Visit: Matt's Game Exchange

I first learned of Matt's Game Exchange when I picked up managing a few locations for my company in Greensboro, NC. I have visited the store a few times and made a few purchases over the last year or so, but I never thought to do one of these retro store visit type posts. I'm not sure when I last visited the store (I'm going to guess sometime in the fall of 2017) so these pictures are probably outdated now, but I've got them sitting on my laptop's hard drive so why not share them?

This particular store is located at 2924 West Gate City Blvd., Suite A in Greensboro, NC. The store isn't that far of I-40 and it's pretty easy to get in and out of. The store is located in a strip mall and is a rather large store. So large in fact that their shelves help create a smaller shopping area, while the rest of the store is used for storage (?). They never seem to have huge inventory of games, but their selection is pretty varied and they seem to have a good flow of trade ins.

Most of the higher end (i.e. expensive) games are kept in the glass cases over near the register, but that doesn't mean there aren't some good games out on the shelves. The first section of games that you can easily browse is their NES section. Here you can see a decent amount of loose NES carts as well as a few boxed games. Looks like I spy a few boxed SNES games too.

I swear everyone's SNES section these days seems to be filled with the same sports and low budget titles. I don't remember anything in this section standing out to me...though I have been know to buying a baseball game if I find one I don't already own.

Below the SNES section was their Genesis selection. A good bit of boxed games, something I'm always glad to see. I'll buy those cheap priced boxed Genesis games sometimes just for the clamshell case. I believe I purchased Double Dragon 3 from this location in one of my previous visits. Plenty of loose carts on the shelves below, but I rarely even look at those.

My guess is now that Hyperkin has released their Retron 77 that old Atari 2600 carts may start moving a little faster. Their selection was small, but they had a few decent games for just a few bucks each. Crystal Castles anyone?

The next section over contained GameCube games. This is one system I'd like to have more games for, but it's getting harder for me to find games that want and aren't priced too high.

Playstation 2 was the next section and I was surprised to see that it barely filled up the 4 foot section it was given. Usually finding PS2 games isn't hard. At least their selection (on this visit) wasn't all sports titles.

If I thought the PS2 selection was sparse, check out how bare the Xbox 360 section was during this visit! Either they have been moving a lot of 360 games or people just weren't trading them in.

The Playstation 3 section however had a few more games to chose from. Nothing that grabbed my attention, but I wasn't a huge fan of the PS3.

Their Xbox One and PS4 sections were filled in a little more. Decent selection from what I can remember, but I usually look for more retro stuff when I visit these type stores.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures of their display cases, but they had some great retro games under the glass. Everything from NES to TurboGrafx. I enjoyed talking to the guys that worked in the store. They were courteous and I could tell that they knew their stuff. It also seemed as if this particular location was smaller than the the store located in Florence, SC. I haven't visited that location, but I'll have to try and swing by there on my next trip down to Myrtle Beach.

Overall the store is pretty cool, but like with many retro stores you may not find necessarily what you're looking for on your first visit. Stores like this you have to visit often and be ready to jump on that "rare" game when you find it as the inventory is constantly changing. Their prices overall are about what you'd expect to find in a brick & mortar retro game store. Not super cheap, but not quite eBay prices either. If you're ever in the Greensboro area or just passing through, you oughta stop in and give them a whirl.

You can find Matt's Game Exchange online or check out their Facebook pages for more information.

PlayStation Days of Play

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