From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


UK video-game retailer GAME is closing* the last of its stores; yet
another trumpet blowing to herald the end of brick-n-mortar sales of
video games. US retailer Gamestop announced earlier this month it is
also closing 400 stores.

Not that will surprise any of us here. Raise your hand if you bought a
new video game from a brick-n-mortar store any time last year? Heck,
raise your hand if you /entered/ any such store in the last year? Who
does that anymore? Even box-store retailers have almost no video-game
presence anymore (certainly, there's nothing there for PC gamers).
Everything's gone digital. Even GAME was mostly tat --FuncoPop
bubbleheads and t-shirts-- rather than anywhere you'd go for games.

Still, I'll miss the stores. Not so much as they are now, but how they
used to be. There was a certain joy wandering its shelves, pulling out
a box, looking at it and wondering if it was worth buying. There was
always a sense of FOMO buying from brick-n-mortar that you don't
really get buying digitally. If I put that box back on the shelf, it
might not be there to buy next week!

There was that sense of community too; it was so easy to bump into
somebody --often a complete stranger!-- and start discussing games.
Especially before the Internet, this was one of the ways you'd be able
to gauge popular interest in certain titles; the equivalent of reading
random reviews on Steam. "Oh, you like 'Curse of the Azure Bonds'? You
gotta try 'Might & Magic II'!"

Plus, you could get some really good sales sometimes if you dug
through the bargain-bin. Ten games for a dollar? Who cares if they
were from ten years ago and were all CGA; that's a bargain!

Plus, you actually OWNED the games you purchased. No worries about the
servers being shut down and you losing access to your games (on the
other hand, heaven help you if your floppy disks go tits up ;-)

So, yeah, I'll mourn the passing of GAME. Not so much for what it is
now, but what it used to be and what it represented; a finer era of
gaming.




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* I like adding URLs to articles https://www.gamesindustry.biz/uk-retailer-shutters-last-remaining-standalone-stores-as-it-enters-administration




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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 11:01:55 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Plus, you actually OWNED the games you purchased. No worries about the >servers being shut down and you losing access to your games (on the
other hand, heaven help you if your floppy disks go tits up ;-)

Yeah, I own a lot of games in their original packaging which means I
own a lot of disks, CDs and DVDs. But so what? I don't have any drives
anymore to play any of them and I don't want to. The floppies, at the
very least, aren't going to work anyway.

To me, a physical collection is more about the packaging than having
working games. I like having both a physical collection of games and
online libraries myself.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:45:17 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 11:01:55 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson ><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Plus, you actually OWNED the games you purchased. No worries about the >>servers being shut down and you losing access to your games (on the
other hand, heaven help you if your floppy disks go tits up ;-)

Yeah, I own a lot of games in their original packaging which means I
own a lot of disks, CDs and DVDs. But so what? I don't have any drives >anymore to play any of them and I don't want to. The floppies, at the
very least, aren't going to work anyway.

Actually, you might be surprised. Assuming they've been stored
half-way decently, they might still be viable. Floppies aren't quite
as fragile as you may remember.

Or rather, /good/ floppies aren't that bad. By the mid to late 90s, a
lot of the floppy disks you could buy were really cut-rate and cheaply produced, and data longevity could be measured in weeks. And Gog
forbid if you re-used any of those floppy disks that came on magazine
covers (especially the ones for 3-hours free AOL!).

But in the 80s and early 90s? The floppy disks were of far better
quality and held data far longer and more reliably. After all, it was
expected that people's data would be stored permanently on them. Not
like in the late 90s, when all floppies were seen good for was
sneakernetting between machines. Retail programs often used the
highest quality disks, just because they couldn't be sure that the
boxes the apps or games came in would be stored in the best
environments; publishers did everything they could to make sure you'd
be able to install the program you paid for.

That said... I still wouldn't rely on floppy disks to store my data.
The few remaining I have, I long ago imaged and archived. But were I
to pull some out and slot them into a floppy drive, I wouldn't be too
surprised if some of them were still readable.

To me, a physical collection is more about the packaging than having
working games. I like having both a physical collection of games and
online libraries myself.

Yeah, but you need space to store all those boxes!

These days, I mostly rely on screenshots of the original boxes. It's
not quite as satisfying as having shelves worth of games... but it
requires far less floor-space ;-)

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:10:17 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, you might be surprised. Assuming they've been stored
half-way decently, they might still be viable. Floppies aren't quite
as fragile as you may remember.

Yes, I would be genuinely surprised if a decent number of my floppies
still worked but it does not really matter. I will never install games
from them ever again.

Yeah, but you need space to store all those boxes!

I know. I have a room dedicated to my PC games and books.
Unfortunately, I have no room for my C-64 games in that room so they
are stored out of sight in bins.

Those C-64 floppies very likely do not work anymore. I used to keep
those bins in an attic that could reach 100+ F in the summer. In my
new home, they are stored in my garage which, as I speak, is hovering
around 0 F. This winter has been pretty cold so far.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 06 Feb 2026 13:25:07 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:10:17 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson ><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, you might be surprised. Assuming they've been stored
half-way decently, they might still be viable. Floppies aren't quite
as fragile as you may remember.

Yes, I would be genuinely surprised if a decent number of my floppies
still worked but it does not really matter. I will never install games
from them ever again.

Good thing I weaseled the caveat of "stored decently" in my claim. ;-)
;-)

Yeah, but you need space to store all those boxes!

I know. I have a room dedicated to my PC games and books.
Unfortunately, I have no room for my C-64 games in that room so they
are stored out of sight in bins.

I dumped (most) of my game boxes, but I hadn't the heart to chuck any
of the manuals. For the longest time I dedicated several shelves to
making them accessible, but these days they all live in seven or eight
banker boxes stashed in the back of a closet. Many of the manuals I've
found (or created!) PDF scans for each, but there are still some games
where --if I want to read the manual-- I have to brush away the dust
and cobwebs and pull the book itself.

The optical disks are better treated, though. While with the majority
of those games I've found digital replacements, there are still
several hundred CD-ROM games that have never been available as digital downloads (or, if they were, I never had an opportunity to acquire).
Maybe if I did, I could finally chuck the lot of the CD-ROMs ;-)




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