When you stumble upon a second hand shop that describes itself as a retro graveyard, you know you're in for a treat. Bitz, located on the Promenade in the sunny town of Bridlington, is potentially the best stocked retro gaming shop in the country, holding plenty of reasons for any retro gamer to make a day trip out to the coast.
Before we get started with our familiar shop tour format, we very much recommend looking away now should you be situated down south or abroad. The treats hidden within Bitz will have you counting the miles from home and working out any possible travel arrangements- ones which we'd hate to be held responsible for!
Upon stepping into Bridlington's very own Bitz, you will feel a sudden wave of nostalgia due to the wealth of classic games directly ahead. As many of us have begun to get used to the lack of retro games available in Cash Convertors or the sparse surviving Gamestation stores, the shelves at Bitz will have you wondering if you've walked through a time vortex to the nineties.
The shelving units holding retro games are overflowing with titles from every platform, so much so that you'll need to spend a good bit of time searching around the shop for other items hidden wherever possible. This becomes even more apparent once you realise that the ceiling beam holding up the very shop you're standing in has its own shelving unit with enough Nintendo cartridges to span the length of the shop. Speaking of quantities, we'd roughly estimate that there are at least 500 Sony PlayStation 1 titles on offer, at least a hundred Sega Mega Drive and Master System games, and plenty of Nintendo NES, SNES and N64 games dotted around. Just when we had thought we had seen everything on offer, the cashier stopped us and handed over two large cases. Looking inside these cases we were then greeted by a huge selection of unboxed Nintendo Game Boy, Color, and Advance titles.
What makes this treasure trove so great though is not just the quantity, but also the prices. Instead of opting for the highest price imaginable and letting their stock gather dust, Bitz have a fantastic array of prices on their games with plenty of gems on offer cheap. While their stock might not be gathering dust any time soon, there were a few unfortunate console sets in the sun facing window which had seen more colourful days- very much in need of rescuing! (We took home the Sega Mega Drive 2 Lion King Box Set needing a loving home)
Until we find another shop housing this much retro stock at such affordable prices, we're labelling Bitz as RetroCollect's Official Ultimate Retro Gaming Shop in the UK (Email us should you know of anything better, we'd love to know). But enough talk, feast your eyes on everything Bitz has to offer in this guided video tour below:
Guided Tour of Bitz (101 Promenade, Bridlington)
We apologise in advance for those currently working out how much petrol they will need to visit this haven. As a closing comment, do not ring the phone number for this shop listed in Google Maps- it isn't Bitz's number, as we found out from a rather frustrated individual on the other end of the line.
Link: Bitz on Google Maps
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Comments
Why couldn't it be closer
It's not bad, but pretty pricey and most of the space inside is taken up with used DVDs.
Wouldn't mind a shop anything like this though in Scotland - seem to be all well south of the border and more so, as hinted in the article, in the lower half of England. Oh well, carboots and eBay it'll have to remain for the time being