Retro Gaming Shops - Electric Town (Ripon, North Yorkshire)

As we continue our wild-goose chase across the United Kingdom for the remaining retro gaming specialists, today's visit saw the RetroCollect team head to Ripon. With the newly opened Electric Town a street away from the town centre, our pixel hungry wallets were rather pleased with the selection on offer spanning a wide range of defunct systems.

Electric Town comes as no stranger to RetroCollect. Having already visited their Castleford branch, which is overstocked from floor to ceiling with more games than your average eBay seller, we had high hopes for the Ripon store.

Unsurprisingly we were impressed within seconds of stepping in from the pouring rain. Towards the left side of the entrance was a glass cabinet stocked with countless rare retro gaming eye-candy, making the visit even more worthwhile.

There are very few places (not including your impressive collection rooms) where you can walk in and stand in front of Evolution 2 (Sega Dreamcast), Space Channel 5 Part 2 (Sony PlayStation 2), Suikoden II (Sony PlayStation 1) and various Nintendo Game & Watch handhelds, Electric Town however is one of them.

Not only was the said display case filled with a huge selection of retro gaming items, but at least a good third of the shelving space on the shop floor featured a wealth of games fit for any classic game collector. If anything, there was too much on offer. The RetroCollect team often found themselves asking for various items to be moved aside only to catch a glimpse of more titles hidden behind stacks of other retro games limiting the view.

Guided Tour of Electric Town (Ripon, North Yorkshire)

While their main trade without a doubt will be the wealth of modern gamers within the region, you cannot help but see that both branches under the growing Electric Town name are being run by avid (and potentially retro) gamers.

This was only confirmed by the conversation which followed after we requested a few titles from the cabinets. The employees certainly seemed pleased to help out a fellow gamer yet to be brainwashed by the hordes of first-person shooters, shortly before offering us access to even more retro games behind the counter and in the stock room.

But for the most important part, the prices in Electric Town were surprisingly good. So often do we visit shops stocking retro games, only to find prices which make the likes of eBay feel cheap. Electric Town however seemed to either match the average eBay price tag or beat it by a few pounds, something which is tough to find.

Link: View Electric Town (Ripon, North Yorkshire) on Google Maps
Link: Electric Town Fan Page on Facebook

< Prev		Next >

Last Updated ( 16 July 2011 )

Comments

(Link to this comment) Revolg 2011-07-16 20:21

Looks like a visit is in order the next time I am in Yorkshire, I think I better save some cash first though

(Link to this comment) gunstarhero 2011-07-16 20:30

Great stuff. I live nowhere near Yorkshire, but as with your last retro shop visit demonstrated, there is more than enough reason to make a journey up north to check out these great places.

(Link to this comment) XFile2708 2011-07-17 09:42

Looks like a ton of good stuff there matey - was the £40 SP one of the AGS-101s?

And what was going on with Shaq Fu at £30? April Fools...? ...lol

(Link to this comment) MegaDrive20XX 2011-07-17 17:05

I love how Europe takes better care of their classic game stores such as this. In America, we rarely find games that are taken care of, damaged cases, destroyed labels. Yet, somewhere out there in our country, there are people who take the effort to at least care for them. Those glass cases are a pain to take care of I bet, the ones I used to manage just kept running out of room after too many games Judging from this video, this store makes it looks more like a vinyl record store. I can dig it.

(Link to this comment) SoupDragon 2011-07-18 09:27

Need. To. Go. To. Yorkshire

(Link to this comment) uberr3tronerd 2011-07-18 14:04

america probably takes lesser care of their retro games cause theres so many copies around even boxed that can be bought cheap from there...like tales of vesperia....i bought it for £40 here because its such a rare game and i keep it in prestige condition....but for over there theres so many copies that people are selling them at $25 and half of the copies are horribly trashed ><

(Link to this comment) MegaDrive20XX 2011-07-20 04:33

Well here's the problem Uberr. Many of the American consumers throw away the boxes, even to DS games!! I mean how in the hell can you throw away a hard plastic case is beyond me! I blame the 8-bit and 16-bit days when cardboard boxes were abused in such manner, seems those habits carried onto the next generation of gamers.

Even rare games suffer, like when i found "Two Crude Dudes" on Genesis. Every copy I found was destroyed and I kept searching for 5 years until I found one with a decent cartridge label.

(Link to this comment) bignes 2011-07-20 11:53

was already to jump in the car for a trip until i saw shaq fu for £30

Ps2 games starting at £50?

(Link to this comment) Happyguy1984 2011-07-21 10:39

Is Evolution 2 really worth £74.99?

(Link to this comment) hargcore 2011-07-22 17:44

Shaq Fu £30? I like that Night Moves C64 hidden away at the back!

(Link to this comment) Cauterize 2011-07-22 22:08

The copy of Shaq Fu was a in-store joke, one I should have explained in the video. If I remember correctly, it was in reference to a certain video game podcast encouraging gamers to destroy any copies of the game they had. This in turn made the shop (as a joke) decide to 'preserve' one copy which in turn would eventually be 'rare' due to the destroyed copies, hence the price tag.

(Link to this comment) Overheat 2011-08-08 16:49

great article - so good in fact that me and my mate Rich today decided to visit Electric Town. We were thoroughly impressed - the shop staff were incredibly friendly and there was an excellent amount of games for sale for practically every console. We even asked politely and got to see a collection of Japanese games that the owner of the store kept upstairs - which was pretty awesome! In the end we bought a few PS1 games and a SNES game, all of which were really well priced :)

Highly recommended store for all! Thank you for pointing it out! :)

Refresh comments list