GameStop will soon resume trading in classic games and consoles

By Will Fulton April 15, 2015

Nintendo Controller — Arielle Fragassi/Flickr

Dust off your Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64, because GameStop will soon resume trading in retro consoles, games, and accessories. The pilot sales and trade-in program will launch on April 25 for the roughly 250 GameStop stores in New York City and Birmingham. If the pilot proves successful, GameStop hopes to roll it out nationally later in 2015.

The systems and accessories accepted will include the NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, Sega Dreamcast, and PlayStation. This will apparently increase the number of games offered or accepted by GameStop by roughly 5,000. In early March GameStop already announced that it would begin accepting the PlayStation 2 (still the best-selling video game console of all time, incidentally) in exchange for $25 of store credit. Sorry, Atari Jaguar devotees — you’ll still have to rely on back channels to get your fix.

There will be about two months of lead time between when the stores start accepting trades and when they become available for resale. This will give them time to build up a buffer of processed products and “time to build up a good assortment for retro games fans to select from when shopping.”

A GameStop representative told IGN that all products will go “back through the Refurbishment Operations Center for inspection, testing and repair.” That extensive testing will allow GameStop to provide retro consoles with “the same warranty as current used and refurbished consoles.”

What older consoles do you still have lying around? Does GameStop’s announcement make you more inclined to cash out, or to dig your heels in and buy more games? My Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2 from high school are currently gathering dust in my living room, but this may finally push me to find a fourth N64 controller and a copy of GoldenEye for nostalgic game nights.

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Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

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