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Recycle Video Games levels up
By Nate Traylor, Staff Writer
Thursday, November 19, 2009 | No comments posted.
NORTH BEND — What do people do when they’re unemployed? Play video games.
“What else are they going to do?” said Annie Jackson, co-owner of Recycle Video Games.
As a result, her downtown North Bend business is doing more than getting by in this recession. “The worse it gets the better it is for us,” Jackson said.
Pushing into its 11th year in business, Sean and Annie Jackson soon will open their fourth location in Tillamook — and possibly a second location in the Bay Area later on.
The store’s inventory is dangerously outgrowing its space on Sherman Avenue. Shelves are packed tight and games are stacked perilously high. And that’s just the front room. In the back, once must-have consoles and obsolete accessories, and thousands of cartridges and disks are piled willy-nilly.
It’s amazing Annie Jackson can find anything.
“She can’t find her car keys, but she can tell you exactly where a copy of Eternal Champions is,” said 27-year-old customer Simon Edd — a former Recycle Video Games employee. “She’s well versed like that.”
The business, which employs 10 people between its North Bend, Brookings and Newport stores, caters to a niche of gamer who pines for the early years of Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog.
The gaming industry found a foothold in household entertainment in the early 1980s when every cool kid on the block either had a Nintendo or Sega. Since then, video games have become much more sophisticated and industry giants Sony and Microsoft entered the arena with entertainment systems of their own.
The more the games advanced, the more valuable the archaic 8- and 16-bit game cartridges have become among collectors.
The store has in stock more than 170,000 used video games, including those for the latest versions of the Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation, but the most sought after are the classics.
“There is a whole nostalgia thing going on,” Edd said.
The systems themselves also are highly collectible. The original Nintendo, which the store has stacks of, is their biggest seller, Jackson said. The store also carries consoles that preceded the Nintendo, including early generations of the Atari and even a rare ColecoVision.
“We have almost every single video game system ever made,” she said.
With an inventory that reaches back to the beginning of the industry’s 30-year history, the Jacksons are considering opening a museum somewhere along U.S. Highway 101.
Edd thinks it would be a good educational resource for younger gamers.
“There are kids today that don’t even know what a Power Glove is,” he said, referring to the once-popular Nintendo accessory.
Jackson is confident it would be a big attraction. The industry, she explained, is expected to undergo a a major transition in two to five years, as many companies will stop producing physical software and strictly make games available for download from the Web.
When that happens, used video game inventories will be all the more valuable, she said, and a museum all the more important.
“What else are they going to do?” said Annie Jackson, co-owner of Recycle Video Games.
As a result, her downtown North Bend business is doing more than getting by in this recession. “The worse it gets the better it is for us,” Jackson said.
Pushing into its 11th year in business, Sean and Annie Jackson soon will open their fourth location in Tillamook — and possibly a second location in the Bay Area later on.
The store’s inventory is dangerously outgrowing its space on Sherman Avenue. Shelves are packed tight and games are stacked perilously high. And that’s just the front room. In the back, once must-have consoles and obsolete accessories, and thousands of cartridges and disks are piled willy-nilly.
It’s amazing Annie Jackson can find anything.
“She can’t find her car keys, but she can tell you exactly where a copy of Eternal Champions is,” said 27-year-old customer Simon Edd — a former Recycle Video Games employee. “She’s well versed like that.”
The business, which employs 10 people between its North Bend, Brookings and Newport stores, caters to a niche of gamer who pines for the early years of Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog.
The gaming industry found a foothold in household entertainment in the early 1980s when every cool kid on the block either had a Nintendo or Sega. Since then, video games have become much more sophisticated and industry giants Sony and Microsoft entered the arena with entertainment systems of their own.
The more the games advanced, the more valuable the archaic 8- and 16-bit game cartridges have become among collectors.
The store has in stock more than 170,000 used video games, including those for the latest versions of the Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation, but the most sought after are the classics.
“There is a whole nostalgia thing going on,” Edd said.
The systems themselves also are highly collectible. The original Nintendo, which the store has stacks of, is their biggest seller, Jackson said. The store also carries consoles that preceded the Nintendo, including early generations of the Atari and even a rare ColecoVision.
“We have almost every single video game system ever made,” she said.
With an inventory that reaches back to the beginning of the industry’s 30-year history, the Jacksons are considering opening a museum somewhere along U.S. Highway 101.
Edd thinks it would be a good educational resource for younger gamers.
“There are kids today that don’t even know what a Power Glove is,” he said, referring to the once-popular Nintendo accessory.
Jackson is confident it would be a big attraction. The industry, she explained, is expected to undergo a a major transition in two to five years, as many companies will stop producing physical software and strictly make games available for download from the Web.
When that happens, used video game inventories will be all the more valuable, she said, and a museum all the more important.
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