Where did you buy your cassette games?

mondeo

My Dad use to bring me to Virgin Mega Stores in town during the late 80's - early 90's, I remember up stairs they had shelves and shelves of C-64 games, Amstrad, Spectrum etc. Flipping super place for games & a great place to spend a Saturday afternoon in those days. It was the only place I ever bought my Spectrum games other then one or two odd ball places that had a rack of them from time to time.

What I would do to go in some place right now and find a hugh shelf full of Spectrum games to have a good rummage through! I'd love that:(.

Rick Deckard

Peats on parnell st. In the old shop upstairs, me and the brother would head in on a saturday and pool our pocket money..

Happy days! Think the games were only a couple of quid. Tried virgin but they had feck all for our 130xe

mondeo

peatcass wrote: »

Peats on parnell st. In the old shop upstairs, me and the brother would head in on a saturday and pool our pocket money..

Happy days! Think the games were only a couple of quid. Tried virgin but they had feck all for our 130xe

I remember peats but funnily enough I was only in it a hand full of times looking for games.

mondeo

Im thinking possibly a majority of people on this forum are the playstation generation and probably don't remember or hadn't been conceived yet when the likes of me was buying zx spectrum/c64 games new in the shops lol. I'm 29 so not that fecking old like

Are there many c64/Amstrad/Amigs/ST/Spectrum era visitors on here?

Retr0gamer

The big computer place in Clearys and HMV on grafton street for me.

paperwork

There was a shop in Clondalkin Village that sold Speccy until about 1995! My best mate as a kid had a spectrum until he got an N64.

mondeo

When the square opened in 1990' 'Harry moores' had a big selection of C64\Amiga games and little or no support for the Amstrad & Spectrum which was a pitty.

CiDeRmAn

When I was a lad I bought my games in a couple of places, Clerys and Easons, both on O'Connell St and then the Virgin Megastore when that opened.
Also would have gone to QTH up on Dawson St and Harry Moores when that opened on Henry St.
I shopped in HMV at that time too, as well as record shops, Golden Discs and the like.
The forst games I bought I got in a litle shop that opened upstairs in a unit in the Castle Shopping Centre in Swords, thats going back a bit, 1985!
It's been interesting to see the retailers ebb and flow over the years.
Back in the 80's it was independant retailers and the various Irish dept stores, not to mention the Megastore.
In the 90's then it shifted to the toy shops and large UK chains, before Gamesworld and Smyths took a chunk after the dawn of the 32bit systems.
In the 00's we see it solidify into the UK chains and Gamestop and Smyths.
And now in the 10's we see it shift further and further into online, with both physical media from amazon and play and also download.
The last decades big retailers are already finding it hard to compete, and we see them opening online portals to keep up.
Be interesting to see where we all shop in 10 years time!

mondeo

paperwork wrote: »

There was a shop in Clondalkin Village that sold Speccy until about 1995! My best mate as a kid had a spectrum until he got an N64.

The very last of the spectrum games in vigin mega stores I have seen for sale was in late 95' and they sold them in packs of 4,5 or maybe 6 just to clear em out. 'mastertronics' re released alot of games at that point swell in similar packs labelled 'sports' 'racing' etc

7sr2z3fely84g5

i remember these shops too,local one sold migs/c64s,looking back before the internet shopping you wonder how much of a mark up some of these retailiers had,thing was,nobody else sold these things in ireland,you just had to make do with what they had.

Even when came to repairs,we didnt have a quick or disposable income as do now,great that you can search on the net to find the answer before you returned the item,usually the seller would tell you it would had to be "returned to england" for repairs,then when sony arrived to open offices in ireland,ireland became an intresting place to do business.

Did speak to retailer recently who i remember sold c64 games,telling me humourous story of getting his osciloscope out to correct the misalignments that the old tape/disk drives used to get sometimes.

Think the last big speccy game was codemasters Robin Hood - Legend Quest which came out in 93!.

gouche

I remember one of the only places you could get Atari 2600 games in Wexford during the 80's was a chemist in town. Always thought that was a bit strange.

ladypip

Im a c64 player (just got myself set up with the system and favorite game of my youth again) I used to buy games in the computer shop in Northside shopping centre. I also remember going into town with my nanny a few times and she brought me to a shop on Henry st, i cant remember the name of the shop though it was small and literally had wall to wall cassette games. It was heaven!!

ciaran76

In Dublin there was a shop on Earl street or Cathedral st that had all c64 /Amstrad/ sinclair / spectrum etc games.

Apollo 1 on Moore st too was great for all these games also.

Welease

Computer shop in the Ilac centre .. and Banba used to sell games also..
I also used to get them from the rental companies in the UK.

but primarily <cough> borrowing games via my double tape deck

Lab_Mouse

like the OP I use to get my c64 games in Virgin megastore.I can remember quiete clearly buying the last ninja 3 there for 13.99.

They also use to sell rpg's like dungeon and dragons near the games section.

Peats was the wrong side of town for me

Use to buy my budget games(mainly codemasters) in the banba in rathmines.

Lab_Mouse

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Be interesting to see where we all shop in 10 years time!

uTorrents probably:pac:

Skerries

used to buy in the Megastore or Easons but i also used to buy them in the games rental place on Cathal Brugha st called Computer City
I used to go in there every Saturday to rent a game for Speccy and then later the Amiga until it closed

d22ontour

paperwork wrote: »

There was a shop in Clondalkin Village that sold Speccy until about 1995! My best mate as a kid had a spectrum until he got an N64.

Used to buy c64 games in Tuthills and Electrovision too i think the name of it was, in the village too.

Peats in Parnell ST too.

mondeo

Nice to hear where people had been getting their stuff:)

Does Rage there in Dublin sell any old C64, spectrum, amiga, Amstrad games?

unky chop chop

Yeah Virgin was where I got the new releases for c64.
Budget games from Mulveys in Dundrum.
Great shop in it's day.Hardware store and a massive wall full of c64 and Speccy games for a fiver.Heaven

7sr2z3fely84g5

Speccy was big in eastern europe,many clones where made,funny story is some radio stations former ussr states actually broadcasted the games on radio,wiki picks up-

One unusual software distribution method were radio or television shows in e.g. Croatia (Radio 101), Serbia (Ventilator 202), Slovenia (Radio Študent), Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania or Brazil, where the host would describe a program, instruct the audience to connect a cassette tape recorder to the radio or TV and then broadcast the program over the airwaves in audio format. In former Soviet Union, mostly in Russia and Ukraine unauthorised radio operators (so-called radio hooligans) often exchanged software from cassette tapes for Spectrum and other popular computers by broadcasting it.
Another unusual method which was used by some magazines were 7" 33⅓ rpm "flexidisc" records, not the hard vinyl ones, which could be played on a standard record player. These disks were known as "floppy ROMs".

unky chop chop

Jesus that's a great idea.Never thought about it before.
Pirate radio stations broadcasting games would have been great back in the day

Dr Bob

mondeo wrote: »

When the square opened in 1990' 'Harry moores' had a big selection of C64\Amiga games and little or no support for the Amstrad & Spectrum which was a pitty.

hey I worked there!
It was much later though , the mid nineties , I remember doing the sega saturn and Playstation launches!
Since I'd an Atari computer Peats was where I got most of my tape games , and oddly enough a lot of my megadrive games came from there!
When I got the c64 Easons and virgin where great places to buy games as well!

mondeo

luas_dublin wrote: »

hey I worked there!
It was much later though , the mid nineties , I remember doing the sega saturn and Playstation launches!
Since I'd an Atari computer Peats was where I got most of my tape games , and oddly enough a lot of my megadrive games came from there!
When I got the c64 Easons and virgin where great places to buy games as well!

It was a nice enough place Harry moores, I did buy a dot matrix printer there back around 92'. I remember the Saturn launches there and the big screen near the entrance with sega rally on it, my jaw dropped when I saw that game:eek:

Dr Bob

Not so much for the saturn , but around the time of the PS1 launch , and for about a year afterwards a few of us used to hang back after work and have tekken/tekken 2 and ridge racer tournaments, i remember Soul Blade getting a fair bit of play later as well.
Actually one of the cool things (and I can probably say this now) was that over christmas or the odd weekend we were allowed sign out a playstation and a few games , on condition that a it was returned exactly the way it was taken out ( as it was going to be sold) and b we didnt mention it to anyone.
This was back when the playstation was 2-300 quid and the games were 30-40 so it was great!
It worked well until late in 1996 some numpty forgot to pack the controller back in the box , and we'd an irate mammy in the shop the day after stevens day complaining that her sons christmas was ruined! He got a few games as compensation so he was delighted but the "loan scheme" went out the window after that:)
I remember lots of cool things about working there , on occaison we'd loan one of the other eletrical shops( RTV rentals I think it was ) consoles and games when they were out of stock and they'd return the favor when we were out , it was all very friendly, the time of shops in ireland acting like that is all gone sadly...

mondeo

luas_dublin wrote: »

Not so much for the saturn , but around the time of the PS1 launch , and for about a year afterwards a few of us used to hang back after work and have tekken/tekken 2 and ridge racer tournaments, i remember Soul Blade getting a fair bit of play later as well.
Actually one of the cool things (and I can probably say this now) was that over christmas or the odd weekend we were allowed sign out a playstation and a few games , on condition that a it was returned exactly the way it was taken out ( as it was going to be sold) and b we didnt mention it to anyone.
This was back when the playstation was 2-300 quid and the games were 30-40 so it was great!
It worked well until late in 1996 some numpty forgot to pack the controller back in the box , and we'd an irate mammy in the shop the day after stevens day complaining that her sons christmas was ruined! He got a few games as compensation so he was delighted but the "loan scheme" went out the window after that:)
I remember lots of cool things about working there , on occaison we'd loan one of the other eletrical shops( RTV rentals I think it was ) consoles and games when they were out of stock and they'd return the favor when we were out , it was all very friendly, the time of shops in ireland acting like that is all gone sadly...

I'll say nothing if you don't kind of thing;)

Nice of them!

Lab_Mouse

unky chop chop wrote: »

Budget games from Mulveys in Dundrum.

use to rent the games from there and copy them with my twin deck:)

Owen

Got mine from Maddens in Cork on Princes Street, they used to have carousels of cassettes on the wall there. Bought my C64 there too as an upgrade from my Vic20. Always remember the gorgeous flight sim joysticks they had too - wanted to buy one which had an artificial horizon in a globe at the centre of it, but my confirmation money wouldn't stretch to both the C64 and the joystick.

mondeo

PaintDoctor wrote: »

Got mine from Maddens in Cork on Princes Street, they used to have carousels of cassettes on the wall there. Bought my C64 there too as an upgrade from my Vic20. Always remember the gorgeous flight sim joysticks they had too - wanted to buy one which had an artificial horizon in a glove at the centre of it, but my confirmation money wouldn't stretch to both the C64 and the joystick.

You done well to get a c64 out of your confirmation money. I got 20quid for my confirmation, a packet of colored marbles and a kick in the arse!
I considered myself lucky

smilerf

used get mine in music shop in carrick on suir

DinoRex

Payton Few Sediment wrote: »

Speccy was big in eastern europe,many clones where made,funny story is some radio stations former ussr states actually broadcasted the games on radio,wiki picks up-

I used to have a computer game radio programme called The Binary Zone back in 1995 and tried this out once... it didn't really work very well.

ciaran76 wrote: »

In Dublin there was a shop on Earl street or Cathedral st that had all c64 /Amstrad/ sinclair / spectrum etc games.

Apollo 1 on Moore st too was great for all these games also.

I loved Apollo 1. Got lots of great Codemasters games in there... Think it's where I was first introduced to Dizzy.

And of course Computer City was great for renting and copying...