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Retro video games have a certain muscle memory attached to them. Blowing into a Super Nintendo game cartridge seems silly now, but 33 years ago it belonged to a gaming ritual I’ve come to associate with simpler times. At the click of a power switch, it all comes flooding back in one glorious, 16-bit rush—slicing through the bomb-wielding enemies of A Link to the Past, dodging pesky wasps through the jungles of Donkey Kong Country.
And while people clamor to get their hands on a new Nintendo Switch 2, a growing number of gamers have taken a shine to retro gaming. Over at Retro City Games, owner Douglas Haughaboo has found his collection of classic games and consoles—Atari 2600s, Game Boys, PlayStation Portables, you name it—flying off the shelves.
“There’s really nothing that I can keep generally in stock. We’re constantly trying to source,” Haughaboo explains. “This PS2 wall, we’ll put out four or five hundred games a week, and it just constantly sells down. The big stuff is still cartridge stuff, though. Nintendo is still king.”
When Haughaboo and his wife opened their first Retro City Games in 2014, they couldn’t have anticipated how quickly the retro revival would take off. In the last 10 years, booming demand has led them to expand from their Town Square location to stores on Stephanie Street and at the South Premium Outlets, with a third location at North Premium Outlets in the works.
“With physical media, it’s different from going back to your hometown after 30 years. Things have changed. You can be nostalgic for it all you want, but the local barbecue place doesn’t taste exactly the same as you remember it. The taco shop’s a little bit different,” Haughaboo says. “But with video games specifically, it’s the exact experience that you remember in every way. It’s tactile. There’s multiple senses being used. It just puts you back in that place.”
That consistency stands in stark contrast to the frustrations of modern gaming. Digital games can be removed from online stores. New games often release in unfinished states, riddled with glitches requiring day-one patches. There’s also no such thing as playing completely offline anymore—titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 require internet connection even for single player modes. And when PlayStation Network experienced an outage in February, gamers learned that simply owning their game isn’t actually enough.
The magic of a retro game lies within its simplicity. It’s fast, responsive and reliable. You pop it in and play—no strings attached. Modern technology has also made retro consoles easier to access. The newly released Atari 2600+, a replica of the original 1977 console, comes with a HDMI input, several classic games already bundled within it and a joystick for less than $150. Where Haughaboo used to sell a couple of Atari cartridges a day, he now sells at least 60.
“My biggest Atari 2600 collector started coming in when he was 7,” he says. “There’s definitely age groups that grew up with things, but I feel like there’s new discovery happening every day.”
The store owner credits much of that growth to social media, where retro gaming content has exploded. In 2023, YouTube reported that videos about classic consoles and games (repairs, unboxings, “let’s plays” and the like) were being uploaded 1,000 times more than they were in 2007.
Affordability plays a part, too. As tariffs force companies like Nintendo and Microsoft to increase prices, retro gaming offers more bang for your buck.
“If you want a PS5 and a couple games and you’re talking like an extra controller, that’s say 700 bucks or so with tax all over that, versus 100 bucks for a Super Nintendo, and I could buy 70 games,” Haughaboo says.
At the end of the day, it still comes down to preference. But retro enthusiasts can rest assured—the classics aren’t going anywhere.
RETRO CITY GAMES Multiple locations, retrocitygames.com. Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
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English (US) ·