Reflections : Gaming Shops in London in the 80s/90s

In the 80s and early 90s on my regular shopping trips to central London there were always two gaming shops/departments which, for me, were always a must visit, it always felt like an event going to both of them, one sadly is no longer there and the other is still there but not the store is once was in my opinion.

The first was located on the first floor of HMV’s flagship store in Oxford Street, and went under the title of HMV Games, taking up pretty much the entire floor and was at the time the largest videogames department in the UK, it was massive!  Literally everything used to be available - SNES, Megadrive, GameBoy, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, PC to name but a few, I spent many a happy hour in there and in fact purchased my Sega Megadrive from there just after Christmas one year!  Sadly, in the now relocated HMV store in Oxford Street the gaming section is now reduced to a paltry one aisle, a pale shadow of what there once was.

The other must visit shop for me was Computer Exchange in Rathbone Place just off Oxford Street, there are branches of CEX all over the country but for me, this one was special at the time as it was the place to go if you wanted to see and buy the latest consoles first on Japanese import, I seem to recall them getting the Saturn and Dreamcast before their UK release.  Another thing I used to love was the Retro department in the basement where it was possible to buy brand new Game and Watch machines, and many other retro consoles, again I spent many a happy hour down there.  Sadly the Retro department has long since gone and the store now is pretty much like any other CEX branch but I’ll always have the memories of visiting there in the 80s and early 90s.

For me the SNES and Megadrive era was the golden age of gaming, I know that the current PS5 and XBox Series X are much, much more powerful and capable of better graphics but for me, the 16-bit era was a great time to be a gamer and game releases felt like more of an event - remember Sonic2uesday and Mortal Monday?  Also there were a plethora of gaming magazines available (although see my previous two posts on retrogaming magazines for details of some available today) my favourite being the unofficial SNES magazine, Super Play, this always had absolutely stunning Anime-inspired artwork on the cover and was an essential for anyone who, liked me, owned a SNES, I never missed an issue and somewhere I still have them all safely in a binder!  Don’t get me wrong I love my Switch and PS5 and think they are both incredible bits of kit but for me being a 16 bit gamer was a time I shall never forget.