Royal Empire Gaming

Garrett Holland

UPDATE - Sept 6, 2022 Reducing from 2 stars to 1. All Gen2 games are still priced way over market value, and have sticker prices that are up to 30% higher than PriceCharting (PC), which itself gives values up to 2X and 3X actual market value.) That, however, is not the reason for the rating reduction. Given their pricing methods as structured, an item with a PC value of about $100 (rolling 6-month average) would have a sticker price in this store of $130 or higher, however, if you were to sell the same item to the store, they would offer ~$25 cash, or ~$35 store credit. A 500%+ markup is thoroughly excessive. Based on my experience, every gaming store that sells retro games located within 100 miles of Orlando will both: 1. Sell you the same item at a much lower price 2. Buy that item off of you for a much higher price. If you're making a transactions at this place for anything, you are throwing some money away, considering you can get anything they sell somewhere else within a reasonable distance for much less, and be offered a much higher trade-in amount literally anywhere else. I gave this place a 2nd chance today, and they failed miserably. Friendly, attentive staff and a pleasing atmosphere is great, but isn't worth the unbelievably high prices. Obviously, there are a *lot* of people who are either willing to pay these grotesquely excessive high prices, or, are simply not aware of the value of what they're buying, because this place has doubled their square footage and remodeled the store within past 6 months. I can only assume they were able to do so because they're making bank on their customers' ignorance. Seriously ... shop around for at least 3 minutes before deciding to buy something here. It's the longest amount of time it would take to find another place that sells the same thing at a fraction of the price. And seriously-Combat for $5? Market value is about 25 cents. Laser Gates in extraordinarily poor condition for $50?!? You can buy the same thing in GREAT condition on eBay for $20 including a purchase protection guarantee. Unbelievable. [Original review - May 2022] The prices on all of their 2nd Gen games that I looked at were extraordinarily high, so high that they disincentivized any purchase. There were a few Gen3 games (NES) titles that were reasonably priced, and I did buy one, but the Gen2 stuff (Atari 2600/5200/7800, INTV, Odyssey2) which include loose and CIB titles, was profoundly overpriced. I likely won't be returning to this store unless I discover they've reevaluated their pricing structure on their 2nd Gen games. Games with completely trashed/missing labels were priced the exact same as their counterparts with pristine labels. Labels and their condition are half the value. I can't imagine that this location makes too many sales on them. Tbh, even if they slashed all the prices in half, the prices would still be on the high end of barely reasonable. i.e. Atari 2600 title called "Crypts of Chaos" was priced over $20 (I could be wrong, but I think I remember seeing $24.99). The market value of this game is around $7 or $8. Even PriceCharting's bloated, flawed eBay scraping algorithm puts this game's value at $15, or almost double market value. This store is selling it at over triple market value. EBay BIN and PC are *not* good indicators of the market value of these games, and this is yet another retro game store that has either not figured that out -or- they, like many other retro game stores, are simply uninterested in selling their inventory of Gen2 games on their shelves. On the good side, the ambience within the store is great, the staff were very polite, and they have many games for many systems, having a much broader selection of games than most other retro game retail locations in Florida. It's just a shame they're priced way out of competitive range. Indeed, they are, on average, the absolute highest prices I've seen thus far out of the several dozen retro game stores Ive been to in Florida in the past 3 yrs by far.

Christopher Riggs

Very cool local game store. They have some nice vintage stuff. Owner is nice guy. Fair trade in pricing. Since the recent renovations this place has taken it to the next level

Mazen Abounassif

Great customer care,clean and plenty of games and consoles to choose from! Highly recommend

Dev Winter

I'm only giving place 2 stars as I've mainly only seen 5 stars reviews. However, they are not open whenever Google says they are. I've tried going there 2 times over the course of 3 days. They were not open either time.