A dream of extraordinary magnitude

Another reason why August 2008 sucks can be found in the link below:

The Herald, Sharon, Pa. – Fire destroys Splitstone Entertainment

Splitstone was one of those places that would make you exhaust your monthly allowance of saying “Hot damn, I can’t believe they have that!” Why? The last time my friends and I took the long drive there, we walked in the door and found The Official Nintendo Game Players Guide and I ran into a copy of Jaleco’s Shatterhand, one of the best games little-known games for the NES. That’d be a mind-blowing day at most places, but not Splitstone. This is the same place where I bought the Versus Books SFA2 guide and Double Dragon live-action movie on DVD on the same day. Remember a few years ago when even the big chain video game stores still had everything from the NES to the Playstation 1? Splitstone was like that to the 25th power. Splitstone went past the NES era all the way back to the Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision and even the Odyssey². I hadn’t seen an Odyssey² game since… cripes, 1980 something. My fingers hurt when I thought about trying to type out all of the epic goodness and recaptured childhood memories I’ve bought from there over last few years. We bought an official boatload of tapes when they were clearing out their VHS stock and many of the NES carts I’ve been able to get for my sister came from there. They had tons and tons of old and new video games, movies, music and even books. I never even got around to checking out all the comics they just started selling. The people that worked there are cool and they never played that “Oooh, I’ll sell it for the highest price I see on eBay!” crap. They also had a disc grinder (or whatever they’re officially called) and all CDs, DVDs and game discs were always in perfect condition.

We didn’t go there that much this year thanks to the rise in gas prices and the really bad weather during the winter. I’d just asked my sister what NES games she still needed and planned get them from Splitstone. Sadly, that’s not going to happen for a while. I’m glad that no one was hurt but I feel really bad for the owners because it’s a family run business. Even after they rebuild, I don’t know how they’ll replace all of the incredible stuff that they had. It really was one of those places where you’d find the game or movie that you never thought you’d find. I wish them all the best of luck in getting through this and rebuilding.

Filed under: Video Games by PrimeOp