Let me tell you about Level 7 Games in Denver.

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CastroCasper

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Edited By CastroCasper

First I wanna start by saying this is not an ad or anything, I just thought I should support local businesses and gaming. In Denver there is not much of a selection of places to buy video games. I usually just go to the Walmart down the street because I am never hassled to get anything else, they are open 24 hours, and usually mess up and charge me less. Other places include Game Stop, Buy Back Games, and a really shady store in the mall. However, I recently found this awesome gem called Level 7 Games. I was coming up on the store heading west and saw the sign. I went in and saw a smaller sized store stuffed with video games. Brand new 360 and PS3 games were on the wall next to almost every system you could want, with all the great games to go along with it. One "employee" is behind the cash register playing an acoustic guitar, two more are sitting on a bean bag chair, dueling in a game of Madden, and the other is in the corner playing a Double Dragon arcade cabinet. I use the word "employee" loosely because they all are volunteers working for free. No one is trying to get you to buy a strategy guide or three more games for an extra 2 dollars off. The real reason for making this post however, is to show you this awesome spray painted mural on the side of the store, so here you go! 

 This is just plain sick.
 This is just plain sick.

 Side view
 Side view


 Close up view of half, Vault Boy approves.
 Close up view of half, Vault Boy approves.

 


    
           Shoryuken!
           Shoryuken!
 
 
Alight, I know big post, but you can't really see everything unless the pictures are big. I am not gonna post the address or website to spam this website, but if you really want to know just google the name of the store. One last thing, this is a picture on their website saved under "cool burger". Enjoy.
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Any bitchin' video game stores near you?
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CastroCasper

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#1  Edited By CastroCasper

First I wanna start by saying this is not an ad or anything, I just thought I should support local businesses and gaming. In Denver there is not much of a selection of places to buy video games. I usually just go to the Walmart down the street because I am never hassled to get anything else, they are open 24 hours, and usually mess up and charge me less. Other places include Game Stop, Buy Back Games, and a really shady store in the mall. However, I recently found this awesome gem called Level 7 Games. I was coming up on the store heading west and saw the sign. I went in and saw a smaller sized store stuffed with video games. Brand new 360 and PS3 games were on the wall next to almost every system you could want, with all the great games to go along with it. One "employee" is behind the cash register playing an acoustic guitar, two more are sitting on a bean bag chair, dueling in a game of Madden, and the other is in the corner playing a Double Dragon arcade cabinet. I use the word "employee" loosely because they all are volunteers working for free. No one is trying to get you to buy a strategy guide or three more games for an extra 2 dollars off. The real reason for making this post however, is to show you this awesome spray painted mural on the side of the store, so here you go! 

 This is just plain sick.
 This is just plain sick.

 Side view
 Side view


 Close up view of half, Vault Boy approves.
 Close up view of half, Vault Boy approves.

 


    
           Shoryuken!
           Shoryuken!
 
 
Alight, I know big post, but you can't really see everything unless the pictures are big. I am not gonna post the address or website to spam this website, but if you really want to know just google the name of the store. One last thing, this is a picture on their website saved under "cool burger". Enjoy.
No Caption Provided
 
Any bitchin' video game stores near you?
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Yummylee

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#2  Edited By Yummylee

lol it's so awesome because the meat and cheese look like its mouth.

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#3  Edited By fwylo

That's pretty awesome.  I used to work at a local game store called Microplay.  But we weren't making enough money to stay open.  It was a great place, all the employees were friendly and had a passion for games.  It was more than a job to us.  Never pressuring customers to buy something that they didn't actually come in for. I miss that place.

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#4  Edited By TheJuda

I agree with this.  I went to check out Level 7 the other day.  I went in looking for some NES games and was blown away by all the games they had for SMS, Genesis, PSX, SNES.  I came away with a Genesis and Spider-Man for the grand whopping total of $25.  Great place and will definitely be going back.

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iKANNIBAL

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#5  Edited By iKANNIBAL

Level 7 games? is that like a rip from Level 1 games in Ohio?

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Liono88

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#6  Edited By Liono88

Another great reason to love Colorado.

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Level7games

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#7  Edited By Level7games
@kurtdyoung: Right on Kurt! We're always happy to hear that people like us. Also we really appreciate you posting such positive feedback about us. That's awesome of you.
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Xeiphyer

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#8  Edited By Xeiphyer

Thats a sick mural! Its cool to see that mom 'n' pop game stores can still exist. Its even cooler that people are volunteering to work there, I wonder if they are related to the store owner maybe? 
 
I really want to find a shady chinese gamestore where they will break street dates haha.

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This thread is really old, but it’s lovely to see folks being so positive about the store. It actually has a pretty remarkable story behind it. The owner, who was raised by a single mother, opened the store in her honor after she passed away at the age of 35. He was just 18, and he stocked the store with games from his personal collection that he and his mother played together. I remember seeing news about the store opening up, and my partner and I visited during the grand opening. I remember that he put an emphasis on stocking rarer games, like Earthbound.

I’m happy to report that I visited the store this weekend (One of three locations!!!), and true to his word, they had a boxed copy of Earthbound for sale. It’s a sad story, but I am overjoyed to see that the store has become a real success, and I was flabbergasted by some of the rarities they had for sale (For example, they just got a Wide Boy 64, and exceedingly rare dev/press unit that plays gameboy games on the N64).

Sadly 9News has since deleted their original coverage, but this Engadget article has a pretty good summary of their opening (the store used to be called Game On): https://www.engadget.com/2009/06/19/denver-gamer-builds-game-store-in-memory-of-his-mother/

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htr10

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@tumes:

Wow, you resurrected an over 7 year old thread, that barely got any replies when it was new, and you actually had something interesting to add to the thread. Nice work.

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CastroCasper

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#11  Edited By CastroCasper

@tumes Wow, I almost forgot about writing this post. Thanks for the info! I wasn't aware of the background of the store before.

Also, how the hell did you find this?

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CastroCasper

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@htr10: Ive waited over 7 years for this moment.

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htr10

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CastroCasper

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tumes

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#15  Edited By tumes

Ha, thanks @htr10!

@CastroCasper By find this, I assume you're referring to this thread? Short version: It came up in google while I was researching stuff. But who'd be satisfied with the short version?! I warn you, I slept like garbage last night because my kid has a double ear infection, so this will probably be rambley and of precisely zero interest to anyone but myself, so buckle up.

Last weekend I dropped into a different retro game store (Game Fortress in Arvada. It's pretty good, but nowhere near Level 7's... level) and picked up a cheap Super Game Boy and Gamecube Game Boy Player because they caught my eye and I didn't have either. They didn't have any boot discs for the Game Boy Player, so once I got home I started poking around google looking for a used one.

In the course of finding the boot disc, I ran into a couple articles about Nintendo peripheral rarities and refreshed myself on the weirder/more valuable ones. I had heard of the Wide Boy 64, but it didn't really stand out. On Friday it popped into my head and I thought I'd take a look on eBay to see if anyone was selling them since I like to get a sense for what really rare stuff goes for. By sheer coincidence there was a listing for one, and I noticed that it was here in town. I also noticed that the product photos were taken at a retail location, so I set about figuring out where it was since the seller didn't list their business name (though their username on eBay is gameoncroc5, which very vaguely rang a bell since I had only visited Level 7 when it was called Game On). After calling around, I finally put two and two together and realized that the store was still around, it just changed names and I lost track of it in the intervening years.

Anyway, in the process of figuring that all out, I was googling around seeing if the original news reports from the opening were still around, and was trying to figure out when they changed their name. Must've been early on, since this thread is 7 years old and the store is 9 years old. Kotaku wrote an article similar to Engaget's which specifically mentions that there was another store called Game On in Denver and not to confuse the two. I imagine there was some kerfuffle about that locally, hence the name change. So yeah, while looking that stuff up I had noticed that ya'll were showing some love for the store on GB and thought I'd drop a little more info.

Hopefully the info didn't come off as too much of a bummer. Dude obviously has lots to be proud of since he made a successful career path and business out of a rough spot in his life. Remarkably, this is not the only time Level 7 popped up in the local news. They've had a few robberies, the most notable of which involved the owner himself chasing the robber down, putting him in a headlock, and subduing him till the cops came: http://kdvr.com/2014/12/09/store-owner-battle-thief-who-tried-to-steal-video-game-system/. Regardless, it did my heart a lot of good to see how well the store has done in the 9 years since I last visited.

If I ever won the lotto and suddenly had excess time and money, I'd definitely roam the land telling the stories of these independent game stores. If I recall correctly the Video Game Exchange down in Colorado Springs was involved in an ATF raid for gun running or something way back when. Unfortunately I can no longer find the news article about that, but I did find this story where the owner and an employee vandalized a competing store and made a pretty fucking creepy threat in their statement: http://daily.gazette.com/Olive/APA/TheGazette/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=THEGAZETTE%2F1998%2F03%2F28&id=Ar01800&sk=83F80FCE&viewMode=text. Tragically, the store is also infamous because one of their employees got beaten to death during a robbery in 2006.

Alright, that's enough rambling. Sorry for the wall of text, but it was a fascinating process getting to this thread. Super glad we have an amazing local chain of game stores here in the Denver Metro area. I highly recommend dropping by one of their locations and asking about what ultra rare shit they have in the back room if you're still local. When I dropped by this weekend, they had the Wide Boy 64, the complete in box copy of Earthbound (one of two that they have in stock), an FM Towns Marty, a game for the FM Towns Marty that is way rarer and more valuable than the system itself, and a really rare limited edition Sega Saturn that was only sold in Toys R Us stores in Japan. I can't believe that this sort of stuff is somehow making its way to Denver, but I'm glad it has.

P.S. In the process of researching that Video Game Exchange stuff, I randomly ran into a blog post about/the Facebook page of my favorite Game Crazy employee from the location that was close to my house when I was a teenager down in Colorado Springs. This has been a weekend of preposterously unlikely coincidences and internet sleuthing.

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htr10

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@tumes:

Every once in a while I read something that someone else wrote on here and feel bad that I don’t have the means to really draw attention to it. This thread is a really interesting 7-year plus story. Thanks for taking the time to write your reply.

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tumes

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@htr10: Thank you! I've been on a real run of random internet research bullshit kick this weekend (for example, I just found someone on reddit whose grandpa probably worked with my grandpa on the US' only air-to-air nuclear test detonation in Nevada in 1957 because I posted an unreleased nuclear detonation photo that my grandpa was awarded because he coordinated the test), and it has been non-stop absurd coincidences. The internet can be a freaking incredible place when it's not awful.

Anyway, thanks for the kind words. For the last 5+ years I've been slowly amassing information about a automated phone line that had interactive games that I used a lot when I was a kid in Colorado Springs in the 1990s. I've tracked down the folks who worked on it, but haven't had any luck finding anyone with archival recordings, if such a thing even exists. Knowing that at least one person shows a passing interest in my garbage ramblings makes me feel like my weird propensity for diving in to obscure stuff over long periods of time might result in something interesting.

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CastroCasper

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@tumes: Wow, that is really incredible. Thank you very much for offering all this information about the local and Colorado game scene as a whole, because I had very little knowledge of it at all. Some real incredible stories there. I am still local so I will make a visit very soon to Level 7.