This is my brief experiences at a few video game-related establishments during my visit into New York City on the 20-21 February 2016. I didn’t take many pictures of the places and my summaries won’t be as detailed compared to my Chicago blog on Round 1 Arcade and Galloping Ghost Arcade, but I hope you enjoy reading my personal thoughts on these places nonetheless.

Nintendo World NYC - 10 Rockerfeller Plaza (on 48th St between 5th Ave & Ave of the Americas)

We (my brother and I) stopped by Nintendo World NYC during our walking trek from Penn Station to our hotel. Nintendo World NYC isn’t quite what I thought the place would be as I approached to the place. The place was extremely crowded during the short time we browsed in the store and it was tough navigating through the hordes of folks doing whatever they’re doing. Both floors has a number of stations to play featured Nintendo games, with the second floor having a special station to play a game on a huge projected screen. There was a bit of a line for folks to play a portion of the upcoming Twilight Princess HD game on that projection station. (The game looks really good.) You can purchase Nintendo video games there, though relegated to recent Wii U and 3DS games from what I saw, and all the amiibos. The main attraction and sales at Nintendo World NYC is their Nintendo merchandise. I was tempted to buy the Splatoon hat but decided against it in dealing with the crowd and equally busy cashier lines. It’s a decent place to check out for a couple of minutes, but not really worthwhile unless you want to buy some neat Nintendo merchandise.

VideoGamesNewYork - 202 E 6th St (on 6th Street by 3rd Ave)

There isn’t many physical video game stores that dedicate themselves to buying and selling various video game stuff new and old, so it was nice that VideoGamesNewYork was on the way. It’s kind of weird to see a video game store amongst a row of houses on the street its situated on. The width of the store on the outside seemed like the store was going to be sizeable, but it’s actually quite cramped when you actually visit the store on the inside. The store has two aisles with a bunch of games and some hardware enclosed inside huge glass boxes. The first aisle with the cashier caters toward the games for the current and previous game generations, while the next aisle and the wall had games from older generations. Most of the games enclosed inside are either Japanese versions of games, rare physical copies of certain games, games in good condition, or games that have the complete package (case, instruction booklet, game, etc.). Toward the back of the second aisle is where they held rare older gaming items. I wished I could’ve browsed through the store longer to see if there was an items of possible interest for me to buy, but my brother (who visited the store with his friend last year and though this store was underwhelming) was eager to move on. Taking a peek at the prices of the games and though I’m not an expert on what games are getting priced at, the store seemed to price high in my opinion. Nonetheless, it’s nice to have a physical store that you can view and buy older video games from.

Books Kinokuniya - 1073 Avenue of the Americas (on Ave of the Americas by 41st St)

Books Kinokuniya is a special book store that sells Japanese books. One of the store’s biggest draws is their significant selection of selling Japanese tankobon (Japanese manga volumes). If there’s a recent active and relatively popular Japanese manga out there, the store will probably carry it. They also sell the localized manga versions as well, so it could be your one place to buy all of your manga needs if you can get to the store. They also sell a number of Japanese item merchandise as well. I regret not purchasing the Japanese Persona 4: Dancing All Night art book there but I did buy the Japanese Splatoon art book, which is a pretty neat art book and the price was normal for a video game art book (total was $41 with tax). So if you’re into manga, I’d recommend checking the store out.

Pictures

---

Thanks for reading!