The march towards an all-digital future is the reason we can't have really good brick-and-mortar video game stores anymore – and if you needed a reminder of that fact, Limited Run's Josh Fairhurst has just supplied it.
Fairhurst has found b-roll footage of a North American Electronics Boutique outlet, dating back to around 1994 or 1995. It shows rows and rows of video games for a wide range of formats – including Genesis, Sega CD and PC – and, as Fairhurst observes, there's not a single Funko Pop in sight.
"I found this among 40TB of data from Digital Pictures, this was likely filmed for a promo to promote their games (like Prize Fighter, which gets lingered on for a good bit here)," explains Fairhurst. "This was [...] likely done on professional equipment. The guy who scanned the film works in the SFX industry so he likely processed it and cleaned it up as well."
With demand for physical games on the wane, the stores of 2025 have had to find other ways to keep the pennies rolling in, and that often means stocking toys and collectables that are unrelated to the pastime of interactive entertainment.
Anyone living in the UK will attest to the sad decline of GAME, the nation's only dedicated video game high street retailer. About 70% of stores are now devoted to toys, board games, Lego and other tat which doesn't have anything to do with video gaming.
Looking at this footage, I'm instantly transported back to a time when my local video game store sold, well, video games – and I miss it.
At least we have cool retro stores like Sore Thumb to give us that old-school physical gaming thrill.