I remember Chrono Trigger being 89$ in Christmas 1995. My dad hated that, but it was about typical of a game cost then. Mario 64 was 79.99 at Kmart and my dad said 'these damn things need to come in a gold brick!"
@@BenHeckHacks I'm also old enough to remember those prices but the problem i have with 70$ games are with the company that started all the PR about "games are to cheap". Last year(maybe it was 2019) they did a profit of 447 million dollars. They payed -51% in taxes. Yes minus, they got a tax rebate of 228 million dollars on 0 dollars payed. And then they fired 800 people since 675M wasn't enough.
@@mikgus I think my problem is games used to be actual complete games and when you bought games you would get full games not portions of games with chunks cut out so they can be sold back to you as DLC. The concept of a game as a "live service" is the death of games as I have ever known them. It's a shame too because I was so glad when they made it possible to patch games but at the same time it allowed them to be extremely lazy and extremely cheap/greedy about content. I don't think it's so much about the price it's more about the attitude of game makers/publishers that believe they are entitled now tomorrow and more money. It's all about the shareholders and getting as much profit as possible.
Inflation calculator says $153 *winces* I'm sure 90% of the fanboyism, was as once you'd got the system/game you weren't getting another - you were going to defend your purchase!
Guess i was lucky growing up in the ds and 3ds era. I sort of stoped beeing interested in gaming for a while so i am not shure anymore ehat exactly i payed but i am farely shure it was never more then 50€. Was this because it was a handheld maybe?
I worked at Electronics Boutique in the late 80's. Half of the day I had to stand there looking at Neo-Geo and Atari Lynx systems that I could never afford. The other half of the day was spent re-shrink wrapping software that was returned (probably after being copied) so we could re-sell it as new.
I met one of my best friends at funcoland. He’s dead now. Had a lot of fun their tho. Had a lady come in and wanted to get rid of a sega master system and Atari games and my buddy said we don’t take them but pointed at me and said that I might. Lady said follow me to my house and you can have the whole box, she was just happy to get it out of the closet. Scored a 2600 with games and tons of controllers, a sega master system with 2 controllers and a small handful of game for the cost of driving about 20 mins. Best score I ever had. Still have it all in my collection too
Yeah I definitely barely remember Funcoland but it wasn't so much before my time as much as I just didn't go have access to one until right toward the end of their existence. I remember them being very cool a lot like the other small game stores in my town that are long since gone.
Nice pickup, my record is probably my working 15 dollar launch model backwards compatible PS3, combined with my 5 dollar Xbox HD AV pack. If you count non gaming stuff it's probably my free 30 inch 1440p Apple Cinema Display that I got from a customer. Gotten plenty of 15 dollar Xbox and Xbox 360s and PS2s and Wiis but those don't really count I guess.
@@MrHack4never Only the biodegradable ones that were basically made from cornstarch. They were essentially Cheetos minus the cheese part. I'm sure they didn't taste great though.
@@MrHack4never I'm trying to remember what video here on RUclips I was watching where they talked about eating those as a snack I think it was something on cinemassacre or something like that. I've never tried it myself nor would I ever want to but I guess if I ever get hungry and they're just sitting around I might.
It's still weird to me that they thought it was a good idea to change puzzle bobble to bust a move when it was localized outside of Japan. Everybody loved bubble bobble why would they not make it clear this was in the same universe I just don't get that.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu I thought bus to move was that game where you have arrows on the ground and you have to step on them in the correct order what does the name have to do with popping colorful bubbles?
There's a game on the dsiware shop called magical whip I've only ever seen gameplay of bubble wobble but never played it and this game looks like the gameplay of that
Loved hearing your funcoland memories! I have soo many great memories there as a young teen. I'd go in every month sometimes just for the newspaper flyer of all there games to take home and highlight all thing's I wanted. I miss that place so much. ❤️
Thanks Ben. Appreciate you sharing your history with us all. These are the stories that rarely get recorded , but are the stories we all share as part of our collective experience that shaped a defining period in our history.
Funcoland and Pizza Hut with the salad bar and red cups were my childhood, I got my copy of Sonic and Knuckles there, good memories. Funcoland always had the coolest staff there
You worked at Funcoland in the mid-90's, and I worked at GameXchange in the late 90's. GameXchange was a much lower-tech version of Funcoland. We didn't have magazines or upsells. Our receipts were all hand-written with a carbon copy underneath for the store to keep. At the end of the night we'd total up the receipts BY HAND and fill out a form to see if our drawer was correct. It was a really great job most of the time because my coworkers were great. We all knew that the work was easier when the store was well-run, so everything was always clean and organized. Our sales rocked and we barely saw the owner. He must have wondered what he did right to have a stable, profitable store he never had to touch. All the prices were set by a giant book that was refreshed every couple of months. The most expensive tier was $34.95, so when a rare game came in an employee would always buy it to flip on eBay. The owner didn't care and it made it a relatively decent-paying job. The owner ended up being a crook at the end, and I never got my last paycheck. Eventually one of the franchisees bought all the others out and GameXchange still exists as a corporate chain instead of a franchise. They were in the news for the owner being really, REALLY weird about COVID response. Ten years after GameXchange I walked into a failing board game store and decided that adding used video games might do well. I asked the owner if he'd ever thought about selling the place, and 30 days later I was the new owner. The combination of board games, video games, and electronics repair was wildly successful, and the employees loved the job for the same reason I loved working at GameXchange. I sold my store at the end of 2019 and the new owner has done really well even with the pandemic. Thanks for letting me go down Memory Lane!
Working at Funcoland through college were some of the best years of my life. It didn't pay much, but the discount was decent and it was legit FUN to work there. And you got to put dibs on anything traded in. That's how I got my top loader way back. So many stories. And then the fun ended when Barnes & Noble bought us out and became Gamestop. The corporate atmosphere just killed everything, and I left shortly after. It was only when Funcoland became Gamestop that we were pressured to sell Game Informer subs.
17:00 Speaking of old prices - I bought a copy of Tail Concerto for $12 at GameStop. It's become one of my favorite games in my collection because it still has that price sticker on it.
funcoland employee memories: -Nightly inventories -Foaming cleaner -Changing out games in the demo systems -no security cameras for some reason -calling equifax for any personal check over $50 -dirt cheap nes games -“ it’s a great day at funcoland” every time we answer the phone -getting assimilated by GameStop/Barnes and noble.
This is a quality list - to which I would add: -GXTV demo TV play -changing out the buy-price list acrylic holders every two weeks -faxing in time sheets and customer/employee request list -building system kits -stamping ONE YEAR WARRANTY on receipts for people that bought cleaners
Great story! I worked at an Egghead Software (remember them?) back in the mid-90s during college. It was an awesome job! We had that 'evaluation' policy on software too. Of course we didn't have console games but we had access to a broad range of PC and Mac apps and games. Oh man the stories I could tell you about what went on there, but posting that on the internet may not be a smart thing to do ;). I also worked there during a few Windows lunches 95, NT4 and 98 where we'd close the store at 7 (the normal time back then) went out drinking and came back to do a midnight re-opening to sell Windows until 2-3 AM. Good times!
Funcoland... I have a lot of a great memories in that place. There was a little strip mall with a cigar store and a funcoland. Twice a year, my dad and I would make a trip out there where he'd buy some "fancy" cigars and we'd spend hours in Funcoland playing some games. That was the main time that I could trade in and get a bunch of new games. Otherwise, I had no used game store anywhere near me.
I was working for Babbages, which became Babbages Etc. before acquiring Funcoland. That was a great place to work back then. So much fun and gave me an opportunity to go to E3 for many years. I still have some Funcoland NES sleeves. Great times.
Can confirm -two cousins of mine loved bubble bobble Funcoland let you try a game on a console before you could buy it in the store. Too good to last. First time playing Star Fox was at a Funcoland - got motion sick standing too close to the screen.
yes back when I was 15 .. born in 81... I had my own cubicle on the top floor of C/M computer service & I worked for a software company I had founded a software company but I had agreed to merge with this new company & we had offices & I started to focus on it full time & then we moved into a new much larger building and I had a big office & dozens of computers and this was 1997 ... great memories... my receptionist used to party with Prince.. I still know one of her sons... who people joke sometimes is Prince's kid lol
I think Funcoland started in my hometown (Eden Prairie). In 6th grade we used to bring the latest price sheets into school if we had them so we could all see. It was a whole thing.
In 1995 my mom bought my brother and I a used NES w/2 controllers, light gun, mario/duck hunt, and the cleaning kit for $45 before tax. Funcoland in Fremont, CA I believe.
I worked at Radio Shack in 95, I made huge paycheck Christmas week in comissions, this was before there was in a huge mall without any electronics store besides Radio Shack. I couldn't sell things fast enough. There was a line spilling out into the mall quite a ways.
There _was_ a Funcoland in the next town over when I was a kid, but since it was across state lines there was a sales tax, so I pretty much never went there. I traded in a couple of old games to get DKC, but since you had to be 18 to sell stuff at what was effectively a pawn shop I had to wait around for like an hour for my parents to come back and get me so they could show an ID.
Bro wow Funcoland now that brings me back. I used to absolutely love going to Funcoland when I was a kid. Talk about kid in a candy store lol more like kid In a video game store. Then I remember one day my Funcoland inexplicably became a GameStop.
That place had mythical status to me. Every time me and my family went to Minnesota I forced my Dad to try to find Funcoland, found it twice. Had dreams about it. Ordered stacks of games from there when I had the money saved up and waited weeks and usually only got half the games because of lack of availability. I called them up and wrote to them to bother them about status a lot.
I remember the weird progression of Babbage's to Electronics Boutique to EB to Funcoland to GameStop. They actually sell products called Funko's still... Curious. I used to work at Babbage's warehouse. It was torture unboxing NeoGeo games to ship to stores. I bought a system and one controller. Never could afford even one game. Eventually gave up and traded it in for an SNES and a Genesis 32X
Wow Ben ,for a few years there I thought you were RETIRED ,and that you just do these new videos "Post Element 14" , as a Lark to keep creative juices going ,, , I wish you luck on that next fulltime prototyping job , , , "YOU CAN DO IT"!! Ben 😸👍
Yeah we definitely had funcoland across the state line from you where I grew up... We had them all over in the flatlander state. And electronic boutique.and then I spent a few years across the state line in the Racine area we had stuff like that out there too
I had one cool interaction with Funcoland in around 94? That year they ran an ad for the Genesis for 50 bucks right before Thanksgiving. Went there with ad in hand, only to find out it was a misprint. It was that price with a select 2 trade in snes games. I lucked upon talking to the manager, and he asked what systems I had played and at the time I had none. Tells me to wait, comes back and tells me he talked to his dm and that they would honor the flyer. Got the system and Sonic 1 and played the hell out of that game.
Funcoland in Chicago, I remember a thing at toys r us to get credit for turning in used games for $5 off snes, I would buy games for $0.50 at funcoland, trade them in and get a nearly free snes as a kid
I worked at a Game Crazy back in '04 and we had the same check procedure and clientele. Dudebros wanted PS2 and Madden, Middle aged dudes wanted Xbox and Shooting games, and kids and Nintendo diehards wanted Gamecubes. We also had to sell Subscription cards and preorders, so this entire video was like reliving my early years too.
My Super Nintendo came from Funcoland. Had to replace the power supply, and I bought more controllers and the multi player extension. I bought Ranma 1/2 Hard Battle at KayBee for $8 before I had the game system. 😀
I still have a June 2001 Funcoland price sheet laying around on a shelf, basically what they pay and what they sell for. It has NES - 6th Gen (Dreamcast, PS2, Not released yet Xbox, Gamecube, etc.)
Ah m, man...Funcoland was how I got my Genesis..Strider was my first game. Wish I hadn’t traded in so many games of my youth. Used to go to the store in New Hope, MN I think...which if memory serves was their first location.
If you go shopping at multiple car dealers or banks for loans within a certain time frame it only counts as one hard inquiry even though they may have each pulled your credit. As long as they are for the same thing - ie I go to buy a car but the dealer(s) gave me unfavorable terms but then went to my credit union or bank to get an auto loan for more favorable terms it will only get counted as one hard inquiry. I think the time limit is something like 45 days.
A man with taste. I wanted this game too more than anything but it was banned from the public in germany and only available behind the counter, if you knew a guy, or in the porn section at blockbuster (that was the legend anyways) which was no go area for me at the time :)
@@VincentFischer That's the funniest thing between the US and Germany apparently Blockbuster actually had porn. Sure you could get R rated movies and those softcore ones but the real deal no way. But there was always at least one local video store that had the wild west swinging doors.
@@VincentFischer Now that's classy. That would have been actually a much better solution but I think part of it is they wanted something that made noise so they knew people were going back there. And to keep you know inappropriate people from getting back to that area if you catch my drift.
Huh. I found your channel with a youtube suggestion that I had no interest in watching but went on to watch everything since then and some older stuff in the last 6 months I'd guess. Just found out you had a big youtube presence in the past.
So true you hardly see packing peanuts around anymore 7 years ago i purchased two thinkway star wars interactive money boxes from someone on ebay they were loose in this huge box I thought the seller just sent me a box full of packing peanuts took me five minutes to to dig the money boxes out I’ve still got the box full of the packing peanuts
That also kind of looks like No-Clean residue. Sometimes Koki S3X58-M650-7 leaves residue behind that looks kind of like that. But I really can't tell since I can't touch it or smell it :)
When I worked computer retail late 80's the biggest margin we made was on repairs of Commodore machines. £25 to replace the 10p fuse on the c64 motherboard and £30 to take their Amiga out the back and drop it 2 inch off the floor to reseat the Gary chip in its socket to get rid of the green screen fault. As they were 'fixes' we could do on the spot they were easy money as parents were always desperate to keep little Sally and Billy occupied.
Back in the day, one of my favy spots to shop, that's now log gone,was Egghead Software. Not sure if they were nationwide, but they had shops in the northeast.
It was not likely a credit report, it was checking to see if they had any bad check or if its a known bad account. Many places in the 90's had machines that would scan the numbers on the check to check it it was a bad account. These servers were run by companies like Equifax
I seem to recall taking apart an analog controller stick once and it was optical; not resistive. It used similar technology to mice with the rubber-coated metal balls. I want to say it was the N64 controller, but it could be any one of the thousands of things I took apart in my 20s. That seems like it would last FAR longer than any resistor-based analog stick.
Funcoland is the only reason I have a decent Saturn collection. I remember buying most of my games after the mainstream moved on but I was still looking for Saturn games in the late 90s/early 2000s as they were super cheap. I also bought a ton of my NES games there was well. I remember it was sort of a bummer back in the day they didn't stock Atari 2600 games (oldest was NES) as these were pretty common still in garage sales and stuff.
7:25 - Man, the Neo Geo. What an awesome machine. Not the CD version, though, those loading times were atrocious. Do you think it was the ultimate 2D gaming machine? In terms of graphics power, of course, not necessarily the content. I did not know Neo Turf Masters, btw, but just looked at some footage and boy, that's a beautiful game. There doesn't seem to be much in terms of homebrew stuff for it, which is very unfortunate. Then again, those machines being expensive as they are...
I remember buying the Sega Genesis version of Super Street Fighter 2 for 99$ Canadian in early 1994. This used up my entire pay check from a half day television shoot I did as a an extra.
LMAO 'frumpy looking girl friend that you'd probably see on dr phil or something' I don't even give a fuck what you're fixing anymore I'm here for your singing & the stories hahahaha
I would like a video of you explaining how potentiometers fail in analog sticks Will you also talk about the alternatives of Optical, Hall Effect, or Inductive.
Chexsystems (owned by Experian) just was there as a system to record people who would write bad checks. Just a lookup against that system would not affect the person's credit. Not sure about the Equifax service.
oh wow, FuncoLand.... I remember those stores. we had one not far from me when I was a kid. I remember scoping out the $5 game bin. Got a few PS1 games. (Edit: Also, minimum wage didn't have the same stigma it does because it was easier to find a job that wasn't minimum wage back then. Now not so much...)
I had aaah real monsters on snes... It frustrated me until I finally realized you need to constantly switch monsters to progress. Then I could not stop playing it. Was a Good.
Remember the Funcoland price sheets that were like a newspaper? I still remember looking at the trade in values of games and always laughing at the $.01 value for NES Super Mario Bros
When we cleaned out the shop I found one lining the bottom of an old box! Felix and I had a laugh looking at the prices. Stadium Events, Flintstones 2, Little Samson, all like only $5
@@BenHeckHacks I used to go in every month just to get the updated price list. Good stuff! I was laughing about the packing peanuts because my cousin and I bought a refurbished SNES from Funco and ate some of those peanuts from the box...why? just because we could 🤷♂️
I appreciate the honesty about the store tales ya I never fell for those scams and that resealing the games and selling them new is scummy makes me feel less bad about doing that with my Mario 64 and returning it for bond lol! I lived in cal during the 80s 90s and was a hardcore game nerd(still am) and I didn’t know about funcoland and dont remember even seeing one. And ya games were expensive back in the day especially in the late Snes era that’s why I never bought games couldn’t afford to only rent games those were the days..
I work in an industry that pulls credit reports all the time. If you are checking your credit that is not being a credit based decision (ie insurance, security, ect) it would be a soft hit, should not take points off your credit report. If you do go to multiple car lots you are trying to get credit therefore you get hard hits you will lose points and increase risk. The one I dont know is for checking accounts.
Inside the bloated walking corpse of GameStop is also SoftWare etc. I remember renting a PSX at Blockbuster when it first came out. God the first time hearing that boot up sound was like magic.
I mean I still like Bubble Bobble (on MAME) because: 1) It's cute 2) The music 3) You can pretty much just keep playing as long as you want because the score doesn't really matter.
I remember Chrono Trigger being 89$ in Christmas 1995. My dad hated that, but it was about typical of a game cost then. Mario 64 was 79.99 at Kmart and my dad said 'these damn things need to come in a gold brick!"
Indeed. Boggles my mind how many whiny RUclips "game journalists" have no concept of inflation when they whine about $70 in 2021's funny money.
@@BenHeckHacks I'm also old enough to remember those prices but the problem i have with 70$ games are with the company that started all the PR about "games are to cheap".
Last year(maybe it was 2019) they did a profit of 447 million dollars.
They payed -51% in taxes. Yes minus, they got a tax rebate of 228 million dollars on 0 dollars payed.
And then they fired 800 people since 675M wasn't enough.
@@mikgus
I think my problem is games used to be actual complete games and when you bought games you would get full games not portions of games with chunks cut out so they can be sold back to you as DLC.
The concept of a game as a
"live service" is the death of games as I have ever known them. It's a shame too because I was so glad when they made it possible to patch games but at the same time it allowed them to be extremely lazy and extremely cheap/greedy about content. I don't think it's so much about the price it's more about the attitude of game makers/publishers
that believe they are entitled now tomorrow and more money. It's all about the shareholders and getting as much profit as possible.
Inflation calculator says $153 *winces*
I'm sure 90% of the fanboyism, was as once you'd got the system/game you weren't getting another - you were going to defend your purchase!
Guess i was lucky growing up in the ds and 3ds era. I sort of stoped beeing interested in gaming for a while so i am not shure anymore ehat exactly i payed but i am farely shure it was never more then 50€. Was this because it was a handheld maybe?
TIL that I can just listen to Ben tell stories in the background and it makes whatever I'm doing so much more enjoyable. Thanks Ben!
I worked at Electronics Boutique in the late 80's. Half of the day I had to stand there looking at Neo-Geo and Atari Lynx systems that I could never afford. The other half of the day was spent re-shrink wrapping software that was returned (probably after being copied) so we could re-sell it as new.
I met one of my best friends at funcoland. He’s dead now. Had a lot of fun their tho. Had a lady come in and wanted to get rid of a sega master system and Atari games and my buddy said we don’t take them but pointed at me and said that I might. Lady said follow me to my house and you can have the whole box, she was just happy to get it out of the closet. Scored a 2600 with games and tons of controllers, a sega master system with 2 controllers and a small handful of game for the cost of driving about 20 mins. Best score I ever had. Still have it all in my collection too
Yeah I definitely barely remember Funcoland but it wasn't so much before my time as much as I just didn't go have access to one until right toward the end of their existence. I remember them being very cool a lot like the other small game stores in my town that are long since gone.
dude you got awesome luck then.
Nice pickup, my record is probably my working 15 dollar launch model backwards compatible PS3, combined with my 5 dollar Xbox HD AV pack. If you count non gaming stuff it's probably my free 30 inch 1440p Apple Cinema Display that I got from a customer. Gotten plenty of 15 dollar Xbox and Xbox 360s and PS2s and Wiis but those don't really count I guess.
Guide to becoming like Ben Heck
Step 1: Devour as many packing peanuts as your body can handle
You could EAT those things?
@@MrHack4never
Only the biodegradable ones that were basically made from cornstarch. They were essentially Cheetos minus the cheese part.
I'm sure they didn't taste great though.
Step 2: watch a crapload of movies.
Step 3: attend both band & choir to get a pretty singing voice, fun fact.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu
Huh, i learned something new today
them tasting bland doesn't surprise me
@@MrHack4never
I'm trying to remember what video here on RUclips I was watching where they talked about eating those as a snack I think it was something on cinemassacre or something like that. I've never tried it myself nor would I ever want to but I guess if I ever get hungry and they're just sitting around I might.
Today I learned Ben was one step away from being on My Strange Addiction - packing peanuts edition
Man....thank you for this.....i can just sit and listen to your stories all day....i do most of the time when i am working. lol
What an awesome video, incorporating both a technical repair and a fun life experience. Thanks again for recording youself and uploading to RUclips!
Thank you kindly for another most excellent video, Ben. More kitchen and/or thrift store shenanigans absolutely welcome.
I liked Bubble Bobble a lot when playing 2 player. Not as fun alone, but still a favorite on NES. Seemed like the levels were endless.
It's still weird to me that they thought it was a good idea to change puzzle bobble to bust a move when it was localized outside of Japan. Everybody loved bubble bobble why would they not make it clear this was in the same universe I just don't get that.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu I thought bus to move was that game where you have arrows on the ground and you have to step on them in the correct order what does the name have to do with popping colorful bubbles?
There's a game on the dsiware shop called magical whip I've only ever seen gameplay of bubble wobble but never played it and this game looks like the gameplay of that
The last time I was this early FuncoLand was still a store
Growing up in Utah, Funcoland always seemed like some magical gaming wonderland.
It was magical for all of us what a wonderful era
Loved hearing your funcoland memories! I have soo many great memories there as a young teen. I'd go in every month sometimes just for the newspaper flyer of all there games to take home and highlight all thing's I wanted. I miss that place so much. ❤️
Thanks Ben. Appreciate you sharing your history with us all. These are the stories that rarely get recorded , but are the stories we all share as part of our collective experience that shaped a defining period in our history.
Funcoland and Pizza Hut with the salad bar and red cups were my childhood, I got my copy of Sonic and Knuckles there, good memories. Funcoland always had the coolest staff there
There u r ein
You worked at Funcoland in the mid-90's, and I worked at GameXchange in the late 90's. GameXchange was a much lower-tech version of Funcoland. We didn't have magazines or upsells. Our receipts were all hand-written with a carbon copy underneath for the store to keep. At the end of the night we'd total up the receipts BY HAND and fill out a form to see if our drawer was correct.
It was a really great job most of the time because my coworkers were great. We all knew that the work was easier when the store was well-run, so everything was always clean and organized. Our sales rocked and we barely saw the owner. He must have wondered what he did right to have a stable, profitable store he never had to touch.
All the prices were set by a giant book that was refreshed every couple of months. The most expensive tier was $34.95, so when a rare game came in an employee would always buy it to flip on eBay. The owner didn't care and it made it a relatively decent-paying job.
The owner ended up being a crook at the end, and I never got my last paycheck. Eventually one of the franchisees bought all the others out and GameXchange still exists as a corporate chain instead of a franchise. They were in the news for the owner being really, REALLY weird about COVID response.
Ten years after GameXchange I walked into a failing board game store and decided that adding used video games might do well. I asked the owner if he'd ever thought about selling the place, and 30 days later I was the new owner. The combination of board games, video games, and electronics repair was wildly successful, and the employees loved the job for the same reason I loved working at GameXchange. I sold my store at the end of 2019 and the new owner has done really well even with the pandemic.
Thanks for letting me go down Memory Lane!
Working at Funcoland through college were some of the best years of my life. It didn't pay much, but the discount was decent and it was legit FUN to work there. And you got to put dibs on anything traded in. That's how I got my top loader way back. So many stories. And then the fun ended when Barnes & Noble bought us out and became Gamestop. The corporate atmosphere just killed everything, and I left shortly after. It was only when Funcoland became Gamestop that we were pressured to sell Game Informer subs.
17:00 Speaking of old prices - I bought a copy of Tail Concerto for $12 at GameStop. It's become one of my favorite games in my collection because it still has that price sticker on it.
Neo Turf Masters is LIFE!!! Especially the hidden Scotland course in the NeoGeoCD version, playing that course took a special kind of madness. :D
lmao when I heard about the game "stonks" I said "Where were you guys when funcoland needed you"
funcoland employee memories:
-Nightly inventories
-Foaming cleaner
-Changing out games in the demo systems
-no security cameras for some reason
-calling equifax for any personal check over $50
-dirt cheap nes games
-“ it’s a great day at funcoland” every time we answer the phone
-getting assimilated by GameStop/Barnes and noble.
This is a quality list - to which I would add:
-GXTV demo TV play
-changing out the buy-price list acrylic holders every two weeks
-faxing in time sheets and customer/employee request list
-building system kits
-stamping ONE YEAR WARRANTY on receipts for people that bought cleaners
Great story! I worked at an Egghead Software (remember them?) back in the mid-90s during college. It was an awesome job! We had that 'evaluation' policy on software too. Of course we didn't have console games but we had access to a broad range of PC and Mac apps and games. Oh man the stories I could tell you about what went on there, but posting that on the internet may not be a smart thing to do ;). I also worked there during a few Windows lunches 95, NT4 and 98 where we'd close the store at 7 (the normal time back then) went out drinking and came back to do a midnight re-opening to sell Windows until 2-3 AM. Good times!
Funcoland... I have a lot of a great memories in that place. There was a little strip mall with a cigar store and a funcoland. Twice a year, my dad and I would make a trip out there where he'd buy some "fancy" cigars and we'd spend hours in Funcoland playing some games. That was the main time that I could trade in and get a bunch of new games. Otherwise, I had no used game store anywhere near me.
I wish funcoland was still open. It’s been 2 decades since I was in one
Those little bonuses on specific sales are called SPIFFS, or at least they were at Radio Shack.
They had spiffs at Incredible Universe where I worked as well, but I was in customer service and was not eligible for them.
I was working for Babbages, which became Babbages Etc. before acquiring Funcoland. That was a great place to work back then. So much fun and gave me an opportunity to go to E3 for many years. I still have some Funcoland NES sleeves. Great times.
Anyplace with a colorful neon sign like that. Wow. I want that sign. I love colors!
Bubble bobble is the bomb, it's the first game I got for my NES collection. Could play it for hours.
The FuncoLand pricesheet was the primary way I found out about new games as a kid.
Can confirm -two cousins of mine loved bubble bobble
Funcoland let you try a game on a console before you could buy it in the store. Too good to last. First time playing Star Fox was at a Funcoland - got motion sick standing too close to the screen.
yes back when I was 15 .. born in 81... I had my own cubicle on the top floor of C/M computer service & I worked for a software company I had founded a software company but I had agreed to merge with this new company & we had offices & I started to focus on it full time & then we moved into a new much larger building and I had a big office & dozens of computers and this was 1997 ... great memories... my receptionist used to party with Prince.. I still know one of her sons... who people joke sometimes is Prince's kid lol
I think Funcoland started in my hometown (Eden Prairie). In 6th grade we used to bring the latest price sheets into school if we had them so we could all see. It was a whole thing.
In 1995 my mom bought my brother and I a used NES w/2 controllers, light gun, mario/duck hunt, and the cleaning kit for $45 before tax. Funcoland in Fremont, CA I believe.
I've alway noticed tall people got jobs in leadership roles
Agreed, especially in thw 80s and 90s
We also had Funcoland around my area. It was pretty great to get discount used games before you could just buy stuff on the internet.
I worked at Radio Shack in 95, I made huge paycheck Christmas week in comissions, this was before there was in a huge mall without any electronics store besides Radio Shack. I couldn't sell things fast enough. There was a line spilling out into the mall quite a ways.
There _was_ a Funcoland in the next town over when I was a kid, but since it was across state lines there was a sales tax, so I pretty much never went there. I traded in a couple of old games to get DKC, but since you had to be 18 to sell stuff at what was effectively a pawn shop I had to wait around for like an hour for my parents to come back and get me so they could show an ID.
Bro wow Funcoland now that brings me back. I used to absolutely love going to Funcoland when I was a kid. Talk about kid in a candy store lol more like kid In a video game store. Then I remember one day my Funcoland inexplicably became a GameStop.
I still remember the old clunk clunk credit card machine at my local game shop.
That place had mythical status to me. Every time me and my family went to Minnesota I forced my Dad to try to find Funcoland, found it twice. Had dreams about it. Ordered stacks of games from there when I had the money saved up and waited weeks and usually only got half the games because of lack of availability. I called them up and wrote to them to bother them about status a lot.
I remember the weird progression of Babbage's to Electronics Boutique to EB to Funcoland to GameStop. They actually sell products called Funko's still... Curious. I used to work at Babbage's warehouse. It was torture unboxing NeoGeo games to ship to stores. I bought a system and one controller. Never could afford even one game. Eventually gave up and traded it in for an SNES and a Genesis 32X
Say- should have grabbed the Elmer's for a damn yummy dip for them packing peanuts!
Ohhhh man Funcoland!!! Taking me back.
Wow Ben ,for a few years there I thought you were RETIRED ,and that you just do these new videos "Post Element 14" , as a Lark to keep creative juices going ,, , I wish you luck on that next fulltime prototyping job , , , "YOU CAN DO IT"!! Ben 😸👍
the Funcoland i recall was by Mishawaka / "grape road" shopping area in NW indiana
Yeah we definitely had funcoland across the state line from you where I grew up... We had them all over in the flatlander state. And electronic boutique.and then I spent a few years across the state line in the Racine area we had stuff like that out there too
I had one cool interaction with Funcoland in around 94?
That year they ran an ad for the Genesis for 50 bucks right before Thanksgiving. Went there with ad in hand, only to find out it was a misprint. It was that price with a select 2 trade in snes games. I lucked upon talking to the manager, and he asked what systems I had played and at the time I had none. Tells me to wait, comes back and tells me he talked to his dm and that they would honor the flyer. Got the system and Sonic 1 and played the hell out of that game.
Funcoland in Chicago, I remember a thing at toys r us to get credit for turning in used games for $5 off snes, I would buy games for $0.50 at funcoland, trade them in and get a nearly free snes as a kid
"Does your Nintendo blink?"
They all blinked.
Girlfriend looked like she was on dr. Phil 😂... Ive heard the term trailor park hot, but thats a new one on me
I worked at a Game Crazy back in '04 and we had the same check procedure and clientele. Dudebros wanted PS2 and Madden, Middle aged dudes wanted Xbox and Shooting games, and kids and Nintendo diehards wanted Gamecubes. We also had to sell Subscription cards and preorders, so this entire video was like reliving my early years too.
Can't watch the first 7 minutes, Ben repeatedly trying to stab himself...
:D Now I can't stop thinking about it watching the vid.
Funcoland on 3rd Avenue in the Bronx was where I would go. Right around the corner from McDonald’s.
My Super Nintendo came from Funcoland. Had to replace the power supply, and I bought more controllers and the multi player extension. I bought Ranma 1/2 Hard Battle at KayBee for $8 before I had the game system. 😀
I still have a June 2001 Funcoland price sheet laying around on a shelf, basically what they pay and what they sell for. It has NES - 6th Gen (Dreamcast, PS2, Not released yet Xbox, Gamecube, etc.)
If I remember right, Virtua Racing on Genesis was $80 retail
Phantasy star 4 was $100
Yeah it was solid Franklin along with the previously mentioned PS4
@@ninjamaster3453 I remember being very glad I wasn't into RPG titles at the time
Ah m, man...Funcoland was how I got my Genesis..Strider was my first game. Wish I hadn’t traded in so many games of my youth. Used to go to the store in New Hope, MN I think...which if memory serves was their first location.
If you go shopping at multiple car dealers or banks for loans within a certain time frame it only counts as one hard inquiry even though they may have each pulled your credit. As long as they are for the same thing - ie I go to buy a car but the dealer(s) gave me unfavorable terms but then went to my credit union or bank to get an auto loan for more favorable terms it will only get counted as one hard inquiry. I think the time limit is something like 45 days.
Was the magazine Game Informer? That was one heavily pushed by Funcoland (As well as Electronics Boutique and gamestop when the mergers all happened)
The best part of funcoland were all the demo stations
Back when Funcoland was around, I was already using other Local Stores like Raven Games or Toyriffic...
ive had to replace soooo many of those analog sticks, drifting problems and such. Also left and right bumper tactiles seem to fail
I remember getting 100$ in christmas or birthday money. I went to buy doom 64, and the strategy guide, but i still needed 10$. think doom 64 was 89.99
A man with taste. I wanted this game too more than anything but it was banned from the public in germany and only available behind the counter, if you knew a guy, or in the porn section at blockbuster (that was the legend anyways) which was no go area for me at the time :)
@@VincentFischer
That's the funniest thing between the US and Germany apparently Blockbuster actually had porn.
Sure you could get R rated movies and those softcore ones but the real deal no way. But there was always at least one local video store that had the wild west swinging doors.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu We had velvet red curtains in ours :)
I just bought Doom 64 on steam a while ago and I don't remember it being $90?
@@VincentFischer
Now that's classy.
That would have been actually a much better solution but I think part of it is they wanted something that made noise so they knew people were going back there. And to keep you know inappropriate people from getting back to that area if you catch
my drift.
Damn you Ben Heck! I haven't thought about Captain Vegetable in like 35 years. As soon as you sang that song though...
"What are you... some kind of a bad dream?" "Do I look like a bad dream?"
Huh. I found your channel with a youtube suggestion that I had no interest in watching but went on to watch everything since then and some older stuff in the last 6 months I'd guess.
Just found out you had a big youtube presence in the past.
So true you hardly see packing peanuts around anymore 7 years ago i purchased two thinkway star wars interactive money boxes from someone on ebay they were loose in this huge box I thought the seller just sent me a box full of packing peanuts took me five minutes to to dig the money boxes out I’ve still got the box full of the packing peanuts
That also kind of looks like No-Clean residue. Sometimes Koki S3X58-M650-7 leaves residue behind that looks kind of like that. But I really can't tell since I can't touch it or smell it :)
Always like seeing my birthday in videos, too bad the year is off by about 25 years lol
When I worked computer retail late 80's the biggest margin we made was on repairs of Commodore machines. £25 to replace the 10p fuse on the c64 motherboard and £30 to take their Amiga out the back and drop it 2 inch off the floor to reseat the Gary chip in its socket to get rid of the green screen fault. As they were 'fixes' we could do on the spot they were easy money as parents were always desperate to keep little Sally and Billy occupied.
Back in the day, one of my favy spots to shop, that's now log gone,was Egghead Software. Not sure if they were nationwide, but they had shops in the northeast.
It was not likely a credit report, it was checking to see if they had any bad check or if its a known bad account. Many places in the 90's had machines that would scan the numbers on the check to check it it was a bad account. These servers were run by companies like Equifax
Funcoland was heaven to me as a kid..
Thank you for the Stories
I remember Funcoland...I got several Sega CD games from them.
It is nothing about what Ben does. It is all about what Ben talks!
Oh man. When this was over, I was hoping there was more. I can't complain though, since it is a 24 minute video.
I seem to recall taking apart an analog controller stick once and it was optical; not resistive. It used similar technology to mice with the rubber-coated metal balls. I want to say it was the N64 controller, but it could be any one of the thousands of things I took apart in my 20s. That seems like it would last FAR longer than any resistor-based analog stick.
Correct the N64 used optical slit encoding (like a mouse wheel) Of course those analog sticks had other issues to, like disintegration :) White dust!
Funcoland is the only reason I have a decent Saturn collection. I remember buying most of my games after the mainstream moved on but I was still looking for Saturn games in the late 90s/early 2000s as they were super cheap. I also bought a ton of my NES games there was well. I remember it was sort of a bummer back in the day they didn't stock Atari 2600 games (oldest was NES) as these were pretty common still in garage sales and stuff.
I got into Saturn around the same time! Have since sold it off since the price went up.
Game Informer magazine still exists thankfully
7:25 - Man, the Neo Geo. What an awesome machine. Not the CD version, though, those loading times were atrocious. Do you think it was the ultimate 2D gaming machine? In terms of graphics power, of course, not necessarily the content.
I did not know Neo Turf Masters, btw, but just looked at some footage and boy, that's a beautiful game.
There doesn't seem to be much in terms of homebrew stuff for it, which is very unfortunate. Then again, those machines being expensive as they are...
I remember buying the Sega Genesis version of Super Street Fighter 2 for 99$ Canadian in early 1994. This used up my entire pay check from a half day television shoot I did as a an extra.
LMAO 'frumpy looking girl friend that you'd probably see on dr phil or something'
I don't even give a fuck what you're fixing anymore I'm here for your singing & the stories hahahaha
I would like a video of you explaining how potentiometers fail in analog sticks
Will you also talk about the alternatives of Optical, Hall Effect, or Inductive.
Chexsystems (owned by Experian) just was there as a system to record people who would write bad checks. Just a lookup against that system would not affect the person's credit. Not sure about the Equifax service.
Bubble Bobble is awesome!
Neo Turf Masters is the best golf game. Mario golf on the game boy color is also fantastic.
Is it really or is it just really rare and expensive dude? Lol
@@goddan7222 neo turf master really is the best golf game.
@@goddan7222 Yes, it really is the best.
I used to have to do the equifax calls working for best buy around the same time, ugggghhh what a pain
oh wow, FuncoLand.... I remember those stores. we had one not far from me when I was a kid. I remember scoping out the $5 game bin. Got a few PS1 games.
(Edit: Also, minimum wage didn't have the same stigma it does because it was easier to find a job that wasn't minimum wage back then. Now not so much...)
Bubble Bobble is great. Also have you considered a jst connector for the analog stick
I had aaah real monsters on snes... It frustrated me until I finally realized you need to constantly switch monsters to progress. Then I could not stop playing it. Was a Good.
Remember the Funcoland price sheets that were like a newspaper? I still remember looking at the trade in values of games and always laughing at the $.01 value for NES Super Mario Bros
When we cleaned out the shop I found one lining the bottom of an old box! Felix and I had a laugh looking at the prices. Stadium Events, Flintstones 2, Little Samson, all like only $5
@@BenHeckHacks I used to go in every month just to get the updated price list. Good stuff! I was laughing about the packing peanuts because my cousin and I bought a refurbished SNES from Funco and ate some of those peanuts from the box...why? just because we could 🤷♂️
If they all like bubble wobble do you think they would like magical whip on the DSi ware store?
I appreciate the honesty about the store tales ya I never fell for those scams and that resealing the games and selling them new is scummy makes me feel less bad about doing that with my Mario 64 and returning it for bond lol! I lived in cal during the 80s 90s and was a hardcore game nerd(still am) and I didn’t know about funcoland and dont remember even seeing one. And ya games were expensive back in the day especially in the late Snes era that’s why I never bought games couldn’t afford to only rent games those were the days..
The only reason I can think that modern analog sticks are not made with hall effect sensors is planned failure.
funcoland was a good niche videogame store too
i remember final fantasy 3 was 100$ cnd when it came out. that 32 meg cartridge was very exepensive.
I work in an industry that pulls credit reports all the time. If you are checking your credit that is not being a credit based decision (ie insurance, security, ect) it would be a soft hit, should not take points off your credit report. If you do go to multiple car lots you are trying to get credit therefore you get hard hits you will lose points and increase risk. The one I dont know is for checking accounts.
loved Funcoland
Inside the bloated walking corpse of GameStop is also SoftWare etc. I remember renting a PSX at Blockbuster when it first came out. God the first time hearing that boot up sound was like magic.
I mean I still like Bubble Bobble (on MAME) because:
1) It's cute
2) The music
3) You can pretty much just keep playing as long as you want because the score doesn't really matter.