Digital Press - Store

I've been programming some video games and needed a real Atari 2600 to test them on. After a failed attempt at getting one that worked from a local store, I took the drive to the Digital Press store owned by Joe. Now, I've known about the store ever since it was in the building phase and when it finally opened, but being an hour away I had never went. It was totally worth the trip!

 

The store is very easy to get to, but if you're not paying attention you might drive right past it like I did. The road splits and there's a sign saying Piaget to the right, but I didn't know I was already on Piaget and followed the sign. Stupid me!

Eventually arriving at the store, I found ample parking around back. The sidewalk was shoveled well, but I think water might have been leaking off the roof (?), so I had to walk around a patch of ice. I made my way to the front and it was beautiful.. like a light shining down from Heaven, a Vectrex system glowing in the front window!

Stepping inside, revealed the store is much nicer than the pictures on his website. The reason I say this is that the website can't possibly show you close up pictures of everything he has for sale.. and he has a lot. Here's a few of the things I found:

Lots of boxed games for various systems. A good amount, but an even bigger amount of unboxed games. Lots of systems, some of them in their original boxes, some of them in generic store boxes. Not every game was a common game either, there were a few rarieties here and there. I didn't have the brain capacity to remember everything, because I was on overload from the amount of cool stuff I wanted to come back and buy when I had money, but I do remember a boxed Coconuts from Telesys, which is a Rarity 4 Atari 2600 game. I saw some TI 99/4A cartridges, some cassettes for a system I can't remember, some Mattel Aquarius stuff, etc.

The systems in generic store boxes were were cleaned, tested, and guaranteed for 30 days. I think some of the systems are a little higher than I can get elsewhere, but at least I know the system will work and Joe will stand by his product. I also know if something goes wrong he's likely to have a replacement for me in stock. For example, the Atari 2600 I picked up was a Sears Telegame model light sixer. It came with paddles, joystick, RF to Coax adapter, and 3 games. It was only $10 more than I found elsewhere, but works perfect the first time. I like that the systems come in ready to go boxes. No fumbling behind a counter for parts, no digging through a pile of mistreated stuff. The stuff here is well taken care of.

There's a few arcade games setup in the front of the store, including MAME for play. In the back sit a few computers you can purchase time on.

One of the coolest things was the mini-museum. He's got some really minty stuff in there along with information on it. A Bandai Playdia, Gamate, a GameKing, and some other stuff I can't remember.