My girlfriend and I just did a 4 city trip in Europe; Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, and Athens. One of the things I was most excited for on this trip was to check out the video games in these countries. Of course I wanted to see the retro games, but at the very least going to the equivalent of Gamestop in each country to see the selection was something I was looking forward to. However, after going to each of these places, I am pretty sure that Europeans don't play games!
In the U.S., you can't go more than a few blocks without seeing a Gamestop. On top of that, in my town there is at least 10 retro game stores and other pawn shop type places that have a decent selection of old games. I figured it would be somewhat similar in these other cities, but I was very wrong.
In Warsaw I did not see a single video game. There were no game stores, electronics stores, or even games available in any of the department type stores I went into. In the mall there was no Gamestop or equivalent. I don't believe anyone in Warsaw has video games.
In Berlin I did go into what I believe was the equivalent of a Best Buy, called Saturn. The store had a pretty limited selection of games and no special editions or anything that I couldn't find in the U.S. When I visited a town about 45 minutes outside of Berlin called Oranienburg (home to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and Nazi concentration camp headquarters...) there was the only retro video game store I saw on the whole trip. The store called Spielkultur had mostly Playstation and newer stuff, with a small selection of 8-bit and 16-bit games (no obey). Since I felt I had to buy something, I picked up Sonic Chaos and Laser Ghost for Master System at a not great 10 Euro each, especially since both games were missing manuals. The one thing I noticed was that the games were in shitty condition (like the gross flea market condition) and almost all of them were incomplete. I would say worse condition than U.S. game stores, which I was surprised by.
In Paris there were no retro stores at all and I found only one electronic store (Best Buy-esque) with any video games. This store carried only the top 50 games or so and had little selection, so I wasn't there for long. The only cool "video game" I picked up was the 3DS Louvre museum guide retail edition, which can only be bought at the Louvre. Cool trivia fact, this is the only region free game on the 3DS. As a Laseractive fan, I have a soft sport for edutainment.
In Athens I didn't see one video game, much like Warsaw. I don't believe people in Athens have any gaming at all.
Overall, I was a bit surprised by the lack of video games I saw in each of these countries. I didn't see much video game advertising either, which was also different from the U.S. As my only other international trip (excluding Canada) was Tokyo, obviously this was in stark contrast to what I had seen before. Based on what I have read online, I get the impression that the UK may have more widespread console gaming, but I don't know this first hand.
Has anyone else been to Europe and agree with these sentiments? Any of your European forum members want to chime in and maybe let me know I was looking in the wrong places? I probably walked 100 miles over my two week trip and I was all over these cities (not just in the tourist spots), so I figured there would've been more to see. I guess Europeans don't actually play video games.
Topic: I Don't Believe Europeans Play Video Games (Read 293 times)
