Advance Console Entertainment were amazing too. I think they were two main middle eastern guys who were at first selling pc engine and megadrive imported games and consoles and provided RGB Modifications. They originally rented out a room in one of those posh and expensive Georgian houses just near Regents Park and I think the closest subway train to them was Great Portland Street.
They later on opened their own shop in Carnaby Street and they continued with RGB mods and repairs for all consoles, PC engine, Genesis and Super Famicom. they somehow faded and shut shop during the 32bit era. They were great and I miss those guys.
I worked in the CEX basement for a bit in 2000, Ash had left by then and started up his own shop near Shepards Bush...
CEX got into legal trouble for imported goods starting with R1 DVDs in 1999 then all import games got stopped a couple of years after - the death knell for the retro dungeon :/
I think ACE were going till at least 2000 that's when I last went in there. In 2000 I picked up a broken Super CD Rom system in the CEX dungeon, maybe when gojira1954 was working there. I was in there buying some games and saw it in a box of broken junk on the floor by the counter.
ACE and Raven Games were the only places I knew of at that time that fixed old consoles. I decided to take it to ACE and it was the last time I went there. When I arrived outside ACE the first thing that struck me was they had a single Neo Geo AES in the window, I remember thinking the shop is called Advanced Console Entertainment, I love the Neo but it's ancient now and hardly cutting edge, where's the PS2 and Dreamcast? I went inside and it must have been near their end as there was like hardly any games on the shelves, and this bit sticks in my head they had loads of copies of Beyond Shadowgate Turbo Duo CD on display, I thought what a random game to choose. They did have a large selection of imported US game magazines though.
He couldn't fix the Super CD Rom system yet still charged me £25 which I was pissed about at the time.
Also I think the CEX dungeon were doing imports till at least 2003, because I remember I sold them my then Japanese Sega Saturn collection. I remember the staff spazzed out over me selling Radiant Silvergun.
I also remember doing trades with a few fellows around London which I think were from personal ads in the LOOT newspaper.
I also have memories back around 93 where I brought a few college buddies to my parents house and Dracula X had arrived in the post. I remember the first bit where Richter was fighting death on the horse cart and my fellow students were commenting on how it looks like Bram Stoker's Dracula movie.
I remember in late 1993 some dude came round from my advert in LOOT to buy some PC Engine games I was selling. He was looking through my PC Engine game collection, then he whipped out from from his pocket his copies of Dracula X and Magical Chase and offered we do a temporary swap. He said he wanted to borrow my Gradius II and I think it was Rainbow Islands.
I'd never seen Dracula X before as it had just been released. I was taken aback by his offer as it seemed out of nowhere and quite random, but couldn't see why not, so went for it.
We were chatting and he said he was from Hong Kong (originally) and he'd asked some family to send him the games, but family he had in Japan, explaining how he'd got a copy of Dracula X so quick. When he came back to pick up his games he brought and gave me copied VHS tapes of the full set of Bubblegum Crisis (subtitled) which wasn't out in the UK yet. Again totally random, but very cool.
