“Our little tagline that I came up with is ‘feed your nostalgia,’” said Stephen Alexander, Assistant Manager at Game Swap. “That’s what we want people to feel when they come in here.”
When the arcade cabinets endlessly repeat 8-bit era chiptunes and the same three catchphrases, or when the TVs play worn VHS tapes — everything from “Power Rangers” to “Mystic Pizza” — one can’t help but reframe the audio as a soundtrack to the past, which is why Game Swap is the time-traveling DeLorean of Dayton storefronts.
Evolving from its original concept of a video game swap shop — where cash for games was the only swapping being had — Game Swap manager, Matt Brassfield, soon embraced toys, old-school merch, VHS and DVDs, eventually snowballing into Blu-ray, LaserDisc and a modest shelf of Betamax.
“We’re one of the only places [in the area] that has a selection of movies this big,” Alexander said. “We have over 35,000 titles in here. And that’s just DVDs and Blu-rays.”
The Kettering Game Swap opened in 2009. Cincinnati and Florence, KY also had branches until they rebranded as Mavericks or closed completely. But even as more folks move toward streaming or two-day shipping their physical media — if they haven’t already donated their collections — Game Swap has had an uptick in sales over the past five years.
“It was a little shaky there when streaming first started,” Alexander said. “But now [users are] understanding if you subscribe to everything all at once, it’s going to cost you hundreds of dollars. So people are going back to [physical media].”
Collecting — whether for posterity or resale — can be viewed as a niche activity. Often, it’s a way of life upheld in ever-narrowing circles, like in the treasure troves of Game Swap.
With the release of the prescient documentary “The Last Blockbuster” in 2020, followed by the hardly-unexpected closure of the remaining Family Video stores across the Midwest in 2022 — orphaning pizza joints or partnering them with cannabis dispensaries — an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for rental stores emerged despite a majority of movie enthusiasts having moved to digital. However, a reverence for those stores’ simplicity and sentimentality is largely not lost on consumers or Game Swap employees.
“That guy sitting up there, Garrison [Kane], used to work at Blockbuster. Our manager, Matt, used to work at Blockbuster,” Alexander said, on the rental chain’s effect on Game Swap’s aesthetics. “And I used to shop there all the time. That influence is very reflective of the store as well.”
What’s generally forgotten about Blockbuster and Family Video — stores that eventually fell victim to the next phase (i.e. internet-based entertainment) — is that they were once nemeses to every independent shop. Those corporate rental chains are defended now because they were the only option widely available for years.
The rental store model in a streaming world is doomed to fail; Game Swap picks up slack strictly as a buy-sell store for the grieving physical media-loving contingent shopping locally — fortuitously scratching those nostalgic itches.
But take another Dayton media store like Second Time Around — which has been temporarily closed since 2020 — or peer into the locked sliding glass doors of any barren mall and the transience of shopping is apparent: here today, gone tomorrow.
Despite a couple of “out of order” signs on the arcade cabinets and sun-faded theatrical posters in the windows, Game Swap seems to be thriving. And though they are every bit of a tangible shop, the balance of e-commerce — on eBay (Game Swap Kettering) and Etsy (as Yeti’s Treasure Chest) — in tandem with their in-store offerings has certainly been advantageous.
While they sometimes sell new, Game Swap mostly deals in used merchandise. Along with buying used is the experience of having someone else’s stuff become yours — for a price, of course — begging the question: what adventure did this thing go on to get here?
Perusing the shelves is the thrill of discovery, it’s experience trumping convenience. Squint and it might be 1998. It’s not a video rental store but in some ways it is.
Browse, spend a quarter on a round of Centipede or spend more on other stuff. Whatever you choose, Game Swap will transport you to another time — of the past and in the present.
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