CharlieR wrote:They do sell retro games on their website, but you never know the condition of the product.
Speaking from experience, I have bought dozens, if not hundreds of retro games and controllers from GameStop's website, and have had very few problems along the way. Most of the cartridges I've bought have been in excellent condition, at least an 8 or 9 out of 10. If I knew how to post pictures on this forum, I'd share a few examples of cartridges that I've bought. Most of them look better than standard eBay fare, have nice front and back labels, and come with their contacts cleaned, to boot!
The only issues I've had were one instance when I received a completely different game than what I ordered, and a general issue with their cleaning methods. I ordered OutRun for the Sega Genesis about a year ago, and when it came in the mail, they sent me OutRun 2019! Honest mistake, I'm sure, and returning the game was quick and easy.
The other issue comes with how they appear to clean old carts and controllers. It seems their preferred way to remove old stickers and gunk is to scrub it off with a Brillo pad. Thankfully, most of my orders haven't had this problem, but I did have a few carts and controllers that, while clean, had countless little scuffs up close. These weren't from general use - they were obviously scrub marks, very fine, but countless in number. It made a 6 button Genesis controller look matte and textured, but hey, it worked. A minor nitpick.
The best thing about ordering from GameStop online is that you can return items in store. As long as you have the receipt, you're golden, and in my experience they will take a return on retro items no questions asked.
On the other hand, I absolutely **DO NOT** recommend ordering any disc-based "retro" games from them! I have had many Dreamcast, Saturn, and Gamecube (which I feel weird calling "retro," but that's how they file it) discs arrived scratched to Hell and back, covered in a pasty resurfacing compound. Their disc buffers are too harsh on those older discs, especially Gamecube. I've also had discs from those three systems arrived obviously cracked and damaged around the center hub, and the chances of you getting one complete with its case and manual are slim to none.
Of all my cartridge-based orders, I'd say I was satisfied with 95% of them. Disc based games, probably only about 25%.
Again, returns were easy on those items, but sheesh, I can't believe they would try and sell something that was obviously so beat-up to begin with!