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| Jim Hanley's Universe |
| Midtown Comics |
New York, NY 10003 6 to Astor Place, N/R to 8th Street |
Brooklyn, NY 11201 M/N/R/2/3/4/5 to Court Street-Borough Hall |
New York, NY 10007 1/2/3 to Chambers Street |
| Elizabeth Center/"Elizabeth Street Mall" |
13 East 4th Street
Anime Crash
New York, NY 10003
212-254-4670
http://www.animecrash.com
N/R to 8th Street, 6 to Astor Place, F/Q/S to Broadway-Lafayette
Some people like to get their anime online. Others buy it from fansubbers in
their local Chinatown. Yet others go for whatever's available at the local
Tower Video or Virgin Megastore or wherever. But yet others only deal with
dedicated anime stores, of which there are now quite a few. Anime Crash, to
the best of my knowledge, is the only store of this type in New York City.
It's located conveniently in the heart of Manhattan, within walking range of
NYU, Cooper Union, a few of the CUNY schools. Good things: fairly large
selection of tapes, manga books, magazines, models, CD's. Bad things: price,
thorough arrogance of staff, who apparently care very little of what they're
actually selling. So, to each his own, and while I can afford to download a
200-megabyte movie from online and get my CD's at a convention, quite a few
people would be happy dealing with a place like Anime Crash. - MK
120 East 7th Street
Mangaya
New York, NY 10009
212-995-1004
http://www.mangaya.com
F to 2nd Avenue, 6 to Astor Place, N/R to 8th Street
A store that knows its niche - untranslated manga - and fills it. This is the
kind of place that's best referred to as "that store where you get manga." The
location is the basement-ish floor of a standard East Village brownstone. The
decor is close to nonexistent. Just shelves lined up along one wall, the
counter along the other. A few posters and flyers scattered around the front,
an SVA anime club showing announcement in the window. Again, *all* of the
manga sold are in Japanese, so for most of us, a curious place, but rather
useless. Note: it did not appear they stock any of the weekly magazines, just
individual volumes. -MK
11 East 33rd Street
The Compleat Strategist
New York, NY 10016
212-685-3880
6 to 33rd Street, B/D/F/N/Q/R/V/W to 34th Street
Remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when they put the Ark away in that huge warehouse with all those other boxes? If you encounter this small storefront tucked away in a rather non-descript building, and dare to open the door, you may find yourself suddenly reminded of it. Shoppers will find themselves dwarfed by wall-to-wall shelves of gamebooks, figurines, dice, and even traditional board games. This is place to find that obscure sourcebook that went out of print back in junior-high school, or a little die-cast Saxon to complete your campaign. I admit to not being a gamer persay, but still enjoy browsing through their massive collection of board games. This place is just cool by sheer intimidation. - KN
New York, NY 10003 212-979-7678 www.gamestop.com N/R to 8th Street, A/C/E/F/V to West 4th Street |
New York, NY 10001 212-967-9070 www.gamestop.com B/D/F/N/Q/R/V/W to 34th Street |
There are six locations in Manhattan, these are two located in popular shopping neighborhoods of Manhattan. Both stores are fairly cramped spaces, but it's only in the 33rd Street store where you'd really care. Perpetually crowded, getting in and out can be a major operation. The register is an island in the dead center, so getting on line is a real hazard at points. Their stock mostly consists of used console games, with a wall dedicated to computer titles. A good swath of floor space is given up to the action figure racks. Software Etc. is generally not afraid to mark down toy merchandise, so if you're looking for figures this is the place to go. The store down on 8th Street has a smaller selection of figures, relegated to a few small racks near the front or the registers. They carry a large selection of new console games in addition to old, as well as the obligatory massive wall o' PC games. The big plus to this branch is that it never really gets too crowded, mostly spillover crowds from St. Mark's Place or the nearby universities. - KN
New York, NY, 10012 212-473-6571 www.ebgames.com N/R to 8th Street, A/C/E/F/V to West 4th Street |
New York, NY 10001 212-564-4156 www.ebgames.com B/D/F/N/Q/R/V/W to 34th Street |
Existing almost as a counterpoint to the Software Etc. branches in NYC are the Electronics Boutiques of the city. Located less than a block from their competition, EB does a few paces around their more visible counterparts. The branch in Manhattan Mall carries a good selection of accessories and used games, despite a very limited space. The major drawback to the store is its miniscule size, the accessible location serving to pack the space with even more eager customers. The back section of the store is also a perpetual mess, stacks of action figures and computer equipment left on the floor in disarray. The store down in the Village is a Bizzaro version of the Midtown branch. A nice open area in the middle, the toys neatly piled into a bin in the back. Usually not very crowded, so browsing is easy and lines are almost non-existent. Because traffic is so light the selection tends to be better as well, making that hard-to-get game not so hard-to-get. - KN
16 St. Mark's Place
Multimedia 1.0
New York, NY 10003
6 to Astor Place, N/R to 8th Street
OK, say you want to buy a PlayStation. Easy enough, just walk to your corner K-Mart or EBX, put down the money, pick up the box. But what if you, being just plain odd, or asleep for the last seven years, want a Genesis or SNES. Even more, what if you, being just REALLY weird, or asleep for the last fifteen, need an Atari 2600 or Intellivision. This is where Multimedia 1.0 comes in. I don't know whether their marquee simply hasn't been changed in that long, or whether it's intended to create the effect, but it proudly lists all of these obscure systems most of us don't *know*, much less remember: Atari 2600, ColecoVision, the TurboGrafx 16. And the thing is, they are actually sold here, along with the games! Otherwise, the inventory is fairly generic, and generally overpriced, but just for those ancient relics alone, the place deserves mention. - MK
9 Mott Street
Chinatown Fair
New York, NY 10013
J/M/Z to Chambers Street, 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall
New York City lacks one thing: a proper 25-cents-per-game arcade. There's a couple in Flushing, another one in Bay Terrace - but where the f*ck IS Bay Terrace? Enter Chinatown Arcade - which technically has a name, but is never referred to by it. Looks like it's been there for a while, too. An L-shaped space goes off into the middle of the block, games along all the walls. Most types of game seem to be pretty well-represented - fighters, 2-D shooters, puzzles and light-gun games, with a "classics" section near the front. The gamers are overwhelmingly Asian, probably about 10% black and Hispanic from the nearby projects, an occasional whiteboy. All in a general atmosphere of friendly competition and general happiness - just another one of those places that makes NYC easy to get through when you're feeling like taking hostages and shooting them one by one. Why bother, when you can do same with space aliens, all for a quarter a pop! - MK
1457 Broadway
XS
New York, NY 10036
212-398-5467
A/C/E/N/Q/R/S/W/1/2/3/7/9 to Times Square, B/D/F to 42nd Street
This neon-lit piece of the Times Square landscape is heralded by some gaming magazines as one of the greatest arcades in the world. There is certainly a large selection of games, and the floor is decently lit, but the downfall of this gamespace is the prices, which are far too high. Capcom's latest? That'll cost you $2.00 per credit. Even older games are upwards of a dollar per play. XS offers simulators, laser tag, and other immersive games, but at even steeper rates. If you have the wads of cash and are completely oblivious to the current going rates of arcade machines, I suppose you could enjoy yourself there. - RM
1540 Broadway
Barcode
New York, NY
A/C/E/N/Q/R/S/W/1/2/3/7 to Times Square, B/D/F/V to 42nd Street
Barcode, billing itself as the "new rules game bar" is really the logical development of the Disneyfied Times Square - Disney grown up, Tomorrowland on acid. It draws a bit from every other "entertainment center" in Times Square, and spits out something quite nice. Now, this is NOT an arcade, and don't you dare ever call it an arcade out loud. And the presence of bouncers out front, and an ID check should tell you something. The decor of the place is essentially minimalist-futuristic: a long bar, pool tables, lots of chrome and neon. A DJ pumping out generic dance music, new - and expensive game consoles throughout. All the games take cards only, nothing as mundane as quarters or tokens. And perhaps it's ironic - or sad - that adult entertainment in Times Square has gone from strippers and prostitutes (well, those just moved over to 8th Avenue) to blasting away zombies, mutants, and terrorists. - MK
36-30 Main Street
Entertainment World
Flushing, NY 11358
7 to Main Street
Amidst the many shops lining Main Street between Roosevelt Ave and Northern Boulevard, there is a small arcade. It won't jump out at you from the street, or even from the sidewalk out front; but all the local gamers know it's there. Its window is often adorned with posters of current or soon-to-be-released movies, preventing much visibility either in or out. Inside however, are arcade machines lining both sides running the gammut from the newest releases to coin-op classics and pinball. Their prices are fair, the newest games ringing in at $0.75/play at most, and classic games offering a couple of extra lives on a single coin. The room is well lit, and with enough room to move around even when the place is at its busiest. They also change their machines every few months, keeping a good rotation of games in at all times. - RM
234 W. 42nd Street
easyEverything
New York, NY
www.easyeverything.com
A/C/E/N/R/S/W/1/2/3/7 to Times Square
Advertising itself at "the world's biggest internet cafe," and sporting some 800 screens on two levels (and a Fire Department-mandated maximum occupancy of 755), easyEverything truly is a new breed of internet access facility. The place is HUGE - a former store or warehouse, and minimalist. to the extreme. The color scheme is all oranges and whites, with long rows of flat-screen monitors lining up the wooden partitions, a register and coffee/snack counter in the front. Open 24 hours, it also presents a rather interesting pricing schedule: computer time, while costing a minimum of a dollar, increases or decreases in price depending on how many people are using the machines. At five in the morning, for example, when there are all of ten people in the store, a dollar gets you two hours; some six hours earlier, access time in the packed cafe ran at 20 minutes to the dollar. The spartan decor - identical wooden chairs, flat screen Samsung monitors, a bare minimum of software, signify that this is a budget place, primarily for an all nighter, or at least several hours, rather than a few minutes of leisurely browsing. Its location, though, is perfect, and all I can say is that easyEverything is an important addition to New York City's already incredible night life. - MK