The Irritating and Pedantic Convention Seller Who Sells Used Video Games For Overinflated eBay Prices
"Super Mario World for $30? That came with the console!"
"Yeah, but it's a Nintendo classic! The price matches the quality. That's how us true collectors roll."
Have you ever met someone you knew you were going to hate from the very first sentence you heard uttered from their slimy, disgusting vocal chords? That person was a vendor at a local retro game convention I had my first of many encounters with. He was the ultimate walking stereotypical image of a nerd, with a lanky, skinny body, glasses the size of dinner plates, and a voice straight out of an Animaniacs skit.
His booth was a table laid out in a lonely corner of the convention hall where few others had bothered walking through. It was sprawling with vintage game cartridges and CDs, all seemingly cherry picked titles with high resale value, with nary a regular mid-tier licensed game or worthless mascot platformer game in sight. Behind him was a banner with a poorly stretched Impact font logo of his name and what appeared to be an edit of a Mega Man sprite made to passingly resemble him.
"Can I, at least... barter?" I choked out.
"No. These are classic, valuable video games and to sell them for any less would be a disgrace to their legacy!" The vendor sneered, launching spit onto my t-shirt.
"Err... I'll pass, then." I said, trying to pretend what I had heard felt like it hadn't given me a brain tumor in the process.
I walked away from the table slightly dejected and annoyed. It seemed the games for sale here were out of my budget, but this guy's attitude especially set me off. As I walked away, the guy stared at me with the most vacant, unreadable expression. Was he angry? Was he disappointed? I didn't know... at least, not yet.
As I got home with a slightly disappointing bag of middling Atari 2600 games and a well-loved copy of Tekken 3, the nasally merchant had mostly left my mind as I tried out the things I had just picked up. A few hours later as I was getting my rusty ass handed to me by Xiaoyu in Tekken, I heard a knock on the front door. I was confused. Who would even be visiting me at this hour?
I opened the door to find, to my dismay, the same young man who had given me the unsettling glare at the convention earlier that day. In that moment, I had no clue how to begin to even process what was happening.
"Uh... hi?" I mindlessly belted out.
"Why didn't you buy any of my games? Do you not like classic video gaming from the 80s and 90s?" He pouted.
I could only stare, dumbfounded. How had he figured out where I lived? Why was he even here? A thousand thoughts raced through my mind.
"I... I'm literally playing Tekken 3 right now."
"Oh, I don't play those kinds of games. I only play games like Mario and Sonic."
"How did you even find my house? Why are you... why are you even here?!"
"Cause I thought you seemed like someone who would enjoy old video games, but then you went and walked away without buying anything!" He said, gesturing in an exaggerated manner.
"You didn't answer my first question."
"When you walked out, I actually look at your license plate and had a few friends who know about hacking get your address. You see, it's actually pretty easy to find out where people live from that kind of information..."
At that moment, I shut the door on his face. This was not worth my time and effort.
"Hey! Open the door up!" He shouted. He would repeat the phrase and variations thereof for about thirty minutes while I tried my best to pretend he wasn't there, going about my usual business. It was a long, painful thirty minutes.
Thankfully (or, at least I thought so at the moment), it seemed like he had given up and walked away. I let out one of the largest sighs of relief known to man, thinking this stupid ordeal was finally over.
Then, through my window, a large, skinny body smashed its way into my house. I had never screamed so loudly in my life, and I backed away into a corner.
"What the FUCK are you doing?! I'm gonna call the police!" I squeaked out in panic. The man brandished a pocket knife and slowly began to shuffle towards me. With a forced inflection, he bellowed, "Now, I'm gonna have my revenge! Ha ha ha!"
He then tripped on my rug and impaled himself through his eye on his own blade. He shrieked and squirmed in pain as I dialed 911. The police came minutes later and took him away. Moral of the story: The retro game market is fucking nonsense.
Written by Smedis2
Content is available under CC BY-SA
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