The Exchange - Chicago, Illinois

DaLatinKnight

Recommend this store due to game selection. Since everything is behind glass doors they put everything on the shelves and you can see the prices right there.

That being said, they seem to take advantage of the fact they have so much as they price up the games a bit. Some time you get lucky and get a good deal for an old game, but some semi popular retro games can be double what they would be online.

Overall very large selection and I do recommend browsing to see if you find anything interesting. The staff are nice which is a huge plus.

Igor

I bought the Call of Duty Advanced Warfare disc. When I got home, I saw that the disk had a lot of scratches and stains. I didn't pay attention to it and put it on download, what was my reaction when I saw that the game downloads only 1.66 GB, then it says that there is an error. At first I thought it was a problem with the set-top box, but when I inserted another disc everything was perfect

Willie Colon

As a longtime Chicago local and a Logan Square native, I used to love coming to this store, especially about 10 years ago when it was fantastic. However, in recent visits, I’ve found the employees to be quite pretentious, rarely offering a smile, and making me feel unwelcome. Prices have become excessively high, and when I have questions, the responses often feel condescending—or worse, sometimes I just get a one-worded response, which discourages me from asking further. As someone who loves retro culture, video games, and movies, it’s disheartening to see the hospitality and service decline so much. As if late, it’s not the experience it used to be.

Rolek Riedel

Walked in for the first time a few hours ago. Place looked good from pics I could find online. Was highly disappointed when I visited in person. Prices are pretty high, not a great selection...and their trade in policy is God awful. Do not trade in anything here!
I walked in with 11 Nintendo NES games and a Game Genie. They offered me a whopping $29 in trade...I scoffed. Then the young kid insulted me further by saying he could "bump up" his pathetic offer to $30. Needless to say I declined and walked out. The Game Genie and Megaman 2 cart alone would have netted them around $100....not to mention the other 10 games.

First and last time going there.

Note to management- I understand business is business and it's great to make money....but stop ripping people off.

Ally Bright

The staff here was very kind and helpful. This store is nice to even just browse if you don’t have something specific in mind. The staff helped many customers on the phone and in the store. They have vinyls, old video games, and even newer accessories. My friend bought a switch controller. Prices are good and it’s well organized.

Chris Recalde

Game collection was severely lacking. Seemed to be filling the space in the store with various movies and music to make up for the lack of game options (which are obscenely overpriced. Good example is the manual less “Tom and Jerry war of the whiskers” was listed for $30, which is ridiculous considering that’s more than double the price from any number of similar reputable vendors). Probably a great place to go if you want to stock up on scratched up madden 07 copies, but I think it’s pretty bad for anything else. Would recommend checking out other options in the area if you’re wanting to expand your retro game collection.

Ben Benedict

Came last week looking for a few games for the Wii, Lauren showed me everything they had and was a huge help in answering all my questions. Awesome game store that has all the retro games and consoles lots of music and movies too overall cool spot with very friendly staff

DJ

Personally, as someone who likes stores like this, I was left disappointed. I love collecting vintage video games, physical media, collector’s items, the works. Obviously, a lot of these things aren’t cheap to buy. But, the prices just are so standard that there’s no difference shopping here versus eBay or Mercari. If I want to go in and buy an old GameCube game that typically lists for $90 on ebay, it’s going to be $90 here. No flex room, it is what it is. It’s not a bad thing and I wouldn’t expect a physical store to offer that much better of a deal - but it makes me debate the point of the physical location if what’s online is literally identical. If you want a cheap dvd on the spot or an old cd or whatever, you can get it here at the price you see it listed for online. There’s some novelty in that. But for a collector who either wants the best deal or a really great customer experience to compensate for standard pricing, this store doesn’t really do either. It’s fine. If you’re walking on the street and happen to pass by, you’ll have a decent enough time walking through the aisles to see what’s there. If you’re a collector, you’ll just see what’s there, snap a photo of the price, go online and see it be the same. Not great, not bad, but I think with there being so few of these types of stores in the area, it’s kind of a letdown