How far do you go for games?

[botticus]

While on my drive to a couple K-Marts last night, I was wondering what sort of distances CAGs usually cover during the course of their deal-hunting. Hopefully my poll choices cover some decent variety. Feel free to describe your average or greatest journey ever.

I think I'm leaning towards one-way distance here, not round-trip. Basically the shopping radius you traverse.

[cdeener]

Normally, I don't have to go to far because every place that sales games are 4 to 10 miles away. I have several GS and EB within 4 miles, K-Mart within 3, several Sears within 5, Wal-Mart within 5, Meijer within 5, Sam's Club and Costco within 7, several CC's within 7, several BestBuy's within 7, and Blockbuster within 3/GameRush within 8. Almost forgot I also have a couple of Gamecrazy that I don't acutally shop at within 4 miles of my house too.

[YoshiFan1]

Typically 0 - 5 miles because I have a K-Mart, Walmart, Target, Circuit City, Toys R Us, Sears and Best Buy all within 5 miles of my house but I will go 11 - 20 miles for a specific sale. Like the $5 CC sale, I went out of my way to go to some stores and the $10 TRU sale, I went to some TRU stores around 15 miles away so I voted 11 - 20 miles.

[Reality's Fringe]

It has to be pretty good to get me to drive far. The furthest I usually travel for a deal would be near Dayton, and that's usually the Half-Price Books, Circuit City, and Comp USA near the Dayton mall.

[Allnatural]

No more than 10 miles I suppose (one way). There's plenty of stores to choose from in the local area, but I have been known to rack up the miles by going to many stores in a single day; one end of town to the other.

[wubb]

Everything is close so I typically don't go more than 5 miles. Only exception is for the truly epic deals like the $5 classic plastic or the big CC clearances. I'll hit all of the stores within 20 miles or so of me if the deal is sweet enough. Or even better if it works out that I'm travelling within the sale window I'll check the locations and hit all of them along my route :mrgreen:

[Kayden]

If I can't get it off line i generally don't get it.

However, sometimes I'll make the 6 mile drive to bloomington.

[graf1k]

I'm with Kayden.

I have never found a local sale that was worth a damn just unless I had read about it somewhere first, so I don't even try anymore. Besides, I don't really window shop at stores anymore. I find I'm probably 300% more likely to impulse buy in a situation like that.

[jimbodan]

Back when EB/Gamestop/Gamecrazy used to carry a decent amount of PS1 games I used to make a long ass trip to EVERY EB/GS/GC store within 20 miles of my house, it would take all day but I managed to really fill out my PS1 collection.

[crowbb]

I won't go out of my way to look for a deal. If I know about a great deal and it's in my path I will check but otherwise I consider my time worth more than saving a few bucks.

[jPoD]

Exactly 11.5 Miles to the closest Best Buy
1.5 Miles to closest EB Games

:)

[vietgurl]

Back when I was more of a collector, I used to hunt down Gamestops and EBs within a 1-2 hour radius looking for rare games. Nowadays, I think the gas and time aren't really worth it anymore.

[M1C13]

on Wednesday I drove about 40 miles to get a DS Lite.

[CaoPi]

I go about 6-10 miles where I am Bestbuy, CC TRU are all in a close radius!

[Oktoberfest]

I've actually biked a few miles before to get my hands on a deal on Guild Wars awhile back

[kjauburn]

Alot of the time I will stop in to places when I go visit clients onsite. Of course its turn in a few long trips home from multiple stops after work...

[jennie25]

about 6 or so months ago I drove to flint michigan (from lincoln park) to get a copy of valkyrie profile, I got pulled over by the michigan state police and lets just say that wasn't good, I very well could have went to jail that day (and probally should have), almost ran out of gas twice, it was quite an adventure

[Chacrana]

Luckily, the place where I live has 2 Best Buys, 2 Circuit Cities, a Gamecrazy, 3 Gamestops, 2 EBGames, and other stores within 15 miles.

[Kayden]

I don't think theres an EB within 10 miles of me... I used to live within 2 blocks of a target, BB, CC, TRU, EB, 2 GSs and a Software ETC. The best part is that when I lived there, I didn't have any money to spend. :lol:

[Archgarth]

It all depends on risk vs. reward. Lately I will not just drive around to see if they have a game in stock, or at a good price, instead I'll just call ahead, saving me the time, hassle, and gas. The only time I can recently think of me making a special trip was when a local retail chain (Fred Meyer) had a 50% off clearance sale on their video games. I literally visited the five closest to me, and racked up a good forty miles in what ended up as my best haul since I've been coming to CAG.

[Vinny]

I think the most I've gone is 20 miles... and I didn't exactly get a deal out of it. Frankly, I don't have the time to waste just for a deal. Chances are, if it's really good, the deal will be long gone before I can get to the store because of sites like CAG spreading the word.:-P

[PenguinMaster]

I used to have to drive around 20 miles to get to a lot of things, but I just moved and now everything's within 10 miles. But I may drive around 25 miles to get in on some great Canadian deals.

[Kapwanil]

When I'm home in NY I have several EBs and GSes in a ten mile radius (I think around 13, actually) along with a few Best Buys, Circuit Cities (usually god awful for deals), Comp USAs, and a few other worthwhile jaunts if they have a nice deal. No extreme travelling, really.

When I was in Pittsburgh I usually went to local stores and they were fairly plentiful and less than a mile away in most cases. Out in Pittsburgh the furthest I ever went for some games would be about 25 minutes away in Robinson since that EB had the BEST cart games, period. 50% off on all of them, huge stock, plenty of rare titles. It was the best EB trip I've made for classic games in the past five years.

In Indiana...ouch, that's rough. I live in Bloomington and we have the EB, the GS, and the Best Buy. There's also a Wal-Mart but, lord, I'm not driving ten minutes to get there. Otherwise...since I usually visit a friend in West Lafayette I go to some game stores out there. In that case I guess you can say I go a good 130 miles for some deals since, well, there aren't any large Game Crazy or Game Rush locations like that back in NY. That one Game Crazy was like a FuncoLand if it had nothing but reasonable or insanely cheap prices. It was heaven. But I guess I'd disqualify that since I go to spend time with my friend rather than solely for a deal.

[HumanSnatcher]

Crap, accidently checked 21-30. Meant to go for 11-20. When I used to live in Norfolk, I'd HAVE to drive at least 10 miles to get to any deals.. About the only time I hit every location of a store was when I was looking for the Aqua Teen vol 4 that CC had on sale a few months back.

[FOnewearl]

All the stores that are good for cheap games in my area are close, 6-10 miles at most. 1 TRU, 1 EBgames, 1 K-Mart, 1 Circuit City and 1 Sears.

The only clearance sale I ever went on a road trip for was the clearance sale at KBToys last October as I knew the selection was gonna vary from store to store and I was gonna find Donkey Konga for $10 or die trying :) Besides the KBToys closest to me (which dosen't sell video games anymore) I checked two other stores that are both about about 50 minutes from where I live and maybe about a half hour away from each other.

I have afew more stores for games within an hour of me (more EBgames, Sears and 1 Kmart) but that's usually too far to drive with the gas and time I'd be using for maybe a game or two I'm interested in that I might save afew more dollars on if they don't have it in stock near me.

The longest distance I travel looking for games on the regular basis is probaby the one flea market that's about 15-20 miles from where I live.

[mcgavin27]

Considering the closest store that sells games is at least 20 miles away, I checked 31-50 because that store 20 miles away is a wal-mart and there is no fucking deals at my wal-mart ever.

[STATIC3D]

I guess I'm lucky. When I do a check for store availability on gamestop there are EIGHT stores (GS/EB) that show up at the smallest 10 mile range. After the merger, I've kept expecting them to shut down some of the stores since that many are so close.

[botticus]

I guess I'm lucky. When I do a check for store availability on gamestop there are EIGHT stores (GS/EB) that show up at the smallest 10 mile range. After the merger, I've kept expecting them to shut down some of the stores since that many are so close.
I have 11. Within 5 miles I have 6 or 7 EB/GS, BB, CC, TRU, Sears, 2 Targets, MicroCenter, Walmart, some Blockbuster, GameRush, maybe some other stores.

But I occasonally go up to 15-20 miles away to hit up another 2 BBs, CC, TRU, couple K-Marts, any number of EB/GS, another GR, a GameCrazy or two...

[GuilewasNK]

Oh God, before today I would have to go either 30 miles to Danville or 50 to Roanoke to get to EB or Gamestop because all we have in my area is Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Kay-Bees, yuck. They olny hadthe biggest games and if I want to purchase something like KOF Neowave I had to either order it online or go to one of those place I mentioned. But today we finally got a REAL game store!

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90384

Now I live only 1 mile from where I need to buy games! :D Glorious.

[onikage]

I typically don't go more than 5-10 miles out of my way for a game/deal. There are several EB/GS/Target/KMart stores within a 10 mile radius, so there's no real need to go further. The only time I've driven much further than 5-10 miles was during the first 3 for $15 sale at GC. I probably drove a total of around 125 miles in directions I normally wouldn't go, but it was definitely worth it.

[STATIC3D]

botticus,

I was just talking about GS and EB. There are TONS of BB, Wal-Marts (not that I shop there), Target, etc. stores beyond the 8 GS/EBs.

[pinoy530]

I drove to a GS 17 miles away twice in two days to get Valkyrie profile last week. First time I went there, someone already put it on hold but I called later that night and the guy didnt pick it up so they let me buy it the next day.

I've driven 170 miles before to go to different game stores, but I guess that doesnt really count since I was just going from home to back to my college apt.

[botticus]

botticus,

I was just talking about GS and EB. There are TONS of BB, Wal-Marts (not that I shop there), Target, etc. stores beyond the 8 GS/EBs.
I know, that was my first response: 11 EB/GS ;) The rest of that stuff is within a small radius.