Here at Aeropause, we have always had a love-hate relationship with Gamestop.  On one hand, we have always decried some of their practices and even the service as being disasterous, but then we have had some Gamestop managers actually come to the site and ask us for our input on past shopping excursions.  That said, I was ill-prepared for the Gamestop I saw a few weeks ago while on a weekend getaway to the Universal Studios area.  I ran into what could be the most meticulously kept and most qualified staff I have ever run into at a Gamestop.  The pictures are from my Blackberry Storm, so they are not the best, but you can get the general idea of how great this store looked.

This particular Gamestop is located at the Universal Citywalk, a huge tourist trap near the entrance to Universal Studios.  I believe it is also a test store for Gamestop as there were some concepts I had not seen up to this point at a Gamestop.  They had multiple gamestations where you could play on any system.  The games were in alphabetical order on the shelves, and almost their entire section of used games, had original cases (a big deal for a Gamestop).  The staff never badgered me about trades or subscribing to Game Informer, and were pretty hands off, with the exception of greeting me as I walked through the door.

The biggest plus was the knowledgeable staff on hand to answer questions.  Most Gamestops seem to hire the most ill-informed employees on the planet.  The kind of employees that would tell someone a PS3 is backwards compatible, because they had no clue that it was not.  I have Gamestop staff tell me games are not coming to the PC, even though the games were already out and on shelves at other stores.  But at this Gamestop, I was asking a few questions about a used 60GB PS3, and during the quiz session, the guy behind the counter chatted me up about some games I found out he was a fan of Wasteland, and knew of the second story in the paragraph guide in the book.  Very geeky and very impressive.  I could of just come on a lucky night, but it seems that while overhearing other conversations, the entire staff on site for that evening knew what they were talking about.

Now I would not want to drive the 60 or so miles to get to this Gamestop on a regular basis, but it will be on my places to stop list when I am in the area.