Video game stores used to be a thing of beauty. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago, specialty shops selling consoles and games were still a relatively new thing, and the standalone, non-chain stores were often packed to the gills of domestic and import games and hardware, living museums to the then-current round of consoles (this would have been around the PSOne era). With their hyper-organized floor plans and same-y collections, modern game stores have thoroughly Wal-Mart’d up the hobby, restricting off-beat and odd game purchases to eBay or sites like PlayAsia.

Enter The Grid, a concept store which popped up in a Charlotte, North Carolina shopping center. Opened by Goodwill, the shop looks like what would happen if you stumbled back into the era of CRT TVs and ubiquitous copies of Battle Arena Toshinden.

Imgur user ltra1n collected some great pics from The Grid, which houses what appears to be a little something from every generation of consoles (and even a couple of arcade cabinets). Plus, I’m going to go ahead and assume that the person who named the shop had a lot of love for old-school games/TRON.

There are quite a few 16-bit era games in their original boxes along with peripherals in their original packaging. Also: Sega Saturn and original PSOne games remain, I believe, the gold standard of way too big boxes in console gaming.

According to the poster, 90% of the profits from game sales go to charity, which makes the venture even more appealing.

So Goodwill, what would it take to get The Grid locations opened up in other cities? Because I’m guessing some L.A. locals might love to donate/buy some classic games.

To see more images of The Grid, head over to ltra1n’s Imgur page.

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IMAGE: Wikimedia via Evan-Amos