Quick Read: A Trip To CEX
[Midweek Read] Heading out to my local retro shop
If you live in the UK, Europe or Mexico then there’s a good chance you’ve heard of CEX: Complete Entertainment Exchange.
This is a British chain of second hand shops that deal in electronics, DVD’s, accessories and most importantly: video games. The inherently environmentally friendly premise of CEX, its low prices, excellent online marketplace and a business model that gives you generous in-store credit for bringing in unwanted goods have made it a commercial powerhouse and virtually the last remaining second hand video game retailer on the high street; I built most of my retro collection through this chain.
Yesterday, I decided to pop in CEX on the way to the gym, trade in 2 unwanted controllers and see what I could get.
I’m not sponsored by/affiliated with CEX in any way.
The Selection
One of my favourite parts of CEX is that you never know what you’re going to find; this isn’t a chain that receives brand-new, sealed video games like Gamestop or GAME, CEX only stocks what people bring in so it’s a true roulette. I’ve seen pristine N64 games, rare GameCube titles and even a NeoGeo before. I love window shopping even if I don’t get anything.
This trip didn’t disappoint either, feast your eyes.
This selection of 3DS games is among the more impressive ones I’ve ever seen. It will piss me off for all eternity that they slap these stickers on the covers instead of having them tucked into the plastic but we’ll set my nerd rage aside for now. There aren’t really any rarities here per-se but I’m very glad I bought Samus Returns back in 2023, it only cost me £31 and my copy is in mint condition.
3DS hardware and software prices are mad at the moment, if you’re not using yours then you’re sitting on money my friend.
I have to say, my heart sank a little bit seeing this little stack of Original Xbox games.
When I used to visit this branch of CEX a few years ago they had a mighty collection but now it’s dwindled to nothing; maybe it’s popular? Or maybe they can’t justify the shelf space for games that don’t sell? Who knows?
There are some good ones here: Return To Castle Wolfenstein is considered the best in that series by some, Operation Flashpoint: the precursor to Arma is great and KOTOR is in my top 10 games ever… we’ll try to ignore Driver 3 rubbing shoulders with these classics.
Ah man, my heart always sinks when I see either a Pikachu or Pokémon N64. That Pikachu Edition with the button in the critter’s foot was the version of the console I grew up with: the one I got for my 9th birthday but I was forced to sell it when we moved across the country and now it costs more than a holiday to Spain.
If you’re not in the retro scene then you might not know this but GameCube hardware and software prices are at an all-time high, I’ve noticed since this increase they’ve moved all the GameCube games behind the glass with the other big-ticket items.
A little to the left there was a small selection of SNES, Dreamcast and NES games.
My eyes widened at that copy of Paper Mario, that’s a notoriously pricey game: most of the Nintend0 64 library is less than £30. I hope whoever brought that in treated themselves to a nice dinner and I hope whoever buys it takes care of it. That’s the sort of thing I’d buy on the spot if I was a collector with a lot of cash to spare.
What a sad looking Dreamcast, it was quite yellow in-person, I think if you’re going to test and to clean up things that get brought in to be sold on, you might as well give it the Retrobrite treatment as well.
I spotted this pristine looking pair of Game Boy Colours; I have a teal one too and it doesn’t look anywhere near as good as this one. The prices are a little bit extortionate but no doubt, modded with a backlight and fitted with a cartridge containing a disgusting amount of ROMs, one of these will make somebody very happy indeed.
Let’s be honest too: the Game Boy Colour is unbelievably aesthetic, even if you don’t use them they look pretty on a shelf.
Next to the Game Boys I was shocked not only to see a game for the Sega Saturn but also for the, arguably even more ill-fated and obscure Sega Mega 32x.
Every day I thank God that child me didn’t break any of his Pokémon cartridges, these things are worth so much now. £40 for a game that weighs less in data than a modern JPEG but we don’t buy numbers and code, we buy memories and feelings; when you have nostalgia or a calling to play an old game, you pay what passion demands.
If I wasn’t in the process of saving or if my voucher wound up being a lot more I might have folded and bought that Neo Geo pocket Colour, what a sexy little device.
By the way, if you’re a newer retro gamer than I strongly advise you not to bother paying for original Memory Cards like that one for the GameCube, the 3rd party options today are cheap, plentiful and store a huge number of saves; I bought a £20 one from Amazon about 4 years ago and it’s still not full.
Shout out to that Game ‘N’ Watch.
There were rows upon rows of Fat PS2’s, Xbox 360’s and such behind the glass but these are cheap and relatively uninteresting.
I once bought Soul Reaver 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2 from this very same branch of CEX, now the PS2 section is 75% shovelware.
Seeing the word ‘soccer’ on a PAL video game was an out of body experience.
The Goods
I took this trip to CEX to get rid of two gamepads: my Hori Octa Fighting Commander Tekken 8 Edition: a gamepad made for fighting games that I no longer use because I prefer an arcade stick and to pawn off my Sega Saturn Model 1 controller; I got the Model 2 back in the Summer and it’s better in every way.
Despite buying from CEX pretty regularly this was actually my first time selling to the chain; a lot of collectors keep this stuff as an investment and my family often remind me that this stuff will be worth a lot of money in future (or already in the case of my Saturn library and my rather large Dreamcast selection) but I don’t buy consoles and games to sell on or as an investment, I buy things I want to play and to preserve.
I had to wait in line for a while since I was there during lunch hour and they test most items there and then but once I did finally make it to the counter the process was painless.
I handed over both controllers, got a look like I’d just dropped the words ‘Sega’ ‘Saturn’ and ‘Model 1’ in a row on accident and waited briefly for them to test the Hori; the Sega Saturn isn’t exactly a console you come across every day so they couldn’t test it but gave me the benefit of the doubt since the pad was in good condition and my Hori worked fine.
I took a cool £29 CEX voucher for my troubles, which was more than I expected; it’s my birthday on Sunday and I knew I wanted to place an order that evening so I had it emailed to my account’s linked address instead of taking a lower amount in real cash.
But what did I spend it on?
I’ll have to show you the goods in a follow-up note since my little Bond-pack hasn’t arrived yet but this is what I ordered.
The World Is Not Enough (N64) = £10
007 Everything Or Nothing (GCN) = £8
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64) = £8
007 Nightfire (GCN) = £5
This order was £31 in total but thanks to my voucher it cost a singular Great British Pound and the rest of it was shipping costs. My order would have been £43 but came out to around £14, nice!
If you grew up in the heyday of the PS2, GameCube and Xbox like me then you’ll know the 007 license was a seal of quality; I have Agent Under Fire for PS2 already but have never owned Nightfire or Everything Or Nothing so I’m happy to add those to the collection, especially as they run better on GameCube.
For the N64 I picked up the cult-classic The World Is Not Enough and Rogue Squadron. TWINE isn’t a Bond film I think too highly of but Nintendo 64 enthusiasts often claim the game is as good as Goldeneye so I’m eager to test that claim; Rogue Squadron was the first N64 game I played on real hardware back when I was 9 years old and got it for my birthday so I’ll be happy to replay it, especially with the Expansion Pak which improves the performance.
Since First Light has been delayed, I decided to dose up on Bond to stave off the withdrawal.
I Am Entirely Shameless
I will review literally anything, it’s your fault, you all platformed me.
Fast forward a little and I found myself wobbly-kneed post leg day and in need of some grub and a good coffee. I’m not sure if Costa exists outside of the UK but essentially? What you’re looking at is British Starbucks except the coffee is better, the variety is more narrow and the food is slightly worse; I’m not a snob, so I order it anyway.
My cappuccino (yes, I’m drinking it past midday Italians, you’ll have to deal with it) had that typical over-roasted, burnt coffee shop taste but it wasn’t overpowering and the foamy milk and chocolate dusting kept me satisfied in a 7 year old eating too much chocolate sort of way.
The panini was made of brie, bacon and chili jam and came out piping hot so I had to leave it for a minute in order to not end up looking like a Feral Ghoul. The bacon was a bit leathery but tasted pleasant, the chili jam added a nice little peppery zing and the brie… didn’t really taste like brie that much but it was gooey, salty and pleasant enough though trying to eat gooey foods and drink huge foamy coffees with a beard is like a real-life quick time event.
It was good, Humanity Restored.
Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.
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I wonder if CEX shops are like charity shops. Everyone says you find the best charity shop clothes in like Kensington and Chelsea, where rich people go to drop off their fancy clothes. I wonder if there’s a CEX that has a shit ton of rare and exciting games. Or if they’re all a little bit like TK Maxx where you just have to buckle in and flick through, hoping to come across a gem. 😅
I remember the GAME in Oxford Street was the pinnacle for finding brand new PlayStation games second hand, as it was where all the PS office employees came to trade in their monthly free games they didn’t want. 🤫
Interesting thing about CEX and the pronunciation which I learned through Spotify adverts - the C is said with an S sound, so now imagine saying it out loud 🤣
These kind of shops are great. Though they do remind me of when I had to sell my older consoles like the Master System, Mega Drive and Saturn to get the next generation. When you're a child, saving pocket money only got you so far, so you had to also sell your real estate. I now really regret having to do that, so now all my older consoles are packed up under my bed, never to be sold. You never know when you'll want to play them again.
It was great to read about your shopping trip though, much more fun than when I usually go shopping!