Closing brick-and-mortar stores in the days of selling video games is routine practice these times. But at a small town in the Midwest, a closing GameStop store left behind an unusual something: a huge window poster of Master Chief, the legendary icon of the Halo franchise. This big picture, still hanging there by a year and a half since the Ames, Iowa, store closed its doors on January 18, 2024, has become a nice reminder of community pride and recognition, as reported by Ames Tribune.
GameStop, which had nearly 6,700 stores in 2015, has been gradually shutting them down. It is ridiculously simple nowadays to download games, and this has made selling games on disc not as cool and harder for retailers like GameStop. We don’t really know the reasons for shutting down this specific store in Ames, but it is in line with bigger trends in legacy retail.
Although the store is vacant, the enormous Master Chief poster remains. It’s as if a melancholy reminder of how gamers once game shopped stores. This photo completely resonated with the local populace and Halo gamers. Others have even made pilgrimages to the location, with some wearing complete Master Chief costumes, utilizing the abandoned store as a setting for photos and to demonstrate how much individuals are still infatuated with the character. To them, Master Chief’s emotionless face brings with it a strange sense of comfort, a cozy nostalgia for when GameStop was a busy hub of their gaming universe.
As GameStop experiments with new sources of income, such as through the sale of trading cards, the Master Chief poster at Ames is a lasting reminder. It is not just a reminder of how long characters in games can remain popular, but of how much people are invested in their games and hobbies, even when companies shift. This one image is a soft reminder of one shopping moment fading away, but one that is leaving memories behind to endure.
