We never had game shops around me that look like the ones we saw online in other countries, those looked like relatively cool places to have around. I also once told a friend coming from the US to buy me a whole bunch of used games from a Gamestop and I was amazed how cheap they were. We only had overpriced originals or super cheap pirated games here, used cheap originals were neat.

I wouldn’t hang out in such a place as an adult (and I’m icked by retail-as-community-space) but maybe as a teenager it would have seemed nice. Just being able to ask the people working there for opinions or recommendations was probably a big part of how games work for people I’d imagine.