Atomic Comics and Gaming

Yesterday evening I stopped by the closest FLGS to my house, Atomic Comics and Gaming, on Broadway, roughly across the street from HEB Central Market. The store is relatively new, having opened within the past year and has a great location right in the heart of a busy retail district. I was initially hopeful, as from the street I spotted a rack of board games on the wall. Unfortunately, once I inside I found what looked to me like a store on the ropes.

First the positives:

• Gaming Space: The store has dedicated 2-3 gaming tables at the back which are for free, open gaming. Though the lighting in the store seemed just a tad dim and the space a bit cramped for the number of tables, this looked area looked like it would work for a small group.


• Location: For me the location, about 3 miles from my house, is ideal. Plus, being across the street from Central Market and a few other good eating places would make any mid-game-day reprovisioning quite convenient. Parking around the corner on a side street seemed adequate.


• Video Games: One thing I think every FLGS should have is a few arcade games. Its always fun between game sessions to blow off some steam with a good fighting game and even have a quick king of the hill type tournament against your gaming group. Atomic Comics has a 2-3 arcade games in the store set up for just this sort of fun.


• FFG presence: The store did have Marvel Heroes and World of Warcraft on the shelf, priced at full retail.

Now the negatives:

• Lighting: The entire store could use a healthy increase in footcandles. My overall impression was that the store had a dark and dreary atmosphere inside. Last night actually had clear skies, so I don't think this can be blamed on cloudy winter weather. In particular if we were to ever use the gaming space, lighting might become an issue.


• Atmosphere: Thinking back, I'm not sure whether the actual temperature in the store was cold or whether this impression was merely psychological. The floor of the store is not carpeted and the ratio of merchandise to floorspace is pretty low, giving the impression that the store seems somewhat barren. The walls of store were painted with a dark color, with lots of comic posters all over the place. My overall impression of the store's "theme" was was that it seemed like a converted basement bedroom of a comic-geek teenager. The girl behind the counter had bouncey Tejano music playing through the store audio system, which at least to me, didn't seem to go too well with the pseudo-gothic theme of the store.


• Merchandise: The board game content was approximately 5-10 games, all priced at full retail. I don't remember exactly what all of them were, but other than the FFG stuff I don't remember being impressed by the selection. A few Steve Jackson titles, I believe... On the store's website they adverstise as being a certified hub for all things Wizkids. I figured I'd at least be able to get an occasional in-the-neighborhood fix of a Mechwarrior CMG booster or two from the store. Unfortunately, they didn't have a single booster pack from the game in stock. I did see a few Heroclix items on sale, plus a fair amount of Magic and a few other CCGs. Overall, the store seemed about 80% comics.


• Activity Level: I visited the store at approximately 7 PM on a Thursday night. I was the only customer in the store. No gaming activity of any kind was underway. One of the fun things about going to an FLGS is seeing what other geeks are playing. Perhaps this isn't entirely a fair criticism of the store itself, but the activity level in the store was zero.

Conclusions:

• The store is hurting. Maybe I came on a bad night, but the store was dead. I was looking forward to throwing them a bone or two, but I honestly couldn't find anything I was remotely interested in buying.


• We are very lucky to have a store like Dragon's Lair in our town. I need to shop there just a bit more to show my support.