Seattle’s retro gaming scene is basically a treasure hunt disguised as a coffee-fueled lifestyle. It’s where flannel-wearing collectors, caffeine-addled speedrunners, and nostalgia historians roam the aisles of dusty game shops like archeologists hunting for buried cartridges. Somewhere between Pike Place and a Side Street arcade, you’ll find people debating the superiority of NES controllers while sipping $6 lattes, all with the intensity of a Seahawks game.

The city has enough retro game stores, conventions, and collector meetups to make you think it’s secretly powered by a giant SNES in a basement somewhere. Local arcades still glow with CRT screens and the comforting hum of pinball machines, while garage sales offer the occasional jackpot—sometimes literally, if someone left a working Neo Geo in a box. In Seattle, retro gaming isn’t just a hobby; it’s a lifestyle, a mild obsession, and an excuse to justify owning more plastic than IKEA.