Retro Games Earn Returns?

DANO WEIR: I got two investments, Jason.

DANO WEIR: One in my right hand, one in my left hand.

DANO WEIR: Comes in at a reasonable value. And then it tanks. And it's down. And it's over. And people are done with it. And that's passe.

DANO WEIR: And then when no one's looking, it creeps up in value. And before long, it's actually worth more than it was in the first place.

DANO WEIR: Am I talking about Apple stock or a rare retro video game?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: In this case, it's a video games. Yeah. Or maybe both. Or it could be, but I mean, I don't follow Apple stock too closely. Well, I do. They're very similar.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Fair enough.

DANO WEIR: Financial money is really good. If you're checking out, It's All Money.

DANO WEIR: Hey, welcome to Petaluma. This is It's All Money powered by Sonoma Wealth Advisors. My name is Dan O'Weir. I'm the marketing director for Sonoma Wealth Advisors. Hello to our clients and prospective clients.

DANO WEIR: Hello to Nostalgia Alley fans. We'll tell you more in just a moment. I want to introduce my guest first. He is the owner, operator, and creator of Nostalgia Alley, a retro game store in Petaluma. He's Jason Morehouse. Welcome, Jason.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me on.

DANO WEIR: I want to set the scene for video games in general. Maybe it was, maybe your kids are playing Minecraft right now. Maybe for you, it was super Mario world when you were growing up, or maybe your dad or mom used to play a Tron cabinet in the arcades back in the day. Video games strangely have this sort of like basement vibe still that it's isolationist and that it's sort of over here on the side.

DANO WEIR: And yet, would you believe? All of recorded music and all of Hollywood's box offices, box office receipts, that revenue combined. Video game revenue is double both of those combined. If video game revenue, which is estimated $200 billion, was its own country, its own economy, it would be the 27th biggest economy in the world.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It's pretty wild to think about.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And, you know, if you look at it too, like one of the biggest video game franchises you there is is pokemon which is i think bigger than like the top three like two three and four combined as well so like star wars and whatever else is on there like pokemon's bigger than that and i know pokemon doesn't just account as a video game because there's also the card game the tv show but it's it's all adjacent so yeah the the nerds are rising man we're here so if you're from Nostalgia Alley if you're new to our podcast.

DANO WEIR: Hey, I'm one of you. I come to the shop on weekends and I love this store and I've gotten to know Jason and Rebecca and their family and it's just such a cool business story that I knew I wanted to host a podcast episode and tell that story today because today's episode is about being an entrepreneur.

DANO WEIR: Today's episode is about customer service and the purpose of this show is trying to show that what we do, we are a financial advisor over in Sonoma. We work with prospective clients like yourself, but we also educate.

DANO WEIR: And I personally like to show that everything's a market. You know, everything is a market. And it's not just, you know, what you're investing in, your time and your money isn't always just stocks and bonds. So that's kind of what we're talking about today on the show.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah. When you think about everything is a market, there's some things that I wouldn't even dream about being a market that I've seen. And I'm not going to talk about on this show, but it just there's a niche out there for everyone. And so. If you could find that niche, you can build a business out of it and, you know, support a living by doing that. And that is what he does.

DANO WEIR: That is what he does here in the store. We are on Petaluma Boulevard in Petaluma. It's in a historic building, and I'm surrounded by thousands and thousands of games from the Super Nintendo. We're sitting next to the Xbox and Xbox 360 rack, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, Sega Genesis.

DANO WEIR: I mean, we'll talk through some of the titles today. We'll see some of the. Some of your merchandise some of the collectibles you have but let's start with the story how does one wake up and start a video game a retro video game store in Petaluma how did you end up owning this store well there's different like kind of things.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: That have had to come together for this all to happen but you know like most people I enjoy playing video games and it's something that I like to do all my free time so that was one part of it and the other part of it is I just don't like being told what to do.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I wanted to be my own boss. And so if you could find a way to do that, to me, it was like, well, that's the logical thing to do. I was working a job that was kind of a...

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Dead-end job it was really cool in terms of like being able to help people but in terms of finances I you know I was barely making above minimum wage at the time and and so for me and my wife now because she was working in the same industry we thought if we take the risk to do this what are we going to lose can we go back to this job yes we can so why not you know dive dive off and see what happens.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And that's kind of what we did. And it wasn't just, you know, an overnight thing.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It took years in this of us kind of working and gathering and trying to put all the pieces together. California, there's a lot of things that kind of a lot of loopholes you have to jump through in order to get to where you want to be in a business.

DANO WEIR: You know, I've heard that.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah. It's, it's strange. You'd think they would want everybody to do it because they want our tax money, but no, they, they, they make, make you do the work.

DANO WEIR: So you want to get paid on the front and back at the middle. And, Well, what does day one look like, though? I mean, do you remember the first, this is all the inventory that's surrounding us. This is a used retro game store.

DANO WEIR: This is all inventory that you've purchased. So do you remember the first game that you bought, the first purchase you made that would lead towards your store, and what was it, and how much did it cost, and where was it?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Okay, so we're going back in time now, because, so the store opened in November of 2018, Bye. I had been planning on all this stuff, and I think it was probably March of 2013. So that's kind of when I decided I want to open up a retro video game store. And so I got all the money I had, which is, you know, maybe 100 extra bucks in my life, and I went to a yard sale.

DANO WEIR: $100.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I was broke, dude. I was... Cash. It's what I had, you know? I mean, I had some extra money to pay my rent. What year? 2013. 13. 13, yeah. Sorry, I missed that. No, it's good. And so I, you know, this is my extra, you know, pocket change or whatever it is. And I didn't have a lot of extra. So this was a lot of money.

DANO WEIR: This was your margin to gamble on your dream.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah. What do you say it like that? Oh my gosh. But it's true. It's what it was. And so I went to a yard sale and my shtick was, hey, you guys have any video games? And I was like, you know what? I have a DS and some DS games.

DANO WEIR: Okay. So this is a handheld Nintendo and games for it.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yep.

DANO WEIR: And this is where, what city?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Ah, this was in. Mountain View. Mountain View, okay. Yeah, so at the time I lived in San Jose. Okay. And so this was, yeah, I think San Jose.

DANO WEIR: Okay.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Somewhere around there.

DANO WEIR: Remember one of the games?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I don't, it was, there were, yeah, Etron Odyssey was one of them. And at the time I was like, oh my God, this game is so expensive. It's worth like $35.

DANO WEIR: And you just do that because you were into gaming.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes, yeah, yeah.

DANO WEIR: But the person who was selling it did not.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I don't know if they knew it or didn't know it. You know, that's.

DANO WEIR: They just wanted to get rid of it.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: They wanted to get rid of it. You know, that's what yard sales are. It's to get rid of the stuff you don't care about anymore.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Hopefully get it to someone who does care about it and i don't exactly remember what i paid the guy because he had like maybe five or six games and little ds system and mind you at the time no one really cared about video games like for retro stuff they wanted the ps3 the PS4 was getting ready to come out so that kind of stuff was more of a thing and so maybe i paid the guy 30 for all the stuff because that's what he he said he's like give me 30 bucks take it i'll be happy you're happy cool we did it and i was like oh you know, I get home and I'm like, oh wow, this is like $80 worth of stuff at the time.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Like, that's a great deal. I can, I have a $50 come up on this. And when you only have a hundred dollars to your name.

DANO WEIR: If it's an over a hundred percent return.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It's amazing. Right. And I'm like, I could do this. And then you start driving around and you're spending six, seven hours a day looking at yard sales and you get nothing else. So then I'm like, my time is not so good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, but one of those things where. I had more time than I had money at the time.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And so my time was worth less because I had more of it. Whereas my money was worth more. So I couldn't just go to a shop and buy something. I had to find it for the cheap. And then you do that over and over and again for, you know, whatever, 2013 to 2018 is five years.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And at that point you have a garage full of stuff. And I, I mean, I had a lot of stuff and I turned into the store. Fortunately for me, my wife, Rebecca is. A lot smarter than I am. So she was able to do all the paperwork for California. Well, it's a different type of- You're smart to know that. Yes. That's what I'm saying.

DANO WEIR: You're smart to be able to admit that.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes. And we all have skill sets, right? And so fortunately for me, Rebecca's skill sets are where my deficits are and my skill sets are where some of her deficits are. So we really complimented each other on a lot of those things.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And now we get to the first day of the store being open and Wait.

DANO WEIR: What did she say when you said, hey, babe?

DANO WEIR: I think I want to start a game store because, because there, there is, you are in a long line of husbands who've had a big idea and now you have to actually present it to your wife. What was her response?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Okay. So I'll tell you what her response would be now versus back then. Her response now would be like, that's stupid. Let's not do that. Her response back then was like super supportive. She was on the same page because she was very similar to me. Always wanted to have a business. Didn't like people telling her what to do.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So we were kind of on the same page about that. And she's like, let's do this. This works. You're passionate. I'm passionate. Let's do it. Nowadays, now that we see how much work it is, maybe, maybe not. Shines off a little bit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I still absolutely love the job and so does she. But your priorities change over the years.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And now we have a six-year-old and, you know, what we want to do with him. And maybe the time that this job takes up, it's a little complicated. But I think she overall still really appreciates what this business has allowed us to do in our lives. So, you know, maybe she would say yes, but she'd be a little bit more hesitant.

DANO WEIR: Back to when you were talking about the garage sale, because we see this in the stock market all the time, which is these kind of prevailing, you can call them the vibes or the narratives or whatever it is. And just as an example, last summer, everything was AI. Everything's going to be, ChatGPT is going to be the greatest IPO of all time.

DANO WEIR: Who is Claude? X, Y, and Z, fill in the blank. We're all building data centers. Meta's doing this for AI. Mark Zuckerberg's with the president. Disney had something.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, yeah. They all did it.

DANO WEIR: By the fall, it was suddenly over. And everyone was like, this is overblown. And you could see it. And you could see it in the financials. People were backing off of it.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Sure.

DANO WEIR: And then again, now in the new year, here comes a new push. And suddenly, ChatGPT's done. And Claude's the one to be. Right. So I say that to say when you're talking about games, when you went to that guy at the garage sale in 2013, I felt it.

DANO WEIR: Right. Which is that like NES, Genesis, these games from the 90s, these systems from the 90s. I lived through that. I bought all those new and they were hot. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, we're off that now. Everything's on a disc.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes.

DANO WEIR: And you're just like, oh, what about all the stuff I bought? Yeah, we're we're not doing that. We're off that.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And if you went to GameStop, you got pennies on the dollar for what it was. Yeah.

DANO WEIR: So it's an interesting case of you literally bought low. And then because of factors out of your control, the market came back.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Absolutely. And so to be honest, too, I was into video. So 2013 is when I decided to do the store stuff. But I had been buying before that because I still cared about the NES. That's my favorite. The original Nintendo system is my favorite. And so I remember in January of 2007, the neighborhood I was living in did a.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Big community-wide garage sale type thing and i was going around like oh my god NES like i had one of these when i was a kid and it like it got lost in a move my life was weird how much for this and the guy's like 20 bucks and you could take some games with you i was over the moon about it i'm like take my money i had worked i didn't get work in like 45 minutes i went upstairs i set that up i played a game like the first level of Mario and i was hooked I was so sad I had to go to work that day.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And I couldn't wait to get off work just to get back and kind of just relive my childhood a bit. And, you know, I got like five or six games that day, but the one I was most excited about was the original Mario game because it just had so much feels to it. You know, I'm smiling right now because it's true, and I'm getting little shivers because I just think about how excited I was.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And now I see Mario every single day, but it's still, it's a part of my life, you know, and that was a happy part of my childhood to have that. And so I had been buying from 2007 all the way up to 2013. But, you know, again, broke college student. You just pick and choose when you can. And so I didn't have a lot of stuff.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: But 2013 was when, like you said, the market was super low. No one really cared about that stuff. And so I could go and I could get these games. And people were like, please take them. I was going home with carloads of stuff. And Rebecca was like, what the heck are you doing, man? Like, trust me, I didn't know what I was doing.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: You gotta you gotta pretend like you do sometimes and it turns out i did because now around 2016 things just started shooting up and that 30 dollar Etron Odyssey was now worth 50 dollars right so it almost doubled in price in just a couple years and then 2018 comes around and all these games people are just starting to really get into it people want to relive their childhood and what does that mean right so nostalgia like what's nostalgic for me might be different than you might be different from...

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: 10 year old kid who played Minecraft, right? I don't care about Minecraft, but someone out there does. And so sometimes when people come in here, they'll see like a PS4 game. Like, that's not nostalgic. I'm like, not for you, but this kid over here, it is. And so the market's just ever turning, right?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: You know, you could be a 30, 40-year-old man, and you could find a game in here, and then you could also be a 10-year-old kid who's like, oh, my God, it's Minecraft, or whatever the title is. So we are fortunate that we have a big, what is that word?

DANO WEIR: Following?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Well, following, but also, like, demographic, right? It doesn't matter if you're male, female, young, old. We have pretty much all of them in our...

DANO WEIR: Or a little grasp and and that's where the name for the shop comes from Nostalgia Alley yeah and i'm glad you touched untouched on that on a wide a wide demographic of customers yes if you again one of the reasons why i wanted to tell this story is not only you know have i enjoyed coming in here because i i do like video games surprise so do your kids And so do my kids. They may have been taught by their father.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: A little bit.

DANO WEIR: When you come in here on a Saturday in Petaluma, this is one of the busiest spots in town. Yeah. You're in downtown and it is, I mean, it's cooking in here.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Sometimes you can't walk in here. Well, you can walk in here. Totally can't, Fire Marshal.

DANO WEIR: And so one of the first times I came in here, you know, there was so much activity, it was bustling. And I've just like, and I've lived in Petaluma my whole life.

DANO WEIR: You know there's something happening here this is kind of I don't say movement but it's just like there's there is there is interest in what's happening in the store too yeah do you remember like the first you know Saturday that you saw that opening the store in 2018 how long did it take to develop that okay so those are two different questions because there's kind of two parts on that so I'm just saying when was was there an early moment or did it take several years until you knew that you know proof of concept this business is going to work yeah so okay so the first Saturday we opened.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Like we had a line outside and I was shocked by it. I'm like, cool, if we could do a couple hundred dollars in sales, like I'm pretty happy with that. And I had zero expectations. I didn't know, right? This is all just a guess. But the first Saturday, like there was a pretty big line down the street, like for people to come in.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And like, there was like a guy from the newspaper. I don't remember which one it was like the Bohemian or something like that. And he was doing like a Facebook live and people were excited and like, we were busy nonstop that day. And I was, I was like, we did it.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: We won you know okay lock the doors go home we made 500 bucks no i think we did i think we did it like probably like 1800 that day which blew my expectations out of the water profit or total total sales okay yeah yeah i mean i it's doing the profit on that's hard because when we first opened like all the stuff i bought from yard sales and so i didn't really track what i was doing which If you ever do something like this, track what you're doing because you need to know your cogs.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I heard that. Cost of goods. I heard that, yeah. Yeah. No one told me this, though. I was blind. Like, no one told me how to run a business. No one told me what I need to do to ins and outs.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And so now I'm usually a little bit more helpful when people are like, hey, I want to start a business. Do you have any advice? I usually will tell them certain things because it's, if I would have known those things. It would have made my life so much better.

DANO WEIR: What's one thing you have the ear of an entrepreneur, right? Yeah.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Well, if you're doing like physical items, track your, it will especially use once track your cogs. Also write your goals down. I, this is one thing I did know, but this, I tell everybody this smart goals. Smart is the acronym on that, but be very specific, make it measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bounded. If you could do those things right there, you could do so much more with your life.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And that's true for exercise. It's true for starting a business, trying to get out of debt if that's something you care about. But you've got to be very specific and track what you're doing. So those are the two absolute biggest things. Know what you have, know what it's worth and what you paid for it, and then track your progress by setting smart goals.

DANO WEIR: Let's talk about customer service because, again, one of those early times that I came into the store, I had, full transparency, had some really bad experiences in, not game stores.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Oh, I thought you meant with me. No. I was like, no.

DANO WEIR: In stores that are like this.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Sure.

DANO WEIR: None in town because they've all gone, but in other places as well.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Right.

DANO WEIR: You know, the record store, the video store. Absolutely. So this is the niche collector who's very passionate. And they are actually opening the store just to talk to other niche collectors like them and ignore the common folk, ignore, ignore the new person, you know, and be have really specific conversations. And so and kind of I have been in stores like that, not all, but some. And I've just felt looked down on.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah.

DANO WEIR: When I came in here the first time, you started talking to me and you started asking me, hey, how are you doing? But what do you think? So.

DANO WEIR: Was that a conscious customer service philosophy? And where does that come from?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I don't know if it was conscious, but it was definitely, it's part of who Rebecca and I are. We want to treat everybody the same. And I don't care, you know, if you're the most knowledgeable video game person in the world, or you're a 90 year old grandma looking for something that she wants to get her grandkids who are into, you know, Pokemon.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: We will talk to you the same and we'll treat you the same as long as that's reciprocating, you know, like if you're going to be a turd, maybe you're not going to get that.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Like extra mild but i'll still help you out you know and i've had that before not often because most people will come into the shopper like what this is the coolest thing ever so you get a big smile on your face you're happy you're excited you get to you get to see all the fun stuff and we've had people like come in and they're like oh we don't play video games but then they're like oh wait miss pac-man i love that so they start changing their tune but i i just want to be good the people and I think I've been to enough stores like what you refer to whether it's comic books, video games, vinyl records, whatever it is, I've gone to the stores where I felt looked down upon, even if I knew more than the person did about whatever it is that they're selling or talking about.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And I've had those experiences. So I want to make sure other I guess it was consciously because I want to make sure people didn't also have that bad experience. And it's it's a little disheartening when you go to a place and you're just like, that's so cool. But the person was a turd.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And so when we hire people, I tell them, I'm like, I don't care what you know about video games. I care who you are as a person. Because if you come in here and you're talking down on people because, oh, the Xbox One isn't that good or whatever it is, you know, I'm just making something up.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Like, how dare you play that? Like, who cares? Don't yuck on someone's yum, you know, like let them enjoy what they enjoy. But I can't, I could teach you about video games. I can't teach you how to be a good person. And so that's, it is pretty important to us. And I'll tell you a story that's.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Pretty much sums up everything we we had we get people who travel to us from Sacramento San Jose santa cruz i was gonna say that it's incredible i mean this is literally a destination shop you're bringing you are bringing people to Petaluma all the time yeah all the time i mean and they they'll come here they'll buy video games they'll go out to eat food they'll they'll stay at the hotels like it's shocking to me how much of a like how much business we bring to this city and it makes me copy.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So one day this guy comes up, I believe he was from Sacramento area. I'm not exactly sure where, but in that, that general location. And it was him, his girlfriend and one other woman. I think it was probably his girlfriend's friend or whatever, two females. And so the guy walks in first. He clearly was the guy who was in the video games. He had a shirt on all that stuff, you know? And so it was like, Hey man, how's it going?

DANO WEIR: He had a girlfriend though.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: He had a girlfriend. He did have, I know shock. Really? Yes. It happens.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So he brings us, he, we say hi. Cause he was the first one in. And then I look at his girlfriend and the friend she was with and like, Oh, and how are you guys doing? And I, I kid you not. They looked at me. They looked around to see if there's anyone behind him. And I said, are you talking to me? Like, yeah, yeah, of course I'm talking to you.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: She's like, you were the first person to ever acknowledge me at a video game store. And I've been to a lot of video game stores. Wow. And that just, it kind of broke my heart a little bit. Like, I don't know, like, okay, if I'm being weird about it, like, her money is just as good as your money.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: But also, like, she's a person. Like, why wouldn't you acknowledge her? Yeah. And so that made me happy that we were, you know, we were the first people to be able to do that for her. But her whole demeanor went from, like, oh, I'm in a video game store with my boyfriend to.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Oh, I'm at a video game store with my boyfriend, like where they see me as a person. And so I really, I'm really glad we could do that for someone. But yeah, so customer service is very, very important to us.

DANO WEIR: I've learned my, again, I grew up in Petaluma, still live in Petaluma. And, you know, I've lived through the Silicon Valley tech boom.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah.

DANO WEIR: And when people think of that, they think of Steve Jobs and they think of all of these, you know, huge Microsoft tech things. And yet, Bay Area also has some incredible video game history. And Sonoma County specifically, Northern California, the North Bay. I'm actually sitting here. I'm looking at 2K Studios, WWE 2K17.

DANO WEIR: I believe my friend Ryan Hayford worked on that game. Hey, Ryan. Shout out 2K Studios. That's in Novato.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Novato. And they also have a location in Petaluma that does their motion capture.

DANO WEIR: Yeah.

DANO WEIR: So talk to me about once you opened up the shop. You know some you can call them luminaries or celebrities or people who've had significant.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Presence in the gaming creation world have been brought designers have been part of the game oh my god so much and i'm like i'm getting the shivers thinking about all the cool people i've talked to that i never in a million years would have ever guessed and it's going to lead into a story about something else so please forgive me as i talk a lot all right so we've we've had the tease he's great he's in content this is amazing you want the show you want to you take let's do it man we could be partners partners in crime well if you talk about video games it's exciting you know.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So we've one of my wife's favorite games growing up was a monkey island and that was a lucasarts game Which lucasarts is right here in Sonoma.

DANO WEIR: George Lucas's lucasfilm gaming division made star wars and indiana jones games and also had these incredible original games Salmon Max and that's a big one monkey island and several others.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes. So monkey island So we've had a lot of those guys who dango. Yes, we just double fine studios was started off of that and he's down in San Francisco. So like, I mean, there's just a wealth of people, steeper cell who did Sam and Max. He lives in Petaluma.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I met him on the bench over here. He was, he had his dog. I didn't even know who he was. And I'm like, Oh, your dog's super cute. I'm like, wait a second. Are you Steve? He's like, yeah. So we just started chatting, you know, but you just meet people like that. Yeah. So that was super cool.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: But then we, this is where the cool story comes in that I'm most excited about. We had this guy come in, and he talked about how he worked in these different video game companies. And, oh, cool, you're one of the developers, and blah, And we talked and all that stuff, and then he went on his way.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And then he would come in here more and more, and we kind of became pretty friendly and all that. And then one day he came in, and he's like, hey, I'm developing a game right now. Is it cool if I put your dog in my game? I'm like, duh.

DANO WEIR: We haven't even talked about the dog yet.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes. We'll get there. He was definitely a big intro. Big, big part of the store. So he's like, can I put the dog in the game? I'm like, absolutely, dude, please. Yes. And then I went from the dog to, hey, this is like a month later. Can I put your store in my video game? Like, duh.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Why would you even ask that? Please. No. No.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And then like a few months later, he's like, do you want to be in the video game?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: There was words that I used that I'm not going to say on this podcast, but just know I was very excited for that. So I actually got to do a voice acting role that was this big inside this video game that ended up being this big. So not my role, but the game. And the game is Dispatch. Yeah, so AdHawk Studios, they did a killer job with this.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: If you're into video games, absolutely. What type of game is it? Not a game I would typically play, which is a very story-based. Where you kind of create your own path by choosing different things. So it'll give you four options. You could choose to do this, this, this, or this, depending on what you choose will kind of dictate the storylines, kind of choose your own type game.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes. And at the end of it, there is going to be kind of, it's going to kind of bring you to this one kind of big ending, but how that ending happens, you get like eight different options. So episode four, you get to hear my fabulous voice.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Game which is still wild to me that i'm a part of that the store is in the game Jasper is in the game so it's it's big for me and now i can die happy so that's it that was it it's done it's over that's i mean what a crazy full circle moment to own a game store and then now you know so embedded in the gaming community you're literally in a game yes Oh my God, I'm so hoping we get physical copies of this game.

DANO WEIR: Yeah, yeah, because right now it's available for fans to, for people to download and play. For those who don't know, if you're new, if you're revisiting gaming, you can buy games physical like you used to, but a lot of games these days to save on production costs will just start being able to download them.

DANO WEIR: Because we've talked about inventory, we've talked about games. Let's start with your dog. You mentioned your dog Jasper was a big part of the store. So he's holding up a stuffy of a... A really cute dog. What type of dog?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: He's a Papillon, or was a Papillon, which is French for butterfly. That's what you got these big ears on. This plush was actually designed or used, Pokemon plush, to help kind of guide how he sits and all that. So tied into video games. Jasper made it to 18 years old.

DANO WEIR: And he was your mascot when you started the store?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: He was a big mascot. Yeah, he was the mascot, and he was a big part of it. People would come in here just to see him because he talked to everyone. He was very loud. But also really cute. So people looked past it.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So Jasper is awesome. I miss him dearly, but he was a great part of the story and people still talk about him when they come in here.

DANO WEIR: And he is in the logo. If you check out their logo. So it's yourself. The logo is yourself and your wife, Rebecca in eight bit form.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Like kind of like mega man characters. Yeah.

DANO WEIR: Yeah. With, with Jasper.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So that's this guy.

DANO WEIR: He is missed.

DANO WEIR: What else have we got here on the table?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: All right. So right here we have two very, very important things. One of them is very financially important because this is a $20,000 game.

DANO WEIR: You're holding a $20,000 game.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah. I think one of the most expensive ones out there.

DANO WEIR: Write that down.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes. Find this at a yard sale.

DANO WEIR: Can you explain why that game, because I'm looking at other cartridges, I can see Silent Scope, I can see Legend of Zelda, I can see Mario, I can see Mario 2, the American version. Can you tell me why this, Stadium Events from Bandai, is $20,000?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So basically what happened was this game was released by Bandai and Nintendo.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah like 80s i don't know in the 80s in the before time before times yes there might be 87 there it is right there we got it they made this game Nintendo was like whoa what is this that is super cool we want that and this is like right at launch of this game and so Nintendo bought the rights to the game but what makes it unique again it's the i'll get there okay i'm not done yet Nintendo bought the rights to the game But they changed the name of it.

DANO WEIR: No, but the game has a motion pad or something.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, yes. So it does have a, they call it the track pad and stuff like that. It's a big old pad that you kind of stomp on it to run.

DANO WEIR: You actually jump, and then when you would actually jump, then the NES. Your character could jump, yeah. That antiquated technology was doing motion controls, basically.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It's super cool, too. Yeah, and I mean, a lot of people played it as a kid, but they didn't play this version of the game. They played the one that Nintendo put out. And then Nintendo destroyed all the copies of this game. So. Maybe there's like 500 or less that are still in existence.

DANO WEIR: Because they were released in their own version?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, it's the same exact game, just a different name. I'm tired, so I'm blanking on the name right now. But since there's so few of these copies out there, I mean, even if there was, say, like 1,000 of them, that's almost nothing in terms of collectability market or whatever.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I'm pretty sure it's less than 1,000 that are known to exist. So this game has shot up in value just because of rarity. So financially, this is a very significant piece in the Nintendo collecting world. I paid a lot of money for it, but this is a few years before it blew up to $20,000.

DANO WEIR: So it's a good return.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah. If I were to sell it. Yeah. But it's not for sale.

DANO WEIR: I'm just envisioning Rebecca being like, okay, well.

DANO WEIR: Yes. That is worth this. And you're like, I have to hold it. Yes.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, exactly. I'm like nervous. I hope I don't drop it.

DANO WEIR: Okay. So what else do you have there?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: But this right here is way more valuable because of love, right? This is something my mom bought me for my birthday. My mom is no longer with us. So this was something that like, this is the only thing from my childhood I still have left. It is, in terms of finances, it's worthless.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It's worth maybe 50 cents because it's broken. It's, I mean, it still works, but the hinges are broken on it. But because this was, you know, given to me by my mom for my birthday, this is something that I cherish more than almost anything else I own.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: This is the piece right here. So this is the highlight of my collection, and I have a lot of cool stuff. But, yeah, I will never get rid of this. I'll get rid of that 100 times over before I get rid of this.

DANO WEIR: Because that's priceless.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It's priceless.

DANO WEIR: It's such a perfect example, too. And, again, it's one of the goals of our show, which is that defining value. You know, we have a belief in a lot of reliability of value. That a dollar is worth this, except they're printing them every day.

DANO WEIR: That this, I always say Coca-Cola stock, it's just a random stock, I'm not picking it by name for any reason, is worth this until the price changes tomorrow. So it's a perfect example. This is a perfect example you're talking about. The game is worth this amount of money, and yet to you, that Tetris game.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes.

DANO WEIR: Is if you were to lose, if you had to lose one in a fire, God forbid.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, absolutely.

DANO WEIR: It would be a $20,000 game that you would lose.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: This is the one I would pick out. But funny enough, they're sitting right next to each other in my collection, so I'll grab both. Both in the vault.

DANO WEIR: Loophole. Oh, that's great.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes. But yeah, value is absolutely an interesting prospect because some people come in here and they'll see a game that's $200 or $300 and they'll laugh. Like, who would be dumb enough to pay that much money for something? Talk you up. Yeah.

DANO WEIR: What are you doing, man? Oh, man.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: We get people like that all the time. Oh, I own five copies. Okay, sure you do. Yeah, all right, dude. But then we get people coming in like, wow, that's only $200? Like, it's so funny just how people value things. And that's the same with cars or blankets or plush. I mean, we all kind of.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Care about certain things and what those things care about might not always align to what the real market is, you know? And so it's just funny just to think about those little nuances in terms of right now it's only worth a hundred, but it could be worth a hundred and 52 cause things fluctuate and just like stocks. It's life is weird. Yeah.

DANO WEIR: So, okay. So I'm sitting in, you have a party room upstairs. We can talk about that too. Can we go, go take a look?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Let's do it.

DANO WEIR: All right. So, you We are in your party room right now. We're upstairs.

DANO WEIR: Tell me the name of this room, what it's for, and what the story is behind it.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, so we're in a gamer's alley. We have arcade machines, we have Atari 2600 with Halo on there. So if you ever want to play Halo On The Atari 2600, you can do that here. We have a Switch 2, PS5, Sega Genesis, NES, 64, GameCube.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: We have a lot of really cool stuff hooked up so people can come up here and just have a good time. We've done mostly kids birthday parties but we've also hosted a Girl Scout troop and one of the most unique things we've done is we've had a wedding up here.

DANO WEIR: You had a wedding up here? That's amazing.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Wedding dress, suit, tie, looking good. Yeah.

DANO WEIR: Surrounded by retro games.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It was, I mean talking about finances, you know, they were they said, well I asked them, I'm like listen I don't care I'm actually really excited you're doing this. But why?

DANO WEIR: Why are you having your wedding in my video game room?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And he was like, listen, I can go to some winery and it's gonna be all beautiful, but I'm gonna pay like 20 to 30 thousand for that. Or I could do it here, have the time of my life, and pay 250 bucks.

DANO WEIR: So it's 250 bucks for what, two hours?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: For two hours for about 22 people.

DANO WEIR: Yeah, And the appeal is that we've got all these retro game systems if you want to come and actually play them. That's another thing I think that makes the shop unique is it's not just somewhere where you can come and buy the games, but if you're at the room, you can literally play them.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, absolutely.

DANO WEIR: Yeah, cool.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, and it's super fun, and one of the cool things we have is this projector that we're going to play Mario Kart World.

DANO WEIR: We've got the brand new Mario Kart. This came out this time last year on the Nintendo Switch 2. It's Mario Kart World. You and I both played it a little bit in our spare time. You're about to get cooked. I take no prisoners. And so I hope you're ready. We're gonna learn a lot about you by who you select as your driver, I think.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Let's see. Alright, do we want to do Grand Prix? Yeah, let's just do it.

DANO WEIR: We can do a standard Grand Prix. Alright, let's see. He is a what?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I'm like, oh you're a Luigi guy.

DANO WEIR: I'm a very boring Luigi guy.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Alright, I'm not gonna be a dweeb and go pick a girl.

DANO WEIR: I picked the bumblebee car. That's my car.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I'm gonna go with Boo.

DANO WEIR: King Boo.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I do not like the motorcycles.

DANO WEIR: I'm also not a fan of the motorcycles. Too difficult to control.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes, the control is tough.

DANO WEIR: Especially with a heavy driver like Boo.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I'm gonna go with little buggy.

DANO WEIR: So we're gonna complete the interview while I smoke you in the, what are we doing? The green shell.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Was that where.

DANO WEIR: Which one do you want to do?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Well, I was looking for Rainbow Road.

DANO WEIR: Oh, probably the last course. Yeah.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: There it is.

DANO WEIR: We're going to continue the interview while I smoke you in the special cup on Mario Kart World.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: We're going to have a good time, and if I throw a controller, just know I own it.

DANO WEIR: True or false, you recently spent $55,000.

DANO WEIR: On a video game purchase.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: That is true.

DANO WEIR: What's the story?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So a buddy of mine, he is moving across country. He's been collecting video games for a long time and he has quite the collection.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I've made a couple trips out there with the minivan and he lives about an hour and a half, two hours away. So I've got to go out there, pick stuff up, drop some money off and I missed it. And just buy a lot of really cool stuff, so it's been fun doing that.

DANO WEIR: And so did you already know what's in the collection? Nope. So sight unseen, you agreed to buy the whole thing?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes. He said it has to be all or nothing, which I was cool with. Wow.

DANO WEIR: Somebody.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Well, I knew what kind of collector he was. And although I didn't know exact things that were in there, I knew he had good taste.

DANO WEIR: All right, all right.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yes, so bought a lot of stuff and I'm not even halfway done, which is the crazy part. So he's going to be walking out with a good chunk of change.

DANO WEIR: Is that when you, I mean, that's got to be one of the bigger, more significant inventory purchases you make. And so when you co-own the business with your wife, is that you have a conversation about that? You handle that and she handles something else? How does that break out?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Well. That's a point of contention. I'm not going to lie. Genas. So I think it's hard, right? Like, money is a real thing. And, you know, although they keep printing it, it's still...

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: We still needed to pay our bills and all that. Fortunately, we are not doing bad right now, so it's...

DANO WEIR: I'd like to point out I'm in first and Jason's in fifth Yeah, you were saying you're not doing bad in business. You are in the game, but in business.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, well, both, I guess.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So, we had the money to do it, but it's hard because, you know, you just never know what people are going to bring in right now. And some days they...

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So for some months we spend about 13,000 and trade-ins on on you know on the low end and some months we spend it around 22,000 but now when you imagine you spend 55,000 that's and one this one trade-in. Yeah, BAM That's hard. And so we have to be smart about it and she's worried just because it's a lot of money But I I see the return on investment the ROI that we can make on it. So it to me it's a it's it's worth doing.

DANO WEIR: Is that the biggest single purchase you've made?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It is, yeah. By a long shot or not? By a long shot. Yeah.

DANO WEIR: But the opportunity is there and you trust the supplier basically.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah. He took very good care of his stuff so it's all clean. So like the amount of work I have to put into it is less than...

DANO WEIR: You just red shelled him by the way.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I wasn't first though. He took first for a moment. I was there.

DANO WEIR: Because I've been holding on to three red shells. Keep going. No, keep going.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, I just...

DANO WEIR: No No No I need to get my head in the game. I just won. What?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It was that darn acorn, man. It took me out. You're good. You're good.

DANO WEIR: Hey, we got some more. We got a couple more. We got three more. It's a Grand Prix.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Well, that's a nice crown.

DANO WEIR: Thank you. I'll give it to you. It suits me.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So yes, it is the biggest collection I have to date bought. And who knows what the future brings, you know?

DANO WEIR: Always a chance now you mentioned that it was in good condition so that's something we haven't touched on something that makes your business really unique i think is you the process is not take the game trade in walk over to the shelf put it on the shelf i wish my god i wish why is it let's go to the next race yeah what do you do to rehab or clean up some of this stuff and Why is that different?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, so... Back when I was going to video game stores, before we owned one, I loved buying stuff, but I hated being charged pretty much retail or above for stuff that was in subpar, dirty condition. And so one thing I wanted to make sure we did was we thoroughly clean our stuff and do our absolute best to test things and make sure that when you go home, you're not having to wash your hands afterwards.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And so that involves, you know, for older NES games, cleaning pins and cleaning the outside to some things we have to open. And it's just, it's a lot of work. It doesn't sound like... So you don't just blow in it?

DANO WEIR: Because I heard if you just blow in it, it'll actually fix the NES.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, yeah, sometimes it does. And sometimes not so much.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: But yeah, no, we put it all through the paces. We try to open as many systems as we can. We try to... To make sure you're gonna go home and be happy with what you're you're purchasing and it's a lot of time to do that So before we started rolling, you know, I was You were asking me.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Oh, how often do you play Mario Kart? And like it's not yeah, right, right I've been working a lot of 80 hour weeks right now And so it's you know, when you do that, it just you don't have time to play video games But then I started doing some math recently about how much How much money I make and how many hours I'm working and kind of doing the hour or dollar per hour and I realized that I need to change a couple things.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So I looked at do I need to change how much money we're making, how much time I'm working or both and the easiest thing I can do is just change the amount of time I'm working.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So I've committed now to stop working 80 hour weeks and try to pull it down to about About 60 hours a week just to have more of a life with my wife and my son because that's also very very very important.

DANO WEIR: So is that sacrificing revenue basically for the business to do that?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I hope not. If you're more efficient. Yeah exactly and we're gonna hire someone just to kind of help fill some of these gaps.

DANO WEIR: Okay so you're scaling a little bit.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: We got to do that and you know I don't know what it's gonna bring but I think it's gonna be for the positive and I think it will be...

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Best for my home life to do that because you know I want to see my son grow up and I want to have time with my wife and all that which how do you put a dollar value on that?

DANO WEIR: Right.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: So, yeah.

DANO WEIR: I mean, the easiest, one of the ways you could have, you know, been saving time from the get-go was to not worry about cleaning any of that stuff. Like I said, just take it in and just put it on the shelf.

DANO WEIR: So why was it important to you to, because I know in some cases, I follow you on social media, you're, in some cases, like with a Nintendo GameCube, for example, tell me what happens with the laser and what you choose to do with it.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, so...

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: The late, I mean all this stuff is old and so it's, no Second time in a row, man.

DANO WEIR: I mean Jason got second, I got first.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I was right there, I was so close, but so far away.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah, so lasers die. It's not the laser that's dying though. It's the capacitors that power the laser dying. So those capacitors have to be replaced. And so we take the thing apart, we replace the capacitors and get the GameCube up and running.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Now, that's more time, effort and energy, but now we're selling something that someone can use for the next 20 years versus the next 20 days. And that's also important because you don't want to buy something and three weeks later, like, it doesn't work.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And so that's been a...

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: You know just one more thing that we're adding to the repertoire of right kind of refurbishing these systems and getting them back to and resurfacing discs to have seen a disc resurfacer three of them now one of them was very very expensive it was close to twenty thousand dollars which who you spent twenty thousand dollars on a disc resurfacer yeah but it's nice because it saves you time so before the the smaller ones you put one disc in it at a time and you have have to kind of babysit it whereas this new one it does 50 discs You put the 50 in, you walk away, and come back a few hours later and it's all finished.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And that's really nice to not have to babysit that thing, because now it saves me time. And my time is more valuable than that.

DANO WEIR: So to people who don't know, when you're thinking about early video games, NES and Genesis, those came on those cartridges. In the late 90s into the 2000s, there was a shift for production costs. To disc, CD, DVD, tape-based games. But the issue with those is they have their own durability issues because they get scratched. So you invest $20,000 in a machine that can resurface it and then that wet allows...

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Allows you to process more games faster so when you get inventory and it's more reliable absolutely to me being a playable item is more important than being as as new as possible right we've also changed the battery as in some games so some games require a battery to save the data and if the battery dies then your data dies.

DANO WEIR: A lot of people don't know that inside old, not all, but some old cartridge games, they would have essentially a watch, what you would call watch battery. Yes. You know, a soldered into the circuit board. And that's another thing is too, if you, for most people, you know, you've never cracked open a cartridge game.

DANO WEIR: They're just selling circuit boards. Yes. You know, that's all retro games were, were just circuit boards. So it's kind of funny to see them in that format. And then there were always, you know, there is a little bit of power in there, but after 40 years, that thing's done.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: No good yeah things need to be replaced so we changed those batteries out and we've even had some people complain about that because they're like oh it's not the original battery it's not worth it it's not worth what it worked before well do you want it to work yeah exactly so you know i mean everybody's always going to hate on something so we you know we look past that and we just keep doing what we're doing because people seem to be happy with what we're doing and That's ultimately what it's about.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: You're not gonna please everyone in business. So you just do your absolute best to be as good to people and be as what you believe is the right thing to do. Hopefully people appreciate that and keep following it.

DANO WEIR: Jason is just efforting a top three finish here and I am just kinda lonely on the front here.

DANO WEIR: My boys better be proud of me.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I think they will be.

DANO WEIR: I got two boys and I'm gonna just...

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Oh no No No Blue shell Guess whose blue shell that was Okay, and...

DANO WEIR: You got me Oh I got the blue I see all your coins I was coasting a little bit because I was trying to make this competitive.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: No, you weren't. I see that ending...

DANO WEIR: Oh, I got first and he got second.

DANO WEIR: Good one. That was a good one. That was a better game at least. If you don't know Mario Kart, if you're in first place, somebody in the back can throw this item called a blue shell, which kills the person in the front for a moment. And that's what Jason did to me.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I was this close.

DANO WEIR: And now we are down to the final race in the Grand Prix and the final segment of this interview.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: And even if I win this race, you're still going to get first because...

DANO WEIR: No, let's make it like it's do or die. No, whoever... Whoever wins this last race wins the interview.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Grab the controller out of your hand.

DANO WEIR: Well, let's just, while we've got you here, shout out some games. What are games that you like to play? We're playing Mario Kart, so that's a fun one. What else do you like to play?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Gotta say it, man. Dispatch. Get on it. Yeah, okay. That's the game that you're in.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Tetris is one of my absolute favorite games. I think that game is amazing. It is a perfect game. Especially the original Nintendo one.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Just it's a beautiful game it's the music the the gameplay it's something you play for five minutes it's something you play for two hours you know and i love seeing how much it's evolved throughout the years now people are crazy good at that game so that's super cool i love there's a game called legends of dragoon it's for the original playstation i'm not usually a huge rpg guy but this game just it captured my heart man it's it's phenomenal so if you get a chance legend of dragoon for the playstation one i think you can buy it digitally on the PS5 as well ah what else do we got you know Mario Kart's super fun especially when you have little time because you just play for again 20 minutes plug and play one thing especially the older i get the more i like shorter games because you can just kind of Not have to invest 40, 50, 60 hours into it, which most of us don't have that much time to do as adults.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Kids, enjoy your youth.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Put the time in now.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Wasted playing video games it's not a waste it's actually not a waste listen there's so many cool stories out there like i mean people like oh i like books and books are cool too don't get me wrong but you know you get cool stories just from video games as well and yeah and it's a from our perspective you get great music you get you just get so much out of it it's a whole package now now are all video games great yeah no i mean some of the shoot-em-ups can get redundant but Okay.

DANO WEIR: Yeah.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: You know, it's...

DANO WEIR: And getting too mighty yuck on someone's young. That's right. Well, to Nostalgia Alley fans, if you're wondering if I'm a real one or not, my games are, I am a Mario guy.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah.

DANO WEIR: So I celebrate all Mario. Probably my favorite game ever might be the Mario 3D World Bowser's Fury combo cartridge. That's a pretty safe bet for me.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: That's a great game. I played that one.

DANO WEIR: Both of those are amazing. But I go way back, man, especially PC games. We didn't even talk about that.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: But like Counter-Strike.

DANO WEIR: Deus Ex, and System Shock 2, and Half-Life, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, that remake. So I won't say I played them all, but I played a lot. Yeah, absolutely. And then you get old and you can only just talk about them. You can talk about them in the past tense.

DANO WEIR: Here's your Sonoma Wealth commercial. I do work for Sonoma Wealth Advisors, and we're cool enough to support an episode about gaming and the gaming community. It's true. So we're a financial advisor over in Sonoma.

DANO WEIR: We work with individuals and families. We're a fiduciary, which means that we're not pushing products on you. We're a planning-led firm, so we are looking to develop financial plans. We approach things holistically. So we look at the whole picture. We look at your taxes.

DANO WEIR: Look at your income we look at your assets we look at your real estate we look at it all we say what's the best what do we see as the plan that could work best for you and and like i said we're i won't say that everybody in the firm is is a gamer but i certainly am and you know we we have a I would say we in general we have a similar mindset to Jason in that kind of customer focused you know we we want to educate as much as we want to niche and geek out about stuff so that's a little bit about who we are cinemawelf.com if you want to learn more about us Jason is currently in first and I'm in fourth a comfortable first too but I'm now a little significantly up there right he is in my side though and this is Rainbow Road which is classically the most difficult Mario course in a Mario Kart game.

DANO WEIR: Nope, that didn't work.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Oh, he lost his red shell. Oh no, there's a blue- Blue Shell, no Oh.

DANO WEIR: You really did get one. Are you going to beat me the last? This is not good if you beat me. I can't let this... You're killing my cool factor with my kids.

DANO WEIR: I got to say, I beat the owner of Nostalgia Hour. Oh, no Oh, you drove off the course?

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Oh, no Now he's in third.

DANO WEIR: Now I'm in first.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: This is the worst thing ever.

DANO WEIR: This is a true back and forth contest.

DANO WEIR: And he...

DANO WEIR: Now the end is flying.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I'm so close but so far away.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Oh God, that's beautiful seeing that.

DANO WEIR: Yeah, isn't it? I don't think there's any hope right now.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: No Lightning Lightning.

DANO WEIR: I can see you but man it's just...

DANO WEIR: So close. It's so far away.

DANO WEIR: With a banana and a coin, a wing and a prayer.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: He's gonna bring it home. Oh I missed it.

DANO WEIR: And then my thing is... He literally can see me. He can see me.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It's so funny.

DANO WEIR: I don't know. What's he gonna get? What's he gonna get?

DANO WEIR: He drove off. I think it's me, buddy.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It's you.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: I need to play more video games My kids even think of us square, I don't know oh that's icing on the cake for you You did you did crash out bro, sorry like three or four times now.

DANO WEIR: It was close though.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: This is this is miserable Unless I get blue shell I think even if you've got blue shell, it's not gonna help me.

DANO WEIR: Well, there it is.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: There it is. All right.

DANO WEIR: It's okay, buddy.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: It's okay. You know, it can't all be winners.

DANO WEIR: I couldn't take it easy on you. I had to bring it. Hey, thank you so much for checking out It's All Money. I hope you've enjoyed. And in depth, this is a double episode with Nostalgia Alley and Petaluma. Learn more about them at nostalgiaalleygames.com. Yep. And you can learn more about us at Sonoma Wall. Wealth.com.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Yeah. You can also check us out on Facebook or Instagram too. Just that Nostalgia Alley.

DANO WEIR: We're just swing by the shop.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: That's even better. Cause honestly, I like seeing people. I like talking. If you can't tell, I will not shut up once you get me going. So appreciate you.

JASON MOORHOUSE, NOSTALGIA ALLEY: Thanks for watching.

DANO WEIR: Thanks for watching and listening to It's All Money. We hope today's episode shared information to increase your financial confidence. Now is the time in the show for the voiceover with a bunch of words at the end. Listen close though. You might find out. Out something you didn't know.

DANO WEIR: It's All Money is powered by Sonoma Wealth Advisors. Sonoma Wealth Advisors helps individuals and families in Northern California and across the country with building, managing, and sustaining wealth.

DANO WEIR: Sonoma Wealth is a comprehensive, holistic finance solution offering financial planning asset management tax planning 401k solutions and appropriate insurance take our free wealth analysis now at sonomawealth.com if you haven't already like and subscribe Subscribe to It's All Money on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

DANO WEIR: It's All Money features human hosts, musicians, editors, video crew, and voiceover talent. Video production by Forz Media in Roanoke Park, California. Online at forzmedia.com. Music by Neon Beach, Sparkle Rising on Soundstripe. Voiceover by me, Dano. Thank you for listening to the very end.

DANO WEIR: We appreciate diligent viewers and listeners. Fermata Advisors LLC is registered as an investment advisor with the SEC and only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or is excluded or exempted from registration requirements.

DANO WEIR: This content was produced by Fermata Advisors LLC, DBA Sonoma Wealth Advisors, DBA Fermata 401K, DBA Fermata Tax. The opinions expressed by Fermata Advisors LLC on this show are their own. Information presented on this program is believed to be factual and unbiased.

DANO WEIR: Up to date, but we do not guarantee its accuracy, and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. Discussions and answers to questions do not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice, but are limited to the dissemination of general information.

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