When I saw that Circuit City was liquidating its inventory, I thought it would be a golden opportunity to find some cheap games. The nearest Circuit City is about 10 minutes from my home, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick drive. However, I was cautiously optimistic because I read several articles about how CC had raised their prices and then lowered them slightly to create the illusion of a “sale", back when 150+ stores closed in November.

Despite my initial concerns, my optimism grew as I got closer to the store and I saw signs advertising “Up 30% Off”. The parking lot was swamped with people and I walked into the store to find a sea of humanity roaming around and rummaging through the shelves looking for good deals. The line for the checkout stretched from one end of the store to the other. Slowly, I made my way through the crowd toward the video game section. I figured most of the good games would be gone, but in fact most of the shelves were still relatively full.

My intention was to pick up a few games for my DS, which had been severely underutilized last year. Even if I could get a few bucks off The World Ends with You or Chrono Trigger, I would have been more than satisfied. Sadly most, if not all, the games were marked up to full price and then slightly marked down to prices that I could easily find on sites like Amazon. Disappointed with the DS prices, I made my way to the Xbox 360 games. I nearly laughed when I saw Ninja Gaiden 2 with an original price of $40 and then I actually did laugh when I saw it was on “sale” for $30. For a little perspective, I recently picked NG2 for $10 at BestBuy and Amazon currently has NG2 at $28. I think the funniest “sale” I found was a copy of Call of Duty 4 (not the GOTY edition) for full price ($60). All I can say is that if you are going to CC to look for deals then don’t expect much, and be aware of the going price for a game at other stores and online.

I think it goes without saying, but I am sure most of us feel bad for the people at Circuit City who lost, or will be losing their jobs in the coming months. I can even understand that it’s the liquidators hired by CC, and not CC itself, that set the prices and “sales”. Nonetheless, I think it speaks volumes that during my last trip to Circuit City, I walked away without buy anything.