LIVING IN THE PAST: Retro gaming store deals up nostalgia

It’s Friday, and you get off work. You walk into the local movie store and pick out something to watch over the weekend.

While there, you can also peruse some other merchandise like toys and video games.

While this sounds like a trip to a chain rental place during a bygone era, for Replay’s in Muscle Shoals, this is the present day.

A step into the store at 1203 Woodward Avenue is like walking into the past for adults who grew up watching movies, playing video games and collecting merchandise from their favorite franchises.

A wall of movies in both DVD and Blu-ray formats. Shelves full of CDs, VHS tapes and video games for consoles going back as far as the late 1970s. Even the consoles themselves when available.

Figures, both new and old, from popular franchises like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He Man and the Masters of the Universe, G.I. Joe, Batman, Star Wars and most anything else you can think of.

Much like the name on the sign out front suggests, many of the items found in Replay’s offer a second chance for adults to relive their childhood by playing their favorite old games, getting a chance to play ones they missed, or rediscover the toys of their childhood.

Medders eventually taught himself to repair both old and newer video game consoles, another item the store has for sale.

“It’s still very popular, even with younger kids,” said Steven Medders, who owns Replay’s with his wife Crystal. “There are a lot of people our age that enjoy collecting this stuff, but kids are into it, too. I love when someone comes in here and just squeals because they see a Ninja Turtle figure they had when they were a kid or a certain movie they used to watch.”

The nostalgia is strong with this one. In fact, Medders said one of the most common types of patron he gets are those people who wanted certain games, toys or movies in their childhood but couldn’t afford them.

Now, as an adult with their own disposable income, nothing is stopping them from regaining a piece of their childhood.

“Now I have adult money. There’s a lot of that,” Medders said. “I bought a sealed Ghostbusters firehouse a few years ago because I had all the other toys as a kid and I wanted the experience of opening and building it.

“Movies and video games that are good will always be good. There’s a lot of replayability in those old games.”

There are also a growing number of people who prefer to own something tangible in an era where games and movies are becoming increasingly digital only.

Owning a physical copy means not losing the content if a movie or game studio pulls their work from digital libraries in the future.

But how does a kid born and raised in Houston end up owning a retro video game store in Muscle Shoals?

Medders lived in Texas until his early 20s, when he briefly moved to Canada.

“My dad has a thing for Canadian chicks and married one, so he moved up there,” he said. “I went to stay with him for six months. It was something fun to do.”

However, Medders had family in northeast Alabama, where his parents were originally from.

He eventually went to stay with his grandmother and got a job working on military equipment at Anniston Army Depot during the Iraq War.

“I hated it,” Medders said. “We were fixing up these Stryker (armored fighting vehicles), and you would find fingers and other body parts in them. We were working 20 hours a day because they were trying to rush these things out. I got sick of it.”

So, like any other geek/nerd would do, he went to the Replay’s store in Anniston and begged the owner to let him work there.

“I bugged the guy for a month, and finally out of pure frustration he hired me,” Medders said. “I worked there for a couple of years as an hourly employee. They were in expansion mode at that point. The hope was to build up the company enough that it would eventually get bought out by GameStop.”

While that was not in the cards, moving to a different city was.

After working at Replay’s in Anniston for two years, Medders was eventually offered the chance to run another store in the franchise, ad after some research, he chose the Muscle Shoals location.

Not only did Medders become his own boss after eventually buying out the location, but moving to Muscle Shoals allowed him to meet his now wife, Crystal.

“She is from Tennessee originally,” he said. “Her dad worked for the TVA dam system, and they moved around a lot. Eventually they moved to Leighton. I had been here a couple of years, and someone introduced us on Facebook. She liked the Ghostbusters jumper I was wearing in the photo, and things went from there.”

Medders said becoming his own boss was a lot of fun but exhausting.

“If you’re not here, you don’t make money,” he said. “You might work a 17-hour day. If you have to get caught up on some work, you might have to come in at 4 a.m. But it’s very rewarding. I enjoy being my own boss. I would have a hard time going back to having a boss if I had to.”

Why put up with the long hours and difficulty of running a store?

Medders said he watched “Home Alone 2” when he was young, and when he grew up, he wanted to own a toy store just like a character in the movie.

“I love being in the community and getting to know people,” he said. “We have a lot of regulars. We love being here. It’s a smaller community, especially compared to Houston, where some people would rather hit you than talk to you.

“My (high school) graduating class had 2,000 kids in it. I love the small-town feel. If it hadn’t been for this store and taking a crappy, minimum-wage job, I would have never met my wife. I love having everything in one spot together. You can come in and get a toy, a movie, a CD. There’s something for everybody.”