CHESTERFIELD, September 23 — The story begins with a cardboard box and a family living room, and it ends next month inside a shopping center on Robious Road. Luke and Nicole Baab, husband-and-wife co-owners of the pre-owned video game business Retro Room, plan to open their first brick-and-mortar store next month at 10060 Robious Road in Chesterfield, Virginia. The shop will sit in the Robious Hall shopping center, near the intersection of Robious Road and Midlothian Turnpike.
At its heart, Retro Room is a buy-sell-trade operation built around pre-owned and vintage games. The shelves will carry titles for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64, alongside more recent games for the Xbox One and PlayStation 5.
Consoles, merchandise and Pokemon cards round out the inventory.
From shipping boxes to a storefront
The brick-and-mortar location is the latest iteration of a company Luke Baab started in 2018. In its early days, Retro Room was a subscription service that shipped boxes of handpicked video games to customers. It later moved to a pop-up and swap-meet model, with Luke running pop-ups at local breweries for the past few years while also serving as a stay-at-home dad to the couple’s four children.
What unfolded next was a matter of timing. The shift to a physical store comes as the couple’s youngest child heads to school, opening up an opportunity to expand.
Luke is now full-time at Retro Room, while Nicole also works in human resources for Dominion Energy. Nicole Baab said the Midlothian and North Chesterfield area seemed underserved for video games, which motivated the couple to open there.
A nostalgia play, and a family one
“It’ll be truly everything from the 1980s to the present, and hopefully it’s a place where there’s that nostalgia factor,” Nicole Baab said. “But also families can share in what they buy, playing those video games with one another. A lot of those video games from when I was a kid in the ’90s were everybody in a room together, playing Mario Kart or seeing if you can beat that next level of Sonic.
It’ll have that togetherness feel.” The business aims to appeal to collectors, kids and families by tapping into nostalgia for classic games — a pitch that leans on the couch-and-controller memories of an earlier generation as much as on the games themselves. Retro Room has a five-year lease on its roughly 1,000-square-foot space at Robious Hall, giving it room to eventually host video game tournaments and other events.
The shop is joining Total Wine, Hot Pot 757 and others at the shopping center.
Physical media finds a foothold
The upcoming Retro Room shop would be among the latest of several stores with an emphasis on physical media to open in the Richmond area. DVD store Blue Rose opened this month at Chesterfield Towne Center, and earlier this year, Rewind Vintage opened in downtown Richmond. For those involved, the next milestone is simple enough.
Watch for the doors at Robious Hall to open next month, and for whether a room built around old cartridges can pull in the families who once played them.
