My local indie game shop closed down. It wasn’t just any independent game shop it was CA Games. Charlie Ambrose opened the shop 15 years ago. That’s a long time for a game shop. Jeez, it’s a long time for just about any shop these days. It has nestled in DeCourcey’s Arcade in Cresswell Lane in Glasgow since 1992, the year we first played Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2 and Super Mario Kart. The year the SNES debuted in Europe.

It was the shop that provided copies of games for many of the games magazines in the UK right up until it closed. 

Charlie was a well liked guy and no wonder. We’d spend hours discussing cheese and baseball and games as Charlie’s Great Dane, Brea, stared at me through big sad eyes as if to say “How can you talk about cheese for this long?”

It was a tiny little shop with no windows. The shelves were bowed with the weight of the games. Behind the counter were more shelves filled with weird and wonderful imported strangeness. When Charlie wasn’t there, Ross was. He worked for Charlie the whole time - all those years. I could talk to Ross about RPG’s for many, many hours.

CA Games wasn’t just a place to buy games. It was a place to be into games. 

Charlie had enough of no windows and bowed shelves, and has taken to a life at sea. It couldn’t be further from his previous existence and I doubt he has an Xbox 360 on board ship.  But I like to think there’s a DS Lite tucked away somewhere inside his waterproofs.