Herein lies the dread account of one man’s descent into the ancient ruins of Cash Converters and the unspeakable otherworldly terrors discovered within.
Dear stranger, to whom I write this harried confession as the sun slowly abandons my lonely refuge and the darkness draws nearer all around. It is my dim hope that these words may find you by happenstance, so the world of man might know of the things I have seen and be roused from its easy slumber.
By the time you read this it will be too late for my salvation, but there may be others who follow in my footsteps; innocent explorers whose eternal souls are in perilous danger. A monstrous evil resides on our doorstep and it does not sleep. With what little light and wits remain to me, I will endeavor to write down everything I endured in the terrible realm of Cash Converters; the catacomb of the gaming damned.
My ill-fated expedition occurred in a remote pocket of civilisation known by the local West-ee tribe as Penriff. As an avid collector of interactive motion pictorials (or “video games” in youth slang), it had been my custom to visit queer shoppes and hovels on the outer fringes of the known world. After all, the finest treasures are often buried in the least-expected places.
Yet in all my travels off the beaten track, I had never encountered a region so utterly loathsome and bereft of cultured breeding as here. The very air seemed to hang heavy with the rank stench of sin and corruption. Undeterred, I drew my coat around me as if to ward off the winds of evil and pushed on towards my destination.
The location of my hunt was an ancient trading post of evil repute; a crumbling relic of a bygone era known only as Cash Converters. Like some terrible sauropod of the deep, this ageless building had somehow defied extinction and continued to endure in a world to which it belonged no longer.
As I approached the sulfuric entrance the air grew thick with thunder, and the doorway suddenly seemed to take on the shape of an open maw. An irrational fear gripped me, and I was struck with an almost uncontrollable urge to flee gibbering into the rainy afternoon. But alas, my own greed momentarily quelled my terror. I had heard tale that they sold copies of R-Type Delta inside and I was determined to add this rarest of jewels to my collection.
As I cautiously ventured into the building’s fouler depths, I immediately knew that my mystery correspondent had been mistaken. There were no treasures for my collection here. All that remained were the discarded trinkets of thieves, beggars and opium fiends — a potpourri of worthless artefacts that had been offloaded for a handful of coins.
…And yet… …And yet… a strange power seemed to thrum from the display chests festooned upon the decaying walls. As I leaned closer, I came to notice that the game cabinet was locked and bolted.
“Who would deign to steal such pitiful refuse?” I wondered in a vain attempt to calm my frayed nerves. But even as the hollow jape left my lips, an awful thought came unbidden: the locks were not there to keep what was inside the cabinet safe — they were there to protect the people outside it.
It was at this moment that one of the trading denizens slithered out of the shadows with a sibilant hiss. His blunted, deformed language was barely decipherable, but I managed to glean what sounded like an offer of two-for-the-price-of-one.
He held up some of his vile wares, the very sight of which caused my gorge to rise. The primeval artwork and inscriptions on these tablets filled me with despair and foreboding. Forty 4 Party. Robin Hood Quest. Clever Kids: Pony World — each unnatural offering was more terrible than the last. Had these abominations been forged by some malevolent Elder God? Or had I stumbled into a nightmare from which there was no waking?
I wanted no part of these dark and unknowable entities. I would sooner have accepted a proffered python. They had been cast into this wretched abyss for a reason and no good could come from bringing them up to the surface. But the merchant of gloom would not take no for an answer.
Fearing what might happen should I refuse, I hastily accepted a pair of the upthrust relics and fled that godless realm, never to return. For the sum of five dollars I had purchased my life… as well as my doom. For I had taken the terror with me.
Visibly shaken from my harrowing ordeal, I absconded to my mountain retreat with the cursed booty clutched to my clammy breast. There was now a taint on me that could never be washed away. The dogs in the streets cowered in my presence and when I tried to pet a stray cat, it exploded.
As soon as I entered my abode, I felt an irresistible compulsion to gaze upon the diabolical secrets inside the ancient receptacles. As if drawn by an unseen force, my white-knuckled hands broke the seal on the first tablet and prized out the contents entombed within.
Inside was a parchment and disc that were familiar yet horribly alien; a satanic mockery of the collectibles I held so dear. Even the title was an affront to Christendom and all that is good and holy in this world — Mary-Kate and Ashley, Sweet 16: Licensed to Drive. What kind of madness was this? The blackest kind.
Things become hazy at this point and I thank the heavens that my tortured intellect has been spared the enormity of full recollection.
The brief snatches I do recall are horrible enough — I remember there was a terrible din of music, endless waves of disturbing colours and ghastly inhuman faces staring with dead, souless eyes. Driving may have been involved also.
The cockerel has now ceased its crowing. The light is all but gone. I fear my time on the earthly plain is almost at an end. With my last dying breath I implore you to warn all who will listen never to step inside that terrible, terrible place where even the foulest of demons fear to tread.
Here ends my missive. Know that these scribbled ramblings are truth. There is a place worse than hell on this earth. A place teeming with indescribable terrors. That place is CASH CONVERTERS and it will surely be the doom of us all!
P.S. — I also got Sensible Soccer 2000 which was passable. I give it 6/10.
But seriously, how is Cash Converters still a thing? Does anyone still go there to buy secondhand games? If so, what’s the appeal over eBay and the like? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Comments
32 responses to “Cash Converters: In The Catacombs Of The Gaming Damned”
If it was not for cash converters I would proboly never really got into gaming as a hobby. Cause in the 90s they sold sega games for $5 and I made $20 a week mowing lawns (yay child labour) so I could buy one game a week and still have enough for all the necissary things in life like comics and chocolate.
Though the last time I went in one (2002) they were still flogging off sega games for $5 and PSone games for $10 and that was all they had for games.
(For those simple minded xbox fans the PSone was the first playstation not the last playstation, I know you lot are confused by the concept of one)
It’s not the XBox users who are confused by one it’s the executives who named the thing.
They also had incredibly cheap N64 games!
I picked up Kaido Racer f or Ps2 from CashConvertors possibly one of my favourite racing games on the console! Just for the price of $4 I am not complaining although a slight issue with scaling was there everything else made it worth while didn’t see that as negative as you have made it out to be they actually have alot of titles I already owned from silent hill to granturismo and even kingdom hearts. You need to search in the baskets and not in the shelves where there are thousands of games!
Cash Converters is so overpriced these days for old and new games/consoles.
More filters than my Instagram feed, damn..
But yeah, I direct a fair few people each day who come into work asking about x for a PS2, Original Xbox, Nintendo 64 etc to Cash Converters. Don’t know why people think we would be stocking almost 20 year old hardware at EB Games :/
The only bad experience I’ve had with them was purchasing Kya: Dark Lineage on PS2, which was faulty.
Fortunately, they refunded my purchase, so it wasn’t too bad.
Cash Converters is where I got my Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. And handful of games. Stopped buying from them ages ago though.
Last time I was in there I had to explain to an employee who was selling a 360 on how to remove the hard drive… Wasn’t going to say anything but they were going to grab a knife to jimmy it off…..
Hilarious
I remember seeing a limited edition Halo and R2-D2 Xbox 360’s in my local Cash Converters, if i had the money i probably would have bought them.
they buy the games of you for 50c, and sell them for $8, wow, just wow.
Cash Converters do not trade products for money, they trade misery for abject horror. You get ripped off going in and get ripped off going out again. I haven’t gone near them since I first discovered eBay 🙂
crime converters
I picked up an old resident evil game for my mate who is a collector for cheap. Even had its original price on it which he appreciated.
This was about 4 years ago, now cashies think any game from the 90’s or earlier is worth $99.
Clueless!
Last time I went in there they were asking for prices higher then eBay.
I will stick to rummaging through garage sales.
So you’re angry because you couldn’t profit off of a business?
What is wrong with you?
Care to expand?
I Loved Cashies in the days before I knew about ebay. I could get 5 cds for $20, I picked up my first Playstation one for $120 from them when they were still retailed at $350+ brand new, and I grabbed so many games from them. I remember one particular trip to Cashies in Robina back in the PS1 days and stumbled across “second hand” copies of Vagrant Story, WWE Smackdown 2, and Dino Crisis 2 for $20 each. I used the term “second hand” because these 3 games had only just been released here in Aus within that month, and were still at full retail price in EB games.
I went to my local cashies maybe 3 months ago, and they had some pretty decent 360 and PS3 games there, and most of them were only $15-$20 each, of course they had some real dogs in there too….and they were purchased to be given to my friends as “Bonus” presents on their birthdays 😀
The cash converters in my area is a gold mine for cheap games, consoles, accessories, and blu rays.
… I think it’s because I live in an area with high crime.
I watched that Documentary on your home town just the other night (Super Mario Brothers) and from what I saw in that it did indeed looked like it was non-stop crimes everywhere. And old ladies with giant stun guns……and fungus everywhere… ;D
Up here in the scorched lands, they even run ads on the longvision for Cash Converters. ‘Come on down to Cashies!’ they say. I say nay.
I used to get all my Gameboy Colour games from CC when I was a kid. A few months ago, I went back there to see if they still sold Gameboy games. That will be the last time I ever venture forth into that accursed shop. All they seemed to sell was Xbox 360 games at about the price you would see at any Electronic Boutique.
I buy stuff off Ebay cheap then sell it to cash converters for profit!. they are also handy if you need quick cash. they offer loans at 17% interest (laughable, but if u r desperate then its there)
It’s still a great place to buy older consoles (PS1, N64) but not so much for the games.
I’ve been hording the GBA Pokemon titles for a while now and Cash Converters is where I get most of them. I have at least 5 copies of each of the 5 titles and it’s easy to tell if the carts are real or fake, unlike eBay and other places.
why such bad quality pics?
I bought Dirge of Cerberus and the Futurama game for PS2 from cashies a few weeks ago lol.
$8 blurays. You’re welcome.
Their webshop is amazing.
I’ve been browsing it regularly since 2009 and have bought many recent games for stupidly cheap prices.
While Cash Converters are total rip-offs when it comes to old game stuff (just ‘cuz it’s a SNES game doesn’t mean it’s worth $50 guys!) they’re a boon when it comes to games from the 128 bit gen on popular systems like the PS2. $3 for a copy of Killer 7 complete with manual? Fuck yes!
HAHAHA
I’ve just bought a tonne of christmas bargains at my local cashies. I’ve spent at least $100 on games and Blu rays, good ones.
This was very entertaining to read, kudos.
I use to frequent Cash converters modbury for fair priced old games.
Then 6 months ago they really started to suck and suck hardcore….. everytime i’d end up there things would be WAY over priced and they would even take it upon themselves to write up justification notices full of crap as to why these prices were fair.
I also remember being able to haggle…..
last week went in and they had a copy of simpsons wrestling in a paper packet, asking price $25.00
They had ‘make us an offer we’re crazy’ signs all over the shop and bagging about their massive game clearance.
Had the salesman go, oh no the manager doesnt like us haggling over prices, ticket prices are the prices. Manager comes over, i’m like in all seriousness everytime game traders has this its $5-10 in a case, you serious about $25?
Doesn’t even look at me starts laughing, oh i used to work in the games industry I think I know what things are really worth.
I’m like oh do tell me where did you work?
He replies oh I managed a GAME.