Why and how a JRPG fan spent $2,000 building a GameStop in his basement: "The spaces combined with the passions in our lives have the power to bring people together"

Photographs of custom game store collection display with dozens of games and boxes on shelves.

In December, Reddit user Chef-BILLIEVE, who I'm just going to call Chef Bill or Bill for this story, turned heads among video game collectors with a painstaking recreation of a GameStop interior which he had used to fill out his basement and nostalgically display his game collection. I only recently learned of this after official GameStop social media shared his post, and it goes without saying that I immediately had to talk to Chef Bill about how and why this impressive display came together. Its origins are more frugal and more heartwarming than I expected.

Bill tells me he got into collecting games in the late '90s and early 2000s, beginning with a Nintendo collection and then adding in PlayStation with two all-timers: Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy 7. "This was the catalyst for what would become an enduring relationship with JRPGs which are heavily represented within the current collection," he explains.