Range of entertainment available at Pahrump center

A grand reopening of a video game store was filled with entertainment, prizes and interesting characters.

Game Corner & Family Fun Center-Pahrump officially celebrated moving into its new, larger space with a grand reopening celebration in early February. The center at 1190 E. Highway 372, Suite 8, moved into a space five times larger than what it was in previously.

“We kind of did a soft opening about a month ago,” said Josh Osborne, co-owner of Game Corner & Family Fun Center-Pahrump. “We just wanted to make sure any of the bugs that needed to be worked out were done first before we made this official.”

The new space is packed full of entertainment options, such as pinball machines, arcade games and table hockey. Some games in the new space can earn players tickets redeemable for prizes.

The new space is also equipped with a stage and projected screen for monthly video game tournaments. The success with tournaments Game Corner had in its smaller space led to the idea of expansion.

“Once we did that first one, we realized we had something going,” Osborne said. “The tournament idea is what really led to everything else.”

Game Corner opened its 1,000-square-foot space in the summer of 2018 and had its first tournament in its new shop at the end of January.

“Over there (in the smaller space), we did do some small tournaments,” Osborne said. “We had a couple of arcade machines, but people were looking for more than that. So when this place became available, it was 5,000 square feet versus the 1,000 that we had.”

Osborne said he’s been working over the past few months nonstop getting ready for the store’s expansion.

The store is split up into two areas, the video game store and the family fun center. The hours vary for both.

The video game store is open seven days a week with the fun center being closed Monday and Tuesday.

“I would love to get it to the point where this place is open seven days a week, but we have to pay for staff, we have to pay for electricity,” Osborne said. “You’ve got to be smart. If you open it up and there’s just not much happening, you’re burning money.”

Osborne said he’d like to get a cosplay community together at the store. (Cosplayers wear costumes to represent specific players.) Several people showed up to his grand reopening in costumes.

“We’re hoping to get to a point to where we can do actual events for cosplayers,” Osborne said.

This could include cosplay-themed parties or gatherings at a specific event.

Osborne said he is also interested in bringing in physical game players to the shop as well.

“We are going to gear ourselves toward the physical game players too: board games; card games like Magic the Gathering; Pokemon, Dungeons and Dragons; because that’s a whole kind of untapped resource here too,” Osborne said.

Osborne is interested in building up this portion of that business. Though he is looking for it to grow, he said that side of the business is not as large as it is for video games.

“We’re probably going to have some days during the week where people just come and borrow the game and just play for free,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get to a point where we have enough people coming in where it makes sense to have like a $10 buy-in tournament.”

Contact reporter Jeffrey Meehan at jmeehan@pvtimes.com