There is an exciting event happening at Iceman Video Games in downtown Peterborough March 2nd-3rd. To celebrate the Nintendo Switch release on March 3rd, we will be hosting a two day launch party. Starting March 2nd at 7pm, you will have the opportunity to play through the history of Nintendo home consoles. There will be free food, drinks and even prizes. The event will wind down at midnight when you will have the opportunity to purchase a Switch console and even the highly anticipated Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The celebration continues on March 3rd at noon, where you will be able to demo the Nintendo Switch in store. We are located at 390 George Street; participation is free, and all are welcome.

Starting at 7pm on March 2nd, we will have all of Nintendo's home consoles set up to play for free, going as far back as Zelda on the NES up to as recent as Smash Bros on the Wii-U. This will highlight Nintendo’s journey over the years and will showcase where they have drawn inspiration from when designing the Switch. Anyone looking to battle Pokemon should bring their 3DS to challenge the other players who will be there.

The Nintendo Switch festivities continue on March 3rd. We will have a Switch console set up in store starting at 12pm for anyone who is curious about testing it out. We will be showcasing the new Zelda game, Breath of the Wild, and also 1-2 Switch. 1-2 Switch is going to be a unique game; it has players staring at each other instead of a screen while playing, which is definitely an interesting new direction for video games.

Now you might find yourself wondering, who exactly is Iceman? Iceman Video Games is a family-run video game store that has been around since the early days of Nintendo. Originally under a different name, we started selling video games in 1992. The Super Nintendo was still fairly new at the time, but we also made sure to keep stock of the classic NES titles. In 1996 we thought a name change was in order, and have been known as Iceman Video Games ever since. What sets us apart from a lot of other independent video games stores is the fact that we have always carried new games, always having them for day of release, instead of just relying on used games.

In addition to our downtown location, we have one in Lindsay. The Lindsay location is managed by original owners Chris and Gary, my parents, and the Peterborough location is managed by myself, Holly. The Peterborough location opened up in May 2015. The reason why we chose Peterborough was actually because I went to school here. I graduated from the Bachelor of Business Administration program at Trent University in the spring of 2015. The program taught me a lot, and I draw on my experiences at Trent to help me with managing the store. While at Trent I fell in love with Peterborough, and I knew I wanted to stay after I graduated. As we were already thinking of expanding to another location at the time, I made sure to suggest we join the Peterborough community.

We are proud to bring events like these to our community, to help make gaming something more than just sitting in front of a screen by yourself. We recently hosted another launch party at our downtown store in November: the Pokemon Sun and Moon midnight launch party. The Poke-party was a lot of fun, it gave everyone the opportunity to just hang out together with the common interest of the new Pokemon game coming out. The gaming community here in Peterborough is vibrant, filled with great people who all share a passion for video games, whether they grew up with them or have recently discovered gaming. I have found that a lot of gamers have unique stories as to why video games are important to them, and hearing people tell me their stories is always one of my favorite parts about work. That is a big reason why we are excited to bring the community events such as the Poke-party and now the two-day Switch event, in hopes that it can become part of a gamer’s unique story.

If ever you find yourself downtown, stop in to chat, we love it when people come in and share their passion about a new game they just got, or maybe even an old game they just discovered. For me, gaming is more than just something I use to pass the time, so I like to share my passion for it with fellow gamers as well.