Upon entering Pink Gorilla, I felt overwhelmed. Despite the store's diminutive size, it packs a pretty intense blast of video games.
That's by design: Like the jam-packed gaming stores of Tokyo's Akihabara district, Pink Gorilla is intended to celebrate games.
There's stuff everywhere — shelves full of games from every console, placards from classic arcade machines, and walls lined with colorful video game characters. Somewhere to my right, a game of "Street Fighter II" was running.
Pink Gorilla aims to re-create the experience of visiting the Akihabara district, where stores like Super Potato overwhelm visitors with a whirlwind of gaming history. What Pink Gorilla is, though, is something even better than a direct re-creation: it's a uniquely American spin on Japan's iconic gaming stores.