HOULTON, Maine — Jordan James didn’t have to worry too much about whether to close his store when the COVID-19 pandemic struck last spring, because he already had planned to close it for remodeling.
A few months later, Extreme Gaming, located in Houlton’s Market Square, is back to doing what James opened the store to do, which is sell and host tournaments for card games such as “Pokémon,” “Yu-Gi-Oh” and “Magic: The Gathering.”
“We generally have 15 to 20 players come in [for tournaments],” said James. “We have a decent crowd to come in for “Magic.” We’re trying to get “Pokémon” to go back on, and trying to get “Yu-Gi-Oh” to start up again.”
James, who resides in Presque Isle and owns another Extreme Gaming store in Lewiston, decided to open up another location close to home, and chose Houlton after evaluating the player base.
Tournament structures have a $5 entry fee, and players can win prizes based on how well they do in the tournament. Prizes are generally card packs for the game being played — a “Magic: The Gathering” tournament will award card packs from the latest Magic card set for example. The better a player does in a tournament, the more card packs awarded.
While Extreme Gaming currently only does card games, James plans to expand to other types of games. He’s working on building a table to host “Dungeon and Dragons” and other tabletop role-playing games, and also plans to install several screens to do video game tournaments on consoles. His store sells old and used consoles, such as the Nintendo Gamecube and NES systems.
James also intends to create a card inventory that people can order from online.
“What’s going to be online is about 20,000 cards,” said James. “Pretty much everything gaming I can order.”
