[Ed. sez: I attended a demonstration of 'Highway' at this store on Saturday the 15th. While I was wandering through the aisles, I spotted several very appealing and unusual games, including Niek Neuwahl's 'Tayu,' by Kosmos ($60), Reiner Knizia's 'Modern Art,' Mayfair ($30), Leo Colovini's 'Carolus Magnus,' Venice Coll.($40), and Gerard Mulder's 'Krieg und Frieden,' Mayfair ($55). I also picked up a nice German Travel Chess set in a wooden case ($35). On Fridays they have their 'Napoleon's Battles' crowd.]

Game Parlor
13936 Metrotech Drive
Chantilly, VA 20151
Phone: 703-803-3114
Email: staff@gameparlor.com
Website: www.gameparlor.com

Located in a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, Game Parlor is a 5,000 sq. foot store with a complete selection of historic, fantasy and science fiction games and game-related books and other products.

About 1/3 of the store is a game room featuring 17 tables and 8 gaming computer. The 17 tables consist of: four 5'x10' tables used for miniature games (which can be linked together for even larger playing surfaces); two tables inside a private role-playing room; and eleven 3'x5' tables for board and card games. The tables are provided free of charge, although the private role-playing room and big miniature gaming tables are so popular that there is a reservation system to guarantee that these tables will be available for your use. The eight gaming computers, which are linked together in a local area network, cost $5 per hour (but you can get this down to $3.50 per hour if you purchase a card representing a block of time). The tables are used for private ad hoc games as well tournaments, leagues and gaming nights organized by Game Parlor customers.

Today people think that Game Parlor's game room is some sort of a promotional tool for the store itself, not realizing that it actually was the other way around. Rob and Cindy Weigend, the owners of Game Parlor, founded the store ten years ago as a 1,500'sq. facility with six tables, and the store has been expanded twice since that time. Ten years ago, Rob was a lobbyist in Washington, DC and a member of the Washington Gamers Association, a local board gaming club. Frustrated at the lack of good gaming facilities for the club, Rob wanted to create a gaming facility, but wondered how to fund it. He decided to open a game store along with the game room so that income from the store could support the game room. Well, the idea worked so well that Rob eventually quit his lobbying job to work full time for the store. Today many gaming stores have adopted Rob's plan for in-store gaming.

As nice as the gaming facilities are in Game Parlor, they are not the true strength of the store. Rather, it is the amazingly broad and deep inventory in the store. From the beginning, Game Parlor used a computerized point-of-sale inventory management system that allowed the store to quickly restock any game or product sold. In addition, Rob's philosophy is to stock every game, every miniature, and every game-related product he can, so that the inventory contains thousands of items. The store is extremely clean and well organized so that you can find just about any product very fast.

The latest addition to Game Parlor is a re-constructed website at www.gameparlor.com which has, among other things, two extremely popular (and labor-intensive) areas -- the new products section and the calendar. The new products section describes each new product received in the store using two important features: an easy to use and consistent organizational scheme so that classifies all products, and a detailed description written to be useful to someone who is not familiar with the game or game system. The calendar for each month contains a listing of the time and description of each event, and if you click on the day of the week (i.e.: Saturday) on each calendar, you get a detailed description of each event scheduled on that day.