About Green Dragon CVR

MISSION STATEMENT:
The Video Game Counter-Revolution

*NOTE: operations moved online exclusively. Thank you for your supporting the bar these last years!

We grew up in an age of box art, million-word video game narratives & rides home in the car reading manuals. All these things which expanded the tangibility & worth of our games faded from the mainstream for a time as the industry was revolutionized by digital consumption, “the death of single-player”, annualized abuse of popular brands & the rise of games-as-a-service.

But a gaming counter-revolution is underway, accompanied by renewed interest in the physical format. Offerings like Elden Ring, Tears of the Kingdom and Death Stranding embody everything we loved about games of yore, while more games than ever are published on physical media. Green Dragon CVR exists to participate in this counter-revolution by keeping the physical format alive & celebrating autotelic, beautiful, single-player, self-contained video games. To this end, we sell thousands of physical console games, including imports & Limited Run titles you won’t find at big retailers. Delivery and pickup in Vaughan-Woodbridge.

An essential part of our efforts is explaining the special merits of the video game medium. What is it we continue to find so special about games? This question led to our “Gaming Under the Influence” podcast & line of writing, where we analyze games using only the best tools: philosophy, intoxicants & decades of gaming experience. Our approach is rooted in the contention that video games, like all fine art, exist to be beautiful, against all commercial and political pressures. We are always working to perfect our standard for criticizing video games, based on the ontology & critical framework of Jacques Maritain’s ‘Art & Scholasticism’. Our efforts have been systematized here.

“The contemplation of wisdom is rightly compared to games, [because] the movements of games are not ordered to anything else, but are sought for themselves. it is the same with the delights of wisdom[.] That is why divine Wisdom compares its delight to games: ‘I was delighted every day, playing before him in the world’” - Aquinas on games