VRChat Kmart is an eerie metaverse time machine

Forget Stranger Things and Kate Bush - a trip to a working Kmart store in VRChat is the most potent dose of early '90s nostalgia you'll ever have

VRChat Kmart recreates the feeling of actually being in a Kmart store to such a degree that you have to experience it to really understand. Once a big box fixture across the United States, Kmart has all but disappeared from America – only three stores remained open as of April 2022. But even if you don’t live near one of these last few locations (there’s one in Long Island, one in Westwood, New Jersey, and one in Miami), you can still experience the true heyday of Kmart thanks to a dedicated group of VRChat roleplayers.

The fluorescent lighting, the odd modular shelving, and the blandly specific Kmart music remind me more of my own experience of the early 1990s than anything else I’ve ever watched or played.
The main difference – and this is a big one – is that this version of Kmart is typically packed with anime characters.

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