New Fun Games Now Available At Barnes & Noble

New York, NY – August 24, 2004 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, announced that ThinkFun Centers are now in over 360 Barnes & Noble stores all across the country. ThinkFun is a leading manufacturing of fun games for children and adults that challenge the mind and provide hours of enjoyment. ThinkFun games are also available on Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com [1]).

“Intellectually stimulating games for children and adults have become more popular with our customers,” said Steve Riggio, chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc. “Our game business has seen double-digit growth over the last three years, and ThinkFun will add 40 new stimulating and enjoyable games to our game assortment. I’m convinced that these new ThinkFun Centers will be a great success in our stores.”

“Barnes & Noble has smart customers, and we have the mind-challenging games they like to play,” said Bill Ritchie, chief executive officer of ThinkFun, Inc. “Sometimes the mind wants to be stimulated, and you can’t beat a good book or a mind-challenging game. Now, customers are going to be able to pick up both at the same time.”

The bestselling games now available at Barnes & Noble are:

• Rush Hour ($15.95), the traffic-jam puzzle that has already sold nearly four million units worldwide
• River Crossing ($14.95), the multi-challenge plank puzzle game
• Oodles of Doodles ($19.95), a family game that is a combination of “Pictionary” and “Outburst”
• Aha! Brainteasers ($19.95), which provides a new twist on some of the world’s best brainteasers
• Smart Mouth ($14.95), a fast-paced, hilarious word game, and
• The Fifteen Puzzle ($9.95), an elegantly crafted, polished metal and decorative enamel version of the original 1880 numeric slider puzzle.

The ThinkFun Center, a stand-alone fixture, also has a hands-on display that allows Barnes & Noble customers to experience the game before they buy it.

About Barnes& Noble, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 841 bookstores in 49 states. For the third year in a row, the company is the nation’s top retail brand for quality, according to the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive®. Barnes & Noble conducts its e-commerce business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com [1]), which is ranked fifth in traffic among retailers with their own Web site, according to Media Metrix, and the number-one brand among e-commerce companies, according to the latest EquiTrend survey. In addition to its retail operations, Barnes & Noble is one of the largest book publishers in the world. Its subsidiary, Sterling Publishing, publishes over 1,300 new titles a year and has an active list of over 6,000 titles.

Barnes & Noble also has approximately a 63 percent interest in GameStop (NYSE: GME), the nation's largest video-game and entertainment-software specialty retailer with 1,603 stores.

General financial information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company's corporate Web site: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/financials [2].

About ThinkFun
ThinkFun is the leading manufacturer of mind-challenging games. By transforming the ideas of mathematicians, puzzle masters, and game theorists into engaging products, ThinkFun has mastered the art of making games that prove that problem solving is fun. ThinkFun games are made for everyone looking for an engaging challenge. Founded in 1985 as Binary Arts by Bill Ritchie and Andrea Barthello, ThinkFun’s products have won nearly 200 awards and are found in stores around the world. More information can be found on the Web at http://www.ThinkFun.com [3].