I remember going to the video store with my dad and then not being able to find him for a while. It wasn't until I got much older that I realized he was disappearing into the 'back room' and what that actually meant.
oh. my. god.
i am just now realizing that my dad took strolls through the back room when I was distracted with video games. wow.
I had a local, indie store where I grew up that would rent out the weird stuff that no one ever bought, which is why I can say that I played both the 3DO and the Jaguar.
Wow. I don't know if I've ever laid eyes on either in the wild.
Needless to say, this place went under for generally being irresponsible as all hell with their purchasing decisions (and being in nowheresville Florida). But, it was a pretty cool experience. Everyone at school was talking about Mortal Kombat on the Genesis and I was playing Star Control on the 3DO. I also played a ton of shitty Jaguar games, which I guess is what you do when you're 12 and can rent a console for a week for $20.
This place would also let you play by the hour if I remember correctly.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
On the contrary, I think being a remote shithole is the only profitable venture within the physical video rental market these days.
The only surviving Blockbuster within miles of my house is in the worst part of town, and just two weeks ago I saw a Blockbuster that was heaving in a little berg called Fairfield, Tx, a little berg utterly dependent on cashflow from people on the interstate stopping there for gas and food.
On the contrary, I think being a remote shithole is the only profitable venture within the physical video rental market these days.
The only surviving Blockbuster within miles of my house is in the worst part of town, and just two weeks ago I saw a Blockbuster that was heaving in a little berg called Fairfield, Tx, a little berg utterly dependent on cashflow from people on the interstate stopping there for gas and food.
I think there's probably some magical combination of factors that contributes nowadays to producing a rare, profitable brick-and-mortar video store. Chiefly, I'd think you need an area without readily available or affordable high speed internet access so you don't have to compete so heavily with digital distribution. You need a population large enough to support the store and pay the rent, but not so large that other distribution models are going to be attracted to the local market. This population should also ideally skew older. They need some disposable income, but not so much that they're going to invest in their own DVD/blue ray collections.
I've also seen some blockbusters in larger population centers. As recently as a year ago, there was still a Blockbuster just south of Pennsylvania Avenue where Eastern Market abuts Barracks Row. This is prime real estate, if you're not familiar with D.C.: it's about five hundred feet away from a metro stop on the blue/orange line, and there is a very high volume of pedestrian traffic around the clock on weekends. During the daylight hours, Eastern Market is one of the commercial hubs of the District. During the evening hours, Barracks Row has a very high concentration of bars and attracts a lot of 20 somethings looking to unwind. This location's rent has to be extraordinary, but it managed to hang on until something finally killed it off sometime around 2011 or 2012.
I have no idea who represented its client base, though; I openly ridiculed the store's existence up until I discovered that my wife had never seen any of the Indiana Jones movies, at which point I realized that you can't stream anything that Steven Spielberg directed, so I ran down, filled out a membership application, rented all three movies, watched them, returned them, and then folded my membership card in half and used it to balance out a chair that kept wobbling.
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
The old mom-and-pop video rental place I used to frequent before Blockbuster came to town used to let me have some of their movie posters and promotional displays when they were done with them.
I remember when I saw this bad boy and almost lost my shit as a kid:
I needed this for my room. Hell, I still do.
My dad worked for Raley's (supermarket chain in Northern California) and I had this in my room. Along with a TMNT2 video display that I used the alcoves of for storing all my Turtles.
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Mego Thor"I say thee...NAY!"Registered Userregular
Oh, I remember the 3DO and Jaguar and even the CDi. I knew a guy who had a Jaguar - it was a shitty system with a terrible controller and slightly-better-than-16-bit-graphics - and I played a few games on it. They were not good games. The other two systems I saw and played in various electronics stores. The CDi had nothing but shit, but there was a pretty cool racing game on the 3DO that was amazing-looking at the time. Not $700 worth of amazing, but damned pretty. Never saw any place that rented those games, though.
Now the TurboGrafx, that was a cool little system. The stores always had a fair amount of TG16 games, but I still never saw them in rental stores and I knew only one kid who had one. I played Bonk on his system sometimes; that was a cool game.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I think some small part of me will always lust after a neogeo. They were ridiculous as a home console for that time.
One of my teachers actually subscribed to Arcade trade mags, which where I first heard of the neo geo. Even as a kid I balked at the price back then. But I was still amazed by the thing (actual arcade perfect games at home, because it's the actual arcade hardware! Take your memory card with you to the arcade and save your progress to take home!)
Now that I think about it... That same mom/pop store was where I rented and played my first Final Fantasies. I rented the first one, I'm pretty sure it was our first week in town, just rented the house, no cable, no TV, so I get to rent FF1. Then FF2(4) comes out and we rent a SNES and the game for the weekend so I could play that.
I also remember that they rented Game Genies, and then this thing called Game Action Replay (which was a device that allowed you to do save states on your NES games). However to actually use the PAR, you had to rip out the silver bar that held the cart in place. I explained this to my mom, and we took it back to the store, where I explained it to them that I couldn't use this thing without destroying my system (it was even right there in the thing's manual "grip the silver bar firmly and pull to remove it"). Got a free rental out of that.
If you're curious, here's a pic. It's the weird looking thing on the left.
This thread is killing me. I am loving it. Growing up, my parents never let us get a video game console until my 8th grade graduation (at which point I received both Star Wars Pod Racer and the original Super Smash Bros. along with my brand new N64). So before that, the only console experience we had was on our birthdays. Both on mine and my older brother's birthday, we got to choose the system we wanted to rent and then three or four games along with it. We had the system like a week or something like that, and it was completely superfluous to other presents - it was just a kickass time.
I can remember many a birthday week watching my brother play through the earliest Final Fantasy games (and having nightmares from the scary monsters - no joke). It would be a 100% of the time time sink, and honestly, I can't remember what games I would get. I have vivid memories of a robot baseball league with battling and powering-up of the robots between games for the NES, but that's pretty much it. These were amazing times.
Fast forward, and I can remember spending countless Friday nights at the local video rental place (never Blockbuster - too expensive for a high schooler!) picking out movies for the weekend. I would burn through so many movies for a buck a night, I still owe my almost encyclopedic movie trivia knowledge.
On a side note, I just heard about the VHS Preservation Society, which I thought was appropriate timing for this thread. The idea is that the quality, trailers, commercials, etc. of the VHS age are worth preserving and remembering. They offer a wide, wide, WIDE selection of old VHS tapes transferred directly onto DVD for $10.00 a piece. We're talking stuff they put out on VHS that's too obscure to have made it to DVD still, and likely never will. Ever wanted to see Norman's Awesome Experience? Didn't even know it exists? You're in luck!
I haven't tried it yet, but I really want to. I'm not sure how long it lasts, and it's legality appears to be a tiny bit dubious. Has anyone ordered from them before?
CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
edited February 2013
I actually owned both a 3DO and a Jaguar. I don't know what that says about me, but it probably isn't good.
CaptainPeacock on
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
@thehopelessgamer The precise reason why I love and still own Commercial Crazies, despite not owning a VHS player, is that the kitschy 80s were awersome. Even, and especially, the commercials.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
Absolutely. I really do love the VHS Preservation Society for this very reason - context. It's one of the things that horrifies me about Blu-Ray. Whenever I see a message at the start of a blu-ray disc that its searching the internet for new previews to show me, it bugs the hell out of me. I want to see what movies were coming out and making me excited back in the day that I originally got the movie. It's like a little time capsule.
Working at Blockbuster was my third job (first job was as a do-everything-in-the-store guy at a supermarket, second at a mom & pop video game store). I think I was the only employee aside from an ex-Marine who wasn't drunk or high at all times. He and I were also the only ones who didn't steal. The deposit would regularly be missing $10-20, movies in the employee cabinet would disappear between audits, etc. For the most part, my customers were awesome, aside from the one girl who accused me of being racist because I didn't let her skip 20 people in line on a Friday night. One of my regulars chewing her out for five minutes solid has been one of the greatest experiences I've had in retail.
It wasn't a bad job, and it was entertaining to see the notes other reps had left in accounts. I think my favorite was "this woman regularly smells of used cat litter."
GreasyKidsStuffMOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered Userregular
I had a friend who worked (still works, actually) at a mom and pop store back home. Five or so years ago I found out through another friend who also worked there that he was caught renting porn titles but under the store account, not his own. Or something like that, the details are hazy. Basically he got called on it and told that nobody gave a shit he was renting porn, just do it on his account and not the other one.
He then actually began accumulating a collection of DVDs he would buy for super-cheap when they were taken off the shelf to make room for new ones (it was a very small backroom). He lent me one once. Actually, I went into the back room once just for kicks; it is weird. I was trying to make sure nobody else in the store saw that I went in, cuz I felt so lecherous...
Just had my own memory pop up after reading some of the posts in this thread.. I picked up the Ocarina of Time the day it came out from my Mom & Pop and kept it for 4 or 5 days to beat it. I also remember actually buying it after this rental as well, which makes sense now after seeing all the praise it's had. Good times.
Oh, I remember the 3DO and Jaguar and even the CDi. I knew a guy who had a Jaguar - it was a shitty system with a terrible controller and slightly-better-than-16-bit-graphics - and I played a few games on it. They were not good games. The other two systems I saw and played in various electronics stores. The CDi had nothing but shit, but there was a pretty cool racing game on the 3DO that was amazing-looking at the time. Not $700 worth of amazing, but damned pretty. Never saw any place that rented those games, though.
Now the TurboGrafx, that was a cool little system. The stores always had a fair amount of TG16 games, but I still never saw them in rental stores and I knew only one kid who had one. I played Bonk on his system sometimes; that was a cool game.
Oh man, another memory.. I was the kid with the TurboGrafx, and I even had the 32 bit expansion, and a decent chunk o' games.. At the 'good' game store in the 'big' city, where they had the by the hour play booths, I was shown a TurboGrafx handheld that played the normal games, and I was told it would be stateside soon (not sure if it ever did.. I got my TurboGrafx from Sears, of all places.).. Covetted that so bad, and broke down and got a game gear that I hated, since I always compared it to that.. It's also what killed me and my gameboy.
You guys know what's absolutely the saddest sight ever?
Someone renting a porn on Christmas Day. Happened every year.
I would also always crack up when a parent would come up to the register to pay, would try to distract his kid somehow while trying to get me to ring up his porn discretely along with some disney movie and a game.
Also, there were coutless times when I would be ringing up a family and the kid had put in a hentai movie. Often times I would tell the mom/dad that it really wasn't a cartoon aimed at kids..sometimes they wouldn't get it until I explained it more.
I remember that when I turned 18 (or close enough to it) I went into the 'back room' at our local video store for the first time. I felt like SUCH a creep, and worked my way over to the door watching the employees until everyone was looking away, and quickly went in there.
It was like physically walking into the internet. All my porn had come from the internet, so I didn't realize just how graphic the boxes that porn videos come in were. I had expected a bunch of generic cases with titles written on them, not a 12x12 room crammed with as many shelves as possible, with row after row of graphic retail boxes.
I'll never forget the mutual shame I felt when a guy my dad's age walked in, saw I was in there, and in one motion turned around and walked out. It was like the Simpson's when Grandpa Simpson walks into the bordello, sees Bart working the door, and smoothly turns around and walks out.
On the contrary, I think being a remote shithole is the only profitable venture within the physical video rental market these days.
The only surviving Blockbuster within miles of my house is in the worst part of town, and just two weeks ago I saw a Blockbuster that was heaving in a little berg called Fairfield, Tx, a little berg utterly dependent on cashflow from people on the interstate stopping there for gas and food.
I think there's probably some magical combination of factors that contributes nowadays to producing a rare, profitable brick-and-mortar video store. Chiefly, I'd think you need an area without readily available or affordable high speed internet access so you don't have to compete so heavily with digital distribution. You need a population large enough to support the store and pay the rent, but not so large that other distribution models are going to be attracted to the local market. This population should also ideally skew older. They need some disposable income, but not so much that they're going to invest in their own DVD/blue ray collections.
I've also seen some blockbusters in larger population centers. As recently as a year ago, there was still a Blockbuster just south of Pennsylvania Avenue where Eastern Market abuts Barracks Row. This is prime real estate, if you're not familiar with D.C.: it's about five hundred feet away from a metro stop on the blue/orange line, and there is a very high volume of pedestrian traffic around the clock on weekends. During the daylight hours, Eastern Market is one of the commercial hubs of the District. During the evening hours, Barracks Row has a very high concentration of bars and attracts a lot of 20 somethings looking to unwind. This location's rent has to be extraordinary, but it managed to hang on until something finally killed it off sometime around 2011 or 2012.
I have no idea who represented its client base, though; I openly ridiculed the store's existence up until I discovered that my wife had never seen any of the Indiana Jones movies, at which point I realized that you can't stream anything that Steven Spielberg directed, so I ran down, filled out a membership application, rented all three movies, watched them, returned them, and then folded my membership card in half and used it to balance out a chair that kept wobbling.
I'm pretty sure the Barracks supported it in large part. A bunch of Marines who aren't packing around dvd collections and share their net connection, to the point where there's almost certainly throttling on streaming like video? Those dudes rent movies.
Huh, all the talk of the back room is mystifying to me. I guess they were illegal in WA? In my time I've been in many a blockbuster/hollywood and never seen a back room. Or I was super oblivious. As far as I know you have to go to a sex shop to get porn.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
Blockbuster changed their image to more "family friendly" when they expanded over the years.
Oh, I remember the 3DO and Jaguar and even the CDi. I knew a guy who had a Jaguar - it was a shitty system with a terrible controller and slightly-better-than-16-bit-graphics - and I played a few games on it. They were not good games. The other two systems I saw and played in various electronics stores. The CDi had nothing but shit, but there was a pretty cool racing game on the 3DO that was amazing-looking at the time. Not $700 worth of amazing, but damned pretty. Never saw any place that rented those games, though.
Now the TurboGrafx, that was a cool little system. The stores always had a fair amount of TG16 games, but I still never saw them in rental stores and I knew only one kid who had one. I played Bonk on his system sometimes; that was a cool game.
Oh man, another memory.. I was the kid with the TurboGrafx, and I even had the 32 bit expansion, and a decent chunk o' games.. At the 'good' game store in the 'big' city, where they had the by the hour play booths, I was shown a TurboGrafx handheld that played the normal games, and I was told it would be stateside soon (not sure if it ever did.. I got my TurboGrafx from Sears, of all places.).. Covetted that so bad, and broke down and got a game gear that I hated, since I always compared it to that.. It's also what killed me and my gameboy.
Oh, I'd forgotten about the TurboXpress (I think it was called)! I never saw a real one, but I saw them sold in stores and it just seemed so cool, aside from the bit where it was like $300.
I had a Game Gear, too. I loved it. I only ever had maybe half a dozen games (Mortal Kombat, bay-bee! And Sonic! And... fuck, I don't remember what else.)
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
You know, speaking of MK, I remember when game ratings first came out. And I knew they were pretty much retarded the second I was in Blockbuster and noticed that Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat had the same rating. (It made sense on the SNES version, since it was completely censored, but the Genesis version had blood enabled if you entered a cheat code. Apparently graphic violence doesn't count if you need to enter a five second code first?)
Ooh, and then there was the day I so excitedly rented the M-rated Mortal Kombat for my SegaCD. I don't know why, exactly, since I had the Genny version. But oh god, that was a terrible gaming experience. It paused the game to load data before every fatality - like for a good 20 seconds - and it also paused for 20 seconds to load data when fighting Shao Kahn every time he changed shape. Which was often.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Oh, I remember the 3DO and Jaguar and even the CDi. I knew a guy who had a Jaguar - it was a shitty system with a terrible controller and slightly-better-than-16-bit-graphics - and I played a few games on it. They were not good games. The other two systems I saw and played in various electronics stores. The CDi had nothing but shit, but there was a pretty cool racing game on the 3DO that was amazing-looking at the time. Not $700 worth of amazing, but damned pretty. Never saw any place that rented those games, though.
Now the TurboGrafx, that was a cool little system. The stores always had a fair amount of TG16 games, but I still never saw them in rental stores and I knew only one kid who had one. I played Bonk on his system sometimes; that was a cool game.
Oh man, another memory.. I was the kid with the TurboGrafx, and I even had the 32 bit expansion, and a decent chunk o' games.. At the 'good' game store in the 'big' city, where they had the by the hour play booths, I was shown a TurboGrafx handheld that played the normal games, and I was told it would be stateside soon (not sure if it ever did.. I got my TurboGrafx from Sears, of all places.).. Covetted that so bad, and broke down and got a game gear that I hated, since I always compared it to that.. It's also what killed me and my gameboy.
Oh, I'd forgotten about the TurboXpress (I think it was called)! I never saw a real one, but I saw them sold in stores and it just seemed so cool, aside from the bit where it was like $300.
I had a Game Gear, too. I loved it. I only ever had maybe half a dozen games (Mortal Kombat, bay-bee! And Sonic! And... fuck, I don't remember what else.)
Trying to play mortal kombat on the gamegear pretty much traumatized me.. I was sooo bad at it, and I played so much of that shit on the Genesis.. And trying to get that Tv adapter to actually work was so infuriating for me, since I lived close enough to Los Angeles to get the channels, but not close enough for them to be strong enough to not get interference from the next market... So, it just didn't work.. Like I said, Game Gears were awesome if you got to them at the right time, I just was spoiled and only associate it with anger and suffering. I think it also had to do with the fact most of the games I got for it, I had actually wanted for my Genesis or something and got their shitty Gg ports.
Oh man, being able to rent an entire system. Goddamn, I miss that. During spring break or some other holiday I'd rent a Genesis and five games and just go to town.
Oh, I remember the 3DO and Jaguar and even the CDi. I knew a guy who had a Jaguar - it was a shitty system with a terrible controller and slightly-better-than-16-bit-graphics - and I played a few games on it. They were not good games. The other two systems I saw and played in various electronics stores. The CDi had nothing but shit, but there was a pretty cool racing game on the 3DO that was amazing-looking at the time. Not $700 worth of amazing, but damned pretty. Never saw any place that rented those games, though.
Now the TurboGrafx, that was a cool little system. The stores always had a fair amount of TG16 games, but I still never saw them in rental stores and I knew only one kid who had one. I played Bonk on his system sometimes; that was a cool game.
I was lucky enough to live in a town with a Hastings... they had video rentals, books and CDs, which was a godsend in a small town with relatively few of any of that. Quite a few of them are still going strong, though usually in smaller towns.
At any rate, they actually had a TG16 for rent. I can't say the selection would have given anyone at Nintendo or Sega sleepless nights, but I dug being able to give odd stuff like Bonk, Splatterhouse and Devil's Crush a spin.
Oh man, being able to rent an entire system. Goddamn, I miss that. During spring break or some other holiday I'd rent a Genesis and five games and just go to town.
Want pink eye, but don't have a public pool nearby? Rent a Virtual Boy today!
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
My Mom's gonna dig out all that remains of my old game collection outta storage next time I wanna go up to her.. Wondering what happened to the TG and that 32 bit expansion had some sweet games.. I remember Primal Rage with it was really great.
Hey, I rented a Virtual Boy from Blockbuster one weekend. I'm certainly grateful, because it let me know exactly why I didn't want one instead of never having a chance to play it and always wondering what could have been.
...And now there's a dead Virtual Boy goggle set on my desk, so I don't know what that means about me.
GNU Terry Pratchett
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Hey, I rented a Virtual Boy from Blockbuster one weekend. I'm certainly grateful, because it let me know exactly why I didn't want one instead of never having a chance to play it and always wondering what could have been.
...And now there's a dead Virtual Boy goggle set on my desk, so I don't know what that means about me.
It means you stand triumphant over a vanquished foe. How many dollars did you swindle from kids who trusted Nintendo, Virtual Boy? How many tears on Christmas day were you responsible for, Virtual Boy?
I remember going to a Walmart? KMart? Target? Big Lots? and seeing a pallet of Virtual Boys packed with a dozen games for $20.
I had my birthday money in my pocket and came oh so very close to buying one. I can't even remember what I bought instead, but to this day I know I made the right choice.
I remember trying out a display Virtual Boy and desperately wanting one, but seeing as how neither my birthday nor Christmas was near, knew I'd have to wait until the next big present-event to ask for one. The damn thing was dead before that day could come.
So many memories. Shame the following generations will never have them;
- We got a coupon book in the mail from a rental store - like 30 "Rent one, get another free" deals. Lots of weekends started with me down there on a Saturday morning picking out 2 games to last until Sunday night. It was a cornerstone of my childhood - lots of Master System games.
- One place kept Dreamcast games until just into 2001, they were still all release titles (or close to, nothing 'new'), but it did give me a weekend with House of the Dead 2 and a light gun. Dayum.....
- One summer, on break from uni/college a Blockbuster had all the Buffy seasons up to (and inc.) 6. I'd rent 2 boxes for a week, cannonball them in a couple of days, return them early and get the next 2. Wonderful; I miss being able to do that (and also having the 2 months off a year... but that's another issue).
- The fact that every time you tried to 'book' a game in advance, they'd tell you it'll be there, but it was all lies because no-one ever worried about the booking notes.
- That week when I was 10 when my parents rented a Genesis... Quackshot then Outrun then Sonic.... just wow...
There was always something great about the VHS boxes in those places too. They were chunky, often worn (if they were the puffed-out-plastic cases instead of the later-on hard plastic ones), but man it was amazing as a kid to poor through the racks just absorbing the sheer volume of titles there were out there.
Oh, I remember the 3DO and Jaguar and even the CDi. I knew a guy who had a Jaguar - it was a shitty system with a terrible controller and slightly-better-than-16-bit-graphics - and I played a few games on it. They were not good games. The other two systems I saw and played in various electronics stores. The CDi had nothing but shit, but there was a pretty cool racing game on the 3DO that was amazing-looking at the time. Not $700 worth of amazing, but damned pretty. Never saw any place that rented those games, though.
Now the TurboGrafx, that was a cool little system. The stores always had a fair amount of TG16 games, but I still never saw them in rental stores and I knew only one kid who had one. I played Bonk on his system sometimes; that was a cool game.
The Jaguar & CDi were such sad stories, honestly: both were legitimately powerful systems (the Jag also had a revised controller that was much better than the uncomfortable original), but they received so little third party support that they were just doomed from the get-go.
I remember trying out a display Virtual Boy and desperately wanting one, but seeing as how neither my birthday nor Christmas was near, knew I'd have to wait until the next big present-event to ask for one. The damn thing was dead before that day could come.
The only Virtual Boy game I ever played was the robot boxing game. It was actually legitimately great, as far as I was concerned; I think I spent almost a whole afternoon on that thing, until the eye strain headache became too severe.
So many memories. Shame the following generations will never have them;
- We got a coupon book in the mail from a rental store - like 30 "Rent one, get another free" deals. Lots of weekends started with me down there on a Saturday morning picking out 2 games to last until Sunday night. It was a cornerstone of my childhood - lots of Master System games.
- One place kept Dreamcast games until just into 2001, they were still all release titles (or close to, nothing 'new'), but it did give me a weekend with House of the Dead 2 and a light gun. Dayum.....
- One summer, on break from uni/college a Blockbuster had all the Buffy seasons up to (and inc.) 6. I'd rent 2 boxes for a week, cannonball them in a couple of days, return them early and get the next 2. Wonderful; I miss being able to do that (and also having the 2 months off a year... but that's another issue).
- The fact that every time you tried to 'book' a game in advance, they'd tell you it'll be there, but it was all lies because no-one ever worried about the booking notes.
- That week when I was 10 when my parents rented a Genesis... Quackshot then Outrun then Sonic.... just wow...
There was always something great about the VHS boxes in those places too. They were chunky, often worn (if they were the puffed-out-plastic cases instead of the later-on hard plastic ones), but man it was amazing as a kid to poor through the racks just absorbing the sheer volume of titles there were out there.
Uh i don't know about the booking thing.
I recall being able to walk right to the counter and tell them what I reserved and pick it up.
Alternatively I also remember seeing a few things behind the counter that were recently returned or (gasp, reserved!?) and being able to rent them.
Posts
oh. my. god.
i am just now realizing that my dad took strolls through the back room when I was distracted with video games. wow.
Needless to say, this place went under for generally being irresponsible as all hell with their purchasing decisions (and being in nowheresville Florida). But, it was a pretty cool experience. Everyone at school was talking about Mortal Kombat on the Genesis and I was playing Star Control on the 3DO. I also played a ton of shitty Jaguar games, which I guess is what you do when you're 12 and can rent a console for a week for $20.
This place would also let you play by the hour if I remember correctly.
On the contrary, I think being a remote shithole is the only profitable venture within the physical video rental market these days.
The only surviving Blockbuster within miles of my house is in the worst part of town, and just two weeks ago I saw a Blockbuster that was heaving in a little berg called Fairfield, Tx, a little berg utterly dependent on cashflow from people on the interstate stopping there for gas and food.
I think there's probably some magical combination of factors that contributes nowadays to producing a rare, profitable brick-and-mortar video store. Chiefly, I'd think you need an area without readily available or affordable high speed internet access so you don't have to compete so heavily with digital distribution. You need a population large enough to support the store and pay the rent, but not so large that other distribution models are going to be attracted to the local market. This population should also ideally skew older. They need some disposable income, but not so much that they're going to invest in their own DVD/blue ray collections.
I've also seen some blockbusters in larger population centers. As recently as a year ago, there was still a Blockbuster just south of Pennsylvania Avenue where Eastern Market abuts Barracks Row. This is prime real estate, if you're not familiar with D.C.: it's about five hundred feet away from a metro stop on the blue/orange line, and there is a very high volume of pedestrian traffic around the clock on weekends. During the daylight hours, Eastern Market is one of the commercial hubs of the District. During the evening hours, Barracks Row has a very high concentration of bars and attracts a lot of 20 somethings looking to unwind. This location's rent has to be extraordinary, but it managed to hang on until something finally killed it off sometime around 2011 or 2012.
I have no idea who represented its client base, though; I openly ridiculed the store's existence up until I discovered that my wife had never seen any of the Indiana Jones movies, at which point I realized that you can't stream anything that Steven Spielberg directed, so I ran down, filled out a membership application, rented all three movies, watched them, returned them, and then folded my membership card in half and used it to balance out a chair that kept wobbling.
My dad worked for Raley's (supermarket chain in Northern California) and I had this in my room. Along with a TMNT2 video display that I used the alcoves of for storing all my Turtles.
Dear Silver Age Mego Thor,
Don't bother, there's nothing good.
Signed,
Modern Age Mego Thor
Now the TurboGrafx, that was a cool little system. The stores always had a fair amount of TG16 games, but I still never saw them in rental stores and I knew only one kid who had one. I played Bonk on his system sometimes; that was a cool game.
One of my teachers actually subscribed to Arcade trade mags, which where I first heard of the neo geo. Even as a kid I balked at the price back then. But I was still amazed by the thing (actual arcade perfect games at home, because it's the actual arcade hardware! Take your memory card with you to the arcade and save your progress to take home!)
Now that I think about it... That same mom/pop store was where I rented and played my first Final Fantasies. I rented the first one, I'm pretty sure it was our first week in town, just rented the house, no cable, no TV, so I get to rent FF1. Then FF2(4) comes out and we rent a SNES and the game for the weekend so I could play that.
I also remember that they rented Game Genies, and then this thing called Game Action Replay (which was a device that allowed you to do save states on your NES games). However to actually use the PAR, you had to rip out the silver bar that held the cart in place. I explained this to my mom, and we took it back to the store, where I explained it to them that I couldn't use this thing without destroying my system (it was even right there in the thing's manual "grip the silver bar firmly and pull to remove it"). Got a free rental out of that.
If you're curious, here's a pic. It's the weird looking thing on the left.
I can remember many a birthday week watching my brother play through the earliest Final Fantasy games (and having nightmares from the scary monsters - no joke). It would be a 100% of the time time sink, and honestly, I can't remember what games I would get. I have vivid memories of a robot baseball league with battling and powering-up of the robots between games for the NES, but that's pretty much it. These were amazing times.
Fast forward, and I can remember spending countless Friday nights at the local video rental place (never Blockbuster - too expensive for a high schooler!) picking out movies for the weekend. I would burn through so many movies for a buck a night, I still owe my almost encyclopedic movie trivia knowledge.
On a side note, I just heard about the VHS Preservation Society, which I thought was appropriate timing for this thread. The idea is that the quality, trailers, commercials, etc. of the VHS age are worth preserving and remembering. They offer a wide, wide, WIDE selection of old VHS tapes transferred directly onto DVD for $10.00 a piece. We're talking stuff they put out on VHS that's too obscure to have made it to DVD still, and likely never will. Ever wanted to see Norman's Awesome Experience? Didn't even know it exists? You're in luck!
I haven't tried it yet, but I really want to. I'm not sure how long it lasts, and it's legality appears to be a tiny bit dubious. Has anyone ordered from them before?
Hopeless Gamer
Hopeless Gamer
It wasn't a bad job, and it was entertaining to see the notes other reps had left in accounts. I think my favorite was "this woman regularly smells of used cat litter."
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
He then actually began accumulating a collection of DVDs he would buy for super-cheap when they were taken off the shelf to make room for new ones (it was a very small backroom). He lent me one once. Actually, I went into the back room once just for kicks; it is weird. I was trying to make sure nobody else in the store saw that I went in, cuz I felt so lecherous...
Oh man, another memory.. I was the kid with the TurboGrafx, and I even had the 32 bit expansion, and a decent chunk o' games.. At the 'good' game store in the 'big' city, where they had the by the hour play booths, I was shown a TurboGrafx handheld that played the normal games, and I was told it would be stateside soon (not sure if it ever did.. I got my TurboGrafx from Sears, of all places.).. Covetted that so bad, and broke down and got a game gear that I hated, since I always compared it to that.. It's also what killed me and my gameboy.
Someone renting a porn on Christmas Day. Happened every year.
I would also always crack up when a parent would come up to the register to pay, would try to distract his kid somehow while trying to get me to ring up his porn discretely along with some disney movie and a game.
Also, there were coutless times when I would be ringing up a family and the kid had put in a hentai movie. Often times I would tell the mom/dad that it really wasn't a cartoon aimed at kids..sometimes they wouldn't get it until I explained it more.
It was like physically walking into the internet. All my porn had come from the internet, so I didn't realize just how graphic the boxes that porn videos come in were. I had expected a bunch of generic cases with titles written on them, not a 12x12 room crammed with as many shelves as possible, with row after row of graphic retail boxes.
I'll never forget the mutual shame I felt when a guy my dad's age walked in, saw I was in there, and in one motion turned around and walked out. It was like the Simpson's when Grandpa Simpson walks into the bordello, sees Bart working the door, and smoothly turns around and walks out.
I'm pretty sure the Barracks supported it in large part. A bunch of Marines who aren't packing around dvd collections and share their net connection, to the point where there's almost certainly throttling on streaming like video? Those dudes rent movies.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Oh, I'd forgotten about the TurboXpress (I think it was called)! I never saw a real one, but I saw them sold in stores and it just seemed so cool, aside from the bit where it was like $300.
I had a Game Gear, too. I loved it. I only ever had maybe half a dozen games (Mortal Kombat, bay-bee! And Sonic! And... fuck, I don't remember what else.)
Ooh, and then there was the day I so excitedly rented the M-rated Mortal Kombat for my SegaCD. I don't know why, exactly, since I had the Genny version. But oh god, that was a terrible gaming experience. It paused the game to load data before every fatality - like for a good 20 seconds - and it also paused for 20 seconds to load data when fighting Shao Kahn every time he changed shape. Which was often.
Trying to play mortal kombat on the gamegear pretty much traumatized me.. I was sooo bad at it, and I played so much of that shit on the Genesis.. And trying to get that Tv adapter to actually work was so infuriating for me, since I lived close enough to Los Angeles to get the channels, but not close enough for them to be strong enough to not get interference from the next market... So, it just didn't work.. Like I said, Game Gears were awesome if you got to them at the right time, I just was spoiled and only associate it with anger and suffering. I think it also had to do with the fact most of the games I got for it, I had actually wanted for my Genesis or something and got their shitty Gg ports.
I was lucky enough to live in a town with a Hastings... they had video rentals, books and CDs, which was a godsend in a small town with relatively few of any of that. Quite a few of them are still going strong, though usually in smaller towns.
At any rate, they actually had a TG16 for rent. I can't say the selection would have given anyone at Nintendo or Sega sleepless nights, but I dug being able to give odd stuff like Bonk, Splatterhouse and Devil's Crush a spin.
Want pink eye, but don't have a public pool nearby? Rent a Virtual Boy today!
Hopeless Gamer
My Mom's gonna dig out all that remains of my old game collection outta storage next time I wanna go up to her.. Wondering what happened to the TG and that 32 bit expansion had some sweet games.. I remember Primal Rage with it was really great.
...And now there's a dead Virtual Boy goggle set on my desk, so I don't know what that means about me.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
It means you stand triumphant over a vanquished foe. How many dollars did you swindle from kids who trusted Nintendo, Virtual Boy? How many tears on Christmas day were you responsible for, Virtual Boy?
I had my birthday money in my pocket and came oh so very close to buying one. I can't even remember what I bought instead, but to this day I know I made the right choice.
- We got a coupon book in the mail from a rental store - like 30 "Rent one, get another free" deals. Lots of weekends started with me down there on a Saturday morning picking out 2 games to last until Sunday night. It was a cornerstone of my childhood - lots of Master System games.
- One place kept Dreamcast games until just into 2001, they were still all release titles (or close to, nothing 'new'), but it did give me a weekend with House of the Dead 2 and a light gun. Dayum.....
- One summer, on break from uni/college a Blockbuster had all the Buffy seasons up to (and inc.) 6. I'd rent 2 boxes for a week, cannonball them in a couple of days, return them early and get the next 2. Wonderful; I miss being able to do that (and also having the 2 months off a year... but that's another issue).
- The fact that every time you tried to 'book' a game in advance, they'd tell you it'll be there, but it was all lies because no-one ever worried about the booking notes.
- That week when I was 10 when my parents rented a Genesis... Quackshot then Outrun then Sonic.... just wow...
There was always something great about the VHS boxes in those places too. They were chunky, often worn (if they were the puffed-out-plastic cases instead of the later-on hard plastic ones), but man it was amazing as a kid to poor through the racks just absorbing the sheer volume of titles there were out there.
The Jaguar & CDi were such sad stories, honestly: both were legitimately powerful systems (the Jag also had a revised controller that was much better than the uncomfortable original), but they received so little third party support that they were just doomed from the get-go.
The only Virtual Boy game I ever played was the robot boxing game. It was actually legitimately great, as far as I was concerned; I think I spent almost a whole afternoon on that thing, until the eye strain headache became too severe.
Uh i don't know about the booking thing.
I recall being able to walk right to the counter and tell them what I reserved and pick it up.
Alternatively I also remember seeing a few things behind the counter that were recently returned or (gasp, reserved!?) and being able to rent them.