Man I remember my mom surprising me once when she picked me up from daycare and said she rented a ps1 for the weekend.
I really did not appreciate my childhood enough
My mother was a manager at blockbuster during the 90s. I definitely did not appreciate what that meant back then. I could ask for any game they had in stock and she was able to bring it home within a couple of days. They had demo consoles in the manager's office for employees with children that could be loaned out for a week at a time. When there wasn't a babysitter available, she'd just bring me along and stick me somewhere with a stack of games/demo unit/shitty tv.
Damn you just reminded me that I use to go to work with my mom when sick and chilled in a sleeping bag in her office while she worked. Would bring like games and books with me to chill and do till she finished work
Damn, my parents just left me at home by myself. I had keys to my house when I was like 6, and would be absolutely fucked if I lost them. The 80s were wild.
I was honestly shocked when I saw you aren't legally supposed to leave kids home alone until age 12 in many states. I definitely recall being self sufficient and left home alone by age 6.
I am shocked that people leave their kids alone or bring them to the office. Where I live a sick kid is like a sick day. Just stay home and take care of them. We call it VAB (vård av barn = care of child), just call the boss and say "cant come. Today is VAB"
Edit: sick day = sick leave.
English is not my native language.
VAB is a sick leave you can use if your kid is sick, you get paid 80% of your salary.
And yes Im swedish.
Edit again: When I was sick back in the day my parents also used to go to a place called "videohallen(hall of video)" and rent some game for my super nintendo. Or sometimes even the brand new n64 console.
Strangly I didnt exploit that to much!
Most office jobs have some sort of sick leave as a benefit. If they have it, they're required to allow time off to take care of sick family. Though they can limit it to immediate family.
it's america. people aren't doing it by choice. depending on the state, we're lagging 20-40 years behind europe on basic stuff like sick days, vacation days, and maternity/paternity leave
Must be nice. My Mom never got to stay home with me when I got sick. She always had to go to work. Her boss flat out told her once "I didn't get to stay home with my kids when they were sick, why would I let you?" So I was dropped off at my Grandma's house. Mom told me when I was older that she always regretted never getting to stay home with me. Wish we had worker protections and good family leave in this country.
Is that true? I was looking for something like that in my state (NJ) and couldn't find a specific age. I think it really depends on the kid. I know a few 7 year olds who would be fine for a little while on their own and some 10 year olds who will probably need supervision for a few more years....
Edit: Looks like only a few states have laws for this:
Maryland: 8
Oregon: 10
Illinois: 14
While other states have recommendations ranging from 6 to 12. (Also, Illinois, what the heck? I had a job when I was 14 but you can't leave your kids home when you go to the grocery store? Weirdos)
Not as young but yeah. 9-10, home an hour before my sibling. I could make a few simple meals too, we were made to be pretty self sufficient early on. Parents pass their upbringings to their own kids.
I realize later that my folks did that as kids because they *had to*, and it made me thankful for what I do have.
Same here, we had a small porch leading to one of the doors I had a key to and my key fell in between the wood slats and I had no way of retrieving them it sucked!
Also if I stayed home because I was sick I wasn’t allowed to go outside and play when my friends came home. I watched a ton of Price is Right, Beverly Hillbillies and Andy Griffith.
Yea I was left home alone too, I thought it was normal until I called the police one time as a kid because my bike got stolen and the cops showed up freaking out that I was alone. I think I was in 3rd grade at the time. My mother was pretty upset with me but nothing ever happened from it.
Wait, are we not allowed to leave a six year old at home now? I was walking two miles to school by myself at that age and was home an hour before anyone else most days. I was expecting my kids to have a little freedom at that age too but are child services getting mad at a six year old being home alone?
Yes, CPS could legitimately try to take your children away if God forbid something went wrong when you left a kid under 12 at home.
Seems harsh to me, as I remember being left home plenty of times before I was 12, but that's the way it is now.
My mom use to work as an RN at an assisted living facility.
During the summers I would go with her to work everyday and I would bring a little buggy with my ps2 and a tiny little 10-15 inch old school box tv(back before flat screens were mainstream) and plug it in her office and just spend all day playing video games.
Those were some of the best memories of my childhood that I can remember.
My mum cleaned other people's houses for a year while I was young. When I was ill I got to go with her and play with other kids Lego collections. Was brilliant
My mom worked for a privetly owned rental shop in a small Kansas town, I would go to work with her all summer.
They were trying to sell these strange gaming TVs, that had built in speakers in these folding doors. Anyways there was one of those on the counter and I would sit there with an N64 hooked up and just game all day. No one ever rented any of the equipment except the VCRs and Camcorder (I shudder now) so I was constantly taking systems home over night and on weekends.
I have to say, I did appreciate that time; my mom hated the job though lol.
My mom managed and was the sole worker of a tiny country grocery store when I was 3-4. Next door was a mom and pop video store. The worker would let me watch movies, do scratch off tickets, play Mario paint. It was great. The milk guy would give me a strawberry milk and the fruit guy would give me an apple. There was a bookmobile from the library that would give me a book. Had. It. Made. Those are my first real memories.
My mom had a very small biz with a till. She took me to work once when I was 6. Video arcade next door. I remember her explaining tills to me after that and how after 8 hours she had sold $350 worth of stuff. She had to pay $300 for that stuff leaving her 50. Minus the $50 in quarters I stole from the till to play videogames all day means I don't get to come to work with her anymore.
So *you* were the fucking kid who rented all the new games before the store even opened.
You'll never know the feeling of opening a brand new game you rented that came out *that month* & **the blockbuster disc is all scratched up already??!!?**
I was also a manager there, 98-01. Picked up a used rental unit N64 and PS1 for like next to nothing and was sweet since it had the hardshell case two controllers and all the wiring harnesses included (also the memory pack add on was pre-installed in the N64s). Even better, they eventually sold off their rental PS2s which we like *never* rented because we required a 400 dollar deposit, after a few months when it was clear we didn't need 8 of those fuckin things they sold off some "used" ones, well I just checked the rental history and grabbed a unit that had never been rented and bought that 'used'...had two controllers as well, both high Def and standard Def connectors...think I paid like 174 when new consoles in stores were still 300 lol
Working at BBV was fantastic if you were keen to build your home media collection. I probably amassed 1000 vhs tapes and dvds and games for pennies on the dollar just through working there. Good times!
I really miss being able to just rent a game for a weekend. It's how I got into Animal Crossing as well as one of my favorites as a kid, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.
My mum was manager at a Hollywood video. She took home most of the demos and other games/movies that weren't supposed to be for rent or available yet and it was the best.
I didn't get to mess with consoles in the back though, that would've been truly something. I don't even know if Hollywood rented consoles like blockbuster.
Same here. Mom was a manager of many video stores. Countless hors spent wandering the aisles, watching tons of movies. Playing tons of games. This was like the late 80s early 90s. The carpet pattern and wood panels are etched in my mind. Good times they were 🌊📼
My best times gaming.... console and cartridge era, but uncle from Hong Kong visits and brings you the disk drive attachment with every game in existence available plus a bunch of games made for the Asian market that you had no idea existed.
I had to look it up , but yes I had this !
Seriously so many awesome memories from that system. My friends would come over and be amazed at all the games and we would randomly pull discs out of the bin and just play a mystery game what are we going to play today. I recall enjoying a few RPG style games where I couldn't read any of the subtitles and just stumbled my way through.
I have a somewhat opposite story:
I was eight years old, and this was right after my parent's broke that they were separating to me as a kid. My mom tells me she would take me to Blockbuster, I assume for a movie rental. We get there, and of course I am looking at the games immediately. We weren't allowed to own a console as kids, so I always just looked at the graphics to imagine myself playing the games.
I believe in a bid to assuage me of misplaced guilt over my parent's separation, she relents and says that she will rent a PS1 for me for the weekend, and to go and pick out 2 games. I am beyond excited; finally I will be like the rest of my friends with their N64's, Gameboys, and SNES consoles I only got to play at their houses. We get to the counter and she finds out the rental cost and that there is also a refundable insurance cost as well, neither of which she could afford as a newly single parent.
The feeling of an absolute drop of disappointment in my stomach is still something I can use as a way to help me cry on command to this day.
I used to work at Blockbuster and I hated dealing with system rentals because this would happen a lot. You'd get to the deposit part and the parent would balk and the kids would be crushed and then usually they'd try to talk you into making an exception....or worse they'd give you their rent money or something so now if they lose a controller they're homeless?
If I overheard anything about system rentals I'd tried to pull the parent aside and mention the deposit so it wouldn't happen when they were at the counter.
Is that like a "I love you so here's a dope ass game system for a weekend?" Or more of a "mommy needs some drinky time, so here's something to distract you for a weekend?"
I mean. I’m going to drink a beer while my kid plays video games and mind my own business. It’s a win win. I’m not going to get so drunk I can’t be a parent or anything. I’m just going to watch whatever I want on a different tv.
Since my kid is 5 i have to play with him because he can’t read. Idiot.
>I betcha that kid doesn't even do his taxes smh...
Kids haven't been useful since all these fancy labor laws were passed. Can't even have them run the farm equipment anymore without somebody pitching a fit.
I blame the death of game manuals and magazines for your kid not being able to read. I got a Nintendo at 3 or 4 and could definitely read by 5. I *always* read the manuals front to back when I got a new game (except for all the boring legal shit), same with gaming and wrestling magazines when I was in grade school. I was pretty much always reading a few grades above my level.
As an adult you realize a lot of the fun stuff you did as a kid is a direct result of your parents needing/wanting some time away from you
Hahaha! No judgement either. Kids are a ton of work.
Hey, at least she hooked you up so that she could have some "her time." A lot of parents would've been like "Mommy needs to drink, here's a stick and a rock. See you Monday morning."
Ah it's nice to see my childhood described so sweetly, no complaints though being outside with my friends playing with random shit shaped my imagination lol
The fact that so many of us still have functioning limbs is kind of miraculous. We were actively seeking out the best ways to combine activities that would cause bodily injury and harm in the most reckless way possible.
I remember renting a PS1 for a weekend and then having to go back to my Super Nintendo. As a kid it was kind of brutal. Like everyone got this really cool thing, but you are stuck playing the console that will never have a new game again.
Sounds like you were excited and really appreciative of her gift. And you remember it 20 years later. I think you appreciate your childhood. Question is. Do you appreciate what you have now?
On the other hand, I sure appreciated mine when my mom rented the Super Famicom before the SNES had even launched in the US, for us one weekend. She had to put down a pretty significant deposit for it too. That was an amazing weekend
Honestly I will say there was nothing greater than receiving the exact gift you wanted. I remember begging my parents for a GBA for months. I was a dumb kid and assumed my parents not getting it for me was mostly cause they didn’t want me to be happy (not cause we were broke as fuck). On the last day of school they took me to Walmart as a surprise and got it for me; still remember every detail of that day.
My mom rented a Super Nintendo for me. I skipped going trick or treating on Halloween because of it.
they love me so much and for the life of me I keep thinking I am not a good enough person to deserve it.
I once asked a friend of mine why. Why does mom love me SO much?
“It’s like the sunset and sunrise. Knowing why won’t help. You won’t appreciate it as much. Instead, sit in the warmth and enjoy it knowing you don’t need to know anymore about it than you do now”.
Before the N64 released stateside my local no name video rental store was renting a Japanese N64 with Mario 64. $120 for 3 days. I begged my dad to rent it for me for a weekend and he did. Well...obviously I didn't understand Japanese, and I didn't know that you had to jump into the paintings to start a level. I spent the entire weekend just running around the castle. I was thrilled and had a great time, but I was also confused about how seemingly small and empty the game was.
Gaming was so different before the internet. Something so pure about really being on your own to figure it out (even though sometimes things like this happened)
The internet has ruined any kind of pvp or mmo game for me.
If you play a game when it's first released, everyone is learning things & coming up with their own ideas for the first month. It's a whole different experience & a lot of fun.
Shortly afterwards, the game generates a meta where 80% of players copy strategies from top Twitch streamers. Wiki pages & walk-throughs appear on how to unlock or level up things as efficiently as possible...
Nowadays I just stick to single player games to recreate the experience you've described.
i’m currently doing this right now with the RE2 remake. big fan of the franchise but never played the original. going in completely blind is such a unique experience
On a trip to Tokyo, I tried to save money by getting a cheap hotel room. It was about 5x5 with no furniture. I had to sleep diagonally if I wanted to extend my legs. Bathroom was down the hall, it smelled like an ashtray and construction workers were building scaffolding outside my window.
But it had a great location and cost like $80 a night. If I was doing it again I'd probably just stay in a capsule.
That’s crazy, I had an Airbnb with two beds for $25 a night. This was in Shinjuku. It was perfect because we barely spent any time in the room, it was just for sleeping and showering. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
oh wow…something very similar I did! I was mesmerized by Mario 64…I do also have vague memory of just liking to move around to take in all the beauty of the game !
Mario 64 was revolutionary at the time. I remember my buddy got it and we were in awe of the 3d world and just ran around the castle. Holy shit you can climb the trees!! But it wasn't long until we were throwing that penguin off the cliff.
My grandmother bought my brother and me a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red/Blue when I was a kid. I had played games before (Doom2 on my parents computer and super NES games at the same Grandmother's house) but I spent actual hours just in the starting house in Pokemon because I couldn't figure out how the hell to get out. I clicked on literally everything and was completely baffled. I eventually realized that the door was represented by some differently shaded tiles on the floor and made it out.
When the Dreamcast came out friend and I rented it for the weekend and played sonic. It didn’t come with a memory card so we pulled a couple all nighters in a row to beat it because we couldn’t let the game turn off without losing all of our progress.
By the final fight we were both pretty delirious. I don’t remember exactly what happened but on the final fight there was a part where it just glitched and sonic just clipped right thru the floor and died. I was like, “what happened?” He just replied “Fell through the floor. “
We started busting up laughing harder than I ever remember. Not sure why it was so funny but it will always be a fond memory.
The Dreamcast was super ahead of its time. You could hook it up to a CRT monitor to gain resolution which gave a fuck ton of clarity compared to a CRT TV. You could play Quake 3 and other first person shooters online with a keyboard and mouse via either 56k or a broadband adapter. On top of that, you could play against PC players in Quake 3 since it was a direct port so they had cross platform going on in 2001! They had the Sega net ladders where in competitive games you could login to do an official game and it kept track of all your stats on their website, I actually won one month after a ridiculous amount of trying and was so proud. There was even a game called The Typing of the Dead which was just house of the dead 2 except you spelled words above the enemy's heads to kill them and it was super addictive. I ended up typing 120wpm thanks to that game! They modified the players in it so they had on Dreamcast backpacks with giant double A batteries and a keyboard strapped to it lol
https://i.imgur.com/8mPddPn.jpeg
If anyone is interested there is a PC port of this game but it's not on Steam or anything so you have to get creative to find it, it has a huge library of words and makes you type cheesy things being self aware of how cheesy the original game was in the first place. There is a follow up game to it on Steam but it's absolutely horrible compared to the first, don't get tricked into buying that, I think it's called "The typing of the Dead 2 Overkill" or somethibg
My brother and I stayed with my aunt for a weekend when we were kids. She surprised us with a rented N64 and that's what we did all weekend. All we had was Mario and we were blown away, still one of my best memories ever
The ripples of the paintings. The special jumping moves. All the hidden stuff. Single player gameplay but really playing as a group (taking turns and collectively figuring things out).
Pass and play and collective decision making continues to be one of my most cherished ways to connect with the people I love. I’m (30 years old) playing Forgotten City docked on my Switch now, and my parents (late 50s) are participating in dialogue decisions and exploration (my dad: “something flashed over there! No, to your left…your other left, Katie…”, mom: “ooh, say that, say that!”) 😂😂
Tbh the jump from snes and virtual boy to n64 was huge too.
The sheer power between that era and the last was massive. PS1 had the same jump. Most people went from the genesis or snes to n64/PS1 and it was such a massive leap.
Yep. Played it again this year on the Switch 3D Mario collection for the first since it first came out when I was 8 years old. The camera is a little wonkier than I remember, but other than that it’s still such a great game. The movement still feels so good which is insane since it pretty much invented the genre of 3D platformers
Fun Fact: This is how the Neo Geo was meant to be used, they weren't expecting someone to drop $650 (\~$1400 today) for the system and $300 (\~$650 today) per game. It was supposed to be a rental system.
The local, independent video store near my cousin's house had a Neo Geo for rent. We had it all planned out that he would reserve it for the weekend I was visiting, then we would play Samurai Showdown all weekend.
On Friday when I got there, we walked over to pick it up and the store owner said it hadn't been returned. The previous renter was racking up late fees to keep it.
We tried again later that summer but it was gone. The person who rented it before us had kept it and moved away. Phone disconnected, gone.
I am wondering if that's one of the reasons the mom and pop video stores went extinct. If they were too trusting, they got robbed blind.
I was casually friendly with our local video store owners... Their kids went to my school and one of them worked part time at the store too. They were Chinese immigrants with limited English and at the peak of their business (maybe mid to late 90's) they sure seemed to do very well. I remember that if you went on there on a Friday night or weekend you'd be praying to find the hot new movies cause the store was always so busy.
They had not been in business for a long time and I didn't live in the area anymore and hadn't thought about them for quite a while. One day I'm in town visiting my folks and I had to Popeye's Chicken for some takeout and look who's working the counter but the old man from the video store! He recognizes me right away and we chit chat and he tells me that he's now divorced and he's so glad to be done with video rental business.. that it was good while it lasted but they also held on way too long once it started to clearly make less money.
He proceeds to tell me that he got bored after divorce and now owns this Popeyes and he makes way more money doing this than he ever imagined... Good memory, he hooks me up with a whole bunch of free chicken and side dishes!
The bigger issue was just material costs coming down. Rental stores filled the gap. CDs killed the rental industry. CDs let manufacturers price their games low enough to entice direct consumer purchases. Cartridges were prohibitively expensive. An SNES cart was $60 in 1995. Super Mario World would've been $120 bucks today, minimum.
No industry can be killed by a minority of consumers who steal. See Amazon for proof of that.
Neo Geo always seemed so unattainable when I was a kid. My local Pizza Hut had a Neo Geo cabinet and all I remember was how much better it was than my SNES at he time. World Heroes will always hold a place in my heart. That and Art of Fighting!
The local Radio Shack had a demo TurboGrafx-16 when I was growing up. I think it ran Bonk the entire time. I wanted one, despite it being technologically inferior to the SNES I already had.
TG16 had the best games though. Final Lap Twin was one of my favorite RPGs ever. That and Dungeon Explorers? I think that's the name. It used the multitap for 4 players and the main villain was named Natas, which took me way too long to realize was just Satan backwards.
Dungeon explorers was awesome.
I think the release title was Keith courage: and the alpha zone layer that featured a 2 types of levels: really intense action packed platformer levels as a robot, and really slow paced and uneventful levels as a person.
I feel like that may have not encouraged people to keep finding games for the system.
Yes! Keith Courage came with my system and that game was dope AF! Them cats dropping down from the sky. Seriously, playing that system as a youth got me interested in a lot of different culture, especially as I began seeing that same cat statue in Asian restaurants and places around my area.
I somehow owned a turbo grafx 16 when I was 8 or so! I think my dad traded something to a neighbour for it alongside one of those 256 in 1 nes cartridges. I was the coolest kid on the block.
Metal Slug 1 through 7, X, Advance, 1st Mission, 2nd Mission, not to mention how many collections and systems they've been ported too. Honestly not a bad run considering it was on one of the most unobtainable consumer consoles of all time.
Seeing what Konami and Capcom have barfed out trying to recaputre the 16 bit magic I think i'm happy to have Metal Slug stay a happy memory.
I remember wanting a Neo Geo for Samurai Shodown and Fatal Fury, then being shocked at the cost. Thankfully the SNES ports were pretty solid for \~20% of the price lol.
Man, those ports are complete garbage next to each other though. Lol. The MVS games WERE the arcade game. There was nothing changed, the hardware and software were basically the same. Think the only things changed were maybe censoring stuff because of the ESRB on the later titles. Game Sack on YT has a [great video](https://youtu.be/JP_n3570BR8) about this.
This was a time when gaming consoles were still feeling out what worked and what didn't. The industry back then revolved around rentals, video stores bought more cartridges than consumers. Same reason why SNES and Genesis both had notoriously difficult platform games (see Lion King, Aladdin). The idea was to make it just hard enough that you'd need three days to beat it, which prompted multiple rentals.
So yeah it wasn't a great strategy, but that's just how it goes. See also the Microsoft Zune.
The idea was to make it so hard that you couldn’t beat it in a rental period. Devs and publishers figured this would drive sales since the rental industry cuts their income
But iirc this was a Nintendo thing more than anything else? I think a part of the difficulty was simply people taking their known game design philosophy from arcades and tossing it on consoles
The zune was genuinely a good MP3 player, but it was both too late to the scene and too early with what was basically the first music streaming service. People were still used to having all their music in dubiously sourced MP3’s.
This is gonna sound stupid and childish (it was) but in 1998 I, age 13, had this wonderful idea: What if you had a portable MP3 player, but the MP3s were stored at your home computer and streamed to your player over the internet? I thought it was such a great idea that I sent an email to Microsoft and never heard anything back about it.
What I'm saying is, *you're welcome*. /s
Not a "fun fact" because the neo geo was basically an arcade motherboard placed in console with carts that were JAMMA boards. You were literally buying the guts out an arcade unit and the games were exactly the same to the point that you could save your progress in the arcade on a memory card and continue at home and vice versa.
It represented a way to play arcade games at home in full fidelity. In 1990, you would have seen the neo geo games in all arcades. You would be comparing it to the NES for a year until the SNES was released which still was not even close.
The 3DO was similar considering it cost 699 at launch around the same time, though games were better priced being CDs.
How about the Phillips CDi that was 799 at launch which was also CD based.
Companies were trying to capture the adult market of people with money.
You clearly are really young because SNK never pushed the idea of rentals in any advertising. They pushed it as a way to play arcade games at home. Most setups were in higher end entertainment stores next to the large screen tvs and sound systems. Stores were pushing them as high end entertainment equipment and kept it separate from the other cheaper gaming systems. This was because retail saw it as more entertainment hardware like a laser disc player.
These gaming systems were not found in toy stores or budget stores like more affordable gaming systems were.
If you were walking in to buy a big screen TV, large audio system or laser disc player then you were the target audience. Not everything in the entertainment world is meant to be affordable.
You're right that the direct rental idea didn't last very long, less than a year in Japan and I don't think they bothered in other territories, though anecdotes in this thread suggest it did have some success as a US rental. They pivoted to the premium user as you say, but it did inform the hardware design. Why compromise if it's for rental? It's just a mobile arcade machine at that point. In a parallel universe if SNK had always designed it for home use then perhaps they may have made the hardware cheaper.
You are right there's gaps in my knowledge, not because of age, but because I'm in Europe, where it was not a success.
I got one for you, I remember renting a virtual boy from there. Really happy I did instead of saving up as kid to buy one because I hated it. Hurt my eyes like hell.
Man the virtual boy was amazing. I bought one right when it came out after renting one from blockbuster. I was equally happy/sad when the discontinued the product. All of the games that blockbuster had were sold off for like $5 each. It was a dream come true for a kid on a small allowance.
Good god what a beautiful fucking time we all had, what a goddam treat and gift. I get older and now I own every console, have a great tv and sound system. Purchase nearly every game. But I’m not even a percent as happy as I was renting an N64 with pokemon snap with my bro and playing with my mom.
I’m gonna go die now.
Looking forward to renting one of the new 90s consoles on the weekends was great. I kept renting the Sega Saturn because I had a Sega Genesis at my dad's. When it came time to get a new console, my mom got me the Saturn for Christmas. We quickly realized there weren't a ton of great games for it. I still remember my mom returning my Sega Saturn and hunting down an N64. Getting the call while at my Dad's house that she found one and wanting to just be home playing it as soon as possible.
I bought a Sega CD from a rental store. Got the console and a dozen games for a huge discount. Yeah, the system was a commercial failure, but it still had a few great games for it. I remember being blown away by the FMV cutscenes in the Jurassic Park game. I thought I was looking at the pinnacle of video game graphics back then.
I worked at Blockbuster at this time. That shit would get stolen at the time. Someone checks it out with a fake name and a throw away credit card and it would never come back. We started a policy that newer accounts couldn't check the systems out.
The N64 I had as a kid was stolen from blockbuster. The story was my brother rented several times over the year until he was able to buy it. We just couldnt play it during the day.
Nope they had no idea. We could play it during the day when my brother pretended he had rented it again, at the end of the week we would hide in upstairs and play it when they were asleep.
No, that's not true. Only the United States had video games. If you grew up as a child in Europe the only games you had to play were hopscotch and war.
Canada as well. So many memories of me and mom walking 4 blocks down to blockbuster and renting an N64, Mario Kart 64 for us to play together and a second game for me to play single player.
My dad rented this for me when it came out, we couldn’t afford the actual system and this was like $20 a weekend or something dumb. Anyway i played it for so long i ended up throwing up. Good childhood memory
I can add to this stress, saved up all my money for a PS1 and when I went to the shop to buy it I browsed in 2 shops. When I went to pay in the second one my wallet was empty, I had dropped all my cash. Had to run like a bullet back the first shop and so lucky I just caught a shop attendant bending over to pick up the money as I came dashing in. Weirdest thing ever I actually wrote all the serial numbers on a bit of paper so could clearly prove they were mine. Man I wanted that PS1 so bad.
blockbuster was amazing if you came from a poorer family.
you basically could have any game you wanted (for the weekend). there will never be a feel like being a kid at blockbuster on friday night, anything there is yours (for the weekend). my local one even had a cool policy (which I'm not sure if all of em did). If you rented the same videogame enough times you could finally outright buy it for a small price. Effectively once you paid for it through rentals you could obtain the copy.
finally getting a copy of that game you rented like 8 times always felt really special. its mine now, I don't have to give it back :D
I dont know if it was all of them, but in henderson NV. The one closest to pitman (iykyk) had this same policy. How I got my copies of tonic trouble and gauntlet legends.
Can't vouch for it but it looks like this website has some VR headsets you can rent from other users where they ship it to you for X days and then you ship it back.
https://www.igivu.com/
This was how I first played Banjo-Kazooie. A few months later my brother got a 64 for his birthday with Super Mario 64 and Wave Race. I saved up for Banjo-Kazooie and Ocarina of Time, my brother saved up for Goldeneye and Cruisin' USA. We had a pretty wicked lineup, but it took *forever.*
Oh man I remember renting a super nintendo when I was a kid. We couldn't afford to buy one for the longest time but my sister and I wanted one so my mom took us to the video store and my sister and I could rent one. We both got to choose a game and we would rent it for the week in the summer. Oh man the memories was such a fun time playing super Mario for the first time.
Yeah, was like $15-20 for a few days if I remember.
Some birthday parties would involve renting multiple consoles and setting up a few TVs in a big room.
One of my proudest moments in life was when my family went to the video store to rent weekend movies. We were poor so we always had to rent a vcr as well. So we go to the counter to pay for our rentals and the person behind the desk says, “they need to rent a vcr as well.” Unbeknownst to them we had purchased a vcr. I proudly yelled, we have a vcr now!” It really felt like we were moving up in life.
This is how I first played GTA 3, on a rented PS2 from Blockbuster, got the game there too.
Did NOT come with a memory card so I left that MF running for 3 days straight haha
They did a contest where they had game pieces you held up to the tv during a certain commercial to see if you won. Well being red green colorblind i was able to read the game pieces like they were nothing, so i went through the whole stack and grabbed the only winner. Week of n64 rental right at launch. Played mario 64 and pilot wings for a solid week long before any of the neighborhood had their own.
Here in Latvia I remember renting cartridges from my local shop. I really ended up buying only 3 - Chip 'n Dale, Battle City and don't remember the name for the third, but felt similar to Contra, except it was much bigger and more fun, included large variety of levels (underground, underwater, lots of ladders, jungle, etc.).
Did this for my birthday one year, everyone brought their own N64 system to my house, we had pizza and soda and snacks and my dad put all of our 6 tube tvs in the living room, and for my two friends who didn’t have consoles, my mom researched how to rent them and we hooked it all up. I was up until like 2 am playing goldeneye eating stuffed crust ahhhh to be young again!
Yep this is how I played one the first time
A few years later my dad got bored on a business trip that took two weeks or so and BOUGHT AN ENTIRE N64 with games to play(we had one at home already) then when he got back he mailed it to my cousins since they didn’t have one. He’s da OG
I still remember his anguish playing pikmin and watching about 80 of them drown :0
Yupz we lived in the best gaming timeline! Anyone remember Funcoland?
Think Gamestop, but they didn't insult you in how much they would give you for your used games and the people they worked there were young people into gaming too!
I remember saving up and trading in my used SNES to upgrade to a used Playstation and still could afford to buy a few games with it too! I could spend a good part of a few hours in that store just playing games for free and wheeling and dealing for my own copy of the game I had been "Demoing" in store. I don't care what they say, but the late 90s was the most fun times for video games. Games might be better now on the whole, but gaming in the late 90s was so much more memorable because of the environment it existed in. I mean, you could RENT an N64 and you and your friends just played the hell out of it the whole weekend, your other friends would be jealous Monday at school so they invited you over to play the following weekend!
I went to the last existing Blockbuster in Bend OR a few months ago. It wasn't quite as nostalgic for me because they really focused on movies and VHS nostalgia. For me Blockbuster was all about renting N64 games.
We rented a Sega Genesis once, and my cousins pulled the wire out of the controller fighting over whose turn it was.
Fortunately my father is an electrician and was able to repair it. Returned it to Blockbuster and they were none the wiser.
Man I remember my mom surprising me once when she picked me up from daycare and said she rented a ps1 for the weekend. I really did not appreciate my childhood enough
My mother was a manager at blockbuster during the 90s. I definitely did not appreciate what that meant back then. I could ask for any game they had in stock and she was able to bring it home within a couple of days. They had demo consoles in the manager's office for employees with children that could be loaned out for a week at a time. When there wasn't a babysitter available, she'd just bring me along and stick me somewhere with a stack of games/demo unit/shitty tv.
Damn you just reminded me that I use to go to work with my mom when sick and chilled in a sleeping bag in her office while she worked. Would bring like games and books with me to chill and do till she finished work
Damn, my parents just left me at home by myself. I had keys to my house when I was like 6, and would be absolutely fucked if I lost them. The 80s were wild.
I was honestly shocked when I saw you aren't legally supposed to leave kids home alone until age 12 in many states. I definitely recall being self sufficient and left home alone by age 6.
I am shocked that people leave their kids alone or bring them to the office. Where I live a sick kid is like a sick day. Just stay home and take care of them. We call it VAB (vård av barn = care of child), just call the boss and say "cant come. Today is VAB" Edit: sick day = sick leave. English is not my native language. VAB is a sick leave you can use if your kid is sick, you get paid 80% of your salary. And yes Im swedish. Edit again: When I was sick back in the day my parents also used to go to a place called "videohallen(hall of video)" and rent some game for my super nintendo. Or sometimes even the brand new n64 console. Strangly I didnt exploit that to much!
That's common for office jobs in the US, but people who work in retail or the service industry really get screwed.
Depends for a lot of office jobs too, especially if you can’t afford unpaid leave
Most office jobs have some sort of sick leave as a benefit. If they have it, they're required to allow time off to take care of sick family. Though they can limit it to immediate family.
it's america. people aren't doing it by choice. depending on the state, we're lagging 20-40 years behind europe on basic stuff like sick days, vacation days, and maternity/paternity leave
Must be nice. My Mom never got to stay home with me when I got sick. She always had to go to work. Her boss flat out told her once "I didn't get to stay home with my kids when they were sick, why would I let you?" So I was dropped off at my Grandma's house. Mom told me when I was older that she always regretted never getting to stay home with me. Wish we had worker protections and good family leave in this country.
I was pretty self sufficient by age 8 or 9 but I think 12 is a guideline for those who can't judge whether their kid can handle themself lol
Is that true? I was looking for something like that in my state (NJ) and couldn't find a specific age. I think it really depends on the kid. I know a few 7 year olds who would be fine for a little while on their own and some 10 year olds who will probably need supervision for a few more years.... Edit: Looks like only a few states have laws for this: Maryland: 8 Oregon: 10 Illinois: 14 While other states have recommendations ranging from 6 to 12. (Also, Illinois, what the heck? I had a job when I was 14 but you can't leave your kids home when you go to the grocery store? Weirdos)
Alone? Nah, you gotta watch your only slightly younger siblings.
Not as young but yeah. 9-10, home an hour before my sibling. I could make a few simple meals too, we were made to be pretty self sufficient early on. Parents pass their upbringings to their own kids. I realize later that my folks did that as kids because they *had to*, and it made me thankful for what I do have.
Same here, we had a small porch leading to one of the doors I had a key to and my key fell in between the wood slats and I had no way of retrieving them it sucked! Also if I stayed home because I was sick I wasn’t allowed to go outside and play when my friends came home. I watched a ton of Price is Right, Beverly Hillbillies and Andy Griffith.
Yea I was left home alone too, I thought it was normal until I called the police one time as a kid because my bike got stolen and the cops showed up freaking out that I was alone. I think I was in 3rd grade at the time. My mother was pretty upset with me but nothing ever happened from it.
Wait, are we not allowed to leave a six year old at home now? I was walking two miles to school by myself at that age and was home an hour before anyone else most days. I was expecting my kids to have a little freedom at that age too but are child services getting mad at a six year old being home alone?
Yes, CPS could legitimately try to take your children away if God forbid something went wrong when you left a kid under 12 at home. Seems harsh to me, as I remember being left home plenty of times before I was 12, but that's the way it is now.
I'm sure this was a quaint childhood memory for you but it's also an example of how fucked up our sick leave system is.
My mom use to work as an RN at an assisted living facility. During the summers I would go with her to work everyday and I would bring a little buggy with my ps2 and a tiny little 10-15 inch old school box tv(back before flat screens were mainstream) and plug it in her office and just spend all day playing video games. Those were some of the best memories of my childhood that I can remember.
My mum cleaned other people's houses for a year while I was young. When I was ill I got to go with her and play with other kids Lego collections. Was brilliant
Amateur epidemiology experiment!!
My mom worked for a privetly owned rental shop in a small Kansas town, I would go to work with her all summer. They were trying to sell these strange gaming TVs, that had built in speakers in these folding doors. Anyways there was one of those on the counter and I would sit there with an N64 hooked up and just game all day. No one ever rented any of the equipment except the VCRs and Camcorder (I shudder now) so I was constantly taking systems home over night and on weekends. I have to say, I did appreciate that time; my mom hated the job though lol.
I wish I could see what those camcorders saw.
Are you one of those pain demons in Rick and Morty?
Has to be..... Small Kansas Town Eww
That sounds great, and the camcorder part is hilarious lol
My mom managed and was the sole worker of a tiny country grocery store when I was 3-4. Next door was a mom and pop video store. The worker would let me watch movies, do scratch off tickets, play Mario paint. It was great. The milk guy would give me a strawberry milk and the fruit guy would give me an apple. There was a bookmobile from the library that would give me a book. Had. It. Made. Those are my first real memories.
My mom had a very small biz with a till. She took me to work once when I was 6. Video arcade next door. I remember her explaining tills to me after that and how after 8 hours she had sold $350 worth of stuff. She had to pay $300 for that stuff leaving her 50. Minus the $50 in quarters I stole from the till to play videogames all day means I don't get to come to work with her anymore.
So *you* were the fucking kid who rented all the new games before the store even opened. You'll never know the feeling of opening a brand new game you rented that came out *that month* & **the blockbuster disc is all scratched up already??!!?**
I uhh, admit nothing.
I was also a manager there, 98-01. Picked up a used rental unit N64 and PS1 for like next to nothing and was sweet since it had the hardshell case two controllers and all the wiring harnesses included (also the memory pack add on was pre-installed in the N64s). Even better, they eventually sold off their rental PS2s which we like *never* rented because we required a 400 dollar deposit, after a few months when it was clear we didn't need 8 of those fuckin things they sold off some "used" ones, well I just checked the rental history and grabbed a unit that had never been rented and bought that 'used'...had two controllers as well, both high Def and standard Def connectors...think I paid like 174 when new consoles in stores were still 300 lol Working at BBV was fantastic if you were keen to build your home media collection. I probably amassed 1000 vhs tapes and dvds and games for pennies on the dollar just through working there. Good times!
I really miss being able to just rent a game for a weekend. It's how I got into Animal Crossing as well as one of my favorites as a kid, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.
My grandma worked at Toys R Us and at the Christmas parties we used to be allowed to ride the bikes and power wheels around the store.
My mum was manager at a Hollywood video. She took home most of the demos and other games/movies that weren't supposed to be for rent or available yet and it was the best. I didn't get to mess with consoles in the back though, that would've been truly something. I don't even know if Hollywood rented consoles like blockbuster.
Same here. Mom was a manager of many video stores. Countless hors spent wandering the aisles, watching tons of movies. Playing tons of games. This was like the late 80s early 90s. The carpet pattern and wood panels are etched in my mind. Good times they were 🌊📼
Literally sounds like some of the best times gaming until online and LAN gaming became more accessible
My best times gaming.... console and cartridge era, but uncle from Hong Kong visits and brings you the disk drive attachment with every game in existence available plus a bunch of games made for the Asian market that you had no idea existed.
Hopefully including the masterpiece that is known as "Hong Kong '97"
I had to look it up , but yes I had this ! Seriously so many awesome memories from that system. My friends would come over and be amazed at all the games and we would randomly pull discs out of the bin and just play a mystery game what are we going to play today. I recall enjoying a few RPG style games where I couldn't read any of the subtitles and just stumbled my way through.
> I really did not appreciate my childhood enough No one ever does.
Which is why we should appreciate what we have right now.
Damn, heavy. Like, in 10 years, we'll wish we were this age again.
Youth is wasted on the young.
I have a somewhat opposite story: I was eight years old, and this was right after my parent's broke that they were separating to me as a kid. My mom tells me she would take me to Blockbuster, I assume for a movie rental. We get there, and of course I am looking at the games immediately. We weren't allowed to own a console as kids, so I always just looked at the graphics to imagine myself playing the games. I believe in a bid to assuage me of misplaced guilt over my parent's separation, she relents and says that she will rent a PS1 for me for the weekend, and to go and pick out 2 games. I am beyond excited; finally I will be like the rest of my friends with their N64's, Gameboys, and SNES consoles I only got to play at their houses. We get to the counter and she finds out the rental cost and that there is also a refundable insurance cost as well, neither of which she could afford as a newly single parent. The feeling of an absolute drop of disappointment in my stomach is still something I can use as a way to help me cry on command to this day.
I used to work at Blockbuster and I hated dealing with system rentals because this would happen a lot. You'd get to the deposit part and the parent would balk and the kids would be crushed and then usually they'd try to talk you into making an exception....or worse they'd give you their rent money or something so now if they lose a controller they're homeless? If I overheard anything about system rentals I'd tried to pull the parent aside and mention the deposit so it wouldn't happen when they were at the counter.
Is that like a "I love you so here's a dope ass game system for a weekend?" Or more of a "mommy needs some drinky time, so here's something to distract you for a weekend?"
Now that I’m an adult I realize it was the latter
[удалено]
I mean. I’m going to drink a beer while my kid plays video games and mind my own business. It’s a win win. I’m not going to get so drunk I can’t be a parent or anything. I’m just going to watch whatever I want on a different tv. Since my kid is 5 i have to play with him because he can’t read. Idiot.
I betcha that kid doesn't even do his taxes smh...
>I betcha that kid doesn't even do his taxes smh... Kids haven't been useful since all these fancy labor laws were passed. Can't even have them run the farm equipment anymore without somebody pitching a fit.
I blame the death of game manuals and magazines for your kid not being able to read. I got a Nintendo at 3 or 4 and could definitely read by 5. I *always* read the manuals front to back when I got a new game (except for all the boring legal shit), same with gaming and wrestling magazines when I was in grade school. I was pretty much always reading a few grades above my level.
As an adult you realize a lot of the fun stuff you did as a kid is a direct result of your parents needing/wanting some time away from you Hahaha! No judgement either. Kids are a ton of work.
Gaming and family trauma, name a more iconic duo
Only a little bit of trauma... makes’em stronger!
Hey, at least she hooked you up so that she could have some "her time." A lot of parents would've been like "Mommy needs to drink, here's a stick and a rock. See you Monday morning."
Ah it's nice to see my childhood described so sweetly, no complaints though being outside with my friends playing with random shit shaped my imagination lol
We threw pinecones (blaster bolts) at each other and deflected them with sticks (lightsabers).
Oh man, that and "playing" *Power Rangers* on wet+soapy trampolines without nets as a kid was the best
The fact that so many of us still have functioning limbs is kind of miraculous. We were actively seeking out the best ways to combine activities that would cause bodily injury and harm in the most reckless way possible.
I remember renting a PS1 for a weekend and then having to go back to my Super Nintendo. As a kid it was kind of brutal. Like everyone got this really cool thing, but you are stuck playing the console that will never have a new game again.
Sounds like you were excited and really appreciative of her gift. And you remember it 20 years later. I think you appreciate your childhood. Question is. Do you appreciate what you have now?
On the other hand, I sure appreciated mine when my mom rented the Super Famicom before the SNES had even launched in the US, for us one weekend. She had to put down a pretty significant deposit for it too. That was an amazing weekend
Honestly I will say there was nothing greater than receiving the exact gift you wanted. I remember begging my parents for a GBA for months. I was a dumb kid and assumed my parents not getting it for me was mostly cause they didn’t want me to be happy (not cause we were broke as fuck). On the last day of school they took me to Walmart as a surprise and got it for me; still remember every detail of that day.
My mom rented a Super Nintendo for me. I skipped going trick or treating on Halloween because of it. they love me so much and for the life of me I keep thinking I am not a good enough person to deserve it. I once asked a friend of mine why. Why does mom love me SO much? “It’s like the sunset and sunrise. Knowing why won’t help. You won’t appreciate it as much. Instead, sit in the warmth and enjoy it knowing you don’t need to know anymore about it than you do now”.
You just reminded me of when my mom picked me up from preschool and had the Karate Kid on NES game rented for me. Fuck, that was awesome.
You remember daycare years fam? Lmao I don’t remember shit from being 2-3 years old.
Before the N64 released stateside my local no name video rental store was renting a Japanese N64 with Mario 64. $120 for 3 days. I begged my dad to rent it for me for a weekend and he did. Well...obviously I didn't understand Japanese, and I didn't know that you had to jump into the paintings to start a level. I spent the entire weekend just running around the castle. I was thrilled and had a great time, but I was also confused about how seemingly small and empty the game was.
Gaming was so different before the internet. Something so pure about really being on your own to figure it out (even though sometimes things like this happened)
The internet has ruined any kind of pvp or mmo game for me. If you play a game when it's first released, everyone is learning things & coming up with their own ideas for the first month. It's a whole different experience & a lot of fun. Shortly afterwards, the game generates a meta where 80% of players copy strategies from top Twitch streamers. Wiki pages & walk-throughs appear on how to unlock or level up things as efficiently as possible... Nowadays I just stick to single player games to recreate the experience you've described.
[удалено]
i’m currently doing this right now with the RE2 remake. big fan of the franchise but never played the original. going in completely blind is such a unique experience
Reminds me of the King of the Hill episode where they went to Japan and thought they had a tiny hotel room.
Surely you didn't spend entire vacation in sitting room...
On a trip to Tokyo, I tried to save money by getting a cheap hotel room. It was about 5x5 with no furniture. I had to sleep diagonally if I wanted to extend my legs. Bathroom was down the hall, it smelled like an ashtray and construction workers were building scaffolding outside my window. But it had a great location and cost like $80 a night. If I was doing it again I'd probably just stay in a capsule.
That’s crazy, I had an Airbnb with two beds for $25 a night. This was in Shinjuku. It was perfect because we barely spent any time in the room, it was just for sleeping and showering. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Or when Fry moved into Bender's Apartment
😂😂😂
One of my favorite episodes hahaha
oh wow…something very similar I did! I was mesmerized by Mario 64…I do also have vague memory of just liking to move around to take in all the beauty of the game !
Mario 64 was revolutionary at the time. I remember my buddy got it and we were in awe of the 3d world and just ran around the castle. Holy shit you can climb the trees!! But it wasn't long until we were throwing that penguin off the cliff.
Good times were had. This and ocarina of time rocked my world as a kid used to 2D :D
Holy shit that was expensive. Wasn’t the system like $200 at release? I’m just saying people could have waited a bit and just bought one.
My grandmother bought my brother and me a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red/Blue when I was a kid. I had played games before (Doom2 on my parents computer and super NES games at the same Grandmother's house) but I spent actual hours just in the starting house in Pokemon because I couldn't figure out how the hell to get out. I clicked on literally everything and was completely baffled. I eventually realized that the door was represented by some differently shaded tiles on the floor and made it out.
This was my experience as well hahaha
Geez this is sad news bears
I remember i rented one for a whole week played resident evil 2 and 007 golden eye 6 days straight lol then my grandma bought me one😁
[удалено]
She was the Best ever i miss her so much👍✌
I truly feel that
🤝👊
Shoutout to grandparents. I was lucky to have 4 great ones
When the Dreamcast came out friend and I rented it for the weekend and played sonic. It didn’t come with a memory card so we pulled a couple all nighters in a row to beat it because we couldn’t let the game turn off without losing all of our progress. By the final fight we were both pretty delirious. I don’t remember exactly what happened but on the final fight there was a part where it just glitched and sonic just clipped right thru the floor and died. I was like, “what happened?” He just replied “Fell through the floor. “ We started busting up laughing harder than I ever remember. Not sure why it was so funny but it will always be a fond memory.
"pretty delirious" "Not sure why it was so funny" Checks out
The Dreamcast was super ahead of its time. You could hook it up to a CRT monitor to gain resolution which gave a fuck ton of clarity compared to a CRT TV. You could play Quake 3 and other first person shooters online with a keyboard and mouse via either 56k or a broadband adapter. On top of that, you could play against PC players in Quake 3 since it was a direct port so they had cross platform going on in 2001! They had the Sega net ladders where in competitive games you could login to do an official game and it kept track of all your stats on their website, I actually won one month after a ridiculous amount of trying and was so proud. There was even a game called The Typing of the Dead which was just house of the dead 2 except you spelled words above the enemy's heads to kill them and it was super addictive. I ended up typing 120wpm thanks to that game! They modified the players in it so they had on Dreamcast backpacks with giant double A batteries and a keyboard strapped to it lol https://i.imgur.com/8mPddPn.jpeg If anyone is interested there is a PC port of this game but it's not on Steam or anything so you have to get creative to find it, it has a huge library of words and makes you type cheesy things being self aware of how cheesy the original game was in the first place. There is a follow up game to it on Steam but it's absolutely horrible compared to the first, don't get tricked into buying that, I think it's called "The typing of the Dead 2 Overkill" or somethibg
My brother and I stayed with my aunt for a weekend when we were kids. She surprised us with a rented N64 and that's what we did all weekend. All we had was Mario and we were blown away, still one of my best memories ever
Mario 64 was groundbreaking gameplay.
Yeah, I still remember the first time playing it. It was huge going from an NES to an N64. Everyone in the living room wanted to try it out.
The ripples of the paintings. The special jumping moves. All the hidden stuff. Single player gameplay but really playing as a group (taking turns and collectively figuring things out).
Pass and play and collective decision making continues to be one of my most cherished ways to connect with the people I love. I’m (30 years old) playing Forgotten City docked on my Switch now, and my parents (late 50s) are participating in dialogue decisions and exploration (my dad: “something flashed over there! No, to your left…your other left, Katie…”, mom: “ooh, say that, say that!”) 😂😂
Tbh the jump from snes and virtual boy to n64 was huge too. The sheer power between that era and the last was massive. PS1 had the same jump. Most people went from the genesis or snes to n64/PS1 and it was such a massive leap.
It still holds up today, too
Yep. Played it again this year on the Switch 3D Mario collection for the first since it first came out when I was 8 years old. The camera is a little wonkier than I remember, but other than that it’s still such a great game. The movement still feels so good which is insane since it pretty much invented the genre of 3D platformers
I lost my mind playing Shadows of the Empire, having read the book earlier. Actual Star Wars music AND you could lasso AT AT walkers? Amazing.
>All we had was Mario That is really all you needed for the weekend.
Same but with a playstation, twisted metal and a random star wars game. Was great
Fun Fact: This is how the Neo Geo was meant to be used, they weren't expecting someone to drop $650 (\~$1400 today) for the system and $300 (\~$650 today) per game. It was supposed to be a rental system.
The local, independent video store near my cousin's house had a Neo Geo for rent. We had it all planned out that he would reserve it for the weekend I was visiting, then we would play Samurai Showdown all weekend. On Friday when I got there, we walked over to pick it up and the store owner said it hadn't been returned. The previous renter was racking up late fees to keep it. We tried again later that summer but it was gone. The person who rented it before us had kept it and moved away. Phone disconnected, gone. I am wondering if that's one of the reasons the mom and pop video stores went extinct. If they were too trusting, they got robbed blind.
I was casually friendly with our local video store owners... Their kids went to my school and one of them worked part time at the store too. They were Chinese immigrants with limited English and at the peak of their business (maybe mid to late 90's) they sure seemed to do very well. I remember that if you went on there on a Friday night or weekend you'd be praying to find the hot new movies cause the store was always so busy. They had not been in business for a long time and I didn't live in the area anymore and hadn't thought about them for quite a while. One day I'm in town visiting my folks and I had to Popeye's Chicken for some takeout and look who's working the counter but the old man from the video store! He recognizes me right away and we chit chat and he tells me that he's now divorced and he's so glad to be done with video rental business.. that it was good while it lasted but they also held on way too long once it started to clearly make less money. He proceeds to tell me that he got bored after divorce and now owns this Popeyes and he makes way more money doing this than he ever imagined... Good memory, he hooks me up with a whole bunch of free chicken and side dishes!
The bigger issue was just material costs coming down. Rental stores filled the gap. CDs killed the rental industry. CDs let manufacturers price their games low enough to entice direct consumer purchases. Cartridges were prohibitively expensive. An SNES cart was $60 in 1995. Super Mario World would've been $120 bucks today, minimum. No industry can be killed by a minority of consumers who steal. See Amazon for proof of that.
Neo Geo always seemed so unattainable when I was a kid. My local Pizza Hut had a Neo Geo cabinet and all I remember was how much better it was than my SNES at he time. World Heroes will always hold a place in my heart. That and Art of Fighting!
I wasn’t sure they existed outside of ads in EGM. That and the Turbo Grafx 16.
The local Radio Shack had a demo TurboGrafx-16 when I was growing up. I think it ran Bonk the entire time. I wanted one, despite it being technologically inferior to the SNES I already had.
TG16 had the best games though. Final Lap Twin was one of my favorite RPGs ever. That and Dungeon Explorers? I think that's the name. It used the multitap for 4 players and the main villain was named Natas, which took me way too long to realize was just Satan backwards.
Dungeon explorers was awesome. I think the release title was Keith courage: and the alpha zone layer that featured a 2 types of levels: really intense action packed platformer levels as a robot, and really slow paced and uneventful levels as a person. I feel like that may have not encouraged people to keep finding games for the system.
Yes! Keith Courage came with my system and that game was dope AF! Them cats dropping down from the sky. Seriously, playing that system as a youth got me interested in a lot of different culture, especially as I began seeing that same cat statue in Asian restaurants and places around my area.
Bonk....now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time
I somehow owned a turbo grafx 16 when I was 8 or so! I think my dad traded something to a neighbour for it alongside one of those 256 in 1 nes cartridges. I was the coolest kid on the block.
Metal slug was my jam. I wish there were more of them.
Metal Slug 1 through 7, X, Advance, 1st Mission, 2nd Mission, not to mention how many collections and systems they've been ported too. Honestly not a bad run considering it was on one of the most unobtainable consumer consoles of all time. Seeing what Konami and Capcom have barfed out trying to recaputre the 16 bit magic I think i'm happy to have Metal Slug stay a happy memory.
I remember wanting a Neo Geo for Samurai Shodown and Fatal Fury, then being shocked at the cost. Thankfully the SNES ports were pretty solid for \~20% of the price lol.
Man, those ports are complete garbage next to each other though. Lol. The MVS games WERE the arcade game. There was nothing changed, the hardware and software were basically the same. Think the only things changed were maybe censoring stuff because of the ESRB on the later titles. Game Sack on YT has a [great video](https://youtu.be/JP_n3570BR8) about this.
Sounds like a losing strategy
[удалено]
The only winning move...is not to play.
This was a time when gaming consoles were still feeling out what worked and what didn't. The industry back then revolved around rentals, video stores bought more cartridges than consumers. Same reason why SNES and Genesis both had notoriously difficult platform games (see Lion King, Aladdin). The idea was to make it just hard enough that you'd need three days to beat it, which prompted multiple rentals. So yeah it wasn't a great strategy, but that's just how it goes. See also the Microsoft Zune.
The idea was to make it so hard that you couldn’t beat it in a rental period. Devs and publishers figured this would drive sales since the rental industry cuts their income But iirc this was a Nintendo thing more than anything else? I think a part of the difficulty was simply people taking their known game design philosophy from arcades and tossing it on consoles
The zune was genuinely a good MP3 player, but it was both too late to the scene and too early with what was basically the first music streaming service. People were still used to having all their music in dubiously sourced MP3’s.
This is gonna sound stupid and childish (it was) but in 1998 I, age 13, had this wonderful idea: What if you had a portable MP3 player, but the MP3s were stored at your home computer and streamed to your player over the internet? I thought it was such a great idea that I sent an email to Microsoft and never heard anything back about it. What I'm saying is, *you're welcome*. /s
Not a "fun fact" because the neo geo was basically an arcade motherboard placed in console with carts that were JAMMA boards. You were literally buying the guts out an arcade unit and the games were exactly the same to the point that you could save your progress in the arcade on a memory card and continue at home and vice versa. It represented a way to play arcade games at home in full fidelity. In 1990, you would have seen the neo geo games in all arcades. You would be comparing it to the NES for a year until the SNES was released which still was not even close. The 3DO was similar considering it cost 699 at launch around the same time, though games were better priced being CDs. How about the Phillips CDi that was 799 at launch which was also CD based. Companies were trying to capture the adult market of people with money. You clearly are really young because SNK never pushed the idea of rentals in any advertising. They pushed it as a way to play arcade games at home. Most setups were in higher end entertainment stores next to the large screen tvs and sound systems. Stores were pushing them as high end entertainment equipment and kept it separate from the other cheaper gaming systems. This was because retail saw it as more entertainment hardware like a laser disc player. These gaming systems were not found in toy stores or budget stores like more affordable gaming systems were. If you were walking in to buy a big screen TV, large audio system or laser disc player then you were the target audience. Not everything in the entertainment world is meant to be affordable.
You're right that the direct rental idea didn't last very long, less than a year in Japan and I don't think they bothered in other territories, though anecdotes in this thread suggest it did have some success as a US rental. They pivoted to the premium user as you say, but it did inform the hardware design. Why compromise if it's for rental? It's just a mobile arcade machine at that point. In a parallel universe if SNK had always designed it for home use then perhaps they may have made the hardware cheaper. You are right there's gaps in my knowledge, not because of age, but because I'm in Europe, where it was not a success.
Fuck, I feel old right now.
I got one for you, I remember renting a virtual boy from there. Really happy I did instead of saving up as kid to buy one because I hated it. Hurt my eyes like hell.
I rem trying the demo at the Nintendo kiosk at Walmart on release day I was so glad I did because I didn't have FOMO after that.
>rem
Why use lot word when few do trick
Me no think that
It’s the end of your eyesight as you know it And you’ll feel fine(ish)
My neck pain and headaches from like 8 mins of Mario Tennis will always be remembered.
Man the virtual boy was amazing. I bought one right when it came out after renting one from blockbuster. I was equally happy/sad when the discontinued the product. All of the games that blockbuster had were sold off for like $5 each. It was a dream come true for a kid on a small allowance.
Yes, yes I do.
I'd get to rent one of these for 2 weeks for my bday every year. I can smell this picture haha
Good god what a beautiful fucking time we all had, what a goddam treat and gift. I get older and now I own every console, have a great tv and sound system. Purchase nearly every game. But I’m not even a percent as happy as I was renting an N64 with pokemon snap with my bro and playing with my mom. I’m gonna go die now.
Looking forward to renting one of the new 90s consoles on the weekends was great. I kept renting the Sega Saturn because I had a Sega Genesis at my dad's. When it came time to get a new console, my mom got me the Saturn for Christmas. We quickly realized there weren't a ton of great games for it. I still remember my mom returning my Sega Saturn and hunting down an N64. Getting the call while at my Dad's house that she found one and wanting to just be home playing it as soon as possible.
I rented a Sega Genesis. I feel real old.
Sega CD rental over here, brother. Sega rentals unite!
I bought a Sega CD from a rental store. Got the console and a dozen games for a huge discount. Yeah, the system was a commercial failure, but it still had a few great games for it. I remember being blown away by the FMV cutscenes in the Jurassic Park game. I thought I was looking at the pinnacle of video game graphics back then.
I worked at Blockbuster at this time. That shit would get stolen at the time. Someone checks it out with a fake name and a throw away credit card and it would never come back. We started a policy that newer accounts couldn't check the systems out.
We had to put a $150 deposit to rent one at our local shop.
smart! S-M-R-T!
The N64 I had as a kid was stolen from blockbuster. The story was my brother rented several times over the year until he was able to buy it. We just couldnt play it during the day.
Why couldn’t you play it during the day? Did your parents not know about it?
Nope they had no idea. We could play it during the day when my brother pretended he had rented it again, at the end of the week we would hide in upstairs and play it when they were asleep.
My early adulthood is history now? Damn...
Tbf, yesterday is history too. Even the last second that just passed, yep that's history too.
You could do that here in Europe as well.
And Australia.
Oh man I miss the Blockbuster & Video Ezy rivalry.
No shhhhh, this was only a USA thing... ^^^/s
No, that's not true. Only the United States had video games. If you grew up as a child in Europe the only games you had to play were hopscotch and war.
I remember renting a super NES for the weekend as a kid and not leaving my basement.
[удалено]
Canada as well. So many memories of me and mom walking 4 blocks down to blockbuster and renting an N64, Mario Kart 64 for us to play together and a second game for me to play single player.
I have one in Canada! Anyone have a photo of the paper inside the case? Mine is missing and have always wanted to restore it.
Oh the memories
My dad rented this for me when it came out, we couldn’t afford the actual system and this was like $20 a weekend or something dumb. Anyway i played it for so long i ended up throwing up. Good childhood memory
Old school. Still needed to leave a 300 dollar deposit lol
You don't know stress until you have rented a PSone with FFVII with no access to a memory card.
I can add to this stress, saved up all my money for a PS1 and when I went to the shop to buy it I browsed in 2 shops. When I went to pay in the second one my wallet was empty, I had dropped all my cash. Had to run like a bullet back the first shop and so lucky I just caught a shop attendant bending over to pick up the money as I came dashing in. Weirdest thing ever I actually wrote all the serial numbers on a bit of paper so could clearly prove they were mine. Man I wanted that PS1 so bad.
90s take me back
blockbuster was amazing if you came from a poorer family. you basically could have any game you wanted (for the weekend). there will never be a feel like being a kid at blockbuster on friday night, anything there is yours (for the weekend). my local one even had a cool policy (which I'm not sure if all of em did). If you rented the same videogame enough times you could finally outright buy it for a small price. Effectively once you paid for it through rentals you could obtain the copy. finally getting a copy of that game you rented like 8 times always felt really special. its mine now, I don't have to give it back :D
I dont know if it was all of them, but in henderson NV. The one closest to pitman (iykyk) had this same policy. How I got my copies of tonic trouble and gauntlet legends.
Wasn't just the US, in the UK consoles were also available.
I wish they still had something like this. Would love to rent a VR headset to play some of those games.
We have a place in our city that rents VR systems. They also do vr "escape rooms"
Can't vouch for it but it looks like this website has some VR headsets you can rent from other users where they ship it to you for X days and then you ship it back. https://www.igivu.com/
This is nostalgia gold
This was how I first played Banjo-Kazooie. A few months later my brother got a 64 for his birthday with Super Mario 64 and Wave Race. I saved up for Banjo-Kazooie and Ocarina of Time, my brother saved up for Goldeneye and Cruisin' USA. We had a pretty wicked lineup, but it took *forever.*
Oh man I remember renting a super nintendo when I was a kid. We couldn't afford to buy one for the longest time but my sister and I wanted one so my mom took us to the video store and my sister and I could rent one. We both got to choose a game and we would rent it for the week in the summer. Oh man the memories was such a fun time playing super Mario for the first time.
Yeah, was like $15-20 for a few days if I remember. Some birthday parties would involve renting multiple consoles and setting up a few TVs in a big room.
One of my proudest moments in life was when my family went to the video store to rent weekend movies. We were poor so we always had to rent a vcr as well. So we go to the counter to pay for our rentals and the person behind the desk says, “they need to rent a vcr as well.” Unbeknownst to them we had purchased a vcr. I proudly yelled, we have a vcr now!” It really felt like we were moving up in life.
This is how I first played GTA 3, on a rented PS2 from Blockbuster, got the game there too. Did NOT come with a memory card so I left that MF running for 3 days straight haha
They did a contest where they had game pieces you held up to the tv during a certain commercial to see if you won. Well being red green colorblind i was able to read the game pieces like they were nothing, so i went through the whole stack and grabbed the only winner. Week of n64 rental right at launch. Played mario 64 and pilot wings for a solid week long before any of the neighborhood had their own.
Here in Latvia I remember renting cartridges from my local shop. I really ended up buying only 3 - Chip 'n Dale, Battle City and don't remember the name for the third, but felt similar to Contra, except it was much bigger and more fun, included large variety of levels (underground, underwater, lots of ladders, jungle, etc.).
Used to rent super nintendos for ling weekends. Clayfighter all weekend
Motherfucker, I grew up with Blockbuster and had no idea you could just rent out entire consoles.
Did this for my birthday one year, everyone brought their own N64 system to my house, we had pizza and soda and snacks and my dad put all of our 6 tube tvs in the living room, and for my two friends who didn’t have consoles, my mom researched how to rent them and we hooked it all up. I was up until like 2 am playing goldeneye eating stuffed crust ahhhh to be young again!
Yep this is how I played one the first time A few years later my dad got bored on a business trip that took two weeks or so and BOUGHT AN ENTIRE N64 with games to play(we had one at home already) then when he got back he mailed it to my cousins since they didn’t have one. He’s da OG I still remember his anguish playing pikmin and watching about 80 of them drown :0
How much to rent
I rented a Japanese Dreamcast from the local video store back in 99. Couldn't read the words but you don't need to read to play sonic.
Yupz we lived in the best gaming timeline! Anyone remember Funcoland? Think Gamestop, but they didn't insult you in how much they would give you for your used games and the people they worked there were young people into gaming too! I remember saving up and trading in my used SNES to upgrade to a used Playstation and still could afford to buy a few games with it too! I could spend a good part of a few hours in that store just playing games for free and wheeling and dealing for my own copy of the game I had been "Demoing" in store. I don't care what they say, but the late 90s was the most fun times for video games. Games might be better now on the whole, but gaming in the late 90s was so much more memorable because of the environment it existed in. I mean, you could RENT an N64 and you and your friends just played the hell out of it the whole weekend, your other friends would be jealous Monday at school so they invited you over to play the following weekend!
I went to the last existing Blockbuster in Bend OR a few months ago. It wasn't quite as nostalgic for me because they really focused on movies and VHS nostalgia. For me Blockbuster was all about renting N64 games.
We rented a Sega Genesis once, and my cousins pulled the wire out of the controller fighting over whose turn it was. Fortunately my father is an electrician and was able to repair it. Returned it to Blockbuster and they were none the wiser.
Hell, we rented NES systems from the local gas station convenience store. They had a video section and we rented systems and games as well as movies.
With a $200 deposit (where I lived anyway).