What was it like, old-timer anons? Did it smell good? Did you actually spent time reading the covers? Did you talk to the other kino enjoyers at the store? What happened if you didn't rewind?
>>198601008>Did it smell good?Usually like popcorn, they had a small popcorn machine in our blockbuster at the register and some cotton candy.>Did you actually spent time reading the covers?Fuck no, you already knew what you wanted to watch from all the tv ads, it was like a 8+ month wait between theater run and making it to vhs/dvd.>Did you talk to the other kino enjoyers at the store?No.>What happened if you didn't rewind?They add like .50c charge to your account. Also god raped your asshole with a pinecone for being immoral.
>>198601185>Fuck no, you already knew what you wanted to watch from all the tv ads, it was like a 8+ month wait between theater run and making it to vhs/dvdYou never went in with no idea what you wanted to see and just walked the aisles looking around? That was my favorite way to do it.
>>198601214Nah that was for the game section, I would spend an hour going through ps1/ps2/gamecube games if i could.but for movies it was just whatever was the new mainstream movie at the time they had in stock.
It was glorious. Local mom & pop had a "5 dollars for 5 bucks for 5 days" deal on all movies more than a year old. I would spend half an hour just browsing for movies that looked interesting. Because it was so cheap even for back then, it was worth taking risks on movies you were unsure about, saw a lot of movies I wouldn't have otherwise. Would get reccomendations from the workers all the time depending on what i was feeling like watching. I miss it so much.
>>198601008>Did it smell good?You are confronted with the mixed aroma of buttered popcorn, new carpet, plastic, the mix of cheap cologne and perfume, and the stale farts people leave behind while crop-dusting an empty part of the store.> Did you actually spent time reading the covers? If you were looking for a random film, or if a cover caught your eye, you'd read the cover to find out if it would be complete shit or a hidden kino. Most of the time they would be shit.>Did you talk to the other kino enjoyers at the store? Nah, most people kept to themselves and their groups.>What happened if you didn't rewind?At first, nothing, but then they started charging a rewind fee. Most places kept a rewind machine at the counter and rewound shit people forgot to when they returned the video.Was cash. Friday nights you go out to eat with your lady at about 8, then hit the video store up and grab a couple of flicks. You go back to the house and watch a vid until the horniness kicked in and you start fucking your girlfriend. Head home at about 2 in the morning, wake up and do it again on Saturday night.
>>198601008>What happened if you didn't rewind?your testicles were crushed with a sledgehammer. i will never have children because i forgot to rewind Kindergarten Cop.
>>198601412>who is your da-ACK
>>198601008It usually smelt like a mix of carpet cleaner and plastic. Sometimes popcorn or pizza depending on the store and location.I usually just got what looked interesting based on the cover or what people at achool recommended.I rewound, but sometimes I'd forget and get charged.I miss watching the movie up in the corner of the store playing while browsing or killing time. Zoomers need to bring back rental stores.
>>198601008It was just one of many many things that have changed. I don't really miss it. I miss the 90's, but it's not just "the video rental store". It's the whole state of everything. I don't have a specific longing nostalgia for renting VHS tapes or video games.I miss the way the games and movies came out more than anything.
>>198601008My favorite part was the cotton candy in the checkout aisle. For me though it was more DVDs than vhs
Blockbuster smelled like the Backrooms
>go to video store to rent your favourite movie/game>find out someone already has it rented>or worse, the store threw it out for being too worn/damaged
This is what they took from you
>>198601008It smelled like maladjusted millennial crybabies who never learned to properly socialize.
>>198602020thats rich coming from an anime tranny
>>198602056Nobody gave a shit about "trannies" until you maladjusted millennial crybabies started demanding the rest of us take them seriously. Your worthless generation is everything that's wrong with this era. Thankfully, you'll never be remembered as anything other than the punchline of a joke, like "pet rocks" and "discotheques".
33 year old here, mine shut down when I was maybe 9It was really cool walking through and seeing all the covers and imagining what they were about and renting or a few as a treat for the weekend.I used to spend a lot of time looking at the covers for the horror movies and the anime. They had the coolest covers.my video store had urotsukidoji, wicked city, ghost in the shell, akira and a couple of others. I really wanted to watch them but my dad didn't want me watching that stuff.He was happy with me watching violent movies with him as long as they were wholesome violence where there was good morals on display and not depraved and degenerate violence.For example he watched Enter the Dragon , Terminator 2 and Predator with me.
>>198601008i was born in 94 but our family was poor so we rarely went to video stores. we had some stuff at home on vhs and/or dvd and basically that was it . you just rewatched shit. sometimes we would rent stuff but mostly it was just rewatching whatever we already had at home
>>198602362look at this. Such a cool cover. I wanted to know what it was so badly.One of the many ways movies have degraded is that none of them put any effort into the home media cover like they used to , or the posters more broadly.
>>198602207millennial website
>>198601008Smelled like popcorn, dark chocolate covered liquorice toffie & carbonated soda. They also had white icecream, you could get a liter & hot chocolate sauce. You could also have the girl pick small candies into a green plastic bag -an assortment of you choice. Me & my bud would go on our bikes to 5 different places & watch almost every movie the had. I remember an old Star Wars tape being always there in just one store -getting older & worn. We rode our bikes 6km round trip to this one place who had every Star trek movie, Planet of the apes & spaghetti westerns. Get a coke can, handpicked candy & then make popcorn at home. Watch 2 movies at a time, watch again next day. Confy stuff
>>198602437How was it anon, looks cool
>>198602437Good covers were a big factor. A new hope really stood out in that regard during my period
When I was a kid, going to the local blockbuster on a Friday night when dad got home was the highlight of the week, and almost a sacred ritual for myself and so many of my friends' families. I'd wander the aisles looking at covers, sneaking peeks at rated R/X films, and try to imagine what each film was about. I'd almost always get to rent a video game, get some snacks, and we'd get a movie for the adults and one for the kids. Half the time we'd run into people we knew at the store and catch up, it was great.Do the modern generations have anything comparable? I don't think gathering places like the local video store really exist anymore.
>>198601008Place was literally packed on weekends, specially when new movies came out. Groups of kids outside, cars with hot chicks & cash dudes coming & going
>>198602831>One for adults & one for kidsThat was neat. Our stores had names like 'Baldy' 'Polo' 'King Kong' 'The Prince' 'James Bond'X rated was kept in a back room
>>198601008What i miss most about renting movies/games is the random factor.Back then you would sometimes just take a punt and rent something you otherwise would normally ignore, because you couldn't find anything else.And a lot of the time, renting random shit you'd never heard of before would be how you uncovered obscure gems. Nowdays this is missing, everyone watches the same shit because everyone just follows reviews/ratings. Nobody takes a chance and checks out weird media anymore, so nobody knows about cool obscure gems. It's sad.
I can't even verbalize the absolute disdain I have for modern culture and the current state of my life and how badly I just want to relive 1997 through 2007 in perpetuity until the sun engulfs this miserable planet.
>>198603091Just get a VCR & a tube tv bro
overrated nostalgia. my blockbuster only had modern mainstream shit. god forbid you wanted to watch old classic.
>>198601008It sucked because the kino I wanted was always rented out.
>>198603757>>198603856you guys must've lived in some podunk ass towns with tiny movie rental stores. My local blockbuster was massive and had every movie I could ever want or dream of in those days, and you could ask them to hold things in the very rare chance something was rented out and they'd call you as soon as it was back in.
>>198603955The store was tiny so you got me on that one. I don't think it was in the middle of nowhere.
>>198601008You ever had a Family Video, Hollywood video, GameCrazy in town?Skinda like the McDonald's version of that
>>198602207>waaaaah>waaaaah
>>198601008This is what it was like. Fellow chads know what's up>Be kid in 90s>Go back to blockbuster to return your movies>Want to rent the fifth element>All the copies are out>Go to another blockbuster>They're out too>Start getting desperate>Go up to front and ask them to check the return bin to see if anyone dropped one off>They find one>Decide to rent a 2nd kino to go along with the fifth element>Try to find a side movie that you can jack off too all weekend>Eyeball barb wire or some shitty carmen electra movie>Pretend you're picking up whatever movie is next to barb wire>clutch barb wire tightly behind the fifth element so no one sees you with it>wink at the blockbuster dude as you pay>decide last minute to grab a bunch of candy that you know you'll regret later
>>198603955Blockbuster never had anything because it was where all the normies went and the selection sucked to begin with. The mom and pops always had the games I wanted and at least some movie I would want to watch. Even hastings was better than this shit. When my friends wanted to go to blockbuster I know we would always end up going somewhere else or getting some shit movie no one wanted to watch. I have no idea why people remember this fondly. If it was so great then netflix delivery would not have ripped it a new asshole
>>198602831This was basically my experience. Dad would get home from work earlier on Fridays and we would pick out a couple movies. I remember thinking Jim Carrey was the best back then. I wanted to watch anything with him in it. Usually we would rent one movie for him and my mom and two for me and my siblings. We would watch one movie, usually something more like a family movie and my parents would watch cold mountain or something mature like that when we went to bed. Me and my bro would stay up another hour or two on cartoon network. They had special Friday night programing we would watch on our small CRT TV we had in our shared room. Saturday nights my parents would go on a date and hire a babysitter and order a couple of pizzas and a 2 liter and we would watch whatever movie we didnt watch on Friday. Usually made the babysitters lives hell but I always thought they were sexy and I wanted to run around naked just to see if they would grab me to make it stop.
>>198601008>80s>me and my sister used to cycle into town to the video shop>go to the little video shop that was floor to ceiling with side-on videos>spend a while both of us looking>check through the selection, and shortlist it down to 1-2>cycle back>watchsome of the films stuck in my memory forever. we used to take it in turns having final choice - and see if the other had picked a good onemore often we'd cycle there in the summer and buy a frozen drink he sold there, which would take ages to finish
>>198601008we didn't have a blockbuster in my country but it wasn't even that long ago since i rented a movie maybe 2011 last time? Those places mostly felt like a mashup of a library combined with a candy shop. Even though renting films, in today's view, is getting assraped economically it was pretty special getting off work/school on a friday and going down to the movie rentals with a loved one to get some kino and snack for the night
>>198604366Holy based
>>198602011I rented this as a kid and thought it was just six episodes from a longer running show and god damn was I disappointed later in life when I got the DVD and found out that's all there ever was.
I'm getting so tired of these threads. quit pretending to care about the past. it wasn't anything special.
Blockbuster was kind of trash as everyone has already mentioned, mainly due to the available selection. Most of the nostalgia stems from the memories of people being there with their loved ones, before their parents started to resent one another and before their siblings became too cool or before their friends started liking girls and chasing that pussy. All in all, Blockbuster wasn't great.Friends and I used to bike the 2 miles into the shopping district in our city on Fridays after school, and we'd make Blockbuster one of our stops. Almost always the available selection was trash. We'd stock up on snacks and shit and put the movies in our backpacks and then go to whoevers home was hosting that week and watch a bunch of movies all night.The following day one of us would be designated to bring their backpack with the movies to turn it back into that slot thing they had. The rest of the day we'd bike around town and do various things. All in all I think it would've been a lot funner to just go straight home and stream whatever the fuck we wanted, then go into town on Saturday and have fun over what Blockbuster offered at the time. Kids got it pretty good these days.
The first movie I ever saw on home video was on CED, capacitance electronic disc.My brother rented a player and movie at the general store in the closest town, population about 200.That movie was chitty chitty bang bang.
will video stores make a comeback, bros? i hold out hope that they do but worry that the studios will never go back to physical copies of their films
>>198604594I hope so.33 new sega genesis games are in production right now because of the retro scene.Everything is so miserable about current year everyone wants to go back.
i couldn't sleep for the next 4 days
>>198604594if they do, it'll be like sweet shops - gourmet crap sniffing its own farts and 10 times the price it should be.there'll be a gormless twat handling the tapes with a pair of white gloves
>>198604632any retro stuff just taints the originals.death to revival
>>198601008It was fucking glorious. Browse the sections, check out the cool box covers, hell yeah we talked to people.My friends and I were outgoing and drunk, we had impromptu movie parties with strangers from the vidya store frequently. Ultra rizz, no cap.Now the entire world is on a slide to suck, I can't wait for WW3 and TKD.
>>198604665Retro stuff is cool if you like go pick up some retro junk at the good will for 20 bucks.Once you are spending 1500 dollars on a scalped reddit-tink 4k on ebay it ceases to be cool.
>>198601008I was an outsider. I hated new releases. I hated the normies that would surround that section. This was pre-blockbuster by the way. I went straight to the horror section and loved renting cheapo horror flicks. Then I would dub them at home. Mom and Pop video stores were based. Blockbuster was Normie Night. Fuck them
>>198604741i grew up in a city of culture that had hipster video rental stores specializing in gore, schlock, euro-trash and porno in the back
I miss that fucking carpet smell
>>198602437>Wicked CityOne of the best examples where a cool looking cover wasn't just a marketing trick and the film actually was every bit as cool. There were so many terrible films with awesome covers, but when you watched the film it was nothing like it.
It was so much better than you zoomers could ever imagine.There was a feel to going to a video store, looking at all the sega and nintendo games on the shelf. I still remember this little mom and pop tv repair shop that sold music, vhs and games in the basement in their sons area of the store. The level of excitement I used to get going there and looking at all the sega games is a kind of genuine joy no zoomer will ever know.
>>198601008the only job i ever had that i liked was working at my towns video store i had dreams of opening my own one day, little did i know all video stores would be gone by 2010
>>198601008Any anons here old enough to remember picrel media stores? I remember saving up my money to buy CDs and DVDs brand new. Sort of like Borders. Man those were the days before all this soulless streaming crap.
>be 18>go to rent movies with gf>both choose one>pick snacks>parents away>take turns in having clumsy sex and watching movies
>>19860100838 year old hereI dont recall any smellYes I read the coversOccassionally talked to the cooler store clerks, or kids playing the sega saturn/super nintendo/nintendo 64There was a small fine for not rewinding
>>198605620Tim is that you?
>>198605736The last film i ever rented from the local video store before they stopped renting movies was universal soldier regeneration. They dinged me full price for a late fee and i refused to pay and lost my membership. I had been going there since I was 8 years old.A tragic end to the era but that's how it went down.
>>198605681they always had a good selection but cost like 30 bucks for a CD in 2002. whoever mentioned hastings in this thread, that place was the real deal
>>198605681Used to be HMV at the mall, right by the theaters, back when the the theaters were new and they had a fire breathing animated dragon in the ceiling that would go off and shoot actual huge ass flames every hour.
>>198605681my childhood mall still surprisingly has an FYE one of the last ones I've seen still hanging on. theyre in a way smaller space and not nearly as good as they were in the late 90s early 2000s back when those stores were massive. for me Suncoast and Saturday Matinee were the kings of mall DVD/VHS shops back before FYE
>>198606174>Saturday Matineei remember getting a lot of the best stuff in my collection early on from that place back when DVDs were the new cool thing, lot of my early tv show box sets like Family Guy, Chappelles Show, Simpsons, South Park. that was one of the best things about DVD when it was new, before that it was hard to sell full seasons of shows, maybe only a few tv shows did it, it woulda been something ridiculous like a 20 VHS set for each season
>>198606174I really miss the mall, they used to have midnight madness on Halloween at the local malls and it was so awesome as a kid running around in a costume at midnight at the mall and the place was packed with everyone in costumes and hanging out.
>>198601185>They add like .50c charge to your accountkek that's a myth. maybe at your COCKbuster.>Also god raped your asshole with a pinecone for being immoral.this is yet to be determined as I'm still alive
>>198605681We had Sam Goody and The Wall. FYE too. The Wall would give you a blue sticker and if anything was ever wrong with the disc scratched, broken anything they'd replace it if you had the sticker.
>>198606237I used to go and order VHS tapes there for dirty shit I couldn't get anywhere else. Pretty sure I bought Species, La Blue Girl, Legend of the Overfiend (Urotsukidoji) and other movies that gave me a massive boner.
>>198601008Blockbuster had a popcorn/candy smell. ALL the stores though had that thin ass carpet fabric smell and the smell of the plastic protective cases or the VHS tapes usually. Sometimes if the place was older the drop ceiling tiles gave off that weird chemical/chalky aroma.
>>198601008>What happened when you didn't rewindI remember when they finally invented a VCR that automatically rewinded (rewound?) the tape once the movie was over, and it was seriously a DUDE WOAH TECHNOLOGY moment.Oh, how times have changed...t.39 year old boomer
>>198601008When I was a boy I'd browse the horror and cartoon section a lot, staring at the interesting box arts, never knowing what a movie might be like, but the box would sell me on it. I'd sometimes rent old episodes of cartoons like Transformers, or TMNT, since you couldn't see old shows again unless they aired on tv. When I got into horror, I'd look at each box and see if there was sequels and decide to commit to seeing each filmz usually stumbling on one classic after another. Next to horror was Sci-Fi and anime. I remember renting vol 1 of The Guyver, and immediately coming back for 2 and 3, and I only chose them, because the art looked badass.
>>198601008I would just wander around and pick something for my parents to rent for me based on the cover photo then try and sneak a peak in the porno section.
a local movie store i used to visit had a small anime section, and for some reason they place king of the hill there
>>198603091You can download media exclusively from that era and just enjoy it if you really want.You can hook a PC up to a CRT if you want.I literally did that for emulators but i sometimes watch 80s and 90s anime on it too.
>>198605327It looks so good even today, the art and animation is 100 times better than modern crap.Nearly everything from that director is fucking top notch.
>>198601008A clean Blockbuster smelled like fresh vacuumed carpet, with a hint of plastic and cardboard. Shitty lower rent video stores (the kind with an adults-only room) smelled like cigarettes.
>>198601008>What happened if you didn't rewind?They strapped you to "the wheel".
>>198606766Based, didn’t think anyone besides me remembered The Wall. I rarely bought CDs there because they were expensive compared to the other music stores (Strawberries and Coconuts were my usual spots) at the time but would once in a while just to get a CD case with the sticker in case one ever broke or was too damaged to play. They didn’t know if you bought it there or not could just switch the cover slip into the case with the sticker, good times of scamming the system in the 90s, those days are long gone but my 90s memories will never die *cries*
>>198601008>Did it smell good? It usually smelled like plastic they used for DVDs/VHS.>Did you actually spent time reading the covers?Usually you went in with a specific kino in mind. In my case, I usually picked up 2-3 recent releases and then took chances with a "mystery title" that I would decide by judging it by its cover. It was fun popping it into the player and anxiously waiting to see if it was good or not. >Did you talk to the other kino enjoyers at the store?I used to make small talk. Usually asking if anyone had seen the mystery title I grabbed. I could usually rely on their takes.>What happened if you didn't rewind?Nothing. It was considered common courtesy, but the wagies working there were in charge of doing that with a specialized appliance. I used to have one that was a VHS-sized Ferrari with a pop open top. You'd place the tape in and it would rewind it in less than a few seconds.
>>198602984this poster is a bot>greentext portion of original textreplyadd slightly related commentAnother related comment
>>198609041oh yeah picrel
>>198601008>What happened if you didn't rewind?My brother worked at a Blockbuster and much of his shift was spent rewinding tapes and checking for damage. At smaller more sleazy video stores they hardly ever bothered, so you'd have to end up having to use the rewind button on your VCR.
>>198609041>a VHS-sized Ferrari with a pop open topNostalgia anon you just took me back to my childhood. We had one of those too.
>>198601008>Did it smell good?No, but it didn't smell particularly BAD either.
My last VCR got an STD from a pron I rented. Permanently made every tape played after shift up 1/4 of the screen, the bottom was all staticy.
>>198601375>5 dollars for 5 bucks
