it was a ripoff and always smelled weird

>>737401492
Renting was a pain in the ass and a waste of gas and time just to return to the store. The prices were always high where I was, so buying was better anyways. Good riddance.

people glorify these times even though browsing the internet and getting free shit was infinitely harder than it was now

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>>737401492
It was pretty baller because games were more affordable when you could rent them.

Also, as much as people point out that it's inconvenient to leave the house, it was nice to have something to do. You go out in the world you see what else is popular and it's right there in front of you. You don't have to try and navigate all the astro turfing on social media to determine what's cool and what's new and what's hip.

Also, you could drink a 40 oz behind the video rental store which was really cool because they didn't have cameras back then.

The downside I suppose is the late fees if you lost a video game or a video tape.

It's a little more fun on date night to bring a girl there and you browse movies together, talking to each other instead of sitting on the couch like a couple of fat retards.

Although I suppose I could drink a 40 oz at home too, although I drink wine mostly now.

Earlier today I threw a pineapple out the window. It's still in the yard. I'm going to try and hit it with the lawn mower tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m. hopefully I can wake up my neighbours at the same time. I have a conference call with England at 7.

Yeah, video game and movie rental places were pretty neat. I'm very nostalgic for them. They were less convenient but they were appropriate for their time.

>future generations will never experience the comfort of yellow lights
grim

>>737402184
Now clean it up.

>>737401492
the blockbuster near me never EVER had what I went in for
which both sucked ass but it also got me to play a bunch of vidyas I otherwise never would have

>>737401492
It was like going to a toy store. An entire place filled with hopes and dreams. I guess zooms dont know about toy stores either but it was really cool.

>>737401492
I was a relatively poor kid. Mom couldn't afford original gamecube games for me back then (maybe one at birthday or christmas) It was a good way to rent Twilight Princess or other games to just play them without the compromise of having to purchase them. And having to return it gave you that motivation to finish the game and be done with it before the due date.

>>737401492
Like opening a door of possibility.
>>737401576
Idk, I emulated pokemon blue at age 10 and felt like a fucking genius.

>>737401492
It was try before you buy for the pre-digital console era, and had all kinds of really cool candy grocery stores never carried. This was, overall, how all video rental places were back then, not just the big chains like Blockbuster.

>>737401492
meh the selection was typically quite limited for games, and even for new releases they'd only have a couple copies which were already rented out.
on the positive side, i do miss the feeling of "i need to play the hell out of this game for the next 3 days" and waking up at 5 am to start gaming while my parents were still asleep etc. there was no deciding what to play, even if a game sucked i would fully harvest it.

>>737401492
The local mom and pop stores had a better selection. The nostalgia for Blockbuster is just the easy, go-to way of summing up what's been lost because it's at the junction of a lot of different talking points. Everyone who's been to a Blockbuster gets it on some level, even if they're not informed enough and just chalk it up to nostalgia.

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>>737401492
It was nicer when life was made up of various rituals, Instead of everything coming out if the same device and interaction 24/7.
It wasn't convenient but life felt richer when you had to go to one place to buy a movie, then a completely different place with its own aura and aesthetic to buy a music CD, then another little store to buy a comic, then some other big store to buy a game or toys.
Same with the tv at home and all the various devices you had to go through.
CD players, VHS players, TV antenna, consoles, whatever.

Now everything is hyper convenient and centralized but the sensory experience is flattened to a single mode of interaction, maximum availability makes fruition of everything trivial (if you bought a CD back then, you'd listen to it for weeks) and even the rituals outside the house have shrunk down to nothing.
Not to mention the fact that kids hardly play with videogames, let alone toys, action figures, toy weapons etc... it's all social media all day long.
It's all just more miserable, even if it was all just consoom shit.

I remember my mom never returned a copy of mortal kombat armageddon. I think I saw a bill for $147 in late fees in the trash.

>>737404176
Even phones now arr rook the same and lost their tactility with touch screens. I still remember the feel of the old buttons and the differences between a Nokia 3210 and a 3310. I never liked touching glass on these piece of shit rectangles. Everything is so boring and homogenized.

>>737404614
Don't worry, once they implement Neuro interfaces, you won't even have to touch anything at all, you'll be able to just sit and rot.

>>737401492
A lot of games aren't worth playing longer than a week, and this meant trying them for so cheap, it was reasonable to try a new one next week.

>>737401492
my parents rented the playstation from blockbuster for me and my bro to try out before buying one

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>>737401492
90% of the time you picked a movie because of how cool the cover looked rather than having heard of it.

That's how I found Return of the Living Dead.

I also recall seeing copies of some Def Jam fighting game that no one ever seemed to rent.

Pic unrelated, but just neat. Never rented Command Mission. I do own it, though.

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>rent out a game
>Its shit
>Finish it anywas cuz its the weekend and no one is willing to drive you back to block buster

>>737401492
never would rent shit. only used to go in and buy the discounted candy since it was right next to the haircut salon.

>>737406134
I also want to add that when Blair Witch came out, it was such a big deal with tons of copies and cardboard standups. Never saw it, though.

>>737401492
Unexpectedly meeting people there and you talk about games / movies together was a neat community thing. It was like a ritual to go to the movie store after skiiing on a friday/saturday and pick out some things for you and your friends to enjoy at a sleep over.
seeing new games/movies you didnt know about.

There was a guy here who was a movie autist and he collected movies going all the way back to like the 50s, he had a big store like a library with tens of thousands of movies. Walking around all those movies and reading the boxes while talking with friends about them is much better than scolling netflix.

>>737402307
we'll leave it for the night janny

>>737401576
Maybe the lack of availability made these experiences more worthwhile.

what's there to say, it was an experience
games were harder too for that reason. so you don't end up finishing the game over the weekend. then either rent again and buy a guide or end up buying the game and a guide lol

you, cannot even sell your games.
polish MEP already said during the Euro hearing that he wants SKG + sellable licenses

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>>737408914
you will never understand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azYLbtCujJI
>VHS Video Rental 1991 - Growing up 80's & 90's 3.08K subscribers 139K views 10 years ago

look at all this propaganda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFNfVDQdMxs
> Renting videos at a Blockbuster store in 1993 - Vampire Robot 185K subscribers 556K views 3 years ago

>>737401492
If you were an adult at the time, you probably didn't like it all that much. Whenever you tried to get out of there with a game, there was always a lineup because of some argument between the cashier and the customer, usually due to scratches on the disk.
As a kid, it was a rush for sure because for me I only ever got to go inside when my mom was doing the grocery shopping. I had like 10 minutes to pick out a game and avoid getting caught in a lineup so I can make it back in time to grab the groceries and carry it back home. My family didn't have a car until I turned 12 years old, so we had to walk down this road that was on a huge slop for 20 minutes to get to the mall, then walk 20 minutes back carrying everything but going up the hill.

>>737401519
Skating rinks and non-chain rental places had the same looking/smelling carpet. It wasn’t quite full on BO, not not total pissy bathroom smell, but it was unique and once you know it you know it for life.

It felt like an adventure :) I loved it.

>>737401492
You rented something for a couple of days for a fee, then brought it back. You had to be there to understand.

>>737401492
Going to family video to rent a game for a week for $7 was based as hell. You could play and beat every single big game and never pay full price. Mine closed down in the ps4 era believe it or not. I think last thing I rented was outer worlds or something.

>>737401492
Back then, people rented and bought, then coped with their decision.
Ended up getting Renegade for the NES? It was a good game and nobody could tell you otherwise, because you had to play it.

>>737401492
It was a fun thing to do as a kid but that's mostly because vidya was considered niche so your parents would only buy you games once in a while. Zooms/gen a kids just have phones and games, but up until the early 2000s it was way more common to have random toys, so that's what you got 90% of the time, thus meaning a new video game was something special.

>>737401492
It was really good from the 90's-mid 2000's because the selections were highly curated and unique to each store and just browsing the store and talking to the owner was a great way to expand your media awareness, it got significantly worse as chain stores began to dominate the market and homogenize everything, but this happened at the same time DVD was taking off so it just boosted the retail market and converted renters into buyers because retail now had the bigger better library and you could fit 3-4 boxed dvds for every tape on your shelf.

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>>737401492
Mom and pop video stores were awesome. It wasn't just getting the movie or game, it just had a skeevy but fun vibe to it. Browsing the trashy horror movies with awesome covers was the best part.

>>737402184
knocking over ps5 games.webm

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>>737409220
>My family didn't have a car until I turned 12 years old, so we had to walk down this road that was on a huge slop for 20 minutes to get to the mall, then walk 20 minutes back carrying everything but going up the hill.
holy fucking hillbilly and fucking soul

>>737409667
did you always rewind your VHS tape? don't tell me i got one of your fucked up tapes, anon

>>737409752
If he were a hillbilly like me there would not be a mall within walking distance.

>>737409801
My dad bought one of those video rewinder things, so we always put them in that before taking them back.

>>737404176
solid post

>>737401576
maybe, but millenials were smart kids
now zoomers dont even know what a directory or torrent is
they even struggle to pirate gog games

>>737401576
>getting free shit was infinitely harder than it was now
It really wasn't. Going to the video store and burning their DVDs was pretty easy

>>737401570
>renting was a pain in the ass
you had a week to play a game and return it, what the fuck are you talking about. most games (back then) you could complete in a week anyways, which saved you buying the game for full-price. or in the case you were unsure whether you wanted to pay full price for a game, you could rent and check it out yourself.
>good riddance
fucking dork

>>737409256
lol, my parents used to take us to some old skating places always smelled old as shit built in the 70s

I dunno man renting shit at blockbuster always felt like a scam whenever we did it. in my house we made habit of going to the secondhand shop and buying games from their sub-$10 shelves instead. at least then, we fuckin owned it. same with movies (though whenever we could, we'd rent that shit from the library for free.)
>>737404176
I generally think people are way too up their own ass about, at best, their own nostalgia (and at worst, zoomers being up their own ass about someone else's nostalgia that was sold to them through "the past you grew up in doesn't exist anymore" whingeposts on social media) but I do agree that we are creatures that need inconveniences. There's a reason I still insist on going to fast food places myself instead of just paying someone else to doordash it for me, or why I usually try to buy stuff in-person instead of just ordering everything off amazon.

>>737409667
I miss how you didnt know what you were getting into when you picked out a tape. Beyond the brief description on the back, there were no internet reviews or preview to watch before renting. You just kinda got what you got and even if it was a shitty movie you still had fun because it was a movie night.

>>737401492
>be retarded child
>rent Perfect Dark
>die trying to shoot the Chicago robot
>repeat through the rental period
>do this multiple times
would have been better for all involved if theyd just bought it

>>737401492
>Mom lets me get a movie, game, and candy Friday after school
Really was kino. I still remember I'd always get Starship Troopers, my mom thought it was just a Star Wars knock-off and I'd be looking at Dizzy's tits.

>>737401492
Honestly renting games felt a lot more frustrating than renting movies. Inventory was a lot smaller and you'd often end up needing to return the game before you were done due to the playtime.

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>>737401492
>What was it like?
Having to rent my second/third choice some weeks 'cause of no copies, and some exafaggots never returned their shit on time.

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>>737410456
found plenty of games I enjoyed that I would've never played because of that

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>>737401492
The good thing about it was that you could rent a game for cheap to see if you like it before buying it. And if it was a short game you could complete it within the rental window. Or at least get most of the experience of the game even if you didn't actually finish it.
There isn't really anything like that anymore.

And the fact that you could be picking up 2 new games every week was rad as hell. Even if half of them were usually duds.

>>737401781
You can still walk outside now.

>>737402184
Where's the funny? I know AFV is generally not funny, but normally someone at least hits their head or something.

>>737409725
kek

Master System, Famicom, Sega Megadrive, Super Nintendo (never had one), N64, early Playstation. Fuck yes.
You will never have anything like it having access to all these different games that would continuously improve rapidly by the year.

I had a much better time renting movies typically, few games are truly good rentals and it sucks to invest a weekend into a game you won't finish. The pokemon snap kiosk was kino though

I visited family video a lot later on (like 2006ish) and rented a lot of games because by then I could burn through them in a few days

>>737410748
If I do that I just find random homeless drug addicts.
going outside to the movies is ass because of price and nothing good to watch.
going outside to the mall is ass because of the prices and nothing good to look at.
going out to see what is popular DOESNT WORK because that shit is all online now.
shut the fuck up retard

>>737401492
Cheeseburgers used to be like $1-3. I think I miss that more.

>>737410983
Seeing what's popular has always been gay. As for the homeless, try not living in a shithole, or walk in a nice neighborhood.

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>>737410564
I'll admit it was a silver lining sometimes. Metal Storm ended up being one of the coolest finds I've had.

>>737401492
it was time of high trust society

>>737410983
>I just find random homeless drug addicts.
I go on walks daily in my shit ass city and never deal with that, they tend to congregate in those strip malls with dying furniture stores instead

>>737401492
Carpet cleaning technology still kind of sucked back then so the carpet was as dirty and sticky as it looks in this picture.

>>737407278
this definitely, look at people with steam libraries of 4000 games and they play none of them. Games arent special anymore.

>>737411035
it costs money to move that I don't have.
>>737411176
quirk of my geography, best place to walk by passes through a low income area.
really nice laundromat-gasstation is there though.
one of their oldest employees lives in the area and refuses to put up with ANY bullshit so she keeps crime and homeless away all by herself.
old black auntie with a gun who hates "liberal bullshit"

>>737401576
The technology has improved, but now we have to deal with more people and not all of those people are pleasant.
I'd rather have slow internet and good people than fast internet with bad people.
I'd rather have CRT tube TV than "watch and advert before you can open the menu" UHD TV

>>737401492

for me it was pretty good. games were shorter and simpler
i would pick a game and beat it in a week
did this for Kirby Crystal Castle, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Mischief Makers, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, and a bunch of other random games.

I remember stealing the manuals out of blockbuster ps2 games and then I wasn't allowed back for many years. I found suicide club there and I think I rented twisted metal black and burnout from there. From my memory, I was banned from eb games and GameStop for taking the sealed yugioh cards out of the game box . I sat on the floor reading the power of chaos manual and the eb games guy was furious. None of the GameStops actually liked me because I would always show up short changed to buy a game and make up a sob story about how Its only a few dollars and in some cases they did.

>>737411220
no friction to acquiring them makes them less special

having to wait in line for a release made big releases seem big

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>>737401492
It was great, but it wasn't because it was "better", but because it felt more special. Games were not everywhere and available all the time, when you went to a blockbuster you knew you were going to find something exciting you couldn't find anywhere else.

My friend lived a block away from a Blockbuster that was right across from a convenience store.
Anytime we'd hang out, we'd walk over, pick up a game like Soulcalibur 4 or something with coop, then walk over and get some slurpees and donuts or something, then walk back to his place.
Simple, good-ass times.

>>737401492
it was a ripoff and you were constantly arguing about fees but it was just such a simpler time
we're overloaded with choice nowadays and because the selections were smaller and you has to actually travel somewhere it made you appreciate what you ended up getting a lot more than you do now

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As a kid, it meant going through the entrance and making a beeline to the video game section and finding something that looked good, then being impatient because your other siblings or parents hadn't picked out a movie. Then being more impatient when they stop by the grocery store to get microwave popcorn and other snacks instead of the overpriced stuff at the register.

>>737411142
Every Blockbuster video I would go to always had separate entrance and exit doors with security scanners. The movies and games all had some kind of metallic strip in them and the store clerk would take the games to a pickup spot after checkout (no deactivating the sticker.) Some cases even had a locking mechanism to keep CDs/DVDs from being slipped out. Mom and Pop stores might not have had the systems but it was prevalent

>>737401492
Rentals were cool until Blockbusters and all the big corporations did a take over and then killed the market for Redbox and on-demand pay-per-view TVs/Movies.
Blockbusters was the meme and always rotated out their cartridges to different stores, so we would lose our saves. The actual good rental shops were your mom&pop comic/game stores. But by the mid 2000s Blockbuster had wiped them all out.

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There's no slipping this inside your bag and not setting off an alarm.

Blockbusters also started price gouging us, once they wiped all the competitors out. Which is what was mostly responsible for the death of game rentals.
GameStop/EBGames also stopped doing rentals around the early 2000s, which is when they switched logos. I guess it would be more accurate to say mom&pop comic/game-stores stopped doing rentals when they got bought out/sold out and became EBGames/GameStop.

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>>737401492
It was like a mini-event, for the family.

Parents would go to the store to pick up something up that the house needed on the weekend. Said store was often in a McHighwayland Lot, with a bunch of other stores all within walking distance of one another. They almost always had a Blockbuster nearby. So a reward for going with them was then going to Blockbuster to pick out some movies for everybody to watch. And since you were there with them, you could easily throw a game on top of it.

All of these lots almost always had a pizzeria in them, so you would get that too. Two large pies, breadsticks, two 2-liter sodas. Plus whatever candy/microwaveable popcorn you shook your folks down for, as the economy wasn't completely in the tank, and all these things were still affordable even compared to going to the movie theater outright, back then.

Bonus points if you had friends/cousins tagging along, to do a sleepover.
So you would watch a spooky horror movie with the family, and then stay up all night eating junk food and gaming with your bros. A whole weekend locked down in trying to beat said game, or doing split screen co-op/versus death matches.
If it was really good, you might even save up to buy it. Or ask for the sequel next Christmas.

All of this was during a time before the internet made streaming, shopping, and socializing all so streamlined and convenient. Yet social media never fully replaced how personal and engaging simply going out for <45 minutes, and then spending time at home with friends and family, over a stupid thing like Blockbuster.

For a time, it was great.

>>737401492
Millennials will glorify being molested by their uncle as long as it happened in the 90s.

Now that I think about it. I'm pretty sure GameStop and BlockBusters did some insider trading and deals. Which is why the game stores stopped doing rentals. And Blockbusters was no longer allowed to sell their games.

>>737412148
kek

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>>737412147
Oh, there was also a lot more independent rental places. Just everywhere, in random spots, so long as there was people shopping.

Wasn't uncommon to go to the local mom and pop convenience store for gas/sandwiches, and then find that they had a rental section of movies in the back.

A local pizza place near me used to have a whole section for people to pick out a VHS, while waiting for their pick-up.

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>>737412147
>>737412472
I dont have such fond memories of going to a specific place like this, but visiting a flea market and having the possibility of finding a mega drive game or two there was always exciting. or that one antiquarian that stocked some video games along with all the books and comics. no rental though, so you really just had to take a good look at the box and judge if this is something I should get.

for VHSs though? sure, like you said even our local gas station had a small selection for rental. my mom would work at a kiosk later that had DVDs and would sometimes grab a movie for me to watch along with something from the nearby grill. I really miss her and those time periods in general.

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>>737401492
>What was it like? I hear so many millenials creaming about renting games at the video store during the weekend.
It was a much simpler time

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>>737410748
>It's still 2004 if you just put the phone down and go outside bro

>>737401519
It was the carpets.

>>737414592
grim...

>>737410817
That was AI grandpa

>>737401492
It was kinda expensive and the playstation disks were always scratched to shit

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>>737404176
>a completely different place with its own aura
When you went into a good comic book store and it had that musty 1960s yellowing newsprint smell, you knew you were going to find some good shit.

God, I actually miss that experience, even though it was 100% consuming because the comic book store owners were the coolest dudes and could recommend you things all day long. You'd leave with a big stack of books, cards, and games and have plenty to do for the rest of the month.

How do you even buy a comic book in 2026? Do you just pirate them now? I don't care about that, but looking at it on a tablet screen just feels sterile. You immediately lose the touch and smell of the experience. You can't interact with it, it's not "there".

We've lost so much so fast and we're just starting to realize it now. Kids are going to be fucked up screen slaves that can't do anything useful. I don't know how this ends.

>>737410983
Not to mention, literally everything revolves around a phone now. Commerce, banking, transit tickets, boarding passes, QR code menus, parking apps, digital event tickets, etc. The entire apparatus of society is monumentally different compared to just 20 years ago.

Man I loved getting home from school, watching afternoon cartoons and then my parents taking us to Hollywood Video or Blockbuster. The usual 1 movie and 1 game and then heading next door to Dollar Tree for some little Debbie snacks. Good times.

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>>737410983
>going outside to the mall is ass because of the prices and nothing good to look at
Sad.

The 90s was the total opposite. Malls had cheap food, movie stores, game stores, music stores, that store full of electric pianos that were always playing. Movie theaters. Arcades. Spencer's Gifts. You could go into a mall in 1996 with $20 and spend like 7 hours having a good time.

>>737401492
Shit

>>737401492
A lot more social than staying home and downloading a game.

>>737402184
All those crossfades, it's not really worth recording if you can't do it in one take...

>>737401492
hang yourself underage

>>737414592
Weird how adults just decided to give away their country like that. Their fathers built the country for them.

>>737415104
You can't even go to malls anymore as a teenager because they have rules where you need to have a parent/guardian with you thanks to increased violence from a certain demographic. Malls still exist, but only in the nice neighborhoods where people can afford the insane prices, and even then, it's still not the same. All the third spaces are going, going, gone forever because an increasing number of people are getting priced out of it. I remember when fast food was seen as the cheap meal option firstly, then for convenience 2nd. Now it's overpriced, shrinkflated, and it'll only get worse.

>>737401492
Millennials were the original brokies who rented everything and pretended they owned it.

>>737401492
It sucked and they're retarded, they just miss when they couldn't be completely passive in life, even though they'll kill you if you suggest life shouldn't be a passive experience

>>737401492
Is it hard to understand? You got to walk in a store, look at every movie and game so there will be a bunch of stuff you've never heard of, pick anything you want and get to feel like you're buying it )which everyone understands and isn't a generational thing)

>>737401492
That carpet singlehandedly made experiences feel real and premium
Take me fucking back

>>737415306
I wonder if their own childhood conditioning through media and public education has anything to do with that.
Nah it must be the fault of those evil corporations my teacher and the Internet told me about.

>>737404176
>why dont people go outside as much?
>nowhere to go
>anything that still exists is just overpriced and a worse quality or experience than before

>>737401492
I liked it because I was a broke ass kid and getting new games was near impossible outside of birthdays or events. You also appreciate your time more when you know it's limited to just that weekend. Gamepasses today are objectively better value but when you have so many games available to you you shutdown and stop appreciating them. It's all just noise at some point.

>>737401576
Yeah the lack of any real internet was the only issue with the 90s and would be the main reason I wouldnt immediately go back if I had a time machine.
Yeah rich people had dial-up, but shit was so slow and there were data caps in a lot of places.

>>737409801
>>737409824
Wasnt too hard to just press Rewind immediately after finishing the movie, go take a piss or something and you'd come back and it'd be done.

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It was only decent with like NES games because you'd pay out the ass for some mediocre ass game if it wasn't for renting, we're talking maybe minutes of entertainment. Renting kinda died out after SNES here, I saw America kept it up even till the 360 era or so which seems like an outlier to me, but that's probably because it was often combined with movie rentals.

>>737412147
Yeah its sad that this kind of thing isnt a weekly household event anymore.
Everyone's working shiftwork on different days/hours now, or working 2 jobs.
Going out to do anything like this is so prohibitively expensive now too.
Then with how bad modern TV/movies are no-one feels the need to watch anything together anymore. People would rather just doomscroll with a bluetooth on playing generic corporate slop you've never heard of.

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>>737414925
>How do you even buy a comic book in 2026?
Picrel, with some $30/month subscription to censored corporate shit is how people do it now.

>>737401492
battalion wars was my favorite game to rent because it was the only one i could really get
never cared though because it was just a fun experience man idk

>>737414925
>Do you just pirate them now?
Frankly, it's been like that since 2008-2009. The last time I even tried asking in stores after a TPB was because the uploaded CBR hosted everywhere was missing a couple pages, and after a couple years of nobody having the book in stock someone finally uploaded a corrected release so it didn't matter anymore anyway.

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The mall near my house placed their food court on the second floor in the furthest section of the building with no gates near it just to make sure I have to pass all the shops.

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>>737401492
I'm not going to lie, I miss going to the grocery store with my mom and it having a rental place in it

>>737418176
The DVD rentals in mine only just stopped about 10 months ago. They flash-sold their entire inventory for a buck each, so I did at least pick up a couple new releases I was planning to rent. There's still a lingering pile of junk nobody wants, I expect they'll throw them away soon to make room for another charcoal display for barbecue season.

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>>737401492
Blockbuster was great, and I enjoyed it enough that I worked at one during the summer just for the fun of it, but even that was essentially the watered down Walmart version of the mom-and-pop video stores that were stocked based on whatever the owner wanted to stock it with. Those were fucking great, even the combined smells of dust, old cardboard, and popcorn butter that added to the magic of the experience. Those were great to just walk the aisles and look at the kick ass cover art, and imagine what they were about. Even the shitty movies had cool covers that were designed to catch your eye on a rental shelf.

>>737401492
there where no actual video game stores in my area, only a blockbuster-like rental place and so they had much more games than anyone else.
the store looked very comfy with the carpet and lower ceiling and location below ground flow. it felt like entering a different world, no other place looked like this.
since we had no internet access or magazine subscription it was always a complete surprise to see what new games they had available.
parents grabbed some movies and i got a game or two that i basically knew nothing about except the description on the case. it was hit or miss and usually a tough decision.
sometimes when nobody was around i went to the porn movie section where kids were not allowed (i was somewhere between 6-10 years old) and i looked at the covers. it was so exciting that i usually got an instant boner.
it was a truly magical place.

>>737414925
There are still comic book stores, but most of the comic books suck, for obvious reasons.

>My local city library does free DVD rentals
>people in general are returning to DVDs again
>normies are even starting to share .avis and blueray rips of movies and tv shows via USB
It's starting to heal.

>>737401492
I went to Family Video because that's just what we had nearby but I had good memories of renting RE4 for the Wii and a few other games

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>>737415349
>overpriced, shrinkflated,
It happened so gradually we all just kind of ignored it until one day fast food was $10 per item and tasted like sludge.

I can remember when you could get a big fucking slice of pizza at Sbarro's + fountain drink for $1.99 and it tasted good. You could chill in the food court and talk to your friends for 30 minutes while you ate. It was a good experience.

What are they, like $8 a slice now? And the cheese is waxy, they put 10% sawdust in the crust. Food court seats are too small, the table is always dirty, and they play shit ass music so loud you can't hear someone talking two feet away.

They took away our thirdspaces to save a few bucks and now they've fragmented our entire society. Why go anywhere? Just have some gross food delivered by a foreigner using Uber Eats and then stream everything on one of your seven interchangeable devices that are always connected to the internet.

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>>737402184
I was going to hate on this until the AFV logo let me know it was supposed to be funny!

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>>737420370
>look at the kick ass cover art, and imagine what they were about
That was the best. Often the art was much better than the film.

I wish I never watched Chopping Mall. The movie I imagined in my head as a kid from looking at the box art was much cooler that what it really is (crappy 80s robots shooting kids with lasers).

>>737423019
>crappy 80s robots shooting kids with lasers
This makes Chopping Mall sound even better, but I know for a fact it isn't...

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I was just thinking about this the other day actually. There's nothing cool to do outside your house by yourself anymore. Pretty much anything you could do would just be done better from your PC. Don't know if it's a blessing or a curse.

>>737423789
Outdoors was always just for the sake of it. I sometimes go visit my childhood neighborhood while enjoying a nice summer day. Can't do that from the PC

>>737423019
That shit hasn't gone away except it's so much crappier today. Especially with AI. They all look exactly the same.

Also, it doesn't help that a crappy 80s or 90s movie is still generally much better than a crappy 2010s or 2020s film. It wasn't just one guy with a digital camcorder, a handful of bad actors and adobe after effects bad in the 80s and 90s. They did actually have proper professionals making those films even if they didn't have much of a budget.

Well, before I knew what piracy was it was the only way to really get access to trying out new titles, and it was much cheaper to rent for a week from blockbuster vs buying a new game outright. You could also sometimes ask the teens working there and they'd have insight, or you could just see what was regularly out of stock and know it was popular (which usually meant it was half decent).
It wasn't blockbuster but my local store that got bought up by kroger that I first got my copy of SMRPG, kirby 64, and paper mario, all for like $5 a week. I ended up liking them so much I just bought them outright from the store. It's also where I found ring of red, and then the game shop shut down from the kroger buyout around the same time, and the guy who ran the rentals department told me to just keep it, along with all my other rentals.

It was just one of those things that allowed you an opportunity to experience games. Now you can pirate just about anything you want, and most other things you can't end up being f2p or go on sale for $10 before a year's even up. There wouldn't be a real value to rentals now. Gamefly ran up through 2020, I think they may even still be going, but they had basically 0 new blood because of the advent of f2p and season passes making the disc you rent worthless.

>>737401781
>Work from home cuck
>Has to be prepped by 7am
Ohnonon