Current Events > Have you forgotten what it was like to rent videos/games from Blockbuster?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFNfVDQdMxs

classic times

No, though I do kinda miss it. It was like an event or something to look forward to at times, since you'd go in, smell that familiar smell that was almost uniform due to the plastic. Then you'd look at the shelves and see all the shit you wanted was rented, so you ended up picking up some weird ass game and having a "I have no idea how to play this, because Clocktower on PS1 has weird controls and there's no fucking manual WHAT AM I DOING!!!"

I for real never got out of the starting office room, because of this very thing. Best damn rental ever.

obligatory Psychostick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1wwvxFgTkc

Weve gone backward in society

I used to beg my mom to drive me to Blockbuster on Friday nights so I could rent a game for the weekend. I remember one time I went for a specific game and they didnt have it, so I got something else. I got home, opened the case, and the original game I wanted was in there by mistake. Weirdest coincidence, but it was so long ago i forget what the game was.

Ooof, just remembered renting tenchu and never returning it from the local video game store (we buy gold)

Purple_Cheetah posted...

No, though I do kinda miss it. It was like an event or something to look forward to at times, since you'd go in, smell that familiar smell that was almost uniform due to the plastic. Then you'd look at the shelves and see all the shit you wanted was rented, so you ended up picking up some weird ass game and having a "I have no idea how to play this, because Clocktower on PS1 has weird controls and there's no fucking manual WHAT AM I DOING!!!"

I for real never got out of the starting office room, because of this very thing. Best damn rental ever.

I used to work at Blockbuster Video and can tell you that we purposely removed instruction manuals from game rentals because they were never returned when they used to be included. Though, at some point, basic instructions were printed on the back of the rental box for each game.

I miss seeing movie boxes. I've forgotten so many movies I've seen by now because I never owned them and I can't look at a box and be reminded of it.

The nearest one to me growing up was like 30 miles away.

My memories are renting from grocery stores and gas stations

GeminiDeus posted...

I used to work at Blockbuster Video and can tell you that we purposely removed instruction manuals from game rentals because they were never returned when they used to be included. Though, at some point, basic instructions were printed on the back of the rental box for each game.

I miss seeing movie boxes. I've forgotten so many movies I've seen by now because I never owned them and I can't look at a box and be reminded of it.

This was still when the local one actually put them in there, and you'd find them. They almost always looked like they were used as someone's coffee table whore and the disc wasn't much better. I do remember even prior to that, at other rental places that had nes/snes/genesis era games, that people would actually put level codes/tips in the manual.

Can't have that!

How great was it when you rented the same game like months later, and your save file was still intact!

Yeah they were great. Had all the weird covers of movies my parents never let me rented memorized (all those weird 90's VHS covers). I didn't watch Cable Guy 'till I was like 20 but that cover always looked mad eclectic to me when I was a kid. Plus nothing beats renting those random ass games. Introduced me to Secret of Mana and still have a special fondness for never having owned the game but rented it so many times.

I used to work next to a blockbuster and Id go in there and browse the games every day before work, and whenever something new came out the people working would put one off to the side for me to see if I wanted it

simpler times. Also I was banging Laura and chain smoking cigarettes at the bar. The good ol days.

Nope, I have not.

I lived like a 5 minute walk from one as a kid. 12 year old me used his allowance pretty much every weekend to rent a game. I played almost every Genesis game because of it

I remember going as a kid and hurrying and picking my movie for my mom so I could rush over and play the pokemon stadium demo. Then rushing over to my dad and asking if we could rent a n64 for the weekend. He always said no though lol.

Hollywood Video was so much better.

The local place that smelled like broken ink pens, and had naughty movies in a tiny room behind a beaded curtain, was always the best.

There was literally nothing more exciting than it being Friday evening, after school, and you've convinced your parents to take you to the local video store (in my case, it was Video Safari). And you look for that one game, that game you've been thinking about all week... And it's in. And you grab that cheap empty plastic case, and you take it up to the counter, knowing you're in for a fantastic weekend.

I never did Blockbuster. I had this local small town video store that cheated big time. In a lot of ways.

I could walk there in 2 mins and get a Nintendo rental though which was great as a kid

I'm kind of upset I don't own a lot of games I rented now. On the flip side, I probably would have never gotten to play them without renting.

Overall, don't miss renting games at all, though.

I practically lived at Blockbuster every other Friday. >_>

StealThisSheen posted...

And you grab that cheap empty plastic case, and you take it up to the counter, knowing you're in for a fantastic weekend.

Then, one of these always happens:

1. the game just plain sucks
2. "are you going to hide in your room and play videogames all weekend?"

Questionmarktarius posted...

Then, one of these always happens:

1. the game just plain sucks
2. "are you going to hide in your room and play videogames all weekend?"

I, luckily, avoided #2, but that was only because my parents only let me rent a game if we had nothing planned for the weekend, so they didn't care if I spent all weekend playing it.

And, I'll be honest, I found a way to have fun even with the crappy games. Extremely rarely was a game so bad that I regretted renting it. I didn't get to buy barely any games as a kid, so I only got a game for birthday or Christmas, so I found a way to enjoy pretty much anything. Certain games were just a "Rent only once," vs. a "I want to rent this several times."

StealThisSheen posted...

And, I'll be honest, I found a way to have fun even with the crappy games.

Its how you know what a good game is. Play the bad ones and have an experience

I frequented a couple of local places and when they went down, Hollywood Video, which I eventually worked at. Blockbuster was only a last resort because it was furthest away. One of the local places was only a couple of blocks away from my house and had the infamous adult section and was picketed by religious nuts and eventually closed down. It was also connected to a tanning bed place. The other had old movies for a buck each and I'd rent several at a time along with games. For some reason they had a case full of beepers they liked to sell even past the beeper era.

StealThisSheen posted...

And, I'll be honest, I found a way to have fun even with the crappy games.

I feel I did too. I don't remember ever having a moment as a kid where I found a game to be so terrible I couldn't play it. I guess it was just kid me having low standards.

BanthaFodder posted...

Its how you know what a good game is. Play the bad ones and have an experience

This is pretty true, honestly. It refined my tastes, but mainly in a "How much fun am I having vs. how much fun am I forcing" kind of way. In my childhood, I sometimes had to "force" fun out of a bad game, but I could do it. And then, as I grew up, it made me recognize very quickly when I'm legitimately having fun with a game vs. when I'm forcing it.

I've mostly just forgotten the smell of plastic cases and Blockbuster carpet.

Southernfatman posted...

I feel I did too. I don't remember ever having a moment as a kid where I found a game to be so terrible I couldn't play it. I guess it was just kid me having low standards.

It wasn't necessarily low standards as much as, even as kids, we understood value and loss. Even if a game sucked and we kinda had to find weird ways to have fun with it, we knew we had only rented it for a weekend or whatever, so it wasn't a total loss. We also knew it was what we were stuck with, so if we had to get creative to enjoy it, so be it.

If you think about it, that just shows that we understood value. A bad game is especially bad if you bought it at full price... But if you only paid a few dollars to rent it for a few days, well... It's not actually so bad, if you can find SOME kind of fun in it, right?

I remember one time when I was a little bastard my friend and I rented some ps2 game and got it and it sucked so we scratched the disc up and brought it back and we were like the game is broken it doesnt work and the guy was like thats weird youre the first people to rent that game

MICHALECOLE posted...

, indeed.

MICHALECOLE posted...

I remember one time when I was a little bastard my friend and I rented some ps2 game and got it and it sucked so we scratched the disc up and brought it back and we were like the game is broken it doesnt work and the guy was like thats weird youre the first people to rent that game

Thanks YWS.

No, I remember. Don't really miss it tbh.

I remember the rare occasions when they would let you rent a whole console. It's just sitting on a rack right before the register and you can just pluck it off and play a whole new system for rentals.

BanthaFodder posted...

Thanks YWS.

What does yws mean?

MICHALECOLE posted...

What does yws mean?

It doesn't mean anything I took a shot of alcohol and can't type now

BanthaFodder posted...

It doesn't mean anything I took a shot of alcohol and can't type now

Hmmm

Urban dictionary says it means you want some

but that doesnt really fit

I've never rented anything.

I remember holding Majora's Mask for ransom. Each week I was able to rent a game of my choice and I always chose MM for a long time.

I think the last thing I rented was a tensioner tool from Autozone, and they gave me my money back anyway.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

adrenochrome?