Video Rental Store Memories

[bikingjahuty]

While services like Netflix, Hulu, and Redbox are infinitely more convenient and affordable, I have a huge soft spot for the bygone era of Video Rental Stores. I grew up with these places, as I'm sure many people on this site did and some of my fondest memories growing up involve going out and renting a movie and/or video game. I'm curious to hear other people's experiences and best memories of going to their local Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, or independent rental store and renting movies and games.

[kamikazekeeg]

I will ALWAYS remember video stores.  It feels awful that nearly all of them are gone.  Streaming and Redbox are nice, they are convenient, but there's something about physically browsing stuff, reading the back of the box, coming up to the counter with a stack of movies...I lived in a small town and we had a few video stores, though primarily one independent one I actually spent a lot of time just hanging out in, got to be friends with one of the employees and still am.  I worked in Block Buster from about 2001 to 2003.  Real good job for a highschooler at the time.

[bikingjahuty]

From about 1992 until 1998 I rented everything from an independent rental place called Famous Video. I rented all my Genesis games from them and a decent amount of SNES titles as well. I also remember renting a lot of old Godzilla movies on VHS, as well as a bunch of low budget 80s fantasy movies, some that I loved. I also remember renting the Mortal Kombat movie 6+ times and watching it several times each time before I needed to return it. Sadly they went under well before the demise of all rental stores.

Starting in the late 90s I began renting primarily from Hollywood Video and a local Blockbuster. I primarily remember renting a lot of Anime during the early 2000s, as well as a good amount of PS2 and N64 games. My local Hollywood Video also had a Game Crazy attached to it which was cool for someone who loved video games back then.

I miss all these places terribly...

[atrumlupus]

A lot of my SNES and PS1 games were rented from a mom and pop called J&S movies. The highlight of a weekend was going and renting a game and getting a pizza Friday and wasting the whole evening with Mega Max X or Breath of Fire. I remember the first PS1 game I rented Beyond the Beyond. Now it's horrible but at the time I remember being so excited to play a PS1 RPG.

A lot of my collecting now is owning titles I rented as a kid but couldn't afford to own.

[kamikazekeeg]

I might not have been into anime as much, had I not had my local store and Block Buster.  I had a friend who helped me into more common stuff and another friend who was a real otaku type could show me more deep cuts, but it was those stores that would reveal a lot of other anime for me, because it wasn't easy to get anime in the late '90's/early 00's, let alone in my town, because we didn't have a any major brand store like a Suncoast or EB Games.  We didn't even get a Walmart till I think like...2003? 2004 maybe?

I remember watching stuff on both VHS and DVD. Lots of that oddballs '90's stuff you see show up in like Bennet the Sage reviews lol I remember renting Berserk and Hellsing specifically from Block Buster.

When I worked at Block Buster, I kinda became the defacto game guy.  I would keep it organized the best I could, but before me, that wall would get messed up in the matter of a weak, but I'd make sure games were placed right, generally organized alphabetically, and just to look good.  I remember a district manager coming in for a visit and complimenting whoever was taking such good care of the game wall lol

[thewelshman]

I rented all of my movies and games from a local place called Main Street Video. I'm almost 100% all small towns had video stores named that. I'll never forgot the feeling of renting a SNES/Genesis game and seeing the saves erased, or saved over and having to start all over again. Most notably Final Fantasy II (IV) for the SNES. Of all the games I rented, NBA Jam for the Sega Genesis has to be the one I rented the most.

Nothing was more satisfying, as a kid, than going to the rental store with my mom to get a few movies, and a game for the weekend.

[kamikazekeeg]

I rented all of my movies and games from a local place called Main Street Video. I'm almost 100% all small towns had video stores named that. I'll never forgot the feeling of renting a SNES/Genesis game and seeing the saves erased, or saved over and having to start all over again. Most notably Final Fantasy II (IV) for the SNES. Of all the games I rented, NBA Jam for the Sega Genesis has to be the one I rented the most.

Nothing was more satisfying, as a kid, than going to the rental store with my mom to get a few movies, and a game for the weekend.

I will ruin your 100%  by stating our small town video store was not called Main Street Video lol

[necrosexual]

mannn, getting shit pizza from a local chain and renting a game on a friday night after school. man oh man.
notably, pokemon silver and ahhh... pokemon stadium 2. the amount of times my parents rented super smash bros 64, pokemon stadium 2... they could have bought the games 10x over. in fact, between my neighbour and i, we could have had like 50 copies of those games. whyyyy.

but otherwise i don't remember a lot about them tbh. it was pretty rare this even happened for whatever reason in my fambam.

by the time i was like 8 we stopped going to them altogether. but we lived in a fancy ~broadband~ connected neighbourhood (that DSL tho... but seriously, we had actual broadband RJ-45 wall outlets and everything, right under the telephone outlets, faaaaaannnn-cee) by 2001. so yeah, between ~broadband~ DSL and cable with hundreds of channels... and instant-access pay-to-view film through dish network, my family just stopped going. and we were pretty far out of town (i've actually driven back by there and been ...stunned, is the best word for it, by how far it is to drive into town, no less to drive to where i live now... which is still a far stone's throw from my dad's workplace where he's been for like 30 years now, and i used to deliver about 4 miles from it on the same stretch of road) so it's no wonder that when we moved away from a more central location, we stopped that shit pretty quick. we WOULD go on occasion, but it was pretty rare overall.

and even before then, my brother and i had a babysitter who would bring a whole box of SNES titles over, so we'd borrow one from her... idk what happened to that chick. but yeah, weekly, we got to borrow one, so even before that, it was rare to ACTUALLY rent a game. and i remember, i had really bad radar for good to-rent titles, haha. i guess my parents didn't think it was worth it.

[kashell]

Most of my NES rentals came from a little store called Network Video. It was ran by two...what's the most PC way to put this...well-fed(?) ladies that weren't very pleasant. But, it was close to the house so we braved the storm anyway to rent ourselves a Nintendo game or two. My parents would wait in the car while my brother and I would look for a game. I would usually go with a Mega Man title while he went with Tiny Toons. Speaking of, Tiny Toons was a hard game to finish.

When we moved, Blockbuster was our go to place for games and movies. I didn't rent many games because by then I was hooked on RPGs. They took longer to finish, but there were occasions when we would get the itch to rent something you could not find anywhere such as Mega Man X3. I also remember renting Devil May Cry 2 from that store; I'm not sure why I thought that was a good idea.

A lot of my SNES and PS1 games were rented from a mom and pop called J&S movies. The highlight of a weekend was going and renting a game and getting a pizza Friday and wasting the whole evening with Mega Max X or Breath of Fire.

Those were the first two SNES games I owned!! Such great memories with those great games.

[ignition365]

We always rented from Video Central until they got bought out by Hollywood Video.  At that point we rented movies from a local shop called Universal Video.  Games we still rented from Blockbuster/Hollywood depending on availability.  I remember always wanting to rent Mega Man Soccer and Earthbound, but they were never available to rent ANYWHERE, someone always had it checked out.

[rayne315]

the only rental memory I remember was going to the local family video and renting Dark Cloud 2. I rented it so many times because it was just such a fun game that eventually my mom went out and found me a copy and gave it to me for Christmas.

other than that I was out a few months ago at a very small town in Iowa that has a still running video rental location (cant remember the name) and they seemed to be very popular as there were probably 15 cars in the parking lot at once.

[tripredacus]

I have only rented NES games before. When I had gotten other systems, they were past their prime rental lifetime. The time between NES and Genesis were spent with a Game Boy, which no one would rent for. Then when I got the Genesis, it was already 1997, so the same is true there. Besides the NES games, which was a great way to try something out, my other memories were looking at the boxes. The same is true for nearly anyone who has experienced video rentals.

There were far more times I was in a rental place (even back to when gas stations rented things) that I was not going to get something. So time was spent looking at the front and back of boxes. All that cool artwork.

I actually own 1 former rental system, it is my Sega Saturn which used to be a Blockbuster system. Rental cases are so cool. I had gotten it also in the late 90s, when they clearance out all their Saturn and N64 stuff.

[badATchaos]

Some Ingle stores still have DVD rental sections

[gf78]

Man, video rentals were the thing for me growing up.  I think the first one my folks and I rented at was called Village Video.  This was pre-Blockbuster times in our area, around 85-90.  There were several others.  They were everywhere, all mom & pop shops.  I loved going in and browsing the VHS tapes and looking at the boxes.  It was an every weekend thing to do, especially since there was no satellite or cable available where we lived and we were relegated to ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and KPLR-11.   

Most of our renting was movies as pretty much any game I want, I ended up with somehow.  I distinctly remember renting the LJN X-Men NES game. 

[burningdoom]

I'd still be a regular if they were still around. I LOVED browsing the old release sections and find some old action flick or horror movie I've never heard of and checking it out. And of course I miss renting games. Redbox has them, but they only have a handful of games at a time to select from. It's not the same at all.