Do you miss video stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood video?

Azureth

Azureth

Supreme [H]ardness
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Do you miss old rental stores? Even though I have fond memories of them as a kid I know it's not a huge loss. I can't even imagine how much my parents paid in late fees back in the day. It was admittedly fun going to one and being able to look at the box and hope you got something good when I think of all the times I ended up renting a turd makes me glad we have all kinds of ways to get games today and see what we are getting. Though even the times I managed to pick up a great game it usually involved late fees so overall losing them isn't a huge loss.
 
We still have a few places around here in Michigan where you can rent games. Family video is the biggest one I am aware of.
 
Nope. Not one bit. And I remember when Blockbuster had a membership fee. After they got rid of the membership fee to get more business, ironically their inventory went down and you could never find what you wanted.
 
Armenius said:
Nope. Not one bit. And I remember when Blockbuster had a membership fee. After they got rid of the membership fee to get more business, ironically their inventory went down and you could never find what you wanted.
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This. Can't tell you how many times I came home empty handed from Blockbuster because the one copy of the game I wanted was gone and someone kept it out rented for days or WEEKS!
 
The only time I miss it was during the transferring from VHS to DVD. Since I had my DVD player really early (Panasonic model imported from Japan).. I got all the new releases every friday until people played catchup and started renting DVDs too.
 
no. they never had enough of the releases people wanted.

Netflix and Amazon Prime are more than sufficient.
 
There was a Hollywood Video up the street from me when I was younger and I remember always going there to rent a video game so I miss HV for the nostalgia feels.

Never dealt with Blockbuster though.
 
A little, yeah. It was fun on the weekend or off day to run down to Hollywood and look for something. Kinda made it more of an "event" than just plopping down on the couch and firing up Netflix.
 
A little bit. Not for any of the new releases, but for the obscure horror movie section. Movies I hadn't seen before and haven't seen since. Netflix has a few, but the VHS-era was a goldmine.
With games, I don't think most modern games translate well to that. In the NES and Genesis era, there were a TON of games you could blow through in a few hours or days. Probably 1/4 of them. These days, they might not necessarily be more fun, but they're longer and more involved.
 
Netflix and Amazon are cool ya I have them too but you can't get new releases from them. New releases have to be streamed from on demand cable/dirtectv/xbox etc...I miss being able to goto blockbuster and getting a nice bluray version of a new release.


magoo said:
no. they never had enough of the releases people wanted.

Netflix and Amazon Prime are more than sufficient.
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not really. hated going to the local store just to found out that new movie I wanted to rent was out.
 
First time I played Mario 64 was in Blockbuster. That was a magical 5 minutes.

No, I don't miss bending over to big rental locales.

Hell, I worked at one as my first job. All we did was josh around, do coke in the bathroom, and steal stuff.

(I got fired for getting a __ in the storage room. No regrets.)

I had NO idea they had a camera in there....

Great times.
 
I miss the days of going to the Software rental store and renting computer software and games for my PC and Amiga.
 
You can still get new release Blu-Ray disks from Netflix. No rushing back to Blockbuster at 9AM on a Sunday needed, either.
There's also Redbox and the like if you want disks.
 
About two years before blockbuster started going downhill they would always have awesome DVD deals at the time. 4 for $20 and 3 for $20 deals all the time. Other than that, I could care less.
 
horrorshow said:
For real? That sounds awesome.
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Ya a friend of mine owned a couple but ended up getting sued by a group that represented the software companies.
Initially it was software rental, then the rules changed, and he started calling it try before you buy. The rates stayed the same, $5, $10, $15, $20, rates were based on retail price of the software, and you paid the "deposit" and had the software for 2 days.
If you didn't want to buy it, you forfeit your deposit, but if you decide to buy it, the deposit goes towards the price of the software.

During the investigation, an undercover agent for the group was talking to a sales person about how the system works and the sales person said it is basically renting the software. Mentioning "Renting" was a big no no and everyone was told not to use Rental or Renting when talking about how the business works.
It went downhill from there. This was back in 1997 or so.

here is a news article about him and his stores,
The Free Lance-Star - Google News Archive Search
 
MacLeod said:
A little, yeah. It was fun on the weekend or off day to run down to Hollywood and look for something. Kinda made it more of an "event" than just plopping down on the couch and firing up Netflix.
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This.

I miss them. I wish they were still around. I enjoyed going to the video store and looking around for something.

horrorshow said:
For real? That sounds awesome.
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CompUSA did that where I live. Also some gaming stores rented out PC games. THAT was awesome.
 
+1 for Family Video... very popular here in southeast Michigan... insane prices too, how they stay in business exactly is a mystery, mafia owned maybe...
 
They are all gone here in Australia (at least in the many states and suburbs I've lived and gone through). The one near my old house did have a variety of adult movies though.
 
Going to the local video store as a kid (late 80's early 90's) is one of my fondest memories. We didn't have a computer and I never knew what movies or Nintendo/SNES games were going to be out. It was like Christmas. My kids will never know that joy. Movies and games are nearly instantly available and they read reviews or watch videos of the games or movies they are excited about.

That said, I think movie stores always had a halflife. It was just a matter of time. While I remember them fondly, in reality they weren't that great. Popular games and movies were always rented out for a few weeks. Candy and snacks were super over priced. And late fees could eat you up. They're definitely dinosaurs by today's standards.
 
Domingo said:
You can still get new release Blu-Ray disks from Netflix. No rushing back to Blockbuster at 9AM on a Sunday needed, either.
There's also Redbox and the like if you want disks.
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Not exactly. It was bout 2009, that a couple of the major studios restricted Netflix, Redbox, etc; from having their new releases until 20 or 30 days after release. This was to encourage flat out purchases. They didn't restrict rentals from B&M stores. I imagine there must have been some wierd relationships behind the scenes, for that. For example, my local Grocery chain "Safeway", actually still has signs up, saying that they have new rentals before Redbox and Netflix.


GOD'SlittleSERVANT said:
This.

I miss them. I wish they were still around. I enjoyed going to the video store and looking around for something.


CompUSA did that where I live. Also some gaming stores rented out PC games. THAT was awesome.
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Yes, I enjoy going to the video store and browsing for something to rent. Limited availability forces you to look at other stuff. and it's really great when a place has a really intuitively organized backlog. I really miss locally owned places, for that reason.

Something I never got to experience, which I saw in other cities, was gameboy game rental. I was so jealous of that. I actually ended up owning about 3 times as many gameboy games than NES, SNES, or PSone, due to no rental opportunities.
 
The only thing I miss about video stores related to the fact that visiting one with a girl at the time ensured I was making it back to her dormroom lol
 
I miss them as they were. I have no desire to go into one currently. I LOVED browsing through the horror movies and NES, SNES, PSX games when I was a kid.
 
Yes, but I miss the act of physically going to the store more than the gaming aspect of it. Having my parents or grandma take me to the local video store if I got a good grade or for the weekend was magical. Me and my friends / brothers would get euphoric over the whole experience.

Sadly I feel like its just one more little thing of many we dont have anymore that has led to people being a lot less social and more awkward nowadays. Nobody leaves their house for ANYTHING anymore.
 
RaZoRbLaDeD said:
Yes, but I miss the act of physically going to the store more than the gaming aspect of it. Having my parents or grandma take me to the local video store if I got a good grade or for the weekend was magical. Me and my friends / brothers would get euphoric over the whole experience.

Sadly I feel like its just one more little thing of many we dont have anymore that has led to people being a lot less social and more awkward nowadays. Nobody leaves their house for ANYTHING anymore.
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Yup, exactly.

No way in hell my boy is going to grow up to be socially awkward. Yeah, I'll let the kid game, but he's going outside to get dirty and play with this friends, too.
 
Zepher said:
I miss the days of going to the Software rental store and renting computer software and games for my PC and Amiga.
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I remember buying used PC games for real cheap...back then when DRM was basically a puzzle you had to solve in game using a code from the book that came with the game. I remember Journeyman Project did this. If you had patience you could just take the time to figure out the code yourself.
 
Lifelite said:
I remember buying used PC games for real cheap...back then when DRM was basically a puzzle you had to solve in game using a code from the book that came with the game. I remember Journeyman Project did this. If you had patience you could just take the time to figure out the code yourself.
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I remember some games asking for a word on a certain page/line in the manual before you could run it.
 
I remember renting a Sega Saturn with Virtual Cop and Daytona USA. (y) I also rented a Virtual Boy. I cant remember the games on that system
 
I currently use Redbox which is sort of the same thing now...I go and get my Blu-ray rentals for cheap and return it to their kiosk...
 
I miss it.

There was just something awesome back in the day when you'd have some friends over to spend the weekend and you'd go to the video store and pick up some movies and/or games.

Because of the lack of modern internet/gaming websites (Still had magazines but yeah) you generally relied more on the actual games box to "sell" you on renting it. There were a lot of games/movies I rented and ended up liking (some I didn't, always some bad games that looked amazing in the pics on the box but played like crap) but overall it was nice having that kind of "mystery" of picking out a movie/game you knew little/nothing about and then finding the good ones that you liked.

There were drawbacks, as many people mentioned, late fees, etc, though this was kind of necessary, I mean they needed people to return things within a set time (so they could rent to someone else) if they had no late fees people would have kept things so much longer just "cause."

As far as getting newer things, umm maybe it was just my video store but the ones I went to had "reserves." You could look at a list of the upcoming movies/games and if you wanted to get one when it came out you could "reserve" it by putting down the rental fee ahead of time and then pick it up on release day. This wasn't always 100% though (because the reserve list could fill up). They did this for anything basically, it wasn't only for movies not out, but for things that were already checked out, you could "reserve" it so when the person returned it they'd hold it for you and not put it back on the shelf.

I also kind of miss the people. I got to "know" the people that worked at the video store (I went there way too much lol). It was nice going in and just talking with them, getting to know them and making friends

That's what made it kind of sad when most of them started closing, all the mom and pop stores that were around went first. My town had three video stores that were all mom and pop video stores (we had no blockbuster until like literally, 2000 or so when it first moved in). Blockbuster was the last one to go.

I'm glad I at least got to experience them. Just something only a small amount of people really got to do from like the 80's-early 2000's and no one else will really know what it was like outside of that era.
 
I don't miss it at all. I remember just wandering around the store looking for a movie to rent and hating every minute of it. I don't watch movies as much as I used to but after using Netflix in the early 2000's I never looked back. Hell even Redbox is infinitely better.
 
I miss retail stores sometimes, but I do not miss video rental places.
 
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