Renting video games simply isn't done anymore; paying a couple of bucks to have a game for a set number of days, and then having to return it is a thing of the past. In this day and age of digital copies, prevalent piracy, and gaming consoles requiring you to install a game before playing it, renting games just isn't feasible or profitable anymore. But back when it was, my God it was glorious.
Back in the 1990's, renting video games was the cheaper alternative to buying games. Why spend fifty bucks on a game that'll just collect dust once you beat it (which wouldn't have taken that long to start with) when you can just spend two bucks for one weekend with the game? You went to the video store, picked the game you liked, showed the store card that showed you were a customer of the store, payed the fee, and away you went.
Wait, hold on; let me better describe the process for those who've never lived it. Your parents would drive you to the local rental store (most likely either a blockbuster, or a smaller business) and then you'd zoom off to the game section, which was usually somewhere in the back. There would be shelves lined up with the empty boxes of games that you could look over. Once you found one that struck your fancy, you'd take it to your parent, who'd show it to the clerk, pay the fee, and then the clerk would hand the cartridge over inside a clear plastic casing. Two to three days later, you'd return the game. If you were late, you'd pay a fee.
You know, that was my childhood; every Friday afternoon after school, my folks and I would head on down to the video store, where they'd rent a movie for themselves, and I'd rent a game for myself and my brothers. I was five years old when we did this for the first time, and I remember the game I first rented like it was only yesterday.
Yes, my first rental game was Home Alone, for the SNES. I was actually a big fan of the movie (still am, it's one of my favorite holiday films), so OF COURSE I wanted to try the game! I didn't get very far, though, because the game was a bit on the hard and tedious side. But did I have fun? YES! And was I sad to return the game? I can't remember, but I did get used to the idea with time.
There were many games that I had rented more than once: EVO The Search for Eden, Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2, Super Adventure Island 2, and Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose. I remember it like yesterday, the absolute last game I rented for the SNES was Primal Rage. The week after that, I got a Playstation 1, but that's a story for another time.
When I got the PS1,I stopped renting video games for two reasons: first off, most rental stores didn't start carrying PS1 titles until way later, like 1999 more or less. And second of all, because my SNES died a month after getting the PS1.
"But why not Blockbuster?" Well, my town DID have a Blockbuster; a small one located in the corner of a supermarket. By 1995, that Blockbuster closed down, so if you wanted to rent games, your only choice was this old rental store called Tres Pesetas(Three Quarters, in Puerto Rican Spanish). Tres Pesetas was an OK store; it didn't have air conditioning or anything, and the smell of musty cardboard ran through the store, but it did have a respectable selection of games and movies. The owner was a cool dude, too.
By 1999 Tres Pesetas started carrying PS1 games, so of course I rented a few. It wasn't very many, but one game that always stood out to me was Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. Tres Pesetas didn't just let you take the disc, they also gave you the disc case itself AND the frickin' HARDCOVER manual! Now THAT was service!!!
Alas, the age of game rentals came to an end for me sometime around the New Millenium. By this time, game rentals were becoming less profitable for small businesses, especially when you consider how easily a tiny scratch on a disc could render the whole game unplayable (which has happened to far too many of my games to count!). By the year 2001, video game rentals were becoming a thing of the past.
By 2004, when I started college, I became a regular customer at this video rental store called Video Avenue, which was pretty much a Blockbuster. They didn't have a games section, sadly. That's when I knew, game rentals were gone for good.
Of course by this time, video game rentals could be done online with services like GameFly. Thing is, though, I never used that service; never had to anyway. By the time GameFly was available, I was a full time college student. Gaming was something I did on the weekend with my consoles, and on an emulator with my laptop.
We can't rent games like we used to anymore. But with this new era of easily downloadable demos, who needs to? We've even got games you can play FOR FREE online! But I'll be honest when I say, I'll miss the experience of going from shelf to shelf as a kid, looking over the empty game boxes to see which game I'd take that weekend to play.
No comments:
Post a Comment