/vr/ - Retro Games

Fuck Netflix
Netflix doesn't serve Vidya

shit, I've got $30 in giftcards laying around here still.
do they even have older games anymore? Obviously not /vr/ material, but do they still carry ps2/gamecube stuff?

>>1194550
You mean west coast video. Or one of the many other places that weren't poorly stocked blockbuster with it's higher prices.

>Be about 14 or 15
>hugE Final Fantasy dork
>play demo of FF7 almost a year before its actual release at BB
>Aeris in Mako reactor at beginning of game
>Summon Leviathan
>Nearly shit myself at the AWSUM GREFIX !

Conker's was my go to game to stare at during Blockbuster visits for a pretty good while. I knew it was an "adult" game and I would wonder what kind of mature sophisticated humor would be needed in a game like that. All the while I wish I was grown up enough to be able to fully appreciate it.

>turns out this was one of the main draws

My friends worked there is the late 90s and early 2000s. I could get the box and manual for any popular new release since they immediately threw away all but two or three of them.

One time someone stole a bunch of games by slitting the cases. They thought it was my MO but I didn't do it. They wouldn't have cared if I did.

We used to hide the security tags on one another's clothing in hard to find locations so we would always set off the alarms. Everybody knew it was a game we played but it served the purpose of desensitizing the employees to it so it wasn't long before we could walk out with anything we wanted.

>Early 90's
>Be 12 yr. old kid
>See their weekly ad
>Mart Kart 64 will be available on this date
>Beg Mom to go
>All the nagging eventually breaks my Mom down
>Go the local Blockbuster early to make sure to get Mario Kart 64
>Look all over the shelf, not one copy there.
>Go over to clerk to ask where the game is
>"I guess we didn't get it in kid"
>Bring over the box & say "If the game box is here the game has to be here too"
>Says he doesn't know
>Rent something that wasn't that good, can't even remember it.
>This happened during the SNES days too.
>Years later have a friend who worked at Blockbuster
>Tell him if the game section still sucks
>Says yeah.
>Tell him why I didn't like renting games from there.
>Tells me this which made alot of sense.
>"The employees get first picks, most also return them whenever they want as long as their manager is cool with it"
>Fucking Blockbuster
>No wonder most of the good games were almost all gone.
>Some punk 19 yr. old probably ruined that day for me.
>Eat shit Blockbuster
>I'm pissing on your grave.

>>1194557
>what is gamefly

I remember when I stole a Wonder Ball from one when I was a kid.

>>1195143

I remember trying out a Virtual Boy and being pissed the demo game was Mario Tennis. I thought the 3D was fucking cool as hell but couldn't even begin to give the tiniest shit about tennis.

I got a Blockbuster card so I could rent Dragon Ball GT Final Bout about a billion times. This was right when DBZ was getting popular and I almost shit a brick when I found out there was a Dragon Ball game. Holy shit who were all these blond people? My one friend would also rent DBGT Final Bout and we'd level up our characters and battle. So many hours wasted on that fucking awful game. I miss those days. I tried as hard as I could to track down my own copy of the game and would later find out how rare and expensive it was.

Good times at Blockbusters, good times.
>Rent Majora's Mask
>Get home and go to play
>THIS GAME REQUIRES THE N64 EXPANSION PAK
>Entire week of gaming wasted because of no Expansion Pak

This one isn't vidya but eh
>Be like 12/13
>Grab the South Park movie
>Whole time I'm nervous as fuck thinking they won't let me rent it
>Clerk turns to my Dad
>"Sir, this movie contains lot's of swearing and violence. It's rated R. Do you still want to rent it?"
>Dad: "Sure! He'l be fine"
That was a fun night.

But man, fuck those $10 late fees. Holy shit that was retarded.

>>1195632
Could have gone back and gotten one from them. Sometimes they'd even let you rent one for free if you had rented a game that required one.

That's where I got mine from anyway.

Still have the sticker on my Paper Mario cart.

RIP

CDs killed Blockbuster, I swear ever single cd based game I rented from them was scratched to hell and didn't play proper.

I worked at Blockbuster as a seasonal employee whenever I was on break from university work. Well until now that is.

Loved that job, got paid to literally just talk to people for hours about movies and games. I remember talking to one guy about video games for 3 hours straight, after which I overheard him tell my manager "I don't know who that guy is, but he deserves a raise."

Feels good man, I'll miss this job.

>>1195653
Yeah it wasn't Netflix it was CDs.

> :)

>>1195019
scummy as fuck
i'd assassinate you both

We had a Blockbuster in our town, but nobody ever fucking went there. there was an awesome locally owned store called Superior Video where the people were absolute, complete bros. I remember going in to rent Turok when it came out, and the guy gave me four extra days with it "because the controls are hard"

Can we get some love for Game Crazy up in here?

GOD TIER
Blockbuster

High Tier
Hollywood Video

Redneck Tier
Family video

I hope you like playing Garfield games tier
Grocery store

So who else printed out their best snapshots with this thing?

>>1195757
Never had the chance sadly. I got an N64 right after they got rid of these things. I wonder if any of these stations survived in the wild?

Blockbuster has died, for on days like these we are all /vr/troopers

A salute to our fallen comrade

Pic related, cart I bought when my local one went out of business years and years ago, this game has its place in my heart

I rented all my retro video games at a grocery store.

I have zero fond memories of Blockbuster, only the overpriced hatred for them from overpricing rentals when they cornered the market when I would go there in there as a teenager in the late 90's/early 00's

Fuck them and I am glad they are gone.

I worked at Blockbuster. I was a customer and probably the most frequent person to rent video games from them.

>>1195740
>Grocery store
Hahaha oh man, I remember renting Bubsy 3D at Fry's back in the day.

>>1195854

>renting bubsy 3D

dear lord.... i'm truly sorry

>>1194803
I think that it's dead aside from internet stuff. Buy a DVD I guess.

>be fuckinyoungidunno
>finish ocarina for the second or third time
>get excited when mom says we goin to blockbuster and i can rent a motherfucking game
>know exactly what I want
>time to experience majora's mask
>stare at the cartridge with great vigor in my loins during the 15 minute ride home
>go straight to my room and pop that motherfucker in

THIS GAME REQUIRES THE N64 EXPANSION PAK

>be poorfag little kid who rarely even gets to rent games
>no way my parents will just buy me one
>they just weren't cheap at the time
21 now and I've never played it.

>>1195776
Someone on /vr/ reported finding one at a flea market about a year back.

>>1195667
Fuck, this illustrates the worst fucking aspect of the rise of internet retail:the lack of the human aspect. I like being able to talk to people at retail. It makes the experience a bit nicer than talking to retail drones who hate their job or buying everything online. Blockbusters were chainstores, but they had a relatively laid back attitude which was nice. It's sad that the days of the Cool Videostore Guy are ending.

It's too bad socially inept aspies are killing retail place so only massive department stores are left like Wal-Mart, or places with insufferable shills like Gamestop. It's why I buy anything I can at smaller shops, I can take the extra $3-5 since it usually means they have better customer service.

>>1195153
Oh shit! I would lift these things all the time from the grocery store. Just seeing that pic gets my blood pumping.

I will forever hold Blockbuster dear. Renting vidya and buying pop rocks was the way to live.

>>1196070
>/vr/
>a year
/v/ maybe, but is certainly wasn't here.

>>1196270
Christ, it feels like this place has been here forever. I think it was on some thread here during the summer.

>>1196418
Just shows how much fun you're having.

Oh man, I worked at Blockbuster back in the 90's. Wrote an article for 2600 Magazine about how to rent things for free. That job was great, and I basically spent all my paychecks on renting actual systems.

When you worked there, you could rent, like, 5 things at a time for free, but you still had to pay to rent the game console. That meant it'd only cost me like $25 for a weekend with a Saturn and 5 games. It was awesome.

By the end of my tenure at Blockbuster, I'd CD-duped the entire Playstation catalogue, and played every game in the store. I miss that job, even though I don't at all miss the pay and hours.

We always got these two free rental coupons a month. Pretty much got to enjoy two free games a month. While using them, Blockbuster sometimes forgot I was renting games and I got about 3 games for free. Once, I picked up a case, it had some weight to it, and what do you know, there was a game inside. So of course, I took it. But it was a Naruto game, so I ended up selling it at Gamestop.

I have this particular memory of Hollywood Video. I remember renting Star Ocean 2 and they only gave me the 2nd disc. Being the stupid kid that I was, I never bothered to check until I got home.

>>1195740
I grew up in rural scotland so I was sub-garfield tier.
But the kids my age in my village were always trading and borrowing games.
In fact some fucker probably still has my Dynamite Headdy

>>1197184
>rural scotland
leprechauns?

>>1197207
just sheep and deer, mostly

>>1194550
>http://movies.yahoo.com/news/seth-rogen-james-franco-end-blockbuster-too-fitting-231208864.html
in canada this happened a couple years ago i got a ton of cheap games

>>1195740
>Hollywood Video

Holy shit we had one of those. I didn't even remember the name until just now.

We used to rent the South Park FPS from there, as well as a few other games like Earthworm Jim (for which we'd also rent the SNES because we didn't have one).

>>1197229
I never bothered because I just assumed it would all be PS3/XBOX 360 shit.

>>1195632
I had this exact same kind of thing happen with Donkey Kong 64. Just returned it and they allowed me to rent another game, I probably took Triple Play 2000 home or something.

>be 12
>walk to blockbuster all the time
>they know me and let me rent games with my grandmothers account
>New girl working
>won't rent to me, acts like I'm retarded for trying
>go get manager and tell him
>he comes back and says she can't talk to customers that way
>rent some shovelware psx game on its release date
>get home, won't load
>scratched to shut
>my mom takes me back up there because they'd be closed by the time i got there
>bitch says I scratched it on purpose or that my PlayStation was dusty and that gouged it
>says she's charging the whole game to the account
>my mom starts yelling
>manager comes over to see what's up
>bitch tells her story, i tell mine
>manager says in the almost 3years I've been coming there i never returned a game damaged
>says it was flawless when he put the disc in the rental case that morning
>bitch looks pale and gets me another copy

Never saw her again, apparently they had her on camera scraping the disc across the counter

>>1197395
>apparently they had her on camera scraping the disc across the counter


But

Why

>>1197427
Because she was a bitch. Weren't you paying attention?

>>1197427
Because she wanted to get back at him for calling her manager on her.

>>1195740
We didn't have nearby Blockbusters when I was young, so my family used Video Hut instead (which is now closed, RIP).

I only ever bothered with Hollywood Video to see what video games they had on sale. Snagged Revelations: Persona and Panzer Dragoon Orta for $8 each.

>>1196062
>>1196062
u mad bro?

back in 2000-2002 me and my friend used to rent the worst games we could possibly find, going by scores in magazines

>>1194557
Funny thing, blockbuster could have bought netflix in the early 2000's but they didnt.

Barry McCarthy, Netflix’s former chief financial officer, said in an interview with the Unofficial Stanford blog in 2008, “I remembered getting on a plane, I think sometime in 2000, with Reed [Hastings] and [Netflix co-founder] Marc Randolph and flying down to Dallas, Texas and meeting with John Antioco. Reed had the chutzpah to propose to them that we run their brand online and that they run [our] brand in the stores and they just about laughed us out of their office. At least initially, they thought we were a very small niche business. Gradually over time, as we grew our market, his thinking evolved but initially they ignored us and that was much to our advantage.”

Is not Blockbuster, is BlockBlister! MUCH BETTER!

>>1197551
>damage company rental goods to get back at a costumer
Was she... like... actually retarded? Like, was she considered legally retarded by a court of law? What would bring a person to jeopardize their job over a minor gaffe with a costumer?

Oh well, at least the other staff was bro.
Personally, I have no stories about BlockBuster, didn't have it here in Europoor.

>>1198728
American's act out over minor things. like people following other people home and kicking their teeth in for cutting them off in traffic. Just last year this guy got beaten with a baseball bat because he walked into a store wearing a winter face mask. Not because they thought they were getting robbed,but because the guy called them assholes after he got kicked out of the store

http://www.theonion.com/video/historic-blockbuster-store-offers-glimpse-of-how-m,14233/

>>1198765
Where the fuck do you live, Detroit?

Never had a blockbuster near me and I'm not sad it died. It pretty much killed off a lot of small mom and pop shops as well as video stores that couldn't compete with their selection. Sucks for the people that worked at Blockbuster and lost their job but besides I couldn't care less for it's death.

>>1198776
actually just a mile south, Lincoln park

>>1198847
You live in very close proximity to a ghetto center, of course there's going to be lots and lots of crime.

Cities like LA, New York, Chicago, and Detroit, are the biggest contributors to crime ratings we have in America.

Poverty and high population density does not a nice town make.

>>1198853
really? I couldn't have guessed.

>>1198858
My point is, your experiences aren't indicative of most of America.

Remove the Shitropols, and the crime-rates suddenly become comparable to the EU. Those cities are a burden on our backs.

back on topic, i got my copy of Looney tunes sheep raider there when they started making room for next gen consoles. i loved that game so much

I don't know whether it was me being a '00 kid or just a local problem, but Blockbuster here was a shit.

>grow up with Hollywood Video
>pretty good game selection, always $5.00 for 5 days of game rental
>serves my family well for years
>fast forward to 2010
>returning my little brother's rented new WWE game
>closed sign, employees packing up the games and movies to take to a different store
>not even the employees knew it was coming until two days prior
>tell me to keep my brother's game
>mfw

Bro to the end, Hollywood Video.

>try out Blockbuster since that's the only other rental store
>piss-poor game selection, every game is current-gen and a quarter of them are Cawadooty
>decide it's better than nothing, rent a Mario game
>$9.00 for a five-day rental

Never did business with them after that. Was Blockbuster really that good in the '90s?

>>1196050
There's still some stores that are open, whether or not you're near one is another matter though.

Not necessarily /vr/ related but Blockbuster is responsible for my first anime experience growing up.

I suppose I'll mourn a little for them.

>>1199723

I've seen this ad in this PSX Magazine.

The game is awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0UBycyZb6w

Mexifag here.

We still have Blockbusters, it's our equivalent of Gamestop.

>>1199723
Goddamn that game was good. Probably the best controls for a game like that I've seen to this day. After running a few training missions you feel like part of the machine.

>Late 90's
>Rent BASEketball VHS and Gundam Battle Assault
>Shit's too funny to return, Gundam went back on time
>7 months later get some forms in the mail about owing them several hundred thousand dollars
>Ignore it
>Watch the news later that month and see Blockbusters shit get handed to them for trying to fuck people with late fees and lost video charges
>Next week every location had "No late fees!" signs in the windows

Blockbuster made it seem like they were paying around $100,000 per VHS tape in the lawsuits. I'm glad they're gone.

>>1200215

My friend's parents had their own video store in the 90's. I was nice to them obviously, but they basically taught me how to fuck over everyone else.

The best thing about getting those forms/phone calls was knowing they couldn't sue you for more than the cost of the movie (minus what you already paid to rent it). Running a rental service is pretty much the most fruitless business ever, I'm surprised some places are still operating to this day,

>>1200890
>be me
>go to blockbuster
>rent Donkey Kong Barrel Blast
>they cant get case open
> give me full game for free

>>1203314
best day ever

>>1196423

I think /vr/ is going to be my new home board :)

>>1194550
Hollywood Video boned me on Road Rash 3D for PS1. I rode my bike up there to drop that shit off, then a few months later they tried charging my mom for it, that wasn't going to fly.

We had a franchise called "Movie Gallery" I shit you not, the only blockbuster in my area opened its doors in 2009.

>>1195740
I've got an open Family Video around. Never went in, though, its quite aways. I always rented from Blockbusters too. RIP.

>>1203449
>Hollywood Video

There's your problem. Not to sound mean, but they just didn't have the same level of service that blockbuster had in my area, which was Northern Georgia in the 90's and early 2000's. I live in Southern California now. Even blockbuster in the Pacific Palisades in 2007 had great service. ;_;7

Hollywood Video> Blockbuster

I never used Blockbuster but I used a rental store when I was little. It went out of business a good ten to twelve years ago sadly.

I honestly don't see the big deal about Netflix. Movies don't come out on Netflix's service for months to years after release.

I'm disappointed there's no other place to rent video games now. Gamestop doesn't do it.

>>1203680

Pretty sure most Redbox does if you want something locally or Gamefly if you rent games a lot.

I have not personally rented a video game since the 90's and most of that was at the grocery store.

>>1195139
Wow, that explains why almost i could never see sitting copies of Demons crest and i have to pretty much beg them to keep the DKC2 & 3, the Mario RPGs and Super Metroids.

>>1198984
>e-day rental
>Never did business with them after that. Was Blockbuster really that good in the '90s?
they were more or less put into power by exclusivity contracts and the fact vcr tapes cost like a hundred bucks at one time.

>>1203684

I'd rather be able to rent the games normally instead of waiting through the mail