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Post by Ex on Sept 1, 2020 21:24:28 GMT -5
I had completely forgotten about renting games. For me it's a nostalgic memory. Agonizing over exactly which game to rent, while my parents picked out their movies for the weekend. I would be stuck with the one game for that weekend, so I tried hard not to pick out a turd. Sometimes I did well, and sometimes I did not. But it was always exciting on a Friday after school to get to choose a new experience. This is a video game cultural thing that is lost to today's youth. GameFly is definitely not the same experience.
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Post by toei on Sept 2, 2020 6:05:37 GMT -5
I had completely forgotten about renting games. For me it's a nostalgic memory. Agonizing over exactly which game to rent, while my parents picked out their movies for the weekend. I would be stuck with the one game for that weekend, so I tried hard not to pick out a turd. Sometimes I did well, and sometimes I did not. But it was always exciting on a Friday after school to get to choose a new experience. This is a video game cultural thing that is lost to today's youth. GameFly is definitely not the same experience. And movies. Yeah, I'm actually glad to have experienced that, especially the pre-Blockbuster days. Moving or visiting a friend in a different neighborhood meant access to a whole bunch of new games and movies, since each store had its own selection. Eh, I miss hanging out in shops in general like I did as a kid - browsing through the used CDs, tapes & games stores for new discoveries, hanging out where they sold Magic cards, rental stores... I'd have no reason to do any of that nowadays, even without COVID.
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Post by Ex on Sept 2, 2020 9:47:16 GMT -5
especially the pre-Blockbuster days When I was sixteen and had finished building my first car, it was very liberating to be able to visit neighboring towns, and have access to different rental stores. Often even the same chains of video rental stores, would still have different inventory from town to town. But there were still a lot of independent rental places in the mid '90s. I remember driving 45 minutes one way, to a complete middle of nowhere town, just so I could rent The Doom Generation back in '96. And yet by '99, all the mom 'n' pop rental stores had dried up (in my area), mainly due to Blockbuster saturation. In my late teens and early twenties, I eventually just rented movies from a Video Warehouse and a Blockbuster in the town I lived in back then. I had access to a good selection between those two still. Including a large swath of anime, surprisingly. I say "surprisingly" because I lived in a small town in the deep south at that time. I get where you are coming from there. Myself, I didn't hang out in stores so much as plunder them for rare treasures. Myself and various friends about twice a month, would travel to a litany of malls and unique shops in larger neighboring cities, so we could find the good video games and rare films we wanted. Those trips were exciting, because you never knew what you would find. Sometimes you'd come back with squat, other times you'd have a great haul. I remember there was a store in one city, that sold nothing but anime and manga. It was one of my favorite places to go. It's long gone now. But I still remember some of the best hauls I pulled. Finding Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise for $15 brand new, or a used copy of Phantasy Star IV for $25, or the joke the cute cashier made when I bought Pig's Praise the Lard for $7. Those days are ancient dust now. All back in high school in the '90s. I started using online shopping hardcore in 2000, initially via eBay. Especially for movies and video games, but I bought other stuff there like clothes or PC parts. The main reasons were of course, an infinitely better selection, and much more competitive prices, and the fact this stuff would show up at my house without me dealing with traffic or burning gas. The same reasons that drive us to use online commerce today. I think we all know the dark side of doing so now though, the repercussions brung after decades of society milking that digital udder. Though to be honest, even if the options were all available again, I don't think I personally would go back to pillaging small stores for rare media. The rosy nostalgia of doing so when I was much younger, when I had a lot more free time, and was a more sociable person than I am now, does however remain.
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Post by Sarge on Sept 2, 2020 12:36:29 GMT -5
Oh, man, there was a video store in the mall, Suncoast or something, that used to sell a ton of video games, including used ones. It's where I bought that copy of Mega Man, got my copy of StarTropics, and where my Mom forked out a whole $40 (a king's ransom for us at that time) to get me Dragon Warrior IV for Christmas. I loved that store, even if I only rarely got to visit it.
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Post by Ex on Sept 2, 2020 12:42:00 GMT -5
Yep, I am familiar with Suncoast. When I was in high school, there was one in the Governor's Square Mall in Tallahassee. I visited that mall, and that store, fairly often. I went to Suncoast purely for buying anime on VHS. I distinctly recall buying Bounty Dog and Big Wars there for example.
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Post by Sarge on Sept 2, 2020 12:50:02 GMT -5
Yeah, they had tons of awesome stuff. I remember they had demo consoles set up, too. It's the first place I played Contra III, actually.
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Post by Xeogred on Sept 2, 2020 13:51:23 GMT -5
Was always funny how Suncoast had a lot of adult videos too, hentai even. Lots of merchandise in general. I always thought everything in there was extremely overpriced though, but they were cool stores.
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Post by Ex on Sept 2, 2020 14:19:22 GMT -5
Indeed. I bought the F3 and Cool Devices OVA collections from there. You aren't wrong about the prices being high though. They had rare merchandise and they knew it.
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Post by Xeogred on Sept 2, 2020 15:41:19 GMT -5
On a related note, I guess I haven't played enough of Capcom's entire NES catalogue to really make my own tier list... but I found one for Mega Man I might take a shot at. It'll probably be a bit biased...
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Post by Xeogred on Sept 3, 2020 18:01:39 GMT -5
Whoever made this "Every Mega Man game ever made" list will have to get a TierMaker ultra failing E grade.
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