blockbuster video finally closing in my area

[mas]

Hey everyone.
So by now most of the local video stores have been going away for a few years now. The last rental place is now closing upwhich is blockbuster video. I told my kids how on Friday nights I use to go to applause video or video paradise and wait for movies to come in or games and rent the nes or VHS tape for 3.99 for two days/two nights. It's just like arcades. Every little place like this is going away.
If anyone has the name or story of a rental place on movies or games feel free to share.
For me I remember a smal mom and pop rental place and they just got Mario 2 for the nes in 88. I rented so much my dad bought the game off the guy lol. He probably made over 100.00 over rental fees alone from me. The things I always hated though, was you buy a game and all those silver and number tags were all over the carts.

[Hobie-wan]

I rented NES games from "Fred's Video" back in the day. They kept all their new for sale NES games hanging up behind and above the registers. It always looked wonderful, but they sold them all at full MSRP, so they rarely moved unless it was some hot new game that ws selling out everywhere. My friend and I rented Herzog Zwei enough to pay for it too back then too as it was a good 2 player game on weekends. I have no idea if it is still there or not. I'll have to remember to check downtown next time I visit my parents. Somehow I doubt the skate shop is still there. I can't remember the funny name it had.

[BoringSupreez]

7 years ago, when I first moved to where I am, there were 5 places to rent movies: Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, the local gas station, the local pizza place, and the local grocery store. All of them have either gone out of business except the grocery store, which amazingly enough still does rentals. It helps that they're the only ones left I guess.

Well, I guess Red Box moved in, but that's a totally different format. So is Netflix. Rentals are still big business, but the concept of a rental store is outdated. I only know of one chain that seems to survive: Family Video. Probably because of their low prices. Sadly they don't have a store in my area. When I was younger, I lived near one and I loved renting PS1 games from them. It felt cheaper than buying them, and I was spared the horror of owning a few terrible games thanks to my trying before buying (Rainbow Six on PS1 sucks, stay away!)

[Ziggy]

Growing up, we always had Blockbuster video. There was a number of independent rental shops though. There was one called Video Corner, but we didn't go to that one often.

The one we most went to was called Out East Video. I rented a lot of movies and games from there over the years. When the owner would sell off multiple copies of movies and games, I got a lot of stuff that way. He had two glass counters with cards and such too. One counter had sports cards (baseball, basketball, etc) and the other counter had game stuff like Magic and Pokemon. Remember Pogs and Slammers? Had them when that fad was in. Had Bennie Babies when that fad was in too. His front window always had latest release movie posters. If you asked him, after he took them down he would hold them for you. I got a lot of cool movie posters that way. In the back corner was a doorway to a small room that wasn't very well lit. That's were the porn rentals were kept. I remember being really young and always peaking in there.

Video Corner shut down first, probably just because of a bad location (that whole stretch of stores have all been closed - bad intersection). Out East Video didn't last long after DVDs became popular. I remember he started to carry DVDs, but then I guess he couldn't compete with Blockbusters. It wasn't that large of a store, so carring DVDs along side VHS would have been impossible. When he closed, I heard he sold the entire store's inventory to a single guy. I was kinda upset because if he had a liquidation sale I probably could have gotten a lot of cool stuff for cheap.

There use to be a lot of Blockbusters around here, most of them have closed now. I think there's still one that fairly close to me, but far enough that I never go to it. I'm actually not sure if it's still open or not. There's no Hollywood Videos around anymore, is that chain just completely done?

There's a pretty well known independent video rental shop close to me called 112 Video (located on Rt. 112). I'm almost certain it's still open. It was always known for being able to get ANYTHING from there, obscure stuff even. I haven't been there in years now, as it isn't close to where I live, but I think I would have heard if it closed down.

[CD AGES]

In my area there was plenty of establishments to rent movies and games from, Blockbuster, Hollywood Video and PLENTY of independent businesses that offered the same services. What I find amusing is that I've never once rented a movie, let alone a video game. As a kid I was lucky if I got 2 game purchases a year, maybe 3 if the stars aligned. But I did love to go to video rental businesses that had a few arcades cabs in their location. I fondly recall a rather dank video rental store near my moms place that had a NEO 2 slot cab where I used to go and play KOF 98 and a Marvel Vs Capcom 2 cab housing a Dreamcast console inside that was running... you guessed it, Marvel Vs Capcom 2

[CRTGAMER]

I miss Hollywood Video and Game Crazy. Most of the Blockbusters have gone too, but there are a few still left locally.

Speaking of renting games, anyone ever rent computer games during the 8/16 bit era? There was one store that sold and rented C64 and Amiga games, some real jewels back then. Bought a Dual MSD Floppy drive and a portable SX64 when the guy was winding down his store.

My local library still carries older PC programs for checkout.

[BurningDoom]

That sucks.

I still have one mom & pop place and one Blockbuster left in my town. And a pretty big mom & pop one still in business one town over. But we used to have like 4 or 5 Blockbusters, 3 Showtime Videos, and 2 Hollywood Videos, as well as a string of mom & pop places up until the mid-2000s.

[J T]

I didn't realize there were any Blockbusters left.

The one video store I know still exists in my area is Scarecrow video, and that's because they have an amazing library of movies:

[ExedExes]

Independents were the best by far. We had a good one with good prices and long rental times. I remember feeding my SNES addiction with them. Waiting for Mortal Kombat II to come back, getting Donkey Kong Country there, Pocky & Rocky 1 & 2, all 3 Mega Man X titles, they always seemed to have the newest stuff. Good times.

[AppleQueso]

There's a video store right down the road from me that still rents out Nintendo 64 games. I was pretty surprised when I saw that.