annoying/stupid, but apparently my problem was never being able to go directly after school, and only later at night, after all the other cretins had raided everything worth a frick.
>VHS returns: not rewound
That'll be $2/per tape >candy: more expensive that convenience stores >all the good movies: rented
We'll have that back on Monday. Would you like to pay to reserve it?
>>all the good movies: rented >We'll have that back on Monday. Would you like to pay to reserve it?
Their popular nickname Ballbuster was well earned
literally never a problem we encountered
I lived in pittsburgh, pa and we used to go to the one next to family toy warehouse and they always had the movies we wanted to rent.
>well no shit dude you lived in the middle of a flyover state
yeah i'm not arguing that.
I live in NYC now and am moving from Bronx to Queens tomorrow.
Time moves too quick bro.
My son is 4 almost 5 and my little sister is having her 2nd kid.
hope you get eveything you want in life anon
>all the good movies: rented
oh man. when they had like 5 racks of the BIG NEW RELEASE and all of them were empty (it'd be just the movie box but you had to grab the white/blue box behind it with the actual movie inside it) and you go to the last box on the last row and get the last copy. that was a sweet sweet feeling. didn't happen often, and more times than not you'd miss out, but it was nice when it did happen
I was in a poor town so we didn't have a Blockbusters near us. We had other off-name video rental places. I was always jelly of the rich motherfrickers in more priviledged areas/situations.
Oh well. We still had the "poor man's video rental experience" plenty of times. Was just as fun all thing considered.
We'd plan on having a parent either drop us off or come with us inside while we browsed for like ten minutes looking at what to rent. We always went for the old shit because we didn't want to pay more money for new releases.
Then we'd just end up getting some shit we've already seen before plenty of times and going back to watch it.
I go in
I engage in commerce
I realise I cant watch the movie because someone took a razor blade to the DVD
I tell the people at the store
They insinuate it was me when it's their job to check the discs on return but they dont want to take responsibility
Money stolen
Last things I was renting were Sopranos DVDs the place was always empty and the last place still carrying caramel crunch bars which were good. In elementary school we sometimes went on Friday or Saturday nights and it was packed and you only sometimes found what you wanted. Renting video games was a gamble if you hadn't already played them you sometimes ended up with a crappy game the whole weekend.
the positives were >smaller selection meant you were more likely to pick something faster >companies would make utterly lurid covers for the movies to try and vie for your attention, leading to absolutely kino artwork >a lot of the movies were direct-to-video trash but because you had nothing else to watch, you'd watch it anyway and just laugh at it which is a different kind of kino experience >stores smelled like stale popcorn and cleaner which sounds awful but is weirdly nostalgic
the negatives were >getting nickel-and-dimed on fees >getting there too late and the selection being picked over >most staff were disaffected kids with no control, watching boomers scream at them over fees was always awful
Not Blockbuster but everytime i went to the video rental store as a kid and saw this vhs box i shat my pants. I always had to go around the counter that had it.
>walk in >go to the store console setup for customers >dad goes into the porn section >spend 10 minutes playing a fever dream of a psone game that I'll never know the name of >pick a game to rent based purely off the cover art and the screenshots on the back of the box >turn 360 degrees and walk away >piss my pants in excitement looking at the pictures in the game manual on the drive home
Blockbuster did not have porn. In fact they censored a lot of their normal movies. I never saw one with kiosks, and they did not include the manuals in the rentals.
I grew up in a rural shithole so we didn’t have one but we had a burger joint that had a small video rental section so they had package deals on meals and movie rentals that my poor parents would let me and my brother choose movies sometimes
It was just fun to get out of the house for an hour and spend it walking around the aisles, reading the backs of VHS or DVD covers. Before going home to watch them all night long, it just added to the experience. Before like 2010 life just mandated that you had to go outside if you wanted to do certain things, so by default you just had a good life balance of being inside and being outside. Now everyone just spends every second they arn't in work or school say inside. Its sad. Honestly wish i could go back.....
>Now everyone just spends every second they arn't in work or school say inside.
Yeah true. When I go outside there are literally no people there, like ever.
usually it was just something like, my mom telling me she's picking the movie and me to frick off to the games area where i MIGHT get to pick a playstation game to rent for the weekend. then i'd invariably see a friend there and just be like hey oh i gotta go bye. then begging for some of that overpriced crap while we are in line to check out, which my mom was always right it was 50% cheaper at a gas station or walmart but i want it NOWWWW. being a kid sucked you just get dragged around by parents
>being a kid sucked you just get dragged around by parents
true but the only repsonsibilitie syou have are whether you should use rare candies on your level 50 Charitard
Blockbuster was always the most expensive rental place you could go to and their selection was primarily mainstream films, but they almost always had major released in stock.
Hollywood Video and local rental places were cheaper, often had more obscure titles.
Blockbuster had a better video game rental selection, but it was only worth if you needed the rental to copy the disc. For most people I knew, Blockbuster was the last place you would go to rent a movie.
I remember the Pokemon Snap kiosk. I only had a Gameboy as a kid so I would look at the 3D like it was the greatest thing I had ever seen. I would usually end up renting Wario Land or Pokemon TCG.
What's really nostalgic for me was the small movie rental area at Albertson's. At our store it was like a little closet by the bathrooms. They had much less selection than a place like Blockbuster, which we didn't have yet. I would usually get Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Power Rangers movies.
>mom has to go grocery shopping and usually takes up to an hour to finish >my 10 year old self walks into the blockbuster next door to grocery store while she shops >play the Nintendo 64 that's set up in the corner and play as much pokemon snap and Mario 64 as the demo times allow. >eventually get bored and walk through every aisle of movies just looking at the box covers >get spooked by scary faces/monsters in the horror aisle >get turned on by the more risqué covers featuring attractive ladies in the raunchy comedy aisle >rinse and repeat for 5 years before the blockbuster closed and turned into a bank
i tried to rent a DBZ movie and the guy working there said it was inappropriate for kids and my mom wouldn't let me get it. still remember how frustrated i was. wasn't DBZ like PG rated?
>i tried to rent a DBZ movie and the guy working there said it was inappropriate for kids and my mom wouldn't let me get it. still remember how frustrated i was. wasn't DBZ like PG rated?
that dude deserves a kick in the dick.
i hate when Black person as store employees try to fricker the kids
>renting SNES games... damn i'm old
we rented n64 games.
got megaman ledgends on my 13th birthday.
that shit was THE Best.
my mom gjksdfjfhk;sdfj;gk;sfhjgkl;sdflk
yeah basically.
i just had coffee and am in the middle of packing my apartment cause we are moving to a new place after 7 years and I just feel like time is moving too quick.
nice get
>oh look, nothing I want to watch on VHS again except the same Sonic OVA I've seen a million times >oh look, nothing I want to play on Gamecube again except the same Billy Hatcher game I've played a million times
I enjoyed the atmosphere and that was about it.
annoying/stupid, but apparently my problem was never being able to go directly after school, and only later at night, after all the other cretins had raided everything worth a frick.
>VHS returns: not rewound
That'll be $2/per tape
>candy: more expensive that convenience stores
>all the good movies: rented
We'll have that back on Monday. Would you like to pay to reserve it?
Their popular nickname Ballbuster was well earned
Must be a regional thing, I never once heard this.
>>all the good movies: rented
>We'll have that back on Monday. Would you like to pay to reserve it?
literally never a problem we encountered
I lived in pittsburgh, pa and we used to go to the one next to family toy warehouse and they always had the movies we wanted to rent.
>I lived in pittsburgh, pa
well no shit dude you lived in the middle of a flyover state
>well no shit dude you lived in the middle of a flyover state
yeah i'm not arguing that.
I live in NYC now and am moving from Bronx to Queens tomorrow.
Time moves too quick bro.
My son is 4 almost 5 and my little sister is having her 2nd kid.
hope you get eveything you want in life anon
Have a nice day, anon. Life's a garden, dig it.
>all the good movies: rented
oh man. when they had like 5 racks of the BIG NEW RELEASE and all of them were empty (it'd be just the movie box but you had to grab the white/blue box behind it with the actual movie inside it) and you go to the last box on the last row and get the last copy. that was a sweet sweet feeling. didn't happen often, and more times than not you'd miss out, but it was nice when it did happen
I was in a poor town so we didn't have a Blockbusters near us. We had other off-name video rental places. I was always jelly of the rich motherfrickers in more priviledged areas/situations.
Oh well. We still had the "poor man's video rental experience" plenty of times. Was just as fun all thing considered.
We'd plan on having a parent either drop us off or come with us inside while we browsed for like ten minutes looking at what to rent. We always went for the old shit because we didn't want to pay more money for new releases.
Then we'd just end up getting some shit we've already seen before plenty of times and going back to watch it.
I go in
I engage in commerce
I realise I cant watch the movie because someone took a razor blade to the DVD
I tell the people at the store
They insinuate it was me when it's their job to check the discs on return but they dont want to take responsibility
Money stolen
Last things I was renting were Sopranos DVDs the place was always empty and the last place still carrying caramel crunch bars which were good. In elementary school we sometimes went on Friday or Saturday nights and it was packed and you only sometimes found what you wanted. Renting video games was a gamble if you hadn't already played them you sometimes ended up with a crappy game the whole weekend.
the positives were
>smaller selection meant you were more likely to pick something faster
>companies would make utterly lurid covers for the movies to try and vie for your attention, leading to absolutely kino artwork
>a lot of the movies were direct-to-video trash but because you had nothing else to watch, you'd watch it anyway and just laugh at it which is a different kind of kino experience
>stores smelled like stale popcorn and cleaner which sounds awful but is weirdly nostalgic
the negatives were
>getting nickel-and-dimed on fees
>getting there too late and the selection being picked over
>most staff were disaffected kids with no control, watching boomers scream at them over fees was always awful
It was based and only zoomers who never experienced it complain about having to go outside
Not Blockbuster but everytime i went to the video rental store as a kid and saw this vhs box i shat my pants. I always had to go around the counter that had it.
>walk in
>go to the store console setup for customers
>dad goes into the porn section
>spend 10 minutes playing a fever dream of a psone game that I'll never know the name of
>pick a game to rent based purely off the cover art and the screenshots on the back of the box
>turn 360 degrees and walk away
>piss my pants in excitement looking at the pictures in the game manual on the drive home
Porn? Game kiosk? Manual? Quit LARPing, zoomer
Did you not have a comfy lower-middle class childhood?
Is this a bot post?
Genuinely baffled
Blockbuster did not have porn. In fact they censored a lot of their normal movies. I never saw one with kiosks, and they did not include the manuals in the rentals.
The only censored movie I ever noticed was Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas. That was the talk of the town.
I see. But I grew up in new zealand, didn't realize it was so cucked in america
i dont think they ever had hardcore x rated shit but everything else that guy said was true for my local blockbuster
?si=oj3wR-MHl2tbKYCB
Rent kinos
I grew up in a rural shithole so we didn’t have one but we had a burger joint that had a small video rental section so they had package deals on meals and movie rentals that my poor parents would let me and my brother choose movies sometimes
> we had a burger joint that had a small video rental section
We had a very small town who's main street cafe/grocery store had a little wall of video rentals too.
Also had a big supermarket with a similar thing only it was a bigger wall.
>waiting over a hour for a bus
>it's raining
>kill time in blockbuster
>fat neckbeard clerk kicks us out despite no one else being there
It was just fun to get out of the house for an hour and spend it walking around the aisles, reading the backs of VHS or DVD covers. Before going home to watch them all night long, it just added to the experience. Before like 2010 life just mandated that you had to go outside if you wanted to do certain things, so by default you just had a good life balance of being inside and being outside. Now everyone just spends every second they arn't in work or school say inside. Its sad. Honestly wish i could go back.....
>Now everyone just spends every second they arn't in work or school say inside.
Yeah true. When I go outside there are literally no people there, like ever.
usually it was just something like, my mom telling me she's picking the movie and me to frick off to the games area where i MIGHT get to pick a playstation game to rent for the weekend. then i'd invariably see a friend there and just be like hey oh i gotta go bye. then begging for some of that overpriced crap while we are in line to check out, which my mom was always right it was 50% cheaper at a gas station or walmart but i want it NOWWWW. being a kid sucked you just get dragged around by parents
>being a kid sucked you just get dragged around by parents
true but the only repsonsibilitie syou have are whether you should use rare candies on your level 50 Charitard
blockbuster was soulless
local video stores were way better
Blockbuster was always the most expensive rental place you could go to and their selection was primarily mainstream films, but they almost always had major released in stock.
Hollywood Video and local rental places were cheaper, often had more obscure titles.
Blockbuster had a better video game rental selection, but it was only worth if you needed the rental to copy the disc. For most people I knew, Blockbuster was the last place you would go to rent a movie.
Smelled like cigarettes and burnt popcorn
I remember the Pokemon Snap kiosk. I only had a Gameboy as a kid so I would look at the 3D like it was the greatest thing I had ever seen. I would usually end up renting Wario Land or Pokemon TCG.
What's really nostalgic for me was the small movie rental area at Albertson's. At our store it was like a little closet by the bathrooms. They had much less selection than a place like Blockbuster, which we didn't have yet. I would usually get Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Power Rangers movies.
>mom has to go grocery shopping and usually takes up to an hour to finish
>my 10 year old self walks into the blockbuster next door to grocery store while she shops
>play the Nintendo 64 that's set up in the corner and play as much pokemon snap and Mario 64 as the demo times allow.
>eventually get bored and walk through every aisle of movies just looking at the box covers
>get spooked by scary faces/monsters in the horror aisle
>get turned on by the more risqué covers featuring attractive ladies in the raunchy comedy aisle
>rinse and repeat for 5 years before the blockbuster closed and turned into a bank
All in all it was super comfy
i tried to rent a DBZ movie and the guy working there said it was inappropriate for kids and my mom wouldn't let me get it. still remember how frustrated i was. wasn't DBZ like PG rated?
>i tried to rent a DBZ movie and the guy working there said it was inappropriate for kids and my mom wouldn't let me get it. still remember how frustrated i was. wasn't DBZ like PG rated?
that dude deserves a kick in the dick.
i hate when Black person as store employees try to fricker the kids
>protects little anon from japshit and future weebery
You dont know how much things could have been different if you just took the hint
If that happened to me, I actually would have seethed constantly for days and thought about killing that wagie. I was a psycho as a kid.
they had korn and disturbed tracks
>dad! can we-
>no...
>but i-
>NO!
>*lip quivering*
renting SNES games... damn i'm old
>renting SNES games... damn i'm old
we rented n64 games.
got megaman ledgends on my 13th birthday.
that shit was THE Best.
my mom gjksdfjfhk;sdfj;gk;sfhjgkl;sdflk
>anon dies reminiscing
yeah basically.
i just had coffee and am in the middle of packing my apartment cause we are moving to a new place after 7 years and I just feel like time is moving too quick.
nice get
>oh look, nothing I want to watch on VHS again except the same Sonic OVA I've seen a million times
>oh look, nothing I want to play on Gamecube again except the same Billy Hatcher game I've played a million times
I enjoyed the atmosphere and that was about it.
They had a very distinct smell that I'm not sure to describe, but even during their prime it was the sort of smell that made them feel 'old'