I was talking to Random Encounter earlier tonight and it got me thinking about a little video rental store in downtown Portland when I was growing up called Videoport, that had a huge selection. If they didn't have what you wanted, they'd order it for you. It expanded my repertoire, and it helped foster a lifelong love of cinema in me. I did a search for "Videoport" and found this article from when it was closing. It includes a little mini-documentary which was really fascinating, and I'd recommend a watch for anyone who's still a fan of physical media. Did anyone else have cool video rental stores like that near you? I want to hear about them!
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I was talking to Random Encounter earlier tonight and it got me thinking about a little video rental store in downtown Portland when I was growing up called Videoport, that had a huge selection. If they didn't have what you wanted, they'd order it for you. It expanded my repertoire, and it helped foster a lifelong love of cinema in me. I did a search for "Videoport" and found this article from when it was closing. It includes a little mini-documentary which was really fascinating, and I'd recommend a watch for anyone who's still a fan of physical media. Did anyone else have cool video rental stores like that near you? I want to hear about them!Last edited by Althena; 03-22-2024, 06:43 AM. -
This post really hits close to home. I spent a lot of my youth frequenting a local rental store named Dollar Per Day. I didn't go there for the movies, though, but rather the games. The owner of the store, or one of his employees, must have been a huge Koei fan. They had a really solid selection of Koei strategy games as well as SNES and PS1 JRPGs. It is part of the reason I ended up at the predecessor of the original Valiant Gamers. Cancer_Kills_My_Team_Doesnt also went to the same place, and very often we'd be competing for which games to take home with us each weekend! -
Growing up by Uniontown PA, we had a Wal-Mart with a fairly large strip mall. One of the alcoves held "the Book Store," a cute little book shop where I'd pick up Sonic the Hedgehog comics and just generally browse while my mom was doing some shopping.
After being open for several years, they made an addition to the place aptly called "the Video Store." It was probably in '96 that I rented Super Mario RPG and began my love of RPGs, Square especially. I'd rent the game intermittently, getting so-and-so far before I had to return the copy. I didn't get my own copy of Mario RPG until maybe six years later at a Funcoland outside Pittsburgh.
The Video Store was also where I first rented Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm sure there were other great games I first played from there too, but these 3 are the ones that give me most nostalgia.
Unfortunately, the Wal-Mart shut down around 2004(?) because the land was unstable. They built a new Wal-Mart within a mile, but the stores that got left behind in the strip just sadly and slowly faded away.
Video and game rentals were really a product of their time. Sure, now we have Xbox Gamepass and PlayStation Plus and quite literally hundreds of games at our fingertips at any given moment, but back then you had to be selective. You were gonna have one or maybe two games for 2-5 days, and you didn't want to make a wrong decision. But that also made finding the good games feel all the cooler.Comment
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Back In The Day, in an at-the-time smaller town in Georgia, there was a quaint little strip mall with stores that mostly held a comfortable 'hole in the wall' status. One such store was Turtle's, a small chain of record stores. At a time when vinyl records and cassette tapes were the physical media of choice for listening to music, they were the best local outlet. While not their focus, they also offered rentals of movies on VHS, as well as video games. It very quickly became my primary method of finding which NES games I would considered must-buys.
As the years passed, Turtle's was essentially bought out by Blockbuster. My parents quickly found appreciation for the much wider selection of movies and, as I usually along for the ride, I got to regularly check out the selection of video games. That selection and availability very much had an effect on the genres and titles I enjoy today. Chrono Trigger, Popful Mail, Star Fox, Final Fantasy, Sim City, and Lunar, to name a fraction of the titles and series I've come to know and love. This, all because I could pick up a game and try it out for a couple of bucks, rather than risk blindly going all in on a $40-60 title, or maybe even not being aware of a given title's existence at all. It's strange to think how different my gaming preferences may be, today, had I not had the access to the old-school rental store system.Comment
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The sad thing is that there are still a few "game trial" options out there, but once again, they're generally linked to larger services. Like, I think PlayStation Plus has a bunch of "try two hours for free" type promotions for newer games, but they're linked with PlayStation Plus Premium. And I feel that largely defeats the purpose when the service now costs something like $150 per year.
It's one of those "one step forward, two steps back" kind of situations. Some things become more convenient, but only situationally.Comment
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