Sunday, March 10All That Matters

Gaming history from the US. You could rent game consoles from Blockbusters.


Gaming history from the US. You could rent game consoles from Blockbusters.



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31 Comments

  • MasterBlaster4949

    I remember i rented one for a whole week played resident evil 2 and 007 golden eye 6 days straight lol then my grandma bought me one😁

  • _SKYWVRD_

    Man I remember my mom surprising me once when she picked me up from daycare and said she rented a ps1 for the weekend.

    I really did not appreciate my childhood enough

  • urbz102385

    My brother and I stayed with my aunt for a weekend when we were kids. She surprised us with a rented N64 and that’s what we did all weekend. All we had was Mario and we were blown away, still one of my best memories ever

  • WraithCadmus

    Fun Fact: This is how the Neo Geo was meant to be used, they weren’t expecting someone to drop $650 (~$1400 today) for the system and $300 (~$650 today) per game. It was supposed to be a rental system.

  • 843_beardo

    Before the N64 released stateside my local no name video rental store was renting a Japanese N64 with Mario 64. $120 for 3 days. I begged my dad to rent it for me for a weekend and he did. Well…obviously I didn’t understand Japanese, and I didn’t know that you had to jump into the paintings to start a level. I spent the entire weekend just running around the castle. I was thrilled and had a great time, but I was also confused about how seemingly small and empty the game was.

  • CallMeTheDumpMan

    Canada as well. So many memories of me and mom walking 4 blocks down to blockbuster and renting an N64, Mario Kart 64 for us to play together and a second game for me to play single player.

  • Whatsongwasthat1

    Yep this is how I played one the first time

    A few years later my dad got bored on a business trip that took two weeks or so and BOUGHT AN ENTIRE N64 with games to play(we had one at home already) then when he got back he mailed it to my cousins since they didn’t have one. He’s da OG

    I still remember his anguish playing pikmin and watching about 80 of them drown :0

  • Relevant-Distance886

    Oh man I remember renting a super nintendo when I was a kid. We couldn’t afford to buy one for the longest time but my sister and I wanted one so my mom took us to the video store and my sister and I could rent one. We both got to choose a game and we would rent it for the week in the summer. Oh man the memories was such a fun time playing super Mario for the first time.

  • demonardvark

    blockbuster was amazing if you came from a poorer family.

    you basically could have any game you wanted (for the weekend). there will never be a feel like being a kid at blockbuster on friday night, anything there is yours (for the weekend). my local one even had a cool policy (which I’m not sure if all of em did). If you rented the same videogame enough times you could finally outright buy it for a small price. Effectively once you paid for it through rentals you could obtain the copy.

    finally getting a copy of that game you rented like 8 times always felt really special. its mine now, I don’t have to give it back 😀

  • SickOfAllThisCrap1

    I worked at Blockbuster at this time. That shit would get stolen at the time. Someone checks it out with a fake name and a throw away credit card and it would never come back. We started a policy that newer accounts couldn’t check the systems out.

  • soeasytohate

    My dad rented this for me when it came out, we couldn’t afford the actual system and this was like $20 a weekend or something dumb. Anyway i played it for so long i ended up throwing up. Good childhood memory

  • AVBforPrez

    Yeah, was like $15-20 for a few days if I remember.

    Some birthday parties would involve renting multiple consoles and setting up a few TVs in a big room.

  • cugameswilliam

    This is how I first played GTA 3, on a rented PS2 from Blockbuster, got the game there too.

    Did NOT come with a memory card so I left that MF running for 3 days straight haha

  • NikkolaiV

    This was how I first played Banjo-Kazooie. A few months later my brother got a 64 for his birthday with Super Mario 64 and Wave Race. I saved up for Banjo-Kazooie and Ocarina of Time, my brother saved up for Goldeneye and Cruisin’ USA. We had a pretty wicked lineup, but it took *forever.*

  • ExoticAccount6303

    They did a contest where they had game pieces you held up to the tv during a certain commercial to see if you won. Well being red green colorblind i was able to read the game pieces like they were nothing, so i went through the whole stack and grabbed the only winner. Week of n64 rental right at launch. Played mario 64 and pilot wings for a solid week long before any of the neighborhood had their own.

  • RabidRoosters

    One of my proudest moments in life was when my family went to the video store to rent weekend movies. We were poor so we always had to rent a vcr as well. So we go to the counter to pay for our rentals and the person behind the desk says, “they need to rent a vcr as well.” Unbeknownst to them we had purchased a vcr. I proudly yelled, we have a vcr now!” It really felt like we were moving up in life.

  • johngalt192

    Hell, we rented NES systems from the local gas station convenience store. They had a video section and we rented systems and games as well as movies.

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