I remember you could rent out N64's and Playstations at blockbuster lol I wonder how much they charged for that
Did anyone else do Defensive Driving through Blockbuster? You rented this vhs tape and a machine that you hooked into your phone line. You logged into the machine, watched segment 1 of the tape, and then had x-amount of time to complete the test on the machine. Lather, rinse, repeat for like 12 hours. I did it 2 or 3 times, always had people over with an extra TV so we could watch football and take bong rips and drink beer or whatever while "Blood Flows Red on the Highway" played on the other one. Then we'd all take the (very, oh so very, difficult) test.
Video rental stores made sense in the 80s and 90s. In the 80s, Videos were priced around $80. In the 90s video games cost about $50. It made sense to rent them. Once you could get DVD's sent anytime with no late fee for $8 bucks/mo. it was over. Ironically Netflix offered to sell to Blockbuster for 1 billion. Blockbuster refused. And now they're gone.
Real talk i bought a dvd from ebay not long ago that was a blockbuster copy lol Like 4 bucks for a a copy of Wasabi Shitty movie but i've had a thing for Ryoko Hirosue since Departures
Yeah, I read an interesting article awhile back that was making the argument that netflix binging was part of the problem for shows due to their general habit of releasing the whole series at a time instead of weekly. This means shows aren't in the public consciousness as much, and is even worse for shows that have slow build up, or require gradual word of mouth to really get going. Obviously the shows are a bit different, but one of the comparisons was Game of Thrones vs. The Witcher. Game of thrones had that weekly water cooler discussion type feeling, while Witcher probably doesn't have as strong of a viewer base as it otherwise may have had in the GoT era.
Record stores are for hi-fi aficionados and collectors of albums. No such thing really exists for VHS. It kind a sucks. There's a thousand ridiculous B movies I saw as a kid (and some of yall did too, don't lie, TV13, 20, 26, 39) that will never, ever, be transferred to any digital medium.
i always ended up borrowing more movies than i had planned at blockbuster. also i don't think i've ever rewinded before returning, was that required back then?
It was required and the store could charge you a fee (I recall there being an option in the POS system) but my store DGAF. Take movie out of return bin, open up case, check if it's rewound, if not just put it in the rewinder, rinse and repeat. Now late fees...that's an entirely different realm altogether. I basically took off fees if you, as a customer, came in and were reasonable about it. But if you came in like a crazy b****, "I'm sorry but there's nothing I can do about your late fees. We remind you of when the videos would be due back before you leave the store and it's also printed on your receipt. Green Mile was a new release so that's only a 2 day rental but Office Fantasies 5 is a 5 day rental"
i always liked the families that came in and would rent kids/family movies then sneak in a skinemax movie for themselves.
The fun was actually on Friday or Saturday nights closer to closing time when the retirees stroll in, walks around to browse, "somehow" ends up in the softcore/skinemax stuff, and brings up a copy of Talented Mr. Ripley on top and Secretary Passions 3 on the bottom. I would then call out when those movies are due so the entire store heard and, yes, I was a total dick at 18 for doing that.
Never did that, but I did take a few DD courses at comedy clubs, you would then get tickets to a show and the course was done by a "comic"....notice I put that word in in parenthesis
@steddinotayto You ever get anyone that would call in consistently about a movie that was always out? I remember calling multiple times as a kid about Speed LMAO. I think Blockbuster was the first ones to get the recent releases while the mom and pop shops were last and my dad would only let me get one membership, lol. Mom and Pop memberships were pretty cheap but the selection of course wasn't as big as the blockbusters when it comes to the new releases.
y'know I don't recall that happening often...i don't even recall picking up the phones all that often that summer. I remember calls about video game availability but not movies. Then again the Blockbuster I worked at (1960/Champions) was one of the bigger locations so we had a huge inventory/selection. I did hate the fact that, at that time, we were competing with Hollywood Video to see who could open the latest. I ended up closing around midnight and not leaving until 2-3 in the morning because those videos that goes back on the shelf had to be lined up perfectly or our manager would get on our asses the next day.
