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CWs: food mention

I've been thinking lately, as one does, about the past. I try to avoid seeing it through rose-colored glasses, if at all possible. A bit of the warm fuzzies as a balm against these trying, turbulent, bizarre times. My retro gaming podcast, in recent episodes, has mentioned renting games (NES, &c.). I miss those days of being able to try something out, for a small fee, before buying it. These days, I buy most of my games digitally on Steam, which has a relatively straightforward refund policy: as long as you haven't logged over 30min in the game, you can return it. Presumably they think that the first 30min of a game will determine whether you actually want to own it or not. And usually that's fine. Reading reviews is important for context, just in case that 30min doesn't do the trick, and you can't get a good grip of the game until after that point. And if you get burned? Well, that's the way it goes sometimes; you bought it. Again, it's mostly fine, but there are definitely some games in here I wish I hadn't bought, since they were not what I expected. So it goes.

The '90s, and to some extent, the late '80s, were a simpler time in that regard. Video stores would gladly rent you a video for a night or two, and same with videogames, often. Growing up in Oregon, I remember even renting videos from Winco (formerly Waremart), a discount grocery store that stocked videos near its customer service. I fondly remember, on a night we were set to sleep over at my grandparents' house (they lived maybe a mile or so away from us, max, most of my life) on a Friday or Saturday night, they'd take us to Winco and we would get snacks and rent a video. It often ended up being one of the Ernest movies, which we'd usually seen a bunch already, but loved. And we'd take it back to their place, enjoy the snacks and the company, and crack up laughing. It was magical.

Of course, we rented videos with my parents, too, quite often. We owned a lot of movies, after a time, but for a long time we rented whenever we could, to check out stuff we hadn't seen, or things that my parents wanted to introduce to us. Movies were great, but I liked renting videogames even more. When I was far younger, we lived not far from a place called Five Star Video. It was in a strip mall with a Safeway we often went to. They rented videos for a day at a time, $1/day, and same with videogames. I think they had a decent movie collection, but I was all about the games. I remember renting The Legend of Zelda there once (probably the first time?) and keeping it for nearly a month (My parents were not happy about that, nor was the video store). It was a great way to check out a game and see if I wanted to buy it (read: ask my parents for my birthday/Christmas/&c. and hope for the best). I feel like we rented from there a lot for awhile, but eventually moved on to other places.

Another place I remember really enjoying was a local place called Silver Screen Video. I don't think they had videogames; just movies. They had a lot of the popular stuff, naturally, but also had some more esoteric and obscure titles you might not find elsewhere. It was a little further away from us when I was younger, but once we moved, we were a bit closer. I definitely enjoyed going there, but I think it was a place my parents liked more than I or my sister did. Something about the experience of grabbing a little tag and taking it to the counter that was exciting! Some places had a plastic-encased box for the videotape sleeve, and later, the empty DVD/Blu-Ray case, but the oldest memories I have are of a little tag on a hook underneath the box. Usually the store would give you a thick plastic case for the video with its logo and name and such on it, presumably to keep the paper case intact. You'd bring the tag and they'd go back and find it, then voila, here's your rental! Money was exchanged, and off you went to enjoy it. Silver Screen was a cool place.

There was another very artsy video store with the excellent name "Flicks 'n Pics." It was further away from us, so we didn't go there very often, but it was revered in the community in general for its wide selection which also included very obscure films. I don't think they had videogames, though. They even had a "back room" with a beaded curtain where they kept the "adult" films. Really, like NC-17 ones, or more bizarro unrated ones (I have a feeling some of the weirder parts of David Lynch's catalogue would be right at home there, but I don't know). So you know it's fancy since they had a back room where, naturally, I couldn't go as a kid! All in all, though, they had a great selection, and whenever we did go there, it was a delight. A bonus was that the store had a fun logo with a caricature of Groucho Marx. I remember that pretty vividly. It was definitely unique! Also, the store was right off of Friendly St, which is a great street name.

The video store I remember going to the most, though, was called Premier(e) Video. (I put the "e" in parentheses because, as expected, they weren't always consistent on spelling, even on their own materials and labels and signage and such). They had a great collection of videos, and a great collection of videogames as well. I think they had a slightly longer rental period, too, which was a bonus. I have a very dim memory of renting Action 52 there, that terrible NES multi-cart, and I don't think it even worked in my NES. I can't remember much about the videogames I rented there, but we definitely got a lot of movies there over the years. I think here and there we turned things in too late, and got bad marks in our "record," but overall it was fine.

We also went to Blockbuster here and there, mostly because it was there, and another option. The selection wasn't great, mostly just the most popular movies and videogames. Occasionally one would find a gem there if the manager or employees were cinema buffs, but it definitely wasn't guaranteed. I feel like we got more videogames from there than movies. Strangely, I actually preferred Hollywood Video, later on, to Blockbuster, as far as "big box" stores go. Hollywood Video had a lot of random B-movies and indie stuff that you wouldn't necessarily find elsewhere. My best friend and I rented movies all the time from there back in the day, and same with videogames. Overall, I think they did a better job than Blockbuster.

I really think something's been lost, again, not being able to try things out before committing to buying. I'm all about open-source these days, so I would prefer games and software to be "free," but at the same time, I do miss the "shareware" ethos. If you're not familiar, "shareware" meant that a game was released, usually in part, and one would pay to get the "registered" version, which would give you the rest of the game. For example, Commander Keen episode 1 was released as shareware, and episodes 2 & 3 had to be purchased. The same happened with Commander Keen 4, which I played all the time; episode 5 needed to be purchased. Same with DOOM (episode 1 was free; episodes 2-3, and later 4, were paid) and countless others. Although as a kid, I was angry that I couldn't just play the whole game, since I often didn't have the money to buy the rest of it, I still appreciated being able to play part of the game for free. Again, games these days, you either buy them or don't. There's things like "Game Pass" or whatever that give you a subscription to a large game catalogue, sure, but then you don't own them, you're just "renting" them in a different way. (One could make the argument, though, that you don't "own" Steam games, but only own a license to play them, and I definitely get that argument; it is close enough to ownership for me for the most part). I really prefer buying things from indie studios (film or game), rather than the big names, because I feel like the money's going somewhere more meaningful. So that softens the blow a little bit for me.

I don't think we'll ever get back to that time, though, in the '90s, where we could test things out for a much smaller fee, and decide whether it was really worth taking the plunge. Look at companies like Redbox, who were the last dying gasp of that industry; they folded up as well eventually. Yes, you can "rent" movies online, but it's not the same. I'd much rather check out a movie from the library these days. That is the "new" rental, but it's free (= paid for by taxpayers, well worth it). The service Kanopy is really nice, too, allowing maybe 4-5 checkouts in a month. It's limited, but that's OK. I've found some really cool horror movies on there that aren't necessarily elsewhere. More and more I am becoming fed up with paying for streaming services that I am not using. But my spouse and I make these decisions together, and if they get some use out of those services, then it's not for naught. I'm just glad we have some alternatives that feel like the old days. I feel like this particular nostalgia is a largely harmless one, but I could be wrong.

Thanks for reading, friends. I'd love to hear about your rental experiences in days past and reminisce. <3