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A sucky Mom & Pop video store, and their video game rentals in the '80's.

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  • A sucky Mom & Pop video store, and their video game rentals in the '80's.

    The Place: Small town in the Southern U.S.
    The Time: Fall 1988.

    It was the peak of the era of the "Mom & Pop" video store, as every place that could was getting into the movie rental business.

    In the small town of around 2,000 people I grew up in, we had a beauty salon that had starting renting videos, a dry cleaner that started renting videos, and an actual dedicated video store opening up on main street. Just a year before, you had to drive to the next town over to go to even one video store.

    A big change was the popularity of the NES, which had been the "must get" toy of Christmas 1987. The idea of renting NES games had come around, and indeed every video store was getting in on the act and devoting a significant fraction of their shelf space (1/4 to 1/6 usually) to Nintendo game rental.

    Since most NES cartridges at that time ran about $50 (in late '80's dollars, around $100 in modern dollars), most people only had a handful of games and spending $2 to rent a game for a night was a huge breakthrough, a way to try new games before buying them (because it really sucked to spend $50 on a game to find out it was awful) or to just rent a game for a few nights and play through it (for the games that didn't have a lot of replay value and could be played through pretty quickly).

    Well, we were going to try the new actual dedicated video store that was opening up. It had about a quarter of the store devoted to NES games, and had a bigger selection than any other store in town. My first time there, I rented Donkey Kong Jr. (It was the only place in town that had that game).

    Well, we paid for the $2.00 game rental for one night, and I played the game that night at home, and we dropped it off at the video store the next day. By the time we got home, the phone was ringing off the hook.

    They said I hadn't returned the manual for the game. You know that little instruction booklet that came with NES games, that for most games just told you to not get it wet, how to plug it into the console, and so on? I hadn't recalled the game having that with it (many/most rented games didn't have the manuals with them), but they INSISTED that it was with the game and they DEMANDED the little booklet back. When we said that we didn't have it, they demanded we buy a copy of the game and give them the manual out of the game, or they would sue us for the cost of the game in Small Claims Court. They said we had one week to deliver the manual to them or they'd sue.

    Well, we had to find a place that even sold that game. There was no Wal-Mart in town, and most places that sold NES games only sold a few of them, and didn't overlap much (besides the biggest hits) with what other stores in the same area sold, we checked every store for counties around that sold Nintendo games and couldn't find it. By the end of the week we found Donkey Kong Jr. at a Toys R Us in the major city about an hour away, paid $50 for the game, gave them the dang manual out of it, and never, ever went to that place again.

    I hope it was worth it. For the rest of the late '80's through mid '90's my family rented movies all the time, we rented lots of video games, probably spent several hundred dollars a year on rentals, probably a few thousand over all those years. . .and they didn't get any of that rental business.

    I still can't believe, almost 30 years later, that they would be so hostile and so angry over a tiny booklet to a NES game, and they'd be willing to chase away customers so easily.

  • #2
    Funny, I did this once as a kid with a bubble bobble game because it had a cute boy in it...I never got any angry calls...got lucky, I guess!
    My Guide to Oblivion

    "I resent the implication that I've gone mad, Sprocket."

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    • #3
      I wonder if they'd been planning to return it to their wholesaler for credit, once the townspeople tired of it and rentals tailed off, and without the insert they couldn't do that?

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      • #4
        Ah, yes...Classic Nintendo.

        I miss mine. I had one, and a SNES, and a PS2. That's about as far as I ever got.
        Skilled programmers aren't cheap. Cheap programmers aren't skilled.

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        • #5
          Jeez, they actually gave you the instructions that came with it? At the place I rented NES games from you were lucky to get a poorly-done photocopy of the instructions if you got anything at all.

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          • #6
            When we rented video games years ago, it was hit or miss as far as instructions coming with the game.

            Some came with the manual from the manufacturer, some came with photocopied instructions, others came without any instructions at all.
            Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil.

            "I never said I wasn't a horrible person."--Me, almost daily

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