Page 22 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #43 FREE Edition

It’s hard to overstate how central going to a video store to rent video games was as part of being a gamer
in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Whether it
was a local mom-and-pop small business, a small rental selection
in a grocery store, or a mainstream chain like Blockbuster Video or Hollywood Video, there was no shortage of options for gamers wanting to try something out for
$5 without shelling out at least
$50 a pop to buy something new. Although the process to rent a game in person may seem comically slow now (get in the car, drive to a rental store, see if the game you want is
in stock, wait in line to pay for your rental, drive back home but return it in time to avoid the dreaded late fees), it became a regular ritual in many people’s lives.
For a short window in the mid-’90s, Blockbuster Video allowed people to rent PC CD-ROM games. This was when multimedia computers were
booming. Often ranging in price from $1,999 to $3,499, business professionals, gamers, and families could buy a home computer with an SVGA monitor, keyboard, mouse, hard drive, sound card, speakers, a CD-ROM drive, and Internet access via a modem. To entice people to buy these computers, they often came with a bundle of free games and educational titles.
While computers had a higher upfront cost than consoles, games were almost always cheaper on
the PC! In some ways, the market was the same as today, where AAA console games retailed between $49.99 and $69.99 (cartridge-based console games tended to go for more than CD-based games), and PC games tended to go for way less ($29.99 to $49.99). Games on PCs tended to be a variety of genres
that weren’t readily available on consoles, such as real-time strategy, simulations, and more.
At the time, I lived in Marietta,
GA, a suburb north of Atlanta. As fate would have it, one of the three local Blockbuster Videos within
five miles from my house started offering PC CD-ROM games for rental alongside the usual selection of PS1, N64, and Dreamcast
games. Being a fledgling PC gamer myself, I was intrigued by this rare opportunity to rent a computer game for $5, a fraction of the price of buying one. The selection was somewhat limited; perhaps where we lived was a test market. Years later, when I would bring up that my Blockbuster rented PC games, people looked at me like I was crazy.
The game I remember renting
was obscure even then. A post- apocalyptic taxi game developed by Imagexcel, Quarantine (PC, 1994) let players live their cabbie fantasies as Drake Edgewater, a criminal introduced in an over-the-top full- motion video sequence that playing
BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO WOULD YOU LIKE A COMPUTER GAME WITH THAT?
by Mat Bradley-Tschirgi
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OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #43