Page 28 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #43 FREE Edition

for $2 to rent a game for three days, who could ask for more?
Brett Weiss - Author, YouTuber, Old School Gamer Contributing Writer
Back in the early ‘90s, when I was in my 20s, I would
occasionally babysit a family friend’s two kids. The daughter was usually content with her dolls or watching TV, but the son always had one request - to stop by the video store and rent a few NES games, which I was more than happy to do. Unfortunately, he was a big fan of action films (definitely too young for them) and insisted on renting games like RoboCop, Platoon, and The Terminator.
As you might guess, those weren’t exactly the best the NES had to offer, and without instructions, they could be downright confusing. I’d suggest classics like Mario, Kirby, or Mega Man, but he usually wasn’t interested. Occasionally, I’d manage to get him to try something action- packed but better, like Contra. Regardless of what we played, we always had a great time, even if
we were muddling through some clunky, overly complicated titles. I still look back fondly on those days, and I’m happy to say I’m still in touch with both kids today.
Jarrod Kailef -
Old School Gamer Contributing Writer and Associate Editor
Living on my own as a young adult in the mid-’90s, I
really didn’t have much money
to spend on video game consoles.
I had finally purchased a Super Nintendo after having rented one
a few times, but we were still in
the era where video arcades had better graphics than home consoles, so frequently I preferred to do my gaming at my local arcade. In
my case, that arcade was named Yellow Brick Road. Still, that gap
was getting smaller and smaller all the time as technology improved, and some home ports were close
to indistinguishable from their original arcade brethren.
Elsewhere in this issue I have an article about the first time I rented a Super Nintendo and fell in love with the Final Fantasy series, but here I want to talk about one of my favorite home console ports of all time: Street Fighter II. You see, I wanted to practice for an upcoming Street Fighter II tournament at Yellow Brick Road, and I just didn’t have enough money to constantly pump quarters into the game for practice, nor did I have enough money to buy the game outright. So, off I went to Blockbuster to rent it! I drilled on that game for a solid week during all of my off hours, and it paid off. The game was such a well-done port that the skills I learned playing the SNES version translated almost exactly to the arcade! I won that tournament, and many others in the future, thanks to the practice I got from my rented Street Fighter II cartridge.
Jeremy Parish - Writer, Podcaster, Chronicler, Old School Gamer Columnist
In this age of nearly infinite video game plenty, I think it can be tough to
understand the importance that game rentals had back in the day unless you experienced them for yourself. When a Nintendo cart
cost the present-day equivalent
of $120 (or more) but stores didn’t offer refunds on used software, kids living on a tiny allowance ran the risk of saving up for months and wasting it all on a terrible game.
If you wanted to try a game for yourself and didn’t know anyone you could borrow it from, rentals became a financial lifeline.
But more than that, rentals gave us a chance to sample a much wider selection of games than we could have on purchases alone.
A lot of the game memories and experiences that went on to become foundations of my work in the press and podcasting were games that I rented: Power Blade, The Battle of Olympus, Final Fantasy IV, Tetris, SoulBlazer, and countless others. Without them, would I even have gone into games journalism?
And, contrary to the legal arguments of corporations protectively eyeballing their bottom lines, rentals didn’t kill the idea of buying games. It did give us what we needed to know in order to avoid buying bad games, but really, publishers didn’t have anyone to blame but themselves for putting out duds that kids wanted to steer clear of. But I ended up buying plenty of games after renting them, even if I had completed them
on that rental - like the holiday break where I abused Blockbuster coupons to keep a copy of Secret of Mana for Super NES rented out for two straight weeks for a grand total of five bucks. I completed Mana just in time to return it and trundle off to spring semester, but when I found myself craving a trip through the game again a few months later, I ended up springing for a retail copy... something I wouldn’t have done sight unseen.
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OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #43