Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 218: Rental stores

Episode Date: May 6, 2019

Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, and James Eldred reminisce about the halcyon days before digital distribution and demo discs... back when we had bike over to the video store so we could rent games we wanted to try out.

This weekend Retronauts, Be Kind, Rewind. Everyone, welcome to this episode of Retronauts, whichever episode of Retronauts, this may happen to be. I'm Jeremy Parrish. That at least is a constant. And so too is the constant to my right. Hey, it's Bob Mackey, and I rewind all of my tapes in a thing shape like a Corvette. Yes, that's as, as you should. A red Corvette. Oh, wow. A red corvette? It's actually very little. You're the Prince of videotapes. Was Prince singing about a VHS tape rewinder? Oh my God. He was ahead of his time. Right. He was way on top of things. He was a visionary.

Man. It's really sad that we missed him. And in addition, to the constant. We have the variable. James Aldwood and this podcast requires a $100 deposit. Wow. Well, back in the old days. Yeah. All right. So yes, it's true. There's no escaping it. We're talking about video stores.

And we've been making VHS references because that kind of is how old we are. But in truth, we're going to be talking about video stores vis-a-vis their relationship to video games. And this was a request by James, who is kind enough to help host us, Bob and I, while we are here in sunny Tokyo, Japan. Sonny, too hot Tokyo, Japan. Actually, it's very hazy right now. Yeah.

I've been enjoying it. Well, that someone does. James is putting me up, and I've been a perfect gentleman the entire time. I'm glad you haven't taken advantage of him. I've only taken advantage of his nice shower. We just don't take advantage of that.

That sounds really weird. Oh, wait, no. Scratch that. He has a very nice shower, is what I'm saying. I'm glad to hear that. We just don't take advantage. It would be my boyfriend. We'd be very mad.

Yeah, anyway, this is already going in weird places. But, yes, James, actually, why don't you tell us why you wanted to talk about this particular topic? Well, video stores are kind of important for me. My family has been in the video business pretty much since 1983. My father opened a video store in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio. Back in 1983, Sites and Sounds Home Video. And we had that from 1983 until 1997. when we sold out to the man, to Blockbuster, and got out.

And how did that go for Blockbuster? It went really bad because it turns out Blockbuster is not a good business. They did everything wrong. They did. I did rent from them for a while. I didn't rent, I mean, growing up, I never had to. I rented from Blockbuster maybe three or four times in my entire life. I don't think I've ever rented from Blockbuster. No, I was always.

Our family took it as a point of pride that we only supported the local video stores. also blockbuster was a drive so yeah well my my main memories of renting from blockbuster were uh in late 1993 they sent out this like coupon or something for uh like you know rent rent for one day and get four days free or something so i completed secret amounta for like three dollars that was a lot cheaper than buying it for 60 so that's about my blockbuster memory it's a good plan uh but yeah anyway once upon a time, video stores were really a part of the video game experience. Sometime in the mid to late 80s, you know, once Nintendo's entertainment system really kind

of took off, you know, video stores realized, hey, this is, this is adjacent to what we rent. We should also rent these things. Yeah, it took us a while. Like I said, we opened in 83, and of course, we weren't renting Atari games or anything. but once other stores in Toledo started renting video games, my dad jumped on that pretty hard after I went to a competitor to rent Arkanoid and a customer saw me. We ended up starting care.

Oh, no. Were you the secret shoppers got you? Yeah, it was bad. But I still remember that day we went to Toys R Us. We bought what I felt like was a thousand games, and I got to test them out, in quotes, before we put it on themselves. and that was like 9-year-old me was beyond stoked.

When you walked home from that competing video store, or did your dad say, I can smell Arkanoid on you? You bring that into my home? He was actually mad. Oh, wow. Not at me. Sorry to bring up the situation. No, no, no, at the situation.

I learned it from you, Dad. Yeah. So, yeah, that was in Toledo, there were only really two big stores. There was video connections under us. Oh, yeah, he was mad. Yeah. So I don't actually know what I'm going to do. I don't actually know what I'm going to say in this episode. I don't actually know what I'm going to say in this episode. I feel like James has a pretty good idea of what he wants to say, but I felt like this was a topic

that was worth incorporating at least into a retronauts micro, just because it is part of sort of, I guess, you know, vanishing Americana, like the, the former experience of playing video games, something that people these days do not understand. I mean, there are still rentals, but it's like Red Box and it's not the same as, as video stores back in the day. And the video stores that still exist, most of them, are the most of them, are the than family video, which is still kicking it. Really? The independent chains and they do not focus on games anymore.

I don't know the reasons why. Maybe that's just not economically feasible. The people who go to a video store in 2018 are not looking to rent a new game. Yeah. And I think just the way games drop in price so quickly now, like all physical media, if you want a game for cheap, wait three months or wait for the steam sale. Even like God of War, which just came out as of this recording, will be like

30 bucks at Christmas. Yeah. I mean, there's just no point. And people, you know, online stuff and just, I think people, the relationship with games, nobody wants to keep a game full weekend anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And there are a lot of other factors like, you know, to combat rentals, publishers really pushed hard

like 10 years ago to start incorporating, and also to prevent resales, started incorporating things like one-time download codes. and, you know, what was it that game that was, like, set in World War II, the Saboteur, was that it? Oh, right. If you bought it in advance, like, preordered it or bought it at retail or whatever, you could get a code to, like, have the women topless and the cabarets or something. I think there might have been vintage playboys in that game, or maybe that's a mafia, something like that. I don't know. Yeah, I think that was mafia.

Well, there was no other place to see Brest, so they had the market cornered. The internet didn't exist. No. Yeah, but like, I don't know if you want to get in any history of it now, but like video game developers and publishers contentious relationship with videos towards, it's not a new thing. That goes back to Nintendo. No, absolutely. Yeah. It's true.

Yeah. I mean, whenever I do research for old games, which is a lot, it's always fun and also infuriating to see what in a very specific couple of years. Maybe there's like a three-year span in which a lot of things were changed in American versions of games just for the American market. combat people finishing it in a weekend and it just like, I want the version of the game that doesn't crush you. Right. Yeah, it was, it was this like sudden light switch that flipped. Like, you can, you can kind of tell about when rental stores became a thing in America because that is the point at which American versions of games went from being like really easy to really hard. Like they tended to neuter games. Like, look at Mega Man 8 or Mega Man 2 where the

Japanese version has one difficulty mode, and the American version has two difficulty modes, normal and hard. Hard is actually the default Japanese version, like the only version that was in the Japanese game. And then easy mode is like half damage values for everything. So, you know, you go from that to maybe two years later or three years later, Ninja Guidon 3 and Castlevania 3, where they tweak damage values. And Ninja Guided 3, they took away infinite continues. So you have to be this crushingly hard game in five continues. That's unreasonable. I'm thinking

of basically every Konami game released in 1990, 1991, like Castlevania 3, roller games, Mission Impossible, Tiny Toon Adventures, they all feel like they are designed to, you need to sit with them for more than a weekend. They're just like

very adversarial in terms of their design. Yeah, well, it's not only the games, it's the legalities around the games, because we're talking about the American versions because in Japan, you can't rent video games. Yeah, still. Yeah, I mean, Japan and in America, the 8-bit rental market, it's kind of like A-B testing, where like what happens with one outcome, what happens with the other?

In the U.S., the, uh, basically the courts, I think, upheld the right to rent videos, video games under the same, basically the same rules that allowed home taping and things like that. It was even more than that. So what happened was first, in Japan, first, anything went And people were renting games And they were even renting Cracking Software Like in the early days before Nintendo And then the laws changed

You know And in Japan You can't rent games But you can rent music But there's a crazy thing Yeah And there's a music and for a long time I'm sorry

I'm sorry There's a window Like for most stuff I think it's a week Sometimes a month Where you can't You can't rent it And then eventually you can rent the

Rent the record At the video store It's kind of like the music equivalent of having something in the theaters and then something in the video store. And with games in America, like that never happened, you know, it was always the same with videos. But Nintendo, it wasn't just a matter of making the games harder or getting angry. They went to Congress. They lobbied to make renting games illegal. And eventually some kind, I forgot the name of the act, there's a great video about it by a video game historian on YouTube.

talking about it and he he basically explains that there is an exception so renting computer software is illegal in America but renting video games is it and it sticks it is basically a dedicated council you have to hook up it it makes a definition for video game consoles you know because at the time they were like you can't pirate fees yeah because at the time you couldn't I mean video game rentals are the byproduct of a new technology VHS there would not be video game rentals if not for VHS and with any new technology there's like a fear that it will destroy the world. And with VHS, I think it was Jack Felenti of the MPAA, crafting doomsday scenarios as if what would happen if people could tape programs off the TV.

It would destroy movies forever. So, yeah. And the thing with videos was like VCRs came about in the early 70s, the mid-70s, but they didn't really take off until home video. And one company named Magnetic Video Corporation leased the rights to 50 videos. videos from 20th century Fox and those were the very first VHS tapes. And that was in 1977. And at the time, most studios were terrified of it until they realized this is a really good secondary market.

And by the late 80s, home video was making more money than the theater. Until the prospect of huge profits comes along, it is a doomsday scenario. They're like, oh, we can make money. Well, who cares what happens? We're making money. Yep. And they made a ton of money because videotapes cost $120. $10, all the way up until DVD, and yeah.

We should talk about that. That's really interesting. I mean, that's true for the ones that were sold to rental markets. But, you know, you go to Best Buy or Walmart, and you were buying cassette tapes, VHS tapes for like $20. But not right away. No, not right away. But by the time I was able to buy my own videos, they were late 80s, early 90s. They had come down in price.

No, most of them were still $120. And then six to 12 months later, they were going to go down and. price. There was the rental price and then sell through. And we would have it's true because there were almost everything big, some huge titles would go straight to sell through and it would be a big deal. We'd get a

a press, a sales packet that would say Jurassic Park is straight to sell through. That's the coding they used and that would be 1499, 1999. But 90% of stuff when it came out was $79.99 to $120 because my dad's secondary business was selling used videos to libraries. And we were selling them between $39.99 and $49.99 and $49.99, 30 days after they came out.

Yeah. So, like, if you went to the video store to rent back to the future when it came out of BHS, you could not also go to a store and buy Back to the Future off the shelf. Yeah, very real. Not right away. Eventually, yes, most things. But not immediately upon the rental. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that really changed by the early 90s. It did. I mean, it became more common, but it really didn't change until right before DVD. Yeah, so 95, because Warner Brothers decided they were done a video. They were done, they wanted to change their business model.

And that's when stuff started costing 40 bucks and 30 bucks, kind of getting ready for DVD. Sorry. I mean, it's just I remember buying, you know, stuff that was coming out at Best Buy or whatever, like brand new. and it would be on sale for $15, $25. But that was probably like 20 years after the medium had existed, right? Yeah, I'm talking like early 90s, but that's what I was saying. It was like early 90s that had changed a lot. But I do remember, you know, like seeing MSRP on tapes that were like $100.

And I would be like, but that's unrealistic. That's crazy. I would never pay that much. But, you know, the idea was that it would go to rental shops. Yeah, the only time I ever remember anyone wanting to spend that much money, for a movie the day and day the day it came out

was ghost we had customers asking to buy ghosts I remember this why why ghost I don't know also it was really different back then I guess

yeah well I mean you know ghost was a huge god damn movie what your mom got hot over yeah and it was it was one of the movies also that had a special the tape was a special color

to stop bootlegging to stop piracy you're right it had like a blue oh white okay a ET was ghost white ET I think had But either part of it was green or it was all green, a few movies would do that to stop, to kind of, you could easily find counterfeits. Yeah, we were just talking about this earlier a couple days ago where there was, like, there would be a huge gulf in between the film release and the BHS release.

I remember as a little kid in 1988 or so, we got a copy of E.T because it had never been on VHS, ever, period. And that is just like six years after the movie was released. That was an exceptional case. But, yeah, the window between home, between the theater and home video used to be much larger. Even with big movies like Jurassic Park, it was fall of the next year. Usually, yeah. Yeah. It was crazy back then. But like I said, they realized really quickly they could make a lot of money that way.

And there were even movies, like by the early 80s, there were movies that were making the money back on video. Like, my dad always cites Scarface. Scarface bombed when it came out in the theaters. But he made a ton of money off of it because people would keep running it and other stuff like that. Like usually genre movies, B movies, would make a ton of money on video. Faces of Death. Yeah. You know, we always, the statistic we always had was our biggest per capita titles with Faces of Death and any Cheech and Strong movie.

And then there were companies like Troma that would just focus on the VHS market and bypass theaters altogether. Yeah. Yeah, as VHS became bigger, the grindhouse died. Yeah. And those B-movie studios moved their way over to VHS take. And, like, oh, full-moon pictures, too. Yeah. The puppet master movies.

Yeah, they've got a lot of the IP. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, the big renters, too. Yeah. The genre stuff was usually the biggest stuff. In actual. Going back to something you said earlier about how you can rent music in Japan, that's something that's always fascinated me is just like CD rental cafes.

And, you know, that was. That was why minidisc was so big over here It was because it was like a CD quality Recordable medium So people would rent CDs and just record them But we didn't really have that in the US Because you couldn't rent CDs I don't know of anyone who rented CDs

You couldn't Oh okay Yeah it was illegal So yeah that's fascinating Like how come video games were allowed to be rented in the US But not CDs and vice versa in Japan Yeah I mean like I said There was legislation to stop it

There was legislation in the very early rental times to stop music rentals and that succeeded. But the legislation to stop PC rentals because of piracy went through and then they put in the acceptance for home media. And I think Blockbuster

must have had a better lobbying group than Nintendo. And there's a loophole for libraries because they don't charge anything. Yeah, libraries can rent music. Yeah. Libraries can went damn near anything. Well, they don't rent. They lend. Yeah, they lend. Yeah, so I think that's the difference. Yeah, but they can rent music and even games, like they'll use

libraries aren't in games now, which is hilarious. I mean, no, people, I know of people like, I'm connected to people through social media, whatever, who, that's how they play most of their games. Like, they acquire the software, the hardware they need, but they can't really afford software, so they

acquire from libraries. And, you know, it's great that libraries still exist and that they're keeping up with contemporary media. Yeah, your tax is paid for those games. You might as well play. Yeah, tax is paid for this library to buy 120 copies of American Pi 3. I mean, I mean, that still sounds better than bombing Afghanistan or attack money.

Yeah. I'm all for it. Like, Congress keep buying American Pie 3. God bless you. But one interesting thing about the legislation was Nintendo tried to stop. It was just Nintendo. Sega was all about rental. Nintendo tried to stop it. When they couldn't do that, they sued over Blockbuster copying the manuals.

Oh, man. I love, and I hope there are scans of those online. Just the handmade manuals made by, like, I don't know. know, third parties. Well, there's a, there was a company. Yeah. I can't remember what it was called. Video dude or something.

There were a few of them. Yeah. But they would, they would create these, you know, custom cards that didn't use any copyrighted art, but they basically reproduced the contents of the manual in a slightly paraphrased way. It was just like one, like a sticker basically on the inside of the case. Yeah, they would be like a, you'd get like the, the plastic case the game would come in and we would glue in that little cheap fake manual because we'd

stop copying manuals, not because of any legal thing, but because it was a pain in the ass. You'd have to dismantle the manual. Yeah, I scan manuals and it's a pain of the ass. Yeah, this is not scanning. This is feeding it into a copy. I know. Like, that's enough of a pain in the ass, like having to do it and then

assemble it and so forth. Like, no thanks. And it was always a real problem when there was the occasional game that you needed something in the manual. The first example I could think of was Star Tropic. Yep. Yep. Well, that's Nintendo's flipping off the rental market. Yeah. And so we would have to include a thing, like, if you get to this point,

you do this. Yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah. So what experiences did you guys have with rentals? Obviously, James, you had sort of the insider perspective. Yeah. But what about you, Bob? Like, where did you first start renting games? I think the main appeal was, as part of a family with not a lot of money, it was a great way to actually have entertainment in your life. So renting, going to the rental store or the video store every Friday was sort of a thing in my family and like getting pizza and stuff and each, all of us retreating to our separate rooms and watching our stuff. But probably the time I got my NES from that point on, that's when I started renting games. And actually, I never really owned a lot of games for the NES just because I rented everything. I would, I would go to the video store every weekend. So I'd get a game for Christmas and a game for my birthday. But I probably only own like eight games for the NES just because we had so many. any local rental stores. Yeah, that checks out with,

like, my personal experiences and with my friends coming to the store, you know, like people were renting was such a big part of the NES culture,

I think, because there were so many games. Yeah. And back then it was, you know, your only way to find out if a game was good was to read reviews

and orders play itself. So you're not going to, you can't go on. There's no, let's play. There's no video of it. So that's a good way to find out if the game was good.

A lot, a lot of time before you buy. Rental was really good for that. Yeah. Yeah, I had never considered renting video games, but a friend of mine took me to a video store with him. I went over to stay the night at his place one weekend, and we were just going to play video games, and he was like, let's go to the video store. And I was like, what? So we went and he rented some games, and I was like, you can do this. That's really cool. And it was actually really handy for me because I owned my NES for a couple of years before I started renting. And In those first couple of years, a lot of friends of mine had video games, and we would

basically just trade back and forth, and that was how we all kind of circulated games and try different things. We all buy different games and swap them back and forth. But after a while, most of them kind of lost interest. So the pool of available games to borrow and trade kind of dried up. So right around the time that happened, you started seeing rentals. And so that became a great way for me to continue to expand my horizons. And And there was a video shop called Hastings, which was a, I guess it's still a chain in Texas and Oklahoma. And they do books, videos, and music, and video games, sales and rentals. It was like a bookstore that also rented stuff.

So it was, I could just go there for like an hour and wander around looking at books and checking out magazines and then, you know, figuring out something to rent. Yeah. And, like, it was within biking distance. So in the summer, I would just bike over there and I'd find video games to rent. Sometimes they'd send out coupons like, you know, free rental or something like that. So that was a cheap way for me for a couple of summers to get a lot of entertainment and stay occupied. And, you know, occasionally games would come in and I'd be like, I want to rent this, but I can't get it right now. So I would hide the tag behind other stuff that no one wanted.

And then I'd come back a few days later. and pick it up. I'd rent it. Don't shake your head like that. It would get you. What's that? We knew. We checked. You checked?

At the store, we would, well, at all, at our store, now I know I was a kid from most of this, but I worked, I was a teenager by the time the store closed, and my early teens was spent working at the video store, and one of the things, since I was the gamer, I would go through, and at our store, we didn't have tags. The games were on the self. And it was one of my jobs on organizing. cells was to make sure the games were not hidden. Oh, no, they didn't do that at hours.

Like, no one heard that much. The video games were off in kind of a corner, and they would have the boxes out, like the actual NES boxes and a plastic shell. And then there would be a tag that they would slide into, it was like a plastic strip with the name of the game on a label on top. And you would take that up to the front and they would give you the game. So I would just, like, put the tag for the game I wanted in the back of it. a game that no one was, obviously no one

was going to touch. So it'd stay there for a few days. I could come back, you know, right before the weekend and grab it or whatever. Yeah, you hide. And so it was, yeah, so it was a little dishonest, maybe, but I, it was going to hell. It was fine. No one else really wanted to rid Battle of Olympus, but just in case

I was going to, I was going to keep it for myself. You hide battle Olympus behind anticipation. Yeah, something like that. Pretty much. Those people on the cover are having so much fun. I want to be part of it. They had all the fun. They used it up. Damn. Yeah, and the video game section was actually right next to the porn section.

Was there a beaded curtain? No. There was just like the adult video. There was like, this was West Texas, very prude, very Bible Belt. And the video section, like the porn section was right there. It was like the game section or game aisle one, game aisle two porn section. And right in the middle, joining the two was the Panesian trilogy for N.S. So they actually had bubble bath.

babes and those, the other two games by Panesian like you could rent those and they were actually like shelved with the porn but it was like

right next to the video games so it was like it was like you know the marriage of the two sort of the airlock before you get into the porn section. Pretty much yeah and I was really fascinated by that

I was like there's dirty video games that's so weird like I never rented them and never felt a desire to rent them but now I wish I had actually rented them and lost them because they're really valuable

yeah we had we had a few locations and at the main store even as a kid I was kind of the I helped my dad Tuesday games because he knew I knew what I was talking about at the other stores other people did it and I vividly remember one time going into the store and there were these games for adults only and with the other three of those games yes there's um bubble bath bays hot slots and peekaboo poker I remember bubble bath babes the most and we had stickers on them you couldn't be, you know, adults only. And I remember thinking I'm like probably 10 or 11 years old.

I'm like, that's not legal. Like, that's, that's a, that's a fake game. And but the owner that didn't care. And I don't, I don't think they really rented because those people that's got porn. Yeah, I, I don't know that I ever saw the tags for those games out. Not that I, like, spent that much time looking at them, but I would, you know, check on them just because I was like, these are so weird. Yeah.

And they're very valuable now, right? Yeah, they are. Actually, more valuable than their Japanese counterparts. And there were actually several more of those games published over here. They all had names AV something. Adult video. Yeah. I'm waiting for the Quarantendo on those.

Oh, geez. I'm surprised that it hasn't covered those. He's in 90 now. I guess does he do the unlicensed games? I'm not sure. Because those were all by a company called, it was published by Panisian. in the U.S., but it was Satchen in Japan, I think,

which is like a Taiwanese company, if I'm not mistaken. But there were a lot more of the sort of smutty, unlicensed than to know in ESF, FAMBCOM games in Japan than there were in the U.S. Those kind of stand out because there were just three of them in the U.S. And they had them at my very, you know, the rental store in my very prude local city. It was renting for video stores,

It was true of our store And I'm so sure it was true for most independent stores Like if you bought movies When you bought movies, you bought them from the distributor There were companies that existed to sell to retail outlets Those companies didn't do business with video stores For the most part So you would just get them for wherever

We would go to Toys R Us or other places And that's how you'd end up with games like that also People who would Some mail order catalog, you buy them Buy everything Buy everything And so looking back at the video store, it's interesting to think about what games we had that are now really valuable. Like those, or just kind of strains, like what, color dreams?

Color dreams. Some of those are worth a lot. We had Chiller. Did you get it? I don't know if that one's worth a lot. The Bible stuff, actually. We had those two. Yeah, like Sunday, fun day is worth a lot.

And also stuff like Zombie Nation. Yeah. Those games are super kitchen panic. or panic restaurant I would imagine at the main location at one point we probably had

almost every game because it was a huge store it was bigger than most blockbusters I imagined no video store at Action 52 though just because you had to

oh did you I never saw that okay yeah I never saw that because you had to ordered from that company and spend $200 or however much it was

I think $199 yeah what garbage no I never I never saw that but I remember But when I look at like the stuff that's rare now, I would, I'd just come like, I had that at my house for like, we had it at the store. And when we sold the store, I could have grabbed them, but I didn't. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's pretty much me going to a retro gaming shop here in Japan. I'm like, oh, I used to own that. Oh, it's like $600 now. I really shouldn't have been. Yeah. And, you know, I think with kind of

with renting games, more than movies, theft was always a bigger issue. shoe and I would imagine especially those limited one like even back then there were rental only games they weren't always good there was the clay fighter one oh yeah and but there was that madden one yeah and there was Indiana Jones and the um infernal machine there was that was in 64 okay there was um I thought there was a dr Mario Tetris game that was blockbuster only could be there were several several blockbuster there was a razor scooter game remember in 64 that was blockbuster own. Those were pretty easy to get

if you were another video store. Final Fight Guy, I bet it was a very popular thing to still. Yeah, Final Fight Guy. Yeah. And there was the Madden one that was just all Madden teams. The championship edition, Madden. And for Genesis only, I think. Might have been Super Nintendo. I never heard of that one.

No, it was just Genesis because I never heard of that one. And that was one that, you know, we would occasionally put stickers on there like, you know, so people wouldn't do what you talked about in a Tetris episode of losing the copy Is that known as shrinkage?

That's known as fraud. That's a felony. I don't know if it's a crime. Yeah. And so like people, this would happen of movies and games. People are like,

oh, we lost the game. Oh, well, that's $100. Like, oh, we found it. There it is. We lost that copy of Little Mermaid. Oh, that's out of print. So, you know, find it. Look at your contract.

signed with us. Yeah, don't leave it in your car because it'll melt. You know, don't, you know, if you lose it, find it. Yeah. Speaking of exclusives, it was funny how Nintendo fought the rental market, but in the late 90s, they were best buds with Blockbuster in terms of like, come and get your Pokemon snap pictures printed out here. So I guess they found value in that at some point. Yeah. And we watched, I showed, I sold Bob this video and I, maybe you watched it of a video software deals association convention. Terrible cinematography. especially when they were filming women. Yeah, but that was the big, that's like E3 for video stores. And it was most, I, that's the one with you in it, right? Yeah, yeah. I was looking online. I didn't see that. I was looking online for this video because I knew I was at one of them.

And I found one from 96. And I'm like, I think I was at that one. I wonder if 10 seconds in the video you can see me because I'm a giant six and a half foot tall man pushing my, my aunt in a wheel chair who came with me. So we kind of stood out. But that was when they were whining and dining video stores. So you'd have like B-level celebrities there, like Pat Boone, Barbara Eden. Joan Rivers was there. Joan Rivers was there.

Gates McFadden and who played Counselor Troy. Marinas, heard us. I knew you would know, so thank you. They were there. But some of the little people, too, we got Robert O'Regan's autograph that year. He was there. The director of Desperado and, you know, from Rust till Dawn, stuff like that. But video games were a big presence there too, and we watched that one from, I think, 94, that had this huge booth for Nintendo when they had a fake Stunt Race FX car.

Yeah. And actually, sorry, Charles Martinette. Yeah. Martinet, Martinet, Martin A. You could see him in that video as a floating Donkey Kong head, sounding very much like Mario and harassing every woman that walked by. It's a big, Donkey Kong. How about I give you a kiss? Yeah.

What are you doing later? Bananas. Banana pasta. He really just has one schick when it comes to audience interaction, Charles Martinette. Martinet. Martinet. Martinet is something else. It's Martinet.

It is not. Martinet is you don't want to be called a Martinette. Okay. Well, this is not a hill I want to die on, so I don't know. But it's fun to see him as Donkey Kong. Yeah. Yeah. But I was surprised when I told my father I was doing this, he sent me.

over financials for the last year of the video store. He happened to just have that for some reason. And I was surprised how small video games were compared to the rest of the store. Like, you know, if I look at that, like... Wasn't Super Nias like 15% or something? Yeah, so let me look at it now.

It's not in any order. I don't know why. So, um, the biggest part was action and action movies were a third of our business. And, um, then we get to like Nintendo. was, this is 19th, this is December 1996. At that point, the regular Nintendo

was less than 1%. But the Super Nintendo was only five, like, says he had 5%. Oh, I thought it was more. Okay. I miss her. And, um, well, let me see that. Rents. But it was all made up for by Virtual Boy, right?

Yeah, so my dad's store was unique, mostly because I would pressure him into buying systems. I wanted to play but not buy. So we had a 3DO, a Jaguar, and a virtual boy you could rent, end the games. And in December of 1996, we had

Chen 3DO rentals somehow. Where's Jaguar? I'm getting to the virtual boy. Jaguar, we had five Jaguar rental, some eight titles. And we had six virtual boy titles and one rental. We made $2.99

on the virtual boy that one. You tank that business. What was the virtual boy game that someone wanted to play? Which one was it? Was it Nestor's Funky Bowling? I hope so. Telleroboxing. I'm more curious about what five Jaguar games people invented because other than Tempest and aliens Mrs. Predator, that's it.

Mm. Bubsy? It was Trevor McPhur. Yeah. But that's your poison. Yeah, people always talk about, you know, adult video being a big market. And it was, but like, it was only 5% of our business at that point. And I talked to my dad.

Late fees were 10 to 20%. Oh. So I thought it would be more. But, yeah. Could the relative, I guess, so video games, video games were like minority of profits. Oh, yeah, yeah. Could that be because for big releases, even small video stores would get like 6 to 8 copies of a new big movie? But, well, for big releases, we would get 20 to 30 to 40.

Yeah, I remember when, yeah, the heyday of video stores when you'd go after, right at a big release for something like Indiana Jones or something. It would just be like an entire wall of that one movie. We had, we had, we prided ourselves on having the most of a new release and also the back catalog. I don't want to, the one thing my dad really wanted me to mention when I told me I was doing this is that from the second blockbuster open to the second they sold,

we sold the store of them, we kicked their ass, especially with new releases, but everything. And so you would get a ton of new releases and they would, Those were actually usually lost leaders, though. We wouldn't make money on a new release until they sold it. Would it get people in the store, though?

It would get people in the store, and they couldn't get drastic parts because it was gone. So let's get something else. Right. And they'd buy some popcorn. And they'd buy some popcorn. Or they would wait in the video store for three goddamn hours for a copy to come in, which would sometimes happen. But with video games, they were less of the business, but we made more money off of them. Because they would have a longer shelf life, and they were cheaper.

Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned that you made like 10 to 20% of your money from late fees. Yeah. Was there like a cleaning fee for the porn videos? Oh. Like a wave a black light wand over to be like, okay. I'm not telling one of this podcast.

Oh, my. Hmm. I apologize for bringing it up. It was just meant to be a harmless gym. Yeah. The logistics of that, Jeremy, I don't quite understand. Yeah. But one thing I forgot to mention here was this is 1990.

This is December of. 95. So the playstation came out in September. So in December of 95, we had only, sorry, we had 30 titles, 30 places and titles, but over 200 rentals. So that's a hell of what we turn on investment for the time. So it's like six per, six rentals per unit. People, destruction, they'll be like bonkers. So when you say titles, does that mean different titles, multiple units? potentially or like 30 or whatever I would imagine it might be individuals it might be like this 30 might be three copies of one game but for most games the most we got were two or three

it had to be a pretty big title for us to get more than two so especially for PlayStation's an unproven market at the time so we're not and harder to find so we weren't going to go crazy on that yeah We're going to be able to be. One of my favorite things about rental stores was, as you mentioned, the turnaround on, you know, they would buy stuff and then sell it. a month later after their initial profits had been made or, you know, like the, I guess the hype

it died down. I got a lot of video games at very good prices very, very soon after release that way. I remember buying U.N. Squadron, Castlevania 3, Lolo 2 or 3, a bunch of other stuff, like, you know, a month after it came out, they would, you know, put the surplus copies out for sale for less than half price. It was amazing. Yeah, video games used video games, we didn't sell them. We actually didn't sell them very often, but when we did, they always move immediately. Um, used videos would sometimes be in our store for sale, or ever, uh, you know, if you wanted a copy of chud, uh, on VHS tape, which is a great film, you know, we would get rid of that and put it in the for sale bin, you know, nine bucks. He'd be there

forever. I remember when we were, when we were still the last month of the store, in our used area, there were big box titles. What I mean, a big box title is the early days of video, the boxes were huge. Kind of like with CDs. Yeah. And I think it was just too big. Yeah. And porn kept that box size. But like a shoe box.

Yeah, regular VHS got small, got more form factor. So you would see I remember City of the Living Dead, the Deadly spawn, all these super early VHS tapes. We had them forever because nobody wanted to buy those. And I had no idea why. I was just going to ask why not, but I guess you would

Because I didn't have enough money yet. And it's funny, a lot of those titles later on became really collectible on DVD because those are really rare movies. So, like, for some reason, like, that market didn't exist yet, maybe. And you, your family got out of the video business before DVD. Yeah, it's really funny. We sold the store in 90s, in April of 96. I think DVDs existed in Japan, but not in America yet. Yeah. I don't know if my dad had an idea that the tide was, you know, shifting or the moods were changing, but he got out at the perfect time. He got out at the peak. He went out on top. And Blockbuster bought that store. Like I said, I heard stories of my friends who stayed there to work there of customers coming in and tearing up the membership card and not coming back. They had brand loyalty and stuff like that.

you know, that blockbuster ended up staying open until all the blockbuster's closed. So I guess Toledo has a good rental market. And there's maybe, I think there's like one remaining blockbuster or two? There are four, as of right now, May 2018, there are four blockbusters and they are all in Canada. Not in Canada, Alaska. Alaska, there you go. Yeah. The biggest chain in America now is family video.

Right. Because they are, the thing about Blockbuster was, it's like people like to blame Netflix for killing Blockbuster. And it totally helped. But it's like with Tower Records. Like MP3s didn't kill Tower Records. Debt killed Tower Records. Blockbuster expanded so fast they took on all this debt and they didn't own any real estate. They would always rent.

So like when they bought my dad's business, they didn't buy the building. So they were paying us rent forever, which was great. And so they couldn't liquidate that much. Family Video owns most of their locations. So they're not paying rent, you know, and they keep, they're big in the Midwest still. I, last time I was in Toledo, it was a busy store. And they have like three little cases in Toledo, which is crazy to me. Yeah, there's still one right by my house in Youngstown.

Yeah. So Midwest. Yeah, I guess there's nothing to do in Ohio. So, yeah. Had the family video. I mean, there's opioids and family video. Yeah, you know, you're both together. Well, you know, the biggest.

What a night. Hey, hey, the biggest, like I said, the biggest. renters what faces a death and teach and chan. True. Who's renting knows? Stoners. I do want to talk about, though, how you could rent things in more than just rental stores, because I remember it was good as a kid because in certain stores in the Midwest, like Giant Eagle is a Midwestern grocery store chain and far more was a Midwestern sort

of like Walmart-type store. There would be an entire section of the building, which is like, here's our video store. There's like a different entrance you go in and two. And, like, I just would go in there. My mom would shop and she'd come get me and I'd have a game. Yeah, in Texas, we had Albertsons, the United Supermarket, and all of those stores in the late 80s, early 90s had big video sections. And, you know, when I was looking for NES games that had gone out of print or were hard to find, I would always check the grocery stores to see if they were selling used copies. Because a lot of times you could find stuff there.

Like, people would, I guess, read stuff there, but people wouldn't think, oh, I need to buy a video game. I should go buy a used one from the grocery store because it's kind of counterintuitive. I didn't rent from those places a lot, but I did kind of keep an eye on them because, you know, like, hey, I need my Castlevania fix. Where's Castlevania? And these were in the days in which the used game market wasn't this corporate behemoth run exploitative operation. It was just like, oh, we're done with this game. Do you want to buy it? Not like, give us your games for a nickel.

Yeah. Funco land was still just in the back of magazines. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely supermarkets were a big market back then. We even would pillage their employees sometimes because they were good stores a lot of times, which was the crazy part. You think about going to, in Toledo we had Kroger's and Churchill's and Foothown, and they would have a decent selection for a small store.

It's not like they just threw stuff up on the wall just because everybody else had it. Yeah, it's such a big market. There were thousands of video stores by the late, by the, by the, by the, by the, by the, by the, mid-90s, just saturating everywhere. Yeah, even some Walmarts had video rental sections. Yeah, I wouldn't surprise me. I think those have gone away. Yeah, I would imagine. But I mean, yeah, you'd go to like a super Walmart in the 90s and there would be a big kind of like standalone video store, like rental store up at the front, separate from the video section in the back of the store. Yeah, totally.

But, you want to talk about what killed them? Yes, what killed them. Was it? It was you. It was you. We got out with us. We got out. We took them with us. I know video killed the radio star, but what killed the video star? So a lot of things, like, by the time Netflix came around, video stores were already going downhill. The death of VHS really hurt video stores because even though they became more common to see at retail prices, still most movies that weren't big were still expensive. And so when DVD came out, studios were like, screw it. We're putting it out everything's rental.

Everything is retail. And less people rented movies because a rental could be five bucks. You could buy the movie for 20. And at the time, people would lean in special features. This kind of person who rented a lot would be the kind of person who wanted a commentary track and would want deleted scenes and stuff like that. This is my experience. but I think that was part of the lie the DVDs were selling you. Like, you'll want to build a library.

You'll watch these movies over and over again. There are only 20 bucks each. Here, put them everywhere. And I regret buying so many DVDs because it seemed like such a good idea at the time. And I got rid of most of my DVDs. Yeah, I never got in a half. Once I had to pay for one of those, I never gotten to happen or doing it. So I am that guy who owns thousands of, hundreds of movies.

But, like, DVD was a big, big factor, and then Netflix was, I think, also a huge factor in that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, DVD is something we didn't really talk about, but the changeover was really difficult for video stores because they had to repurchase their entire library. Yeah. Like, they owned all these VHS tapes, and all of a sudden those became, I mean, people were still renting them, I know, but. But, yeah, another big thing was that Blockbuster bought all the video stores. Mm-hmm. They bought so many of them. And then when Blockbuster went under, those other stores didn't come back, you know?

So we did for a while, but that didn't last either. Yeah, it's that weird thing about capitalism where it's just like devour, devour, devour, devour, devour, become bigger, become bigger. So everything consolidates and then all of a sudden it's too big and too unwieldy and it can't survive and then it all goes away. Yeah. It's very fun to revisit shows from the 90s and movies from the 90s in which there's many a joke made at the expensive Blockbuster being the biggest corporation ever. and there were Blockbuster Awards, whatever those were. What were those? I don't know.

Did fans vote on those? I have no. I think you voted at Blockbuster Video. The thing about Blockbuster was, in my experience, no one liked them ever. It was just, it was like Walmart. Or Best Buy, it was your choice. So you went there. And you had no other options, really, you know?

It was a big bummer. Yeah, I mean, in the mid to late. 90s, I did most of my video rentals from a locally owned place. I was living in Abilene, Texas at the time. It was just this little place called Game Boys. It was a great name. It is. It was just locally run. It was like a dude and his wife. And they were probably, you know, like in their 30s. And they just had a little shop where you could rent video games. And they also sold some. And I tried to like give them all the business I could. I didn't rent a ton of games. But when I rented, I would go there. And they would sell used games, so I bought stuff like persona there. And I would try to do special orders through them and, you know, like say, hey, I want to buy this game that's coming up. Can I pre-order through you? And that turned out not to be very good because they were a smaller store. So they weren't getting stuff, you know, day and date of release.

It was kind of like when it comes in. So I tried that. It was like, oh, but I really want to play this game now. So it was tough. But I did my best. But eventually they, I think they like. switched over to DVD rentals, more or less, and then folded. I think one of the major benefits of the smaller stores we didn't talk about is that you would get employees with expertise because it was a different world in which, oh, I'll just work this retail job and make a living.

Oh, I like movies. I'll work at a video store. And you'd get people who knew what they were doing and knew what they were talking about. I could recommend you things. Those people don't last long at a big corporate-owned place because their passion is like, ends up being their enemy. me like, no, no, no, don't recommend things you like. Recommend the things you have to sell. And they are just, they're like, well, I don't care about this anymore.

I can sell anything. I don't want to sell out my principles because I like movies. Yeah, we had that at our store, you know, and it was, looking back, it's kind of funny as the 14-year-old kid working there recommending R-rated thrillers and horror movies to, you know, adult was weird. But yeah. But you were tall enough to pull it off. Yeah, I mean, no.

Oh, he's got to be at least 20. Yeah. Just a very fresh face, 20. I remember having a good relationship as a teenager with people at one of my local stores just like, I like this classic movie, what should I watch? And they tell me and I'd end up usually liking it. Yeah, and I think that is one thing that did help video stores stay a little bit longer. And I think one thing people don't realize it's gone about a video star, like one thing you can't get on Netflix.

There's a lot of big differences with games and movies, like renting, the renting experience. Like, you would go to a video store and you wouldn't know what you'd be. want and you'd browse and that's how you'd find something and you can do it on netflix but it's really not the same yeah yeah you're scrolling linearly as opposed to taking it a whole wall of it yeah like oh something just caught my eye what is that i mean yeah i mean i like streaming but i feel like even with netflix DVDs once you receive something in the mail you feel like oh i have an obligation to experience this otherwise i'm wasting money but with uh 400 movies to stream and nine million animas to stream it's just like well nothing will happen if i don't watch these

and I will never see that money unless I'm looking at my bank account and scrutinizing it, so who cares? Yeah, I remember when I moved to Pittsburgh in like two, in early two, in 2004, there were still quite a few videos stores in my neighborhood. We had four in like two streets. And Netflix was coming around the same time. And I didn't get Netflix because I wanted recommendations. I wanted people to help me. I wanted to browse. Four became three.

They became two. There was one left. I was the only customer. I think, you know, that kind of viewpoint became a minority very quick. But me, it bums me out because it's not the same thing. Yeah, I mean, it's just an experience that's gone away in all forms of media, except I guess, bookstores. There's still a lot of indie bookstores around. And they still, you know, you go and the staff knows what they're talking about and they'll put out those little cards that are like, the staff recommends and just like hand drawn and written, you know.

It gives a little paragraph of explanation, but otherwise it's pretty much gone. Like, I don't know, I recently subscribed to Marvel Unlimited because I feel like I should read old comics and new comics and see what's up. And it's just not the same as like browsing through this, you know, a list and alphabetical list of comics as opposed to going to a comic book store and there's just a rack of stuff and asking like the 50-year-old dude behind the counter who's been working there since he was a teenager, like, what's good? what should I read and getting a recommendation that may or may not be weird, but it's, you know, at least it's, you know, coming from a place of the heart. Yeah. Use bookstores still exist, especially where I come from in the Bay Area. There's like five good ones in Berkeley, but there are no, there are no independent video stores in Berkeley that I know of. In fact, our friend Henry worked at the last one in Berkeley that closed like three or four years ago.

And there is one, I mean, SF used to be much more bohemian. Now it's just like a tech dungeon that's being ravaged by horrible. billionaires but you still got like the the outer sunset or like the richmond or something it's all changing uh slowly it's being corrupted but um there's like maybe one notable uh video store and that's lost weekend uh that basically had to have like a fundraiser to stay open yeah and i believe the the new alamo draft house uh i think it inherited uh they are now also a video rental store because they inherited a store that closed down as well yeah there was still a place you know Last I checked out of the Sunset District that was just like a classic video store.

Yeah. I don't know if they're still around, but they were like two or three years ago. Yeah. It's hard to say, but Lost Weekend is the big one, like the most notable one. But they, even in a town in San Francisco, they needed a fundraiser to stay open. Right. But then, you know, if you want bookstores, you've got like green apple and sick lights and there's just tons and tons of them. Yeah.

So I don't know why books have remained viable because you can also get those. Like those are the easiest thing to get a digital form. That's true. Like that was the first thing. to come out like your own personal video like book reader but i i do read a lot and i also read a lot of digital books but i will say a kindle version of a paperback will be like eight dollars but i can go to the bookstore and be like oh it's three dollars and i can either throw it away when i'm done or just give it back to them or give it to a library so yeah and a lot of you talk about getting

you know almo draft house buying it or stuff like that a lot of the video stores at a left have kind of had to change some became screening rooms some are non-profits um they've taken taking donations, stuff to stay afloat. They really tailor their selection towards older things because if you want a new movie, you can get on Amazon Prime or Netflix. You don't need to go out, you know? So they've really had, and that's, I think, a good idea because, like, if you're on Netflix and you want to watch, no old movies on Netflix now.

It sucks. Yeah. My boyfriend and I watched, in Japan, it's even worse, in Netflix, Japan, with old movies from any country. But, like, we watched Richard Pryor stir crazy because we could. It was on Netflix. I'm like, a movie from the 80s on Netflix? Wow.

Well, yeah, on Netflix, you have to go, like, through 20 categories to find classics first. It's just like, where are the classics? Yeah. But, you know, those video stores that have tailored their selection, they don't talk about video games. Like, a lot of them don't rent video games anymore. So, like, why there is still a very small amount of video stores for people who want to rent movies, there are almost, I think, very few probably for video games now. And if you want to rent video games, what's your options?

Gamefly. They still exist? They do, yeah. Okay, good for them. They supported Retronauts last year. I was a Gameflyer for like six years and it's not like going to a video store, but it was also very cheap. Yeah, yeah.

So, like, I think the renting video games definitely is died more than even movies. Yeah. It's like renting movies is like something that 5% of the popular. can do renting video games is like 1% for some reason yeah it's a bummer except and but in japan video stores just like tower records video stores are still kicking it here yeah i just went to we just went to a four uh story tire records and i bought a forty dollar cd yeah but there are two discs in there yeah but uh sutaya is the i sutaya it's hard for me to say yeah suetia is the big chain here and i hear people tell me they're not doing so good

but they're everywhere and they're always busy so yeah it's not like that tower records was empty there are people oh man yeah all over that place i think it's the collect the collector culture here for for retail for buying things i think there's a collector culture here for video rental i have no idea why it's still so popular here for new movies because the internet is better here um it Netflix is newer here it took a long time and the big one here is hulu Hulu's the big streaming service. Hulu is, it's like, it's like Japan doesn't use eBay, they use Yahoo Oxens.

Japan doesn't use Netflix as much, they use Hulu. They don't have Twitter, they have Lime. Yeah, that came first. So I don't know who is renting stuff in Japan. It's, they're doing it. They don't want them. So let's, let's wrap up

by, maybe favorite rental experience. Were there any games, great games you discovered? through rental, like, things that changed your life? Hmm. Well, I think the benefit of me as a renter was, I don't think anyone had the same taste as me or was reading every video game magazine. So it was just like, oh, this really huge RPGs coming out. I wonder if I have a copy.

Oh, they do. And no one would ever rent it. So I played through Krono Trigger through rental instead of paying $80 for it because I was reading all the reviews like, oh, my God, they had, they better have a copy. And they always did. And I could rerend it whenever I wanted to because no one cared. So I grew up with a bunch of tasteless cowards who did not like JRP's. So, man, yeah, I just had a lot of good experiences in that way.

As someone who didn't have to pay late fees, I would imagine the video store, the Sison Sounds, that's our company, our video store, closest to my house, was a bad place to win video games. Because if you wanted to rent Final Fantasy 3 or Kono Trigger or anything that took a long time, I usually had it. I was a spoiled little kid I guess But I remember the late We have on the customer profile on the computer There was like days late of a title And my copy of Final Fantasy 3 The store's copy became my copy

Because the hours rolled over to zero I had it so long They grandfathered you in Pretty much yeah That when I was playing RPGs more Yeah Yeah video rentals I mean they're pretty much

The Like the foundation of this podcast for me in a lot of ways. So many of the experiences that I've talked about, the games that I've talked about that I love, I discovered them through Rindles, and, you know, whether it was Secret of Mana, which kind of pulled me back into

video games at a time that I thought, well, I've outgrown these, I don't need to play video games anymore. Like, I play that entirely through Rental. I finished it over a Christmas break. You know, I mentioned Battle of Olympus earlier. There were lots of games like that, Strider, whatever, you know, that I would maybe see something similar to it

the arcades, but I, you know, I couldn't necessarily afford to own it, but I could definitely rent it. And so, yeah, that's where a lot of my video game memories come from. Yeah, I, go ahead. I would say, like, from the NES era to the PlayStation 1 era, I probably experienced 75% of those libraries through rentals exclusively. And also, it would make me take a lot of chances. I don't normally, I don't normally like this type of game.

I don't, this cover art is weird. I don't know what it is, but I'll take a chance for a weekend that I would. wouldn't take a chance spending $60 on or $50 on. So it did open up my mind to a lot of different kinds of games, some of them I like. So I feel like without that, I would have just very limited experience. Yeah, I think one thing about video stores dying off and this whole thing that kind of makes me sad is that, like, from a nostalgia standpoint, like, video games were

very, video stores were a really important part, I think, for any one of our generation and playing video games. But, and so, but we all have shared nostalgia for video games and other stuff from our childhood. Video stores were local, were localized, they were local. And so it's like, unless you still are friends with, who you are friends with in your hometown, that's, you know, your memories, you can't, there's no one to share it with. Like, when I was getting ready for this episode, I was looking on YouTube trying to find

old video store commercials, just to see, just to see what was out there. There's not a lot of old videos commercials on YouTube and I was really surprised There's a ton of blockbuster Yeah, that's funny You mention that whenever I go home Which is not that often to my old hometown I will drive by sadly and look at like

That used to be the place I rented videos And now it's a gym? What? They sell cell phones? That's not good. Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of big stores just didn't have advertising

because it didn't need to. So like you can't even get that little piece of a firmer Again, because it never even existed in the first place. Like, we never had advertising. Didn't need it. So, yeah. I want to mention one thing before we go, which I think this podcast would be remiss without mentioning, is the movie Clerks, which was like a snapshot in time in which nothing could be more important to your average Joe than the rental store. Oh, man.

And did the Kevin Smith buy RST video just to keep it open or something? I forget what happened there. I don't know what happened for RST. I know Quickstop still kicking it. Yeah. But they were like next to each other. Clerks. And I know Kimmer Smith's kind of a joke.

And he was a video store clerk like Quentin Tarantino, right? Yeah, he worked at both, you know, because they won't by the same company. And I know Kevin Smith's output is a little more uneven these days. And people like, I hit two people retconning his legacy, but that's complete bullshit. Clerks was one of the most important movies in filmmaking and for anybody. It changed filmmaking like Paul Fixum did. That style of filmmaking, low budget, stuff like that. But also, if you worked in a video store, that was a documentary.

Yeah. I have lost count other people who have asked me a variation of, do you have that one movie with that guy? Right. My favorite was, I'm looking for a horror movie about zombies that has an R and a title. I was like, is it an animator? No? Returned living dead?

No? You know, man. I can't help you. But like, yeah. When Clerks came out, I was 14, 15. I watched it with my parents. It was awkward. Great.

I learned bad words. but like it was like the Bible for us like it was like never seeing anything like that and it completely understood the culture the attitudes the kind of humor plus nihilism of working in retail you know but yeah no movie had the perspective

no movie had perspective and I rewatched it with my boyfriend last year and it's still a damn good movie but I will say Quentin Tarantino must have been the most annoying video store clerk in the universe yeah we had people like him It's like, oh, man, you're just so intense.

I just want to relax tonight. Yeah, we were more like the Kevin Smith variety of like, we weren't Randall, but we were just like, you go. Yeah, that's a good movie. I used to get that. Okay. I'm going to go take a nap. There was also the website, Acts of Gord. Do you remember that?

Yeah, yeah. I don't know that. I'm very heavily embellished and sort of self-puffed website about a guy who worked in a video game shop. That's right. It was basically like. You know, a guy talking about how awesome he was for being rude to his customers. But some of the things in there you read and you were like, yes, I have seen those people. Like, I think there was a lot of like wish fulfillment.

Like I wish I could have told these people off. Some of those were just like, well, that never happened. Yeah. Like this is the conversation you had in your head after they left. But it was still like, yeah, like. Mike inflated with our former retronaut Scott Sharkey in his own stories. Did he have a website with those too? No, he did.

He just worked in a video. store but he was uh i'm willing to believe pretty much everything sharky says he's he's uh so like over it and i think he's been over it since he was a baby that's true that like he doesn't need to embellish he's just like yeah here's some dumb shit i saw it was so stupid i believe those stories yeah yeah it's you know we didn't have a ton of like incredibly disturbing stories horror night customers from hell i'm but there was one person who didn't want a late fee and they threw a VHS tape at someone's head. Oh.

Which, that could mess you up. That's a salt. Yeah, but other than that and, like, you know, stories about break-ins, you know, you'd be amazed how, especially in the 80s, the links people will go through to steal videos. We'd somebody one time just jumped through our front window. We had to put bars on the window, yeah. Wow. But, like, our customers, we, I can't remember any particularly horrific ones that I want

to share in a public form. All right, so to wrap, this has been Retronuts talking about video stores, somewhat video game-related. Part of the overall culture that I think video games were a part of. Sometimes you get into media and it's just hard to divide things out. So, James, you want to tell us where we can find you on the internet? You can find me on Twitter at Lost Turntable and also my blog, lost turntable.com. Hi, it's Bob. Hi, it's me.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I also do other podcasts outside of this one. You might have heard of them. That's Talking Simpsons, our chronological exploration of the Simpsons. And also the podcast, What a Cartoon. That's a different episode of a different cartoon every week. We go into it, the history with sort of like a let's play for a cartoon, if that makes sense. And we also have a Patreon.

Go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. There's tons and tons of bonus content there. You can get if you sign up a series like Talking Critic and Talking Futurama, which Jeremy and Jerry has been on two episodes of Jerry's Your Evil Twin, by the way. I've got to tell you about that. Dang it. And lots of things like interviews with Simpsons writers and directors like the great David Silverman and showrunners and just so much stuff is going on there. Both retronauts and that are sort of my full-time job.

So just give to everybody that's involved in this, I say. You're generous. You're a nice person, I swear. Sure. And finally, I'm Jeremy Parrish, suffering from, I think, allergies to Japan's love of cigarette smoke. I can't deal with that stuff anymore. So I apologize for sounding all stuffed up, but hey, it's been a fun conversation anyway. You can find me on the internet at retronauts.com on Twitter as GameSpite.

And Retronauts itself, of course, is also at Retronauts.com and on the iTunes store and or iTunes, whatever the hell it is, the internet. You'll find us. We're out there. And of course, we're supported through Patreon, patreon.com slash retronauts. Your support keeps us going. And in return, we give you other stuff. So check it out. It's cool. We're great. We love you. You love us. Let's hug it out. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.