Renting Computer Games

I loved doing this every weekend when I was younger. Be it in Blockbuster, Boston video, the library or the sweet shop, I'd more or less be spending all of my pocket money renting out the latest Mega Drive game, before eventually moving on to the N64 and PlayStation. It was always exciting to do so! I remember the time Blockbuster finally got Sonic 3 in - that was a great weekend spent in front of the TV. I've got even fonder memories of renting WCW/NWO Revenge four weekends in a row before eventually deciding that it was worth the fifty quid I eventually paid for it. Bad memories of hating a game and taking it back an hour after I'd rented it, saying it was broken. That game was Pilotwings 64.

The magic of youth!

Renting videogames? Not a thing that I've ever done to be honest. When I got back into gaming when the Playstation launched, I was working so I just bought my games. Don't think it even crossed my mid that you could rent them.

I've only ever rented Sonic Heroes, it caused a rift between me and my friend due to me wanting to play it whilst I had the chance whilst he wanted to watch something awful about tractors XD I ended up buying the game when i returned it anyway. I never rented agsin.

My two most rented games were the original Super Smash Bros for the N64 and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? for the PS1. I did rent games a few times, the only games I was glad I did rent rather than paying full price for were Simpsons Wrestling (PS1) and Wrestlemania 2000 (N64), both of which never got played much even during the time I had already paid for xD

My biggest renting period was just before University when I joined Swapgame.

I have a full GameCube memory card that just has the save files from the games I rented.

Oh, the times we had! Our local video shop was at the end of our (short!) street, so we used to pick various things up. Oddly, the only one I remember vividly was the Chester Cheetah SNES game. It was close to dire.

That video shop diversified into being a tanning salon, a paper shop, an Internet café and now sells carpets.

Tokyo_Sonata wrote:

My two most rented games were the original Super Smash Bros for the N64 and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? for the PS1. I did rent games a few times, the only games I was glad I did rent rather than paying full price for were Simpsons Wrestling (PS1) and Wrestlemania 2000 (N64), both of which never got played much even during the time I had already paid for xD

ahh Wrestlemania 2000 the predecessor to the amazing No Mercy.



*****


WM2000 was a game I rented too (from Global video) among other N64 games like Banjo - Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing (had a few from the snes and mega drive days too) me and my brothers did rack up a pretty high bill with them (which wasn't ever paid, natch) and may be a small reason why they went bust.

It was a great way to test the waters with games you weren't sure about though, and every once in a while you'd get a game you had to try and finish before the return date & if you didn't you'd rent it again and again.

Good times.

I went into a game rental store ONCE. And then bought the game there anyway. And that's why Blockbuster is knackered. I am sorry...

We weren't allowed to rent things as kids. My folks claimed that rental VHS tapes knackered the video player's tape heads up because they were in rubbish condition, and sadly this logic extended to videogame cartridges.

By the time I was old enough to do my own thing, I was well used to buying my games.

It's a real shame that people so comprehensively rejected OnLive- people keep complaining about a digital distribution-centric future because they won't be able to rent games, and here was a fully-featured and accessible videogame equivalent of Netflix.

@The_Jaster: Funnily enough I never did get to play No Mercy (much to my regret at the time), and if I recall correctly when I rented Wrestlemania 2000 I actually wanted No Mercy but it was already rented out to someone else haha

i used to rent all the time, i got a ps1 when it came out. i couldnt afford games or even had any games for it, so used to walk to local video shop and rent mega drive and ps1 tiltes, in till people did copy games on the ps1

copying is bad people, so dont do it

Kezz182 wrote:

Used to rent PS2 games quite often back in the day. Now I much prefer buying games to add to my collection.

This. I seem to get horribly attached to any game I play and like, so having to part with it isn't an option for me.

Back in the day (SNES era) I used to visit a game shop in Featherstone every week, take a couple of my games I'd 'done with' and swap them for a few quid with other games. That stopped when the N64 came out, and I just switched to 'collect' mode.

Never actually rented games.

Stu_the_great wrote:

We weren't allowed to rent things as kids. My folks claimed that rental VHS tapes knackered the video player's tape heads up because they were in rubbish condition, and sadly this logic extended to videogame cartridges.

By the time I was old enough to do my own thing, I was well used to buying my games.

That's why we were never allowed to rent VHS tapes either. I've never rented a game before. I'm not proud to admit it, but if I bought a game and hated it, I would take it back saying it wouldn't work. Surprisingly, this worked up until the Gamecube era in HMV.

Solve My Maze wrote:

Stu_the_great wrote:

We weren't allowed to rent things as kids. My folks claimed that rental VHS tapes knackered the video player's tape heads up because they were in rubbish condition, and sadly this logic extended to videogame cartridges.

By the time I was old enough to do my own thing, I was well used to buying my games.

That's why we were never allowed to rent VHS tapes either. I've never rented a game before. I'm not proud to admit it, but if I bought a game and hated it, I would take it back saying it wouldn't work. Surprisingly, this worked up until the Gamecube era in HMV.

And that's why they don't ahve any money. Nice one, SMM. All those redundancies are your fault.

beemoh wrote:

Solve My Maze wrote:

Stu_the_great wrote:

We weren't allowed to rent things as kids. My folks claimed that rental VHS tapes knackered the video player's tape heads up because they were in rubbish condition, and sadly this logic extended to videogame cartridges.

By the time I was old enough to do my own thing, I was well used to buying my games.

That's why we were never allowed to rent VHS tapes either. I've never rented a game before. I'm not proud to admit it, but if I bought a game and hated it, I would take it back saying it wouldn't work. Surprisingly, this worked up until the Gamecube era in HMV.

And that's why they don't ahve any money. Nice one, SMM. All those redundancies are your fault.

To be fair, I was young the last time I did that. I'm not even sure my voice had broken by that point which means I was legally still a boy when it happened. Still, it probably didn't help...

I'm also guilty of returning games I hated!

Though the only incident I can recall is returning Advance Wars after cheekily erasing the data on the cart. Man, I loathed that game; back to ASDA it went.

Stu_the_great wrote:

I'm also guilty of returning games I hated!

Though the only incident I can recall is returning Advance Wars after cheekily erasing the data on the cart. Man, I loathed that game; back to ASDA it went.

I'm not sure what's wronger: returning the game that way, or not liking Advance Wars.

I'm glad of it for one thing: it taught me that turn-based strategy games are none of my business.

Stu_the_great wrote:

I'm glad of it for one thing: it taught me that turn-based strategy games are none of my business.

There were several such games in my Backloggery before I realised I didn't like them. Real-time strategies, too. Strategy, you say? I just want to hit things with swords with my sword.

I never rented games, but mostly because there was nowhere in town that did rent them. As a nipper I did spend a lot of time buying second-hand games and almost always trading them back in after a week. Which is basically rental.

I rented quite a few Gamecube games. Starfox Adventures and Super Monkey Ball for a start. I think I tried Wave Race: Blue Storm as well, and maybe some Mario Parties. But for some reason it was only ever Gamecube games that I rented and I haven't ever done it since.

Edit: Actually, no, that's not strictly true, I had LoveFilm for a while and I rented Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies, but I kept not playing it because there was no pressure for me to, which kind of defeated the point of having LoveFilm...