Yeah the more I was thinking about it the more I miss it my whole reason for making the thread.
I do too, that really is a part of the gaming experience younger gamers truly will never get to experience and I wish they could. It's just one if those you had to be growing up at the time things to understand,
I've written a few times about the locally owned video store I used to go to. It lasted from sometime in '88 until '99. I got to know the owner of that store very well. He fought against Hollywood and Blockbuster as long as he possibly could. He finally sold it to a local chain-also now dead-the year before it ultimately closed for good.
This store's popularity really took off when a lot of families started renting both movies and games from his store. The game collection in the beginning was NES only and wasn't very large. Then, in '89, that NES collection damn exploded in size! A lot of people gave him their business instead of Blockbuster or Hollywood because he treated everyone well and did right by them. One general memory that the younger gamers will never understand or experience is the whole having your Mom stop by the store on her way home from work to see if the newest big game came back in thing and hoping it did. And the whole taking a peek on top of the TV to see if she was able to get it. Those days are gone for good
It's been 14 years since the store closed, but here's a rundown of the treatment I got from this video store owner:
-He'd call every Wednesday to tell me what games had come in and I usually got first pick. Normally new games were put out on Fridays for the public, but I got them on Wednesdays.
-He had GREAT relationships with a lot of the publishers. Including some that are unfortunately no longer around
They went above and beyond to make sure he got all the new games immediately at release. Gremlins 2 for the NES went through a few delays before it finally did release. Each time, Sunsoft personally apologized to him for the delay and promised he'd be one of the first stores in the country to get the game when it finally came out. They kept their word. I was among the first in the US to get to play it. You DO NOT see that kind of great PR anymore!
-1 year before the US release, I got my first peek at 16 bit Nintendo and Super Mario World when I saw the Super Famicom hooked up to the TV in his office. This was before NOA decided we'd get it for sure.
-Sometime in '96 he finally had to sell his ENTIRE NES and Super NES collections, damn near all ~700 games for both systems. He gave me first crack at both collections. The asking price was really steep and that was with a special discount for me even. I wish I'd had a job at the time, I would have taken both collections. I'm still banging my head against the desk even now because I could have had pretty much complete collections. I took what I could, much of it for free.
-a few Christmases he special ordered me games he didn't have on the shelf. Got Mario Paint and Super Scope 6 the year they came out-which were really hard to get around me.
-had several big unreleased SNES games on order-Mario Vs Wario, Dragon Quest 6, and Mystical Ninja 2 among others. Just like Sunsoft, Nintendo, Enix and Konami all kept him constantly updated on the status of those games. He did good by the publishers, and they did good by him in return.
The building the store was in lies empty now. It's so sad I can't even look inside anymore. Sadly, I don't know if the owner is still alive. If he is by chance reading this-I want to thank him for all the years he gave me and everyone else that gave him our business, and for fighting the good fight as long as he did. He really did not want to give up. Also thank you to your kindness to me and my family. We will never forget it.
