You can only bring back one. Which do you choose?
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I mean... Your last sentence is already becoming more and more true every day, and has been for years. Microsoft was trying to eliminate the used game market back with the Xbox One. In the US at least there has been a sever decline in videogame stores. Gamestop used to be just one of a handful like Babbage's and EB Games. Other stores on this initial post like Toys-R-Us also used to carry physical videogames too (I think Circuit City may have too?).
Plus I always felt that videogames are just consumed too differently from movies. Movies are something easy to consume in a night or a weekend, especially because the rental versions were usually just the movie with none of the special features. I rented videogames a few times as a kid, and I always felt so much pressure to try to play as much of the game on the time I had it as possible. It ended up a stressful and unpleasant experience. Plus you had some videogame developers who adjusted difficulty specifically for rental markets, like Lion King and Battletoads, which I would argue was detrimental to those games.
There's a reason TV show rentals never really caught on like movies either- it just takes too long to consume comfortably. The Netflix mail model made a bit more sense for shows at least, but couldn't quite bridge the gal for videogames. GameFly tried it and I suppose technically still exists, but I haven't heard anyone talk about it in years. RedBox tried and had a nice moment, but ultimately got swallowed by streaming.
Plus DLC and updates are becoming more common, so it would be annoying to have to go and re-rent a game, purchase the DLC, try to speed through it in a weekend, then return the rented game but still be out whatever you paid for the DLC with no way to play it.
Rentals were pretty good for being a low-risk way to try a game out. You could spend $1-$5 usually for a game that might cost $40-$50 to buy new, and occasionally publishers would have promotions where a rental would come with a coupon to offset the rental price if you want to buy the game. Nowadays that has been replaced by free downloadable demos. Which aren't perfect, but I think are better than the old rental system.
Demos have been dying out faster than physical media for years too
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Greater Vancouver area has gone from like 6 toys r us to 1, don't think they're doing too fine
Right, I forgot the Orleans one closed this winter. Ot actually seemed to be well stocked, too. 3 to go in the area, I guess.
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None of these ever existed in my country, except for Toys "R" Us, which still exists.
Sure? Thought they are now called Smyth's or something.
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Tower Records and/or Borders Books & Music.
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I was like, "Friendly's is dead?" for a terrifying second before I read this 🥹
Actually I was like 5 the last time I ate there so it's really not that special to me but happy they're not dead yet. Started my love for gummy bears in ice cream.
They're still about as good as you remember. I.e. my five year old thinks it's the best thing ever.
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Fry’s had been a living corpse for a decade. You’d have to go as far back as Circuit City to actually get the Fry’s you remember.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Even the zombie version of Fry's was better than most of the alternatives (*cough* Best Buy *cough*).
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Demos have been dying out faster than physical media for years too
That does not match my own experience.
Back in my day, I received a couple of demo disks packed in with my PS1, and I got a couple more through other means like magazines and the famous Pizza Hut promotion. Some games would include demos for other games too: Spyro and Crash Bandicoot used to do that a lot. Now that I think if it I don't remember ever seeing any cartridge-based demos at all for any Nintendo or Sega systems, even the later ones like GBA and N64. There were kiosks in public places, but I never saw anything intended for a consumer to have- carts were just too expensive.
By the PS2 era demos had mostly dried up. I have a God of War demo that came with a magazine and that's about it. I could only speculate as to why, but I suspect increasing game sizes and DVD's being more expensive than CD's may have been a factor?
I'll admit I stopped paying attention to demo's for a while, so maybe I missed a peak at some point from like 2010-2020. But nowadays Steam, the Switch, and the PS5 all have a category or filter option to look through demos. There's tons of indie games trying to get attention, and of course tons of shovelware too. But most of Nintendo's published games have demos on Switch. Scrolling through the PlayStation store I see EA sports games, Persona 3, Power wash Simulator, Ys, Diablo 4, FF VII Rebirth, Tekken 8, Crow Country., Chants of Senaar, Sea of Stars, Ghost Trick (I didn't even know that was on the PS5 lol), Like a Dragon, Resident Evil 4... So Square, Capcom, Sega, EA, Activision-Blizzard, tons of indies, and more. Sony is the only publisher whose absence I noticed, unless you count VR stuff. The number of demos available today is overwhelming, if you look for them.
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wouldn't they all die again though? i'd bring back hh gregg for the song
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Toys R Us didn't die. It was murdered by venture capital leeches.
Similar with Radio Shack, though I don't know the details of why they went from basically the only electronic parts shop to a giant mall kiosk.
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Sure? Thought they are now called Smyth's or something.
Not here; They're still called Toys "R" Us.
And from looking at the Wikipedia for Smyths it seems that they bought the Toys "R" Us stores in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Not really the same thing as here (Portugal, btw), I think, since they kept the branding, but IDK, I'm not an IP lawyer...
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An obligatory "Fuck Blockbuster:" They sucked compared to the local rental shops.
This is probably true, but I remember Blockbuster was good at renting out trash movies. While Netflix does this also, some of them no streaming service wants to or can pick up today. Like the old Mario movie or the weird Red Riding Hood movie with Henry Cavill.
That being said, I still wouldn't bring it back. -
Toys R Us. No contest.
I thought they were already opening some stores.
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What is a Friendly's?
That is the one I miss. It was an ice cream shop/ restaurant.
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RadioShack, with the drawers of capacitors and resistors.
I want DYI kits for everything!
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That is the one I miss. It was an ice cream shop/ restaurant.
Oh, ok. thank you for the info.
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The only of them that we had in Germany: Toys'r'us.
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Aren't some of those still open?
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RadioShack, with the drawers of capacitors and resistors.
Yes the old radio shack not the new one which was just a 3rd party cell phone carrier.
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Radio Shack. And not the recent version. The OLD version with breadboards and soldering irons and electronics kits.
Yes please!
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Aren't some of those still open?
Last I checked there's a Radio Shack in Los Alamos. Uncanny vibes, but it's there
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RadioShack, with the drawers of capacitors and resistors.
The drawers are the best everywhere. RadioShack? Component drawers. Home Depot? Fastener drawers. On and on.
