What are some of your memories renting games as a kid?

[Iron Lizard]

We had a place called Power Play. They rented basically everything before the Genesis was popular. It was very neat little shop. They had imported a Super Famicom before the Snes came out which was amazing at the time. Of course it folded. Later we would walk like three miles to Blockbuster. Nice memories but not as neat as Power Play. We rented, Sega Cd, Saturn and 32X. Honestly it was aside from Lunar every game we rented turned out to be garbage. They also were one of the places to get Anime back in the 90's.

[NeoZeedeater]

I most remember renting the Sega CD over and over along with Snatcher. I just loved that game...I remember being 14 at the time and thinking how hold I'd be when the game displayed the year (I think it was 2040), while simultaneously thinking how the world might be awesome and that it will suck to be old in it. I rented that game and System a couple times to play with "the enforcer" - the gun from the Lethal Enforcers games. When I finally purchased that system from a used game shop a year later, I also purchased Snatcher. My Sega CD (model 2) still works today with my little maintenance of cap replacements, rail greasing, and rechargeable battery mods.

Playing through Snatcher in one 7 hour sitting via a rental is one of my favourite gaming memories. I guess I was technically an adult at 19 but I felt like a kid that day.

I was a Atari 2600 kid living in a small town. We had one video store that rented games, but my parents never let us rent them.

I don't recall seeing any game rentals around me before around 1987. I think the first game I rented was Trojan.

I was happy to have renting access to tons of NES and SMS games. I ended up buying the copy of Phantasy Star I used to rent for $12 which was an amazing deal at the time.

One thing that sticks out for me is the owner of a local rental place said he invented the Permastruct rental packaging which was used across North America. When I looked it up on the internet years later, the patent was filed close to where I lived so he was probably telling the truth.
permastruct_large.jpg

I always thought those boxes were ugly, though.

[Leynos]

I remember renting Shadowgate & Tombs & Treasures on NES. My first taste of an RPG. I had no idea what I was doing but it was still awesome with the gothic castle setting and seeing monsters and skeletons. I was a huge horror nerd and really liked a good gothic horror setting. Because of those games I really wanted more games with a gothic horror setting which I still love to this day.