I remember renting NES games from a Mom & Pop store. They found a company that published these adhesive cards that would be applied to the plastic rental case for said game. These cards provided you with the extreme basics of the game (e.g., what each button does, etc.) They only provided the actual manual when they were ready to sell the game.
I believe you’re talking about the “permastruct” instructions affixed to the rental case. The ones with the super hero with the line “Here’s your instructions”
I love the logic from those game companies. If our game is too easy it can be beaten in one rental period, but if we make it obnoxiously difficult and annoying, people will buy them! Instead of renting them, realizing they suck, and not playing them anymore! (And you can't rent something more than once!)
I imagine the practice is still a thing. Just more rare to find now. Some libraries also let people check out games for a week or two. I don't know if all libraries does the same. But at least some libraries do.
Or if the game was too difficult and not fun. Which is what Nintendo often did to try and make people buy the game instead of rent. Which I never did, I wonder how many other people did the same.
I used to rent SNES and N64 games from a local video store in the mid to late 1990s, sometimes I got the original full-color manual with a game, sometimes a black and white photocopied manual, and other times no manual at all.
The reason why rentals should be legal and something we fight for is the fact that “culture shouldn’t be kept behind a paywall” renting allowed people who couldn’t afford to perhaps buy the games and movies that allow a poorer person to experience all the different aspects of culture. I think that’s a good thing
It's also just ridiculous corporate greed. This mentslity thst they are losing money by rentals is insane. If I play a game at a friend's or relative's house, that's not a lost sale. Renting a game for a week/weekend isn't a lost sale either.
@@Bloodstar-o7 You are insane. Playing a game at a friends house instead of buying it for yourself is absolutely a lost sale. So is renting. Everyone who up voted you should be ashamed of their non-thinking devices in their heads.
It’s Nintendo’s right to petition for the law to be changed, but their hysterical overreactions (and quotes) are embarrassing. They knew what the law was when they entered the market. I’m not terribly sympathetic to their position. Sales to blockbuster are still sales, and their eventual partnering with Blockbuster was a admission they were just shooting themselves in the foot.
I didn't understand it as much as a young person, but my friend knew this back in the day, as to why they had to have blockbuster made manuals. Turns out, Nintendo was always a douchebag, and nothing has changed, except being sucessful at killing the switch emulator scene. Won't give nintendo another cent. Esp when their current system and controllers are rather crap.
Renting movies and games was such a big part of my childhood, and the childhoods of people born in the 80s and 90s. I discovered some of favourite games via rental. Games have always been expensive, even more back in the day when you take inflation into account, so being able to try a game for a few days for $5 or so was great. I first played MGS as a rental as well as games as late as Dragon Age Origins. I feel the "try before you buy" mentality has really died off since the death of video stores. While I always appreciate it when developers offer demos, I feel like there is no true modern replacement for rentals.
"I expect, therefore, to be compensated every time the thing sells." Sure thing, just that renting is not selling, so them getting jack shit is totally fine by their own wording.
I think you miss the nostalgic of it more. Times are different now and I could care less for them. There are gaming magazines but I don't buy them anymore as well. I still play lots of games but we've grown up now and having those memories separate us from a whole different generation.
@AndSaveAsManyAsYouCan There are ups and downs to both. Having physical means someone can steal or your house catches on fire and it's gone for good. I've had my Steam games for years and can re-download them as much as I want.
wow even Nintendo was petty back then suing blockbuster for renting their games when that didn't work they tried to sue them for the game manuals just like how they altered a patent so they can sue Pocketpair
I was renting games in the mid 90's to early 2000's. It was always a nice surprise when the manual was included with the game. This was very informative!
Also, the last Blockbuster is located in Bend, OR. There is a documentary titled The Last Blockbuster. They thrive more on selling trinkets and other collectibles, but they still rent movies.
Yeh, GameStop stores are the same way. Literally half the store is toys, apparel, merchandise, even other things like phones and tablets and videogame-adjacent technology. It's kinda weird to see.
When you said “Final Fight Guy” rather dismissively, I’m not sure you knew what that was. It’s not a random generic game name. It’s the edition of Final Fight (a great game) that has Guy instead of Cody as the second playable character. It’s still not ideal that the SNES could only accommodate two characters, as the arcade version let you play as Haggar, Cody, or Guy, but there you are.
Yes. I remember. You would rent a game, and PRAY is was a solid one. You would find out if a game was boom or bust from friends because there was no internet with game reviews. And it was just a one night rental.
Nintendo might complain but they benefitted greatly from the rental of games. I bought a lot of games after renting them back then, and wouldn’t have bought half of them if I didn’t know it was fun from renting it.
I remember renting DOS games from West Coast Video. Now that was money loser for those programmers because we'd take the 5 inch floppy disks home and just copy them. One rent was all you needed.
4:43 John Nintendo really acting like rental companies don't provide them any revenue. Sorry, man, they bought a legitimate copy of the game. You already got paid for it.
Not long after my parents surprised me with an NES in '87, we rented Life Force from our local mom-and-pop video store. The manual, included with the game, mysteriously vanished behind our bulky console TV. My mom tried returning the game without it, but the store refused. It took nearly a week of frantic searching to find the manual, and we ended up with hefty late fees. My parents, understandably frustrated, put a temporary ban on video game rentals. When they finally relented, my dad, in a misguided attempt to protect the manual, hid it. However, when it was time to return the game, he denied taking it and accused me of losing it again. The store's strict policy forced us to purchase the game for a whopping $60. My mom, furious, called it my early birthday gift. Years later, while moving, we discovered the manual hidden in a high cabinet, completely out of reach for a six-year-old. To this day, my parents have never apologized for the unfair accusation.
Oh, that no manual sucked when you rented Startropics NES. Because there was a page in the manual you had to put in water to get a code to continue in the game.
im sorry but blockbuster wasnt finding copies of games, they would have been purchasing vast quantities of games to stock their stores, so developers and nintendo WERE seeing income from that alone... not to mention the age old argument, something which I did many times in the past, people would rent a game for a few days, and if they got into it they would then BUY the game - this again is direct income that might not exist because otherwise you would only buy a game if a friend had it or if you really really wanted it. I've bought so many games because of renting and then realising the games were really good when I initially assumed they wasnt. I have this problem today now with xbox and PC, I dont buy many games anymore, not even most AAAA games, because im too scared to lose my money on something that isnt good. And game issues preventing enjoyable experiences, and that aspect has actually gotten worse over the years. But you cannot rent games anymore! So they dont get any money from me and I suspect many many other people are like me in that regard and theres plenty of games they could sell but never do. companies are so dumb man its unbelievable.
Here we are, so at the peak there were 9094 stores worldwide, so say you released a game and blockbuster went ahead and auto-ordered just 20 copies for rent for each of all their stores, that's 181,880 sales instantly. Now lets say a day later or so the game gets bad reviews (it sucks, terrible game) and so you have poor sales. Blockbuster alone has just made you a ton of sales - it's their problem now.
Man, Lincoln dropping cold asf quotes about Nintendo losing money is a thousand times more hardcore than Reggie's short but infamous "taking names" speech introducing himself as president of Nintendo of America.
i remember growing up in the 80s. damn near every rental store had nes game's. were i lived blockbuster was 20 miles away. so, the nearest rental store near me was movie gallery. i did rented a few nes games from there as a kid.
Can anyone clarify the "rules" of renting VHS tapes back in that time frame. I had a friend that worked at a Mom & Pop type video store, and he said they were "required" to buy the video tapes from specific distributor(s) and they cost like $89.95 a piece (remember that was the retail price of many movies back in the day). He said it was "illegal" for them to go to Wal*Mart and buy say a Disney movie for $24.95 and rent it out. The owner of the shop would do that sometimes, but only rent them out for like 2-3 weeks before selling them to hide the evidence, and was always paranoid of getting busted.
The VHS cassette rental distributors would offer the movies before retail release at a higher price with additional conditions in their agreement. It’s likely the owner was worried about losing access to purchase from that distributor if caught purchasing additional VHS tapes from a nearby store after the retail release of a movie to VHS rather directly from the VHS cassette rental distributor. It was a civil issue related to contractual agreements and not a result of statutory law. It wasn’t “illegal” but there was a legal reason why the rental store owner could have faced issues if caught. For example during a random audit, a secret shopper could show up and count available copies of a title on the shelf. Many stores would hide extra copies behind the desk so that they wouldn’t be able to be counted in an audit. Some audits would include renting a title in order to get the security box unlocked and look for identifying marks to determine if the cassette was one specifically produced for rental or if it is one produced for retail sale. Breaking the agreement might have led to a rental store owner being sued but that was unlikely. The biggest punishment was losing access to any future releases prior to their retail release when the competition across town still has access to those titles to rent before the retail release date.
@KeithS4789 that makes sense! As it's probably pretty hard to get the movies the opening weekend it's available on VHS and that's when people are going to want to rent it. So if that makes sense they wouldn't want to lose being able to buy tapes from that distributor
Nintendo didn't really see how the future of their brand was being influenced by rentals. They would have never gone after the rental market otherwise. Many people don't realize that video games in 1980-1999 were pretty damn expensive. And some of you might be thinking, oh yeah they're expensive now. No... they're not. Video games frequently went for $50-70 USD in the 80s and 90s. That's $120-150 adjusted for 2024 rates. We frequently pay a fraction of that today. This meant many families simply couldn't buy new games whenever they were released. $70 for a game was out of their budget. Couple this with the fact that you didn't even know you would like the game before trying it. We didn't have youtube videos. All we had were biased game magazine (bias either because they were operated by publishers, or were incentivized to advertise by publishers), and advertisements on TV that didn't show much game footage. It was a chaotic market. And I would argue would have gone the way of the market as it did in 1983 without rentals. Now Nintendo and other publishers were correct. Someone could pay $1.50 to a rental shop. Play and beat a game during the period. And then would never purchase the title. Meaning they would lose $50. But think about that for a moment? $50 for a game that can be beaten in a weekend? Is it worth $50 (1985)? There were several games that I rented and rented them often enough that my parents or myself (once I had an income) simply purchased because it would be cheaper than renting as often as I was. Thus the publisher made money off of a rental. Of course that entails them making games good and long enough that warrant such. It raised the standard of what video games should be. Thus avoiding another market crash like in 1983. I'm sorry but while games like Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2, Castlevania, and others are classics. Video games would have quickly lost appeal on games that literally can be beaten by the casual gamer in 10-20 minutes. But this is why we started to see longer games like Super Mario Bros 3 and better RPG titles. By the time of the N64 and Playstation era, games were incredibly long by comparison. Thank rentals. Mario, Zelda, and Metroid wouldn't be where they are today without rentals. I rented Legend of Zelda, Adventure of Link, Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Super Mario Bros 2 and 3, ect and ended up buying all of them. And then went on to buy future titles in the franchise because I knew they would be good. I would have never done that without rental. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom wouldn't have been possible without rental in the early days. Those of you who game on PC understand an interesting concept created by Valve through Steam. Which I believe is a natural evolution of rentals in a philosophical manner. I believe its Gabe Newell of Valve that said that there is a customer for every price point. The idea is that a game that comes out for $60 will have customers who will pay that because they believe the game is worth that and they wish to play it. Then after the game is out for a few months its price drops usually to $50 or $40. Then more people buy. Then after a few years the price drops again. More people buy. Keeping the price at $60 doesn't encourage people to 'eventually' buy the title. They simply don't buy it. You're not earning $30 more on each purchase by not lowering the price. You get nothing instead. But you could get 'something'. Something > Nothing. And the whole market isn't going to wait a year or two in order to get the game at half off. Only those who simply can't afford the full price, or those who aren't sure of the quality. The latter will likely buy future products at full price if they are impressed. The system is one of merit. As any market in media should be based on. The good games by good publishers sell, the bad ones don't. The bad one's aren't entitled to being compensated simply by the idea people should pay full price to see if its bad. That is where Howard Lincoln is incredibly wrong. Of course he was incredibly wrong on many of his decisions.
Shows how long Nintendo is anti consumer. The odd thing is that music copyright is a lot looser in Japan. Going into a store and creating your own mixtape is common practice.
@@Bob_Smith19 Nintendo's public image is pretty friendly but on the business side, yeah they're ruthless and anti-consumer as hell. They also had an absolutely ridiculous (read: abusive) working relationship with game developers that forced them to purchase carts directly from Nintendo at super-inflated prices or else no official license stamp for you. Oh and you could only release a very limited number of titles per year AND none of them could be released on dates that would compete with Nintendo's own releases. Nintendo basically dug their own grave and Sony walked all over them by not requiring any of that ridiculous garbage of their developers ontop of discs being practically free to print compared to carts AND having massive storage. I'd dare say if not for them dominating the handheld market they wouldn't have made it.
I rented a WWF Wrestling game, The Undertaker could shoot demons at people. The instruction manual had a notes section and someone wrote "Demons are not of Jesus"
Ah, so that’s why they switched to just making the back of the rental game case a monospaced type-up of the most important info from the manual. I remember my rental of Metal Gear Solid had Meryl’s codec frequency on there somewhere
Think the lesson here is think how much money Nintendo lost, when it could hav sold expensive replacement color manuals as a compromise. Blockbuster charges missing manual fee ofsay 8 or 10. Then splits the fee with Nintendo? Manuals cost pennies on the dollar to produce. Also consumers should be glad they did incorporate common pc protection using manual to list codes needed to start the game.
See this is why I download Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox and PC games on my computer and don't pay them shit. Now they're the ones renting out licenses for you to be able to download the digital content at the same price as hardware material. It was bad while they made no money in the renting business but now that they're the ones racking in all this money with their digital licenses there's no complaints. Meanwhile we are all just waiting for them to shut down at any moment and run away with our money.
Nintendo probably didn't like them renting their games because there were tons of games people would never buy if they got to try it first. Like Fester's Quest or one of the crap Simpson's games. But then there were games I ran out to buy once I got to try them like Ninja Gaiden or Battletoads.
Japan comes out with a lot of awesome stuff but as far as business goes they are really draconian with a lot of things. Big businesses in Japan can really throw their weight around. I think that is what emboldens Nintendo to be so consumer unfriendly in the rest of the world. Then you have S Korea which is basically the Republic of Samsung. I don't know what it is about Asian culture that gives rise to even more capitalism than that in the US.
lol Redbox wasn't even cheaper, unless you watched immediately. Blockbuster was usually like $3 for a week. And if you were a day late you got charged 43 cents per day ($3 a week prorated). And Redbox was $1 a day. So if you kept it for a week it was twice as expensive
6:49 doh this is complex/nuanced fwiw imho for copyright stuff.. that tbh seems confusing tbh fwiw for how to interpret what should or should not be copyright/or feasible to even try to protect etc.
For us it was the Kroger Video department & (yes it was a thing)& Hollywood Video rentals but yes a many joyful days of going to the video rental stores. First sale law once something is public domain that's it big companies don't have much of a say. As for the copyright of reproducing a manual if it's lost or damaged one won't mind the details when said original is no longer available due to being out of print due to age or limited original copies are not cost effective
I am surprised Nintendo didn't partner a deal and try to collect revenue from the rentals, and give blockbuster a early access to the game, or games designed for rentals so when you buy the game more content was unlocked.
The video game rental market didn't die, it took over the sales market. Today, the vast majority of video games are rented. Or did you think you could buy games online and then own them? No. You actually rent them for a one-time fee, but you don't own them, because how else could these games disappear from your digital library overnight just because companies like Sony decide to? If you really bought the game, no one could ever take it away from you, but all you are buying is a license that allows you to use the game, the game itself is only rented to you, and the license is useless the moment you no longer have access to the game.
Geez I am so tired of every single video telling me 2 billion dollars in 1990 is such and such billion dollars today. It doesn't matter to the story!! If I need to know the inflation adjustment I can look it up, and saying 5 billion really doesn't sound more impressive than 2 billion. I don't have either one.
You see a viable grievance, I see petty A-holes.😄 Frankly if Nintendo wanted that rental money they should have opened their own game rental stores, I think that would have costed about the same as lobbying to ban game rentals.🤪 The only "right" Nintendo would have gained is the ability to rip customers off from sales of LJN and other equally crappy titles with the Nintendo seal of quality. You can leave a movie in a theater early enough to get your money back, plus I've heard of people taking terrible console games back to stores where a refunded purchase benefited no one. I'm shocked and disgusted he used the R-word in reference to a small percentage of profit lost.😒 OMG copyright law, you might as well prohibit the photocopying of a kiosk pamphlet or a phone book at that point with that kind of shenanigan. Took way too long and many wasted millions dollars for Nintendo to realize they were better off working with Blockbuster instead of against them. Funny with streaming there is some growing apathy for such services, IP address masking being pretty much mandatory to get 100% from Netflix, having certain content and or certain seasons of a show spread over many different platforms, terrible GUIs with virtually no way to give feedback to the makers, and a rise in legal licensing divisions whether certain titles even are able to stream at all in original form Egs. Cocoon(1985), Dr. Who Dalek episodes. Personally streaming is more supplemental at this point to me Ie. kind of like old TV.
Here's how it should work, every time you rent something the company gets a percentage of each price to rent the item each time it's rented out to a customer. That would fix so many of these problems.
I remember renting NES games from a Mom & Pop store. They found a company that published these adhesive cards that would be applied to the plastic rental case for said game. These cards provided you with the extreme basics of the game (e.g., what each button does, etc.) They only provided the actual manual when they were ready to sell the game.
I believe you’re talking about the “permastruct” instructions affixed to the rental case. The ones with the super hero with the line “Here’s your instructions”
I love the logic from those game companies. If our game is too easy it can be beaten in one rental period, but if we make it obnoxiously difficult and annoying, people will buy them! Instead of renting them, realizing they suck, and not playing them anymore! (And you can't rent something more than once!)
How to turn a 5 minute game into a year of frustration
The kinda awesome thing about renting games and movies back then is that you could find out if they sucked before buying them.
ALL HAIL GALOOB (game genie) and RENTAL STORES for sueing Nintendo AND WINNING!!!
I imagine the practice is still a thing. Just more rare to find now.
Some libraries also let people check out games for a week or two. I don't know if all libraries does the same. But at least some libraries do.
Or if the game was too difficult and not fun. Which is what Nintendo often did to try and make people buy the game instead of rent. Which I never did, I wonder how many other people did the same.
yes!!!
I used to rent SNES and N64 games from a local video store in the mid to late 1990s, sometimes I got the original full-color manual with a game, sometimes a black and white photocopied manual, and other times no manual at all.
The reason why rentals should be legal and something we fight for is the fact that “culture shouldn’t be kept behind a paywall” renting allowed people who couldn’t afford to perhaps buy the games and movies that allow a poorer person to experience all the different aspects of culture. I think that’s a good thing
It's also just ridiculous corporate greed. This mentslity thst they are losing money by rentals is insane. If I play a game at a friend's or relative's house, that's not a lost sale. Renting a game for a week/weekend isn't a lost sale either.
@@Bloodstar-o7 You are insane. Playing a game at a friends house instead of buying it for yourself is absolutely a lost sale. So is renting. Everyone who up voted you should be ashamed of their non-thinking devices in their heads.
I worked at blockbuster 2000-2001. 30 hours a week max the pay was under $150 but 5 weekly free movies and 3 free game rentals was the perks.
My little brother worked at a movie theater and the pay sucked there too. But he kept that job part time just for the free movies.
It’s Nintendo’s right to petition for the law to be changed, but their hysterical overreactions (and quotes) are embarrassing. They knew what the law was when they entered the market.
I’m not terribly sympathetic to their position. Sales to blockbuster are still sales, and their eventual partnering with Blockbuster was a admission they were just shooting themselves in the foot.
I didn't understand it as much as a young person, but my friend knew this back in the day, as to why they had to have blockbuster made manuals. Turns out, Nintendo was always a douchebag, and nothing has changed, except being sucessful at killing the switch emulator scene.
Won't give nintendo another cent. Esp when their current system and controllers are rather crap.
@@sprockketsHoward Lincoln should be the mascot of modern Nintendo, the absolute dirtbag.
Renting movies and games was such a big part of my childhood, and the childhoods of people born in the 80s and 90s. I discovered some of favourite games via rental. Games have always been expensive, even more back in the day when you take inflation into account, so being able to try a game for a few days for $5 or so was great. I first played MGS as a rental as well as games as late as Dragon Age Origins.
I feel the "try before you buy" mentality has really died off since the death of video stores. While I always appreciate it when developers offer demos, I feel like there is no true modern replacement for rentals.
with the ability to perfectly replicate it without loss of quality would be pointless to rent.
"I expect, therefore, to be compensated every time the thing sells." Sure thing, just that renting is not selling, so them getting jack shit is totally fine by their own wording.
I miss game manuals -- I also miss reading over them in the backseat of the car on the drive home as a kid.
You might be interested in the Evercade. Fully licensed carts with color manuals!
I think you miss the nostalgic of it more. Times are different now and I could care less for them. There are gaming magazines but I don't buy them anymore as well. I still play lots of games but we've grown up now and having those memories separate us from a whole different generation.
@@evgaming9390Having a physical copy means that the company can't cancel your "license" to own it.
@AndSaveAsManyAsYouCan There are ups and downs to both. Having physical means someone can steal or your house catches on fire and it's gone for good. I've had my Steam games for years and can re-download them as much as I want.
You can find them in PDF format online.
wow even Nintendo was petty back then suing blockbuster for renting their games when that didn't work they tried to sue them for the game manuals just like how they altered a patent so they can sue Pocketpair
So it was basically sour grapes on Nintendo's part. Can't stop the rental, so make the experience worse for the end user. Brilliant.
Prettymuch
At the end of the day, corporations often act like spoiled, bratty children. When they're told no, they throw a tantrum.
Howard Lincoln’s a scumbag and I hope he eats sour grapes for the rest of his life over this decision.
I was renting games in the mid 90's to early 2000's. It was always a nice surprise when the manual was included with the game. This was very informative!
Also, the last Blockbuster is located in Bend, OR. There is a documentary titled The Last Blockbuster. They thrive more on selling trinkets and other collectibles, but they still rent movies.
Lol I just seen a video on the last store 👍
@@THEREDHOTWRECKthat’s not true; the manager even made a PSA to rubbish those rumours.
Yeh, GameStop stores are the same way. Literally half the store is toys, apparel, merchandise, even other things like phones and tablets and videogame-adjacent technology. It's kinda weird to see.
When you said “Final Fight Guy” rather dismissively, I’m not sure you knew what that was. It’s not a random generic game name. It’s the edition of Final Fight (a great game) that has Guy instead of Cody as the second playable character. It’s still not ideal that the SNES could only accommodate two characters, as the arcade version let you play as Haggar, Cody, or Guy, but there you are.
Not only that, but that version also has reduced slowdown and fixed bugs from the original release.
Yes. I remember. You would rent a game, and PRAY is was a solid one. You would find out if a game was boom or bust from friends because there was no internet with game reviews. And it was just a one night rental.
Nintendo might complain but they benefitted greatly from the rental of games. I bought a lot of games after renting them back then, and wouldn’t have bought half of them if I didn’t know it was fun from renting it.
I remember renting DOS games from West Coast Video. Now that was money loser for those programmers because we'd take the 5 inch floppy disks home and just copy them. One rent was all you needed.
Remember that in the late 90s, CD-ROMs for the computer.
Just like vhs' 😂😂 My mom had two VCRs to copy movies for us..
4:43 John Nintendo really acting like rental companies don't provide them any revenue. Sorry, man, they bought a legitimate copy of the game. You already got paid for it.
minor correction. Nintendo is "always" the bad guy
ALL HAIL GALOOB (GAME GENIE) and RENTAL STORES for sueing Nintendo AND WINNING!!!
Not long after my parents surprised me with an NES in '87, we rented Life Force from our local mom-and-pop video store. The manual, included with the game, mysteriously vanished behind our bulky console TV. My mom tried returning the game without it, but the store refused. It took nearly a week of frantic searching to find the manual, and we ended up with hefty late fees.
My parents, understandably frustrated, put a temporary ban on video game rentals. When they finally relented, my dad, in a misguided attempt to protect the manual, hid it. However, when it was time to return the game, he denied taking it and accused me of losing it again. The store's strict policy forced us to purchase the game for a whopping $60. My mom, furious, called it my early birthday gift.
Years later, while moving, we discovered the manual hidden in a high cabinet, completely out of reach for a six-year-old. To this day, my parents have never apologized for the unfair accusation.
Well I hope you don't let them off the hook. That is some BS!
0:53 wasn't expecting to see John Stossel in a Nintendo video
Right? I said the same thing lol
Oh, that no manual sucked when you rented Startropics NES. Because there was a page in the manual you had to put in water to get a code to continue in the game.
The code wasn't part of the manual. It was a separate piece of paper.
@@danielpowers5891 but it wasn't supplied when you rented the game. And if I remember, its said in game, to get the manual
🎶 What a difference! Blockbuster Video! 🎶
im sorry but blockbuster wasnt finding copies of games, they would have been purchasing vast quantities of games to stock their stores, so developers and nintendo WERE seeing income from that alone... not to mention the age old argument, something which I did many times in the past, people would rent a game for a few days, and if they got into it they would then BUY the game - this again is direct income that might not exist because otherwise you would only buy a game if a friend had it or if you really really wanted it. I've bought so many games because of renting and then realising the games were really good when I initially assumed they wasnt.
I have this problem today now with xbox and PC, I dont buy many games anymore, not even most AAAA games, because im too scared to lose my money on something that isnt good. And game issues preventing enjoyable experiences, and that aspect has actually gotten worse over the years. But you cannot rent games anymore! So they dont get any money from me and I suspect many many other people are like me in that regard and theres plenty of games they could sell but never do.
companies are so dumb man its unbelievable.
Here we are, so at the peak there were 9094 stores worldwide, so say you released a game and blockbuster went ahead and auto-ordered just 20 copies for rent for each of all their stores, that's 181,880 sales instantly. Now lets say a day later or so the game gets bad reviews (it sucks, terrible game) and so you have poor sales. Blockbuster alone has just made you a ton of sales - it's their problem now.
Nintendo sued my grandma last week for 7.5 million dollars, I still like Nintendo but that's kind of harsh man
For what??
Man, Lincoln dropping cold asf quotes about Nintendo losing money is a thousand times more hardcore than Reggie's short but infamous "taking names" speech introducing himself as president of Nintendo of America.
Lincoln sucks.
Ha... that's funny I remember one of our local rental places had their own manuals and I'd never thought much of why.
I rented Mario Kart…loved it …so I bought it soon after
i remember growing up in the 80s. damn near every rental store had nes game's. were i lived blockbuster was 20 miles away. so, the nearest rental store near me was movie gallery. i did rented a few nes games from there as a kid.
Can anyone clarify the "rules" of renting VHS tapes back in that time frame. I had a friend that worked at a Mom & Pop type video store, and he said they were "required" to buy the video tapes from specific distributor(s) and they cost like $89.95 a piece (remember that was the retail price of many movies back in the day). He said it was "illegal" for them to go to Wal*Mart and buy say a Disney movie for $24.95 and rent it out. The owner of the shop would do that sometimes, but only rent them out for like 2-3 weeks before selling them to hide the evidence, and was always paranoid of getting busted.
There was a time before disney even sold home tapes
I heard something like this, but don't know.
The VHS cassette rental distributors would offer the movies before retail release at a higher price with additional conditions in their agreement.
It’s likely the owner was worried about losing access to purchase from that distributor if caught purchasing additional VHS tapes from a nearby store after the retail release of a movie to VHS rather directly from the VHS cassette rental distributor.
It was a civil issue related to contractual agreements and not a result of statutory law. It wasn’t “illegal” but there was a legal reason why the rental store owner could have faced issues if caught. For example during a random audit, a secret shopper could show up and count available copies of a title on the shelf. Many stores would hide extra copies behind the desk so that they wouldn’t be able to be counted in an audit. Some audits would include renting a title in order to get the security box unlocked and look for identifying marks to determine if the cassette was one specifically produced for rental or if it is one produced for retail sale.
Breaking the agreement might have led to a rental store owner being sued but that was unlikely. The biggest punishment was losing access to any future releases prior to their retail release when the competition across town still has access to those titles to rent before the retail release date.
@KeithS4789 that makes sense! As it's probably pretty hard to get the movies the opening weekend it's available on VHS and that's when people are going to want to rent it. So if that makes sense they wouldn't want to lose being able to buy tapes from that distributor
Nintendo didn't really see how the future of their brand was being influenced by rentals. They would have never gone after the rental market otherwise. Many people don't realize that video games in 1980-1999 were pretty damn expensive. And some of you might be thinking, oh yeah they're expensive now. No... they're not. Video games frequently went for $50-70 USD in the 80s and 90s. That's $120-150 adjusted for 2024 rates. We frequently pay a fraction of that today.
This meant many families simply couldn't buy new games whenever they were released. $70 for a game was out of their budget. Couple this with the fact that you didn't even know you would like the game before trying it. We didn't have youtube videos. All we had were biased game magazine (bias either because they were operated by publishers, or were incentivized to advertise by publishers), and advertisements on TV that didn't show much game footage. It was a chaotic market. And I would argue would have gone the way of the market as it did in 1983 without rentals.
Now Nintendo and other publishers were correct. Someone could pay $1.50 to a rental shop. Play and beat a game during the period. And then would never purchase the title. Meaning they would lose $50. But think about that for a moment? $50 for a game that can be beaten in a weekend? Is it worth $50 (1985)? There were several games that I rented and rented them often enough that my parents or myself (once I had an income) simply purchased because it would be cheaper than renting as often as I was. Thus the publisher made money off of a rental. Of course that entails them making games good and long enough that warrant such. It raised the standard of what video games should be. Thus avoiding another market crash like in 1983.
I'm sorry but while games like Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2, Castlevania, and others are classics. Video games would have quickly lost appeal on games that literally can be beaten by the casual gamer in 10-20 minutes. But this is why we started to see longer games like Super Mario Bros 3 and better RPG titles. By the time of the N64 and Playstation era, games were incredibly long by comparison. Thank rentals. Mario, Zelda, and Metroid wouldn't be where they are today without rentals. I rented Legend of Zelda, Adventure of Link, Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Super Mario Bros 2 and 3, ect and ended up buying all of them. And then went on to buy future titles in the franchise because I knew they would be good. I would have never done that without rental. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom wouldn't have been possible without rental in the early days.
Those of you who game on PC understand an interesting concept created by Valve through Steam. Which I believe is a natural evolution of rentals in a philosophical manner. I believe its Gabe Newell of Valve that said that there is a customer for every price point. The idea is that a game that comes out for $60 will have customers who will pay that because they believe the game is worth that and they wish to play it. Then after the game is out for a few months its price drops usually to $50 or $40. Then more people buy. Then after a few years the price drops again. More people buy. Keeping the price at $60 doesn't encourage people to 'eventually' buy the title. They simply don't buy it. You're not earning $30 more on each purchase by not lowering the price. You get nothing instead. But you could get 'something'. Something > Nothing. And the whole market isn't going to wait a year or two in order to get the game at half off. Only those who simply can't afford the full price, or those who aren't sure of the quality. The latter will likely buy future products at full price if they are impressed. The system is one of merit. As any market in media should be based on. The good games by good publishers sell, the bad ones don't. The bad one's aren't entitled to being compensated simply by the idea people should pay full price to see if its bad. That is where Howard Lincoln is incredibly wrong. Of course he was incredibly wrong on many of his decisions.
Nintendo was able to get Japan to ban video game rentals. Their failure to do so in the US resulted in this lawsuit.
Shows how long Nintendo is anti consumer. The odd thing is that music copyright is a lot looser in Japan. Going into a store and creating your own mixtape is common practice.
@@Bob_Smith19 Nintendo's public image is pretty friendly but on the business side, yeah they're ruthless and anti-consumer as hell. They also had an absolutely ridiculous (read: abusive) working relationship with game developers that forced them to purchase carts directly from Nintendo at super-inflated prices or else no official license stamp for you. Oh and you could only release a very limited number of titles per year AND none of them could be released on dates that would compete with Nintendo's own releases. Nintendo basically dug their own grave and Sony walked all over them by not requiring any of that ridiculous garbage of their developers ontop of discs being practically free to print compared to carts AND having massive storage. I'd dare say if not for them dominating the handheld market they wouldn't have made it.
I rented a WWF Wrestling game, The Undertaker could shoot demons at people. The instruction manual had a notes section and someone wrote "Demons are not of Jesus"
did you People Know That There was a Place Called' Blockbuster Music...
my local mom n pop were kind enough to photocopy the manual
Same, was renting from about 92-95 from the local video store and got photocopied manuals. No one was going to bother the one-offs
Ah, so that’s why they switched to just making the back of the rental game case a monospaced type-up of the most important info from the manual. I remember my rental of Metal Gear Solid had Meryl’s codec frequency on there somewhere
Think the lesson here is think how much money Nintendo lost, when it could hav sold expensive replacement color manuals as a compromise. Blockbuster charges missing manual fee ofsay 8 or 10. Then splits the fee with Nintendo? Manuals cost pennies on the dollar to produce. Also consumers should be glad they did incorporate common pc protection using manual to list codes needed to start the game.
Kids today will never know how lit up Blockbuster was on a Friday night.
See this is why I download Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox and PC games on my computer and don't pay them shit. Now they're the ones renting out licenses for you to be able to download the digital content at the same price as hardware material. It was bad while they made no money in the renting business but now that they're the ones racking in all this money with their digital licenses there's no complaints. Meanwhile we are all just waiting for them to shut down at any moment and run away with our money.
Nintendo probably didn't like them renting their games because there were tons of games people would never buy if they got to try it first. Like Fester's Quest or one of the crap Simpson's games. But then there were games I ran out to buy once I got to try them like Ninja Gaiden or Battletoads.
"It's a mature and sensible thing to do. Do it anyway."
Japan comes out with a lot of awesome stuff but as far as business goes they are really draconian with a lot of things. Big businesses in Japan can really throw their weight around. I think that is what emboldens Nintendo to be so consumer unfriendly in the rest of the world.
Then you have S Korea which is basically the Republic of Samsung. I don't know what it is about Asian culture that gives rise to even more capitalism than that in the US.
lol Redbox wasn't even cheaper, unless you watched immediately. Blockbuster was usually like $3 for a week. And if you were a day late you got charged 43 cents per day ($3 a week prorated). And Redbox was $1 a day. So if you kept it for a week it was twice as expensive
6:49 doh this is complex/nuanced fwiw imho for copyright stuff.. that tbh seems confusing tbh fwiw for how to interpret what should or should not be copyright/or feasible to even try to protect etc.
There were some rental places that would warn you that if you lost the instruction manual you would be charged for the entire game!
For us it was the Kroger Video department & (yes it was a thing)& Hollywood Video rentals but yes a many joyful days of going to the video rental stores.
First sale law once something is public domain that's it big companies don't have much of a say.
As for the copyright of reproducing a manual if it's lost or damaged one won't mind the details when said original is no longer available due to being out of print due to age or limited original copies are not cost effective
I am surprised Nintendo didn't partner a deal and try to collect revenue from the rentals, and give blockbuster a early access to the game, or games designed for rentals so when you buy the game more content was unlocked.
Howard Lincoln the scumbag is why.
If buying isn't owning, then pirating isn't stealing!
I’ve never needed to read a manual to play a game.
There had better be a special place in hell for video game renter instruction manual non returners.
Great video. I still think you and speed cube review do a colab video.
But libraries can still buy them for checkout because they don’t charge for that
If it wasnt for the rental market when I was a kid I would not be the gamer I am today
Are Clayfighter and the other games mentioned Nintendo games?
IIRC Sega didn't care about the manuals and were nice about it.
Curtis Mathes
The video game rental market didn't die, it took over the sales market. Today, the vast majority of video games are rented. Or did you think you could buy games online and then own them? No. You actually rent them for a one-time fee, but you don't own them, because how else could these games disappear from your digital library overnight just because companies like Sony decide to? If you really bought the game, no one could ever take it away from you, but all you are buying is a license that allows you to use the game, the game itself is only rented to you, and the license is useless the moment you no longer have access to the game.
I remember there you could rent a snes or genesis or buy one at blockbuster.
Thank God for Sony Playstation, made Nintendo totally irrelevant to me
Another thing replace Blockbuster for video game rental is XBOX GAMEPASS.
How is it that Nintendo Switch cartridge games aren't available to rent ?
Weird that you mention WCV but not Hollywood Video.
Nintendo always made the money from the initial sale, if not the rental itself, so basically it was just whining that they wanted more money.
nintendo always proving why you can't trust those bastards since 1941
I miss block buster
nintendo has always been a menace.
Nintendo is pretty much always the bad guy, not sometimes.
Hollywood video was a much better deal.
Redbox is gone now
Great video. I'd pair this with Gaming Historians videos:
th-cam.com/video/J3xuy5YALl0/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/nrUWIHasHPQ/w-d-xo.html
Being compared to that channel is true flattery!
Geez I am so tired of every single video telling me 2 billion dollars in 1990 is such and such billion dollars today. It doesn't matter to the story!! If I need to know the inflation adjustment I can look it up, and saying 5 billion really doesn't sound more impressive than 2 billion. I don't have either one.
Nintendo is a drug and it a good drug
You see a viable grievance, I see petty A-holes.😄
Frankly if Nintendo wanted that rental money they should have opened their own game rental stores, I think that would have costed about the same as lobbying to ban game rentals.🤪
The only "right" Nintendo would have gained is the ability to rip customers off from sales of LJN and other equally crappy titles with the Nintendo seal of quality. You can leave a movie in a theater early enough to get your money back, plus I've heard of people taking terrible console games back to stores where a refunded purchase benefited no one. I'm shocked and disgusted he used the R-word in reference to a small percentage of profit lost.😒
OMG copyright law, you might as well prohibit the photocopying of a kiosk pamphlet or a phone book at that point with that kind of shenanigan. Took way too long and many wasted millions dollars for Nintendo to realize they were better off working with Blockbuster instead of against them.
Funny with streaming there is some growing apathy for such services, IP address masking being pretty much mandatory to get 100% from Netflix, having certain content and or certain seasons of a show spread over many different platforms, terrible GUIs with virtually no way to give feedback to the makers, and a rise in legal licensing divisions whether certain titles even are able to stream at all in original form Egs. Cocoon(1985), Dr. Who Dalek episodes. Personally streaming is more supplemental at this point to me Ie. kind of like old TV.
how does renting legal in the first place? you bought a game for 50 bucks and you can rent it out to hundred of customers.
Pfft, okay scumbag.
this forced nintendo to use CDs 💿
Here's how it should work, every time you rent something the company gets a percentage of each price to rent the item each time it's rented out to a customer. That would fix so many of these problems.
I side with Nintendo on this occasion!
I side with Nintendrones like you getting laughed off the Internet, bud.
So many of my n64 game have sharpie BBV-#### ON THEM. the n64 used games selloffs were so awesome and cheap