Memories from the video rental store

[thebrainfollower]

The last Betamax movie was Terminator 2 I think Johnny Sorrow. The guy had invested 50/50 in both formats and my parents were total idiots with electronics. The same Christmas they bought an Atari 7800 instead of a Nintendo because "it had more games".

 

So yeah we bought a format that was dead, and then my dad lost his job and it was a long six years until we upgraded to VHS.

[thebrainfollower]

And they did have a huge Betamax collection but no non WWF tapes which explains a lot of my prejudice. Except Starrcade 90 which isn't exactly WCW's finest moment.

[Ricky Jackson]

I remember the selection of WCW tapes at the stores I frequented to be mostly abysmal. Capitol Combat, Clash III and V (Really? Only the two lamest shows of the early ones. Who the fuck is the Blackmailer?), etc. On the other hand, I did score a copy of Bash 89 for $5 from a bargain bin one day, so I guess that made up for it in a way

[artDDP]

In Sacramento we had a place in a rough part of town called Big 10 Video. It seemed to never pull anything off the shelves and had a wall of arcade machines along the entrance/exit. I loved it because it had the awesome RoboCop arcade game. This place required a photo copy of your driver's license, Social Security, and credit card to set up an account.

 

There was a large section of wrestling videos, lots of WWF and NWA/WCW and a bunch of random stuff. I watched whatever my family members would let me rent since money was tight. I don't remember anything specific about the tapes.

 

I went back as a teenager and they had this "wrestling secrets revealed" type video from 1990 or so. The cover said the guys involved were screwed over by a promoter and decided to expose the business. I really wanted to know the deep, dark secrets of the business but didn't want to waste a rental and be disappointed. Looking back it was probably as bad as the NBC special.

 

A few years ago I took a friend there to see if they still had the wrestling tapes and they were all there, in a much smaller VHS section. We loaded up our baskets and eagerly went up front to check out our bounty of 80s gold. The guys at the counter still wanted photocopies of all of our ID to keep on file. We balked and went home to see what we could dig up on YouTube.

[CodySave]

It wasn't until my 20s I realized how lucky I had it as kid. The local small-town Iowa (population 3000) video store I frequented had an outstanding collection of WWF and NWA/WCW tapes. I must have rented every major event from each fed 1985-1990 multiple times. I remember renting the Bash 87 tape with first War Games all the time. They also had a large collection of Coliseum Video comps. I still have copies of World Tour 90 and Best of WWF Vol. 19 I bought in a clearance sale. At some point in 1991-1992, the store stopped carrying WCW and really limited WWF additions.

 

This was my main exposure to non-WWF wrestling because I didn't have cable, so my weekly TV wrestling fix was WWF Superstars in syndication on Saturday mornings after cartoons. I always looked forward to staying at my grandparents, who had cable - then I could see WCW Saturday Night once every 2-3 months.

 

In the mid 90s, my Mom would occasionally take me to a huge video store in Des Moines 20 mins from my house. I believe it was called Movies to Go. Looked like a giant house from the outside, and has housed both a nightclub and Crossfit gym in recent years. This store had a really nice collection of wrestling tapes and I vividly remember renting a comp of New Japan matches under a different name. All I knew is that it was Japanese wrestling and that seemed so exotic to watch when I was 9. I remember seeing Jimmy Snuka on it and shocked he was wearing boots!

[Matt Farmer]

The first wrestling VHS I rented was the 85' Great American Bash. Not only was I really excited about renting the tape, which BTW you had to reserve because the store would only purchase one or two copies. What also really excited me was the clerk knew my mom and so she gave me a couple extra display posters she had. One was the Great American Bash cover, the cool one with Flair standing over Nikita and Magnum versus Kamala. It also had Russians wrestling the Road Warriors and Dusty versus Tully on the cover. She also gave me a poster for Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

 

Few years later I learned about a Japanese video store in Seattle that carried weekly New Japan and All Japan tapes. Plus a book store that carried the magazines. They also carried some of the commercial tapes that would come out. My buddy and I would rent a bunch at a time and dub them, but then after about a year of that I made a deal with the store to dub me a copy and sell it to me ($3.00 a tape!). Seriously I had years and years straight of nearly perfect Japan tapes. I stopped getting every week towards the late 90's but still bought a bunch when I found time.

 

I was the kid that saved his money from mowing the lawn and other chores to buy a VCR so I could dub tapes. Then when the double deckers came out I bought two of those.

 

Also got into the tape scene too, it's crazy that as a teenager there were tapes I would pay $25 for. No way I would do that today.

[pantherwagner]

Also got into the tape scene too, it's crazy that as a teenager there were tapes I would pay $25 for. No way I would do that today.

 

I agree with that statement 100% but you guys don't realise how lucky you were in the US. Living in Spain, in between postage, blanks and what not, 20 bucks a tape was pretty much the minimum I'd have to pay if I was trading. The positive is that we'd trade 4 hr tapes (we had those in PAL without having to record at double speed and what not).

 

It was a few dollars more if I was buying something out of the UK, and a ridiculous amount of money if I was buying something from Silver Vision (WWF distributor in the UK) and they would take a minumum of 3 months to actually arrive.

 

The day that I had to throw away hundreds of VHS tapes (they were obsolete, I had moved out and my mother needed the space) I almost cried thinking about how many hours doing odd weekend jobs as a teenager it took me to gather that collection.