Anyone ever rent Atari games back in the day

[lesboulez]

While trying to figure out what some cartridges I have are, the topic of renting Atari, Colecovision, etc. games back in their heyday came up.

 

Did anyone out there ever see them for rent, like you can rent Playstation, Dreamcast, etc. games at Blockbuster today? If so what did they look like?

 

Maybe someone can add insight into the origins of my light blue Xante carts????

 

Randy

[El_Phunque]

Yep. My uncle worked at an early rental place called A-1 Video in St. Louis and they had an entire wall of Atari carts. Pretty SWEET.

[Tempest]

You know the more I think about it, I did rent some 2600 games at one point. Back when I was in 6th grade (so this was around 87 or 88) there was a store across the street from school where they had some 2600 games for rent (along with NES games). I specifically remember renting Oink!

 

Tempest

[Osbo]

yup, we used to rent games saturday afternoon and returned monday morning...

[berzerk]

Yeah, I used to rent them. They were kinda expensive to buy way back then. They would probably of been more expensive than the ps2 games now are or about the same. I still remember the place, they built a 7-11 where it used to be, but about everytime I drive past it, I remember the old 2600 rental place, i think they rented videos too.

[Jess Ragan]

They actually had Atari 2600 games available for rent in the early 80's? Wow. And I was excited when they first started renting out NES games... I thought THAT was the first time rental stores offered video games. It's got to be the first time they were widely available, though.

 

JR

[lesboulez]

Any chance anyone can jog their memory a bit and remember if the games for rent looked any different. Or was it just a normal copy that the store bought and rented?

 

I never saw games for rent when I was growing up, the only thing which allowed us little kids to get more games was a little shop which would buy used games and then sell them. So I did get some used games VERY rarely as a kid in 1983.

[Nateo]

Wait a sec, I read somewhere that renting games didn't become available until 1991. Blockbuster started this, and Nintendo sued them for it (this will make me hate Nintendo sometimes, Nintendo can be very arrogant), but Nintendo lost(yay!) and Blockbuster got the right to rent games to others.

[lesboulez]

I'm guessing, since I never could rent the games, that most were Mom and Pop type places that rented games.

 

Back when videos were new (way, way, back I guess) my local hardware store rented videos. He only had one copy of everything and it was kind of expensive. But this was before we had a blockbuster. I'd guess the same happened with Atari games???

[+Random Terrain]

In the early 1980s, they didn't rent Atari 2600 VCS games where I lived. We read an article sometime between 1981 and 1984 that people were either renting games, or wanted to rent them, and Atari was bitching about it.

 

In a time when renting videos or even having a VCR was rare, you probably had to live in a big city to find a place that rented Atari 2600 games in the early 1980s (1980-1984).

 

The last half of the 1980s (1985-1989) is when we started seeing tons of video rental stores popping up everywhere. We didn't get our first VCR until 1988, so I never saw an Atari 2600 game for rent, only Nintendo, Sega and the rest that followed.

 

Below are a couple of web sites that have at least a few words on this subject and what has been posted in this thread.

 

Renting Atari 2600 games (1983):

RETROTIMES #16: Tom the Game Dealer, Take One

 

Blockbuster and Nintendo:

Van der Veen Video Games Online

 

[ 09-06-2001: Message edited by: F of i ]

[atari70s]

I barely remember renting any atari games (87 or 1988) i was 5 or 6 . it was from some small shop i think called game town not sure but i cant remember anythgin that was rented for as titles but i do remember atari games soemwhat ( i think a few 8 bits since thats all i had. )

[berzerk]

The carts I rented looked the same. I'm sure they were retail carts the store just had bought to rent out. I guess I was lucky, cause I lived in a town of around 9000 people. It was just a mom and pop store, but they had quite a few games and I "think" they rented videos too, but can't remember for sure.

[froggger2]

The public library in Jackson Michigan had free Atari and Activision rentals in the early 1980s. I think there was a limit of two at a time. You could reserve them ahead of time up to a month in advance. They were regular cartridges. The instructions were xerox copies of the original instructions. I remember our family getting several Activision patches as a result of high scores on cartridges we checked out. The library stopped checking out Atari cartridges in the mid-1980s, when they apparently sold off their cartridges at the library thrift store.

[ATARIPITBULL]

My friends father had a video store in Detroit, MI for about five years, and he rented Atari and other system games from his store. what was great was that he too loved to play video games, so he would buy all the hotest new games to be rented, but when people would rent them, and never take them back, he stoped the whole thing and never lent out any more games.