Wow, I haven't talked to anyone who has actually rented Neo Geo games. How much did it cost to rent them? Like $50 bucks, haha?
heh...nah...If I recall, I think this place charged like 10 bucks a night for the system and 5 bucks per game, or something average like that. I remember being super excited to go pick it up cuz I reserved the system as soon as the last person was done with it, and I think I got it for 2 or 3 nights along with Nam and Riding Hero, and played it well into the wee hours each night.
It was a pretty cool little hole-in-the-wall rental store, I think it was just called The Game Shop and it was locally owned. Had a great selection of NES, Genesis and Turbo games, maybe 5 Neo Geo games, and you could rent all those systems too of course, and they even had a Super Famicom and the first batch of launch games (Super Mario World, Pilotwings, F-Zero, Actraiser, and Bombuzal) before the SNES came out in America. I used to hang out at that shop a LOT, and got to know the guys that worked there. I think I applied for a job there too, but the owner, who never actually came there, thought I was just some punk-ass gamer geek kid who loitered there all day (which I mostly was), and didn't realize I probably kept that place in business longer than it would've without my support =D
Is it weird to get nostalgic over a game rental shop from 15 years ago?