There's only one Blockbuster left in the world - One too many imo

A Blockbuster store in Bend, Oregon, will become the world’s last outpost of the once-booming video rental chain later this month when a store in Perth, Australia closes its doors.

Located in the Perth suburb of Morley, Australia’s last Blockbuster store will begin a going-out-of-business sale on March 8 and close for good at the end of the month, the Australian Associated Press reported. The store’s owners attributed its downfall to the arrival of Netflix and other streaming services in the Australian market.

The Blockbuster in Bend became the last U.S. location of the bankrupt chain with the closure of two stores in Alaska last summer. Now, it will be the last Blockbuster store in existence on Earth.

“I had no idea,” Sandi Harding, general manager of the Blockbuster store in Bend, told local newspaper The Bulletin Opens a New Window. when asked about the Australian store’s closure. “I wondered which one of us was going to hold out the longest.”

A dominant brand during the late 1980s and 1990s, Blockbuster once had more than 9,000 stores in operation. The chain shut down its last corporate-owned stores in 2014, but some franchisees have remained operational in the years since.

The rise of Netflix, which instantly streams movies and television shows to its base of nearly 150 million paid subscribers, has rendered physical video rentals obsolete. Other competitors in the burgeoning space include Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.

Harding told The Bulletin that her Blockbuster store is still a solid business and has become a tourist attraction, drawing visitors from around the world.

“We probably open up 10 accounts a day,” Harding told the newspaper. “It’s crazy the amount of people that come in and want a Blockbuster card.”
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RIP Blockbuster. Once a titan, and now a single store in Oregon. Such a shame. I remember me and the guys going to rent horror flicks and scifi movies. Saw Terminator for the first time when I rented it from a Blockbuster.

Fucking shame. I could rent a movie, copy the data off and return it. Fucking shame. I salute you, last Blockbuster. :semperfidelis::semperfidelis::semperfidelis::semperfidelis::semperfidelis:
 
Unironic original "That Feel" wojack right now
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A Family Video branch in my town got fucked over by the company and god it was depressing being in a store that was closing for good the next day. I can't imagine the feeling of being in the last branch of a rental place, ever.
 
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I have one of those cards to print photos from N64 Pokemon games on this kiosk at Blockbuster. Young me told myself "eh I'll do it later." Now it's 2019. Also I lost the card somewhere.

Procrastination sucks.
 
Shit where am I gonna print my Pokemon Snap pictures now? You think they'll fit in the Redbox machine? How do I send them to Netflix?
 
Didn't Blockbuster did this to themselves? They could've bought out Netflix back in the 2000's.
 
There's a weird amount of sympathy for Blockbuster and I don't know why.

When Blockbuster first appeared they were great. They had a ton of movies and they were fairly cheap, especially compared to local options. That didn't last long. Once they ran all of the smaller businesses out they started putting the screws to all of their customers. I remember they were running a big special where you could rent a movie for a dollar, and here's how that went.

"I'd like to rent this movie, the ads said it was a dollar a night."
"Okay, that'll be seven dollars."
"What? You said it was a dollar a night!"
"Yep, a dollar a night for a seven night rental, that will be seven dollars. If you want it for just one night it will be 6.99."

Of course, you'd forget to return it a week later and be charged for a whole nother week even if you were just ten minutes late. Fuck Blockbuster, I hope everyone that served on their board dies of AIDS.
 
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I remember being able to get a game for 7.99 for a week and if you finished the game, you could return it for another game for the remainder of the time allotted. Such good times.

But yeah screw Blockbuster. They didn't adapt at all to the wave of new competitors. It would've been great to have a store that had an online and physical browsing store.

Now all we have is those ghey Redbox machines.
 
Kind of strange it still stayed strong in a suburb like Morley. I would have expected a regional town like Bunbury or Bendigo. It's a typical Lower-middle class suburb with lots of dated 70's houses.
 
I worked at a Hollywood Video in my younger days. Similar outfit, although their pricing model was based on making money at the rental, not the late fees, at least that's what I heard from customers. Really, so many customers would bitch about how fucking terrible blockbuster was. Did they charge you if you didn't rewind tapes?

Of course, Hollywood Video is also dead now, and good riddance. Being slightly better than absolute shit still isn't that good.
 
Man, remember when to could get physical DVDs from Netflix?

Blockbuster was all right, I guess. They ran my local video store out of business in short order, but they did have a better selection. Including some really strange Japanese films that I rented on a whim, shit like Versus or Memories that actually turned out really fun.
 
It sucks that all the movie rental places are going out of business. I still remember when the local
Movie Gallery closed down it was disappointing they had such a large amount of older movies. The Family Video that went up to replace it only has about an eighth of what they offered and their classics section only about 20 eighties movies that I already own. I end up spending way more now on movies since I need to buy all the older movies I want to see, or convince the local library to order them.
 
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