I think Ikari Warriors popularity dropped significantly with the sequels, which I haven't played but don't look good.
The first game I rented was Stryder for the Sega Genesis. I'd bought the Sonic 1 bundle and decided to rent Stryder from a small local store. Good times.
My first game was Sector Z, which to this day, I only remember it's name. It was a proud moment whrn my mom and pop video store had the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros 2 .
The renting of videogames went extinct overnight here when some law was passed that forbid it for god knows what reason. It was somehow perfectly ok to rent movies or books, but not videogames.
aspro said:By the time I got back into console gaming, at the end of the SNES and beginning of the N64 era I was in my 20's and have enough money to buy games. I did trying renting from time to time, but it was very rare. My only positive renting experience was from VideoTron which was a video store in Costa Mesa that was run by a vietnamese family. It had a phenomenal selection of classic and arthouse movies. And the porn parrot, which I've talked about before.
This is still true, so rather than recount it I'll quote myself. For those who don;t remember the porn parrot was a animatronic parrot they had next to the entry to the porn VHS section which of course, had a beaded curtain door. Anytime I was tempted to rent porn the motion detection parott would start sqawing, "Helloooo Prettty Boyyyy!" which diverted me into the classic film section every time. Ah, the 90's.
Both were quite good, and I managed to beat them both in just a three short days I had them. However, I was also introduced to the sad reality that most of those early Nintendo games didn't have much more of an ending other than "the end" popping up on the screen.
On another note, I'm kind of surprised we never saw much of Ikari Warriors past the 8-bit generation. That seemed like a pretty notable title in the arcade and on the nes. And then it just disappeared.