User blog comment:SnakeTongue237/Netflix Horror?/@comment-25052433-20151114032628/@comment-25052433-20151115005226

Yep, the 80's and early 90's were the time to be alive man. We had the best shows, (Zack Morris will always be the coolest dude, X-Men Animated Series and Batman Animated Series will always be the best cartoons from Marvel and DC to air, the music was amazing and the true way to know how great your gaming console was was as simple as counting the bits)

Nothing against today's generation, as kids now have some of the most amazing technology right at their fingertips, but I'll never concede that the 80's and 90's weren't the best. We were free to roam the streets until well after dark, as long as you stayed close to home once the street lights came on. We still felt the thrill of making our first "3-Way" phone call. We spent hours on warm summer days trying to figure out the best way to unscramble the adult channels, and sometimes we'd just watch them with the blurs and lines in tact. Riding bikes in the neihborhood was the ultimate form of social media, and figuing out secrets in video games was a matter of either owning the right magazines (GamePro and EGM were the best) or you could always sit around at recess and hope that one kid would have some latest and greatest tips and tricks.

Arcades were also the big thing. A loud, stuffy room full of the latest and greatest games. Last I checked, arcades are all but gone too, which is a sad twist, since many of my fondest memories involved standing at an acrade machine, dumping in quarter after quarter, always hoping to reach the next level.

But, best of all, as mentioned above, were the video stores. Before Blockbuster there were all of these great neighborhood chains. Places for me were ZM Video, which was walkable from my apartment, and  a few larger ones like Video Plus and Major Video. ZM had one of those adults only rooms in the back, so my friends and I spent countless hours discussing plans and strategies to get back there and look at the boxes. The clerk would always catch us and kick us out, but we never really gave up on it.

You mentioned that you had one near you. I would strongly suggest you enjoy that dying piece of Americana before their all gone. It was a time gone by, but to aging Generation X members like myself, it's a time worth holding onto.