Teleport yourself to 1999 in this Dreamcast Hollywood video time capsule

What were you doing in the summer of 1999? I was renting a Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure of Hollywood Video and dreading the imminent start of my high school career. Was my Dreamcast obsession rooted in a pathological avoidance of growing up? Absolutely. This is what made this particular time in my life even more bittersweet and fueled many therapy sessions later. How did you feel with the Dreamcast, Mitch?

Before its North American launch on the infamous 9/9/99, Sega's new 128-bit console snuck into Hollywood Video rental stores. in mid-July this year, and you can bet I was on our landline every day during the excruciating period leading up to it, annoying minimum wage employees with my incessant demands for puberty. What a treat I was. Delicious.

When will the Dreamcast be available? was the endless chant, and I'm sure I got a definitive answer at some point, because I dragged my dad to our local HV on July 15th (exactly, if memory serves) to participate with impatience. But hey, my family didn't even have dial-up Internet access at this point, so give me a break. Gaming information was hard to come by back then, and all I had to go on was a brief mention of the Dreamcast rental program in a recent issue of EGM.

I wrote about my rental experience several years ago, because it's oddly one of my fondest gaming memories. So imagine my surprise and delight when I came across what amounts to a time capsule video from this specific era in Dreamcast history. Posted by a YouTube user Vampire robotThe images are dated September 1999, a few months after the rental program began, and primarily feature an official Sega Dreamcast demo kiosk running the Ready 2 Rumble Boxing fashion lure on a maddening loop.

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Infinity Ready 2 Rumble The theme song is enough to drive anyone crazy, especially (I bet) the Hollywood Video employees who ran the place this early fall, but the sheer nostalgia on display here is palpable. A giant Sonic Traveler next to the kiosk proudly tells potential Dreamcast players that you can RENT IT NOW, while display box rentals for power stone, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing And Sonic Adventure sit patiently on the back shelves, waiting to be picked up.

Another sign says that renting the system with a game for two days will cost you $19.99, although there is was a standard $350 security deposit. Not mentioned, of course. It seems that they Really I didn't want you to run away with all this new technology. Additional games were $4.99 to rent.

The entire video is a borderline disturbing glimpse into a simpler time, with those microwaveable buckets of popcorn, boxes of Cracker Jack, and various movie theater-style candy offerings near the checkout area. You may also see signs in stores mentioning DVD, a then-burgeoning media format that, alongside Sony's PlayStation 2, ultimately contributed to the downfall of my favorite console of all time.

I mean, widespread piracy didn't help either, but if only the Dreamcast had also included a DVD player with its out-of-the-box online play and irreverent creativity. Perhaps Sega's brilliant and pioneering vision of the future could have seriously touched the masses, and we would be looking at a different landscape of the video game industry today.

I rented the Sega Dreamcast twice in 1999: once with Sonic Adventure and once with the above Ready 2 Rumble Boxing. Both times were amazing, and honestly, it was the last time I felt this kind of excitement around a console launch. It turned out that I couldn't avoid growing up for much longer. The death of novelty, I suppose.

That said, if you haven't checked out the Vampire Robots YouTube channel yet, it's definitely worth a play. I'm not exactly sure why all these old pictures exist, but I'm glad they do, because they provide a window into the retail stores, malls, and daily life of yesterday like nothing else I saw it online. Magic, for real. And now we have VHS proof of that time when a now-defunct video rental store offered early access to Sega's superb hardware swansong.

With a sigh.