I was born in 85 and remember the explosion of video stores. In my small town of 3,000 we had a bunch. Gas stations, grocery stores, liquor stores and pharmacies all had a small section of movies and video games to rent. This was in addition to the stand alone independent stores. Being from a family that didn’t travel or dine out, our fun was renting movies and video games on Friday night. If you were lucky one of the stores also did VCR repair and cleaning.
Yup I remember 99 cent rentals at the Pathmark! It was a nice little Friday night adventure with the family. Good times. Picked up the pizza afterwards.