Retro Rentals, Retro Games, Retro Feels - Jumbo Video Canada

Jumbo Video opened its rental business in Canada in 1987 and London, Ont got their branch in 1989! They were within walking distance from my house at the time and I was there for the grand opening! I have so many great memories in Jumbo Video. The first time I saw Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo and Laserdisc was all here in Jumbo! I used to rent all my first NES games from here, Game Boy games too and even systems including the SNES, Sega-CD, 3DO and PS1! They had a giant "Nintendo" logo on the wall over the NES rental section and in the late 80's this was proof that Nintendo was the real deal, here to stay! I guess my assurance that Nintendo was indeed popular. The smell of popcorn would hit you when you walk in the door... and it still does today! While Jumbo Video as a national chain went defunct years ago there are still a few privately owned stores in existence and mine is one of them!

Microplay was another Canadian chain of Video Game shops that had also been around since the late 80's. There was a Microplay in my city growing up but it wasn't close by. My only memory of Microplay was when my friend got his Mom to drive there and rent Splatterhouse for the TurboGrafx-16 system. This Jumbo Video, nor the nearby Blockbuster video carried turbo games and he really wanted to play this game. So I always knew of the store but it was on the other side of the city. There are still a few Microplay stores around but the one here ended up merging into this Jumbo Video store at some point.

I moved out of the city in the mid 90's and so I don't really remember exactly when Jumbo Video moved units or when Microplay merged with them. It may even be possible they closed for some time between moving units. I don't think so but I can't say for sure. From the mid 90's onward there was a small mom and pop shop to rent movies within walking distance and Blockbuster video was closer to me for driving to rent video games. Either way going into this Jumbo Video today still feels like it's the same one from my childhood. It may have moved units and merged with Microplay but it's still very similar looking inside. The fact they've recently got more reasonable with retro game prices is great. I love going into this store from time to time to see if they have any Game Boy systems as they're usually cheaper than what people are asking for them on marketplace.