A Blockbuster Video-Simulator Game Is Flying Off the Shelves

Blockbuster video store manager Doreen Giorgio arranges covers for the 'Titanic' video that will go on sale and be available for rental at midnight in 1998. Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

Samuel Gauthier has a ton of nostalgia for the early ’90s, even if he was, like, a newborn then.

Gauthier, an independent video game developer who cofounded Blood Pact Studios, is one of the two creatives behind Retro Rewind, a video-rental-store simulator game currently selling like The Lion King did in 1995. OK, so maybe sales have not been that strong, but Retro Rewind has been in the Steam Store’s top 10 since its release on Tuesday, when it debuted at number one. Steam is a popular platform for studios and indie developers to share and sell their latest PC games.

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Retro Rewind players run a Blockbuster Video-like movie-rental store set in the early 1990s, complete with spoofs of real blockbusters of the era. The game includes 14,000 (fake) movie titles, the vast majority of which were created by AI prompts. Gauthier went deep on the creation of 21 films “inspired by the biggest movies from the ’90s,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, like his Ghostbusters send-up, Phantom Patrol.

“We kind of take some liberties,” Gauthier, 33, admitted. Gauthier’s partner, who did not participate in our interview, prefers to remain anonymous.

Just like the old days, the (faux films) in Retro Rewind roll out weekly.

But there is not much downtime. Players design their store, work the counter, restock shelves and even rewind movies — these were the VHS days after all. In return, your (computer-controlled) customers pay you ’90s prices (cash only!) to rent movies and buy concessions.

If we’re still doing that stupid, “Hey dad, what were you like in the ’90s?” social media thing, Gauthier, a father of two, can just fire up his PC and show his daughter, 9 and his son, 5. He can then regale them of his rental memories, which for Gauthier, was more on the video game end than the film side. Makes sense — but Gauthier says he does retain a “strong image” of renting the Lord of the Rings films with his father.

A still from ‘Retro Rewind’ Blood Pact Studios

Retro Rewind took 15 months of 60-plus-hour weeks from concept to release. The idea came out of both nostalgia and the fact that Blood Pact’s first game, the exceptionally gory Bonesaw, did not sell especially well. Simulator games suitable for all members of the family have a much larger potential reach.

“I was thinking of the time I was younger. I was going to my local video store — the little one, because there was not a big Blockbuster in my town,” Gauthier said. “I once spoke with my children and said, ‘When I was younger, there was a time where we went (out) to rent movies.’ They could not [picture it].”

Gauthier, who lives in Quebec, has actually never stepped foot in a Blockbuster, but movie-rental stores played a big role in his childhood.

“I thought, maybe we should do something like that so I can show them,” Gauthier continued. “It started as simple as that.”

It is not lost on Gauthier how completely different his two games to-date are. Bonesaw, which was directly inspired by Buckshot Roulette, is its own Russian Roulette-esque challenge. Players face off against the (literal) Devil in a card game in which the loser of each hand gets their fingers cut off by a buzzsaw in the table. It’s pretty grotesque. Still, Bonesaw sold about 10,000 copies, Gauthier said, but its price tag was so modest (currently $6.66, which is so apropos of the game) that “it didn’t really make a lot of money,” Gauthier said, “not enough for living off.” Not when you have a staff, albeit small, to pay.

Retro Rewind, currently on sale for $15.92 (20 percent off $19.90), is accessible for so many more gamers, and has far stronger repeat playability. Gauthier says he does not currently know if Retro Rewind will come to consoles — like the Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 or Nintendo Switch 2 — a “big request from the players right now.” After all, development kits for those platforms are “very expensive,” and it is a lot of work to adapt a point-and-click PC game for console controllers.

Blood Pact still has some long weeks — at least — ahead of it in continued support of Retro Rewind for PCs, which includes various handheld devices including Valve’s Steam Deck. And Gauthier and his partner already have their sites set on developing a new game, which Gauthier could not say much about. Another simulator sounds likely, especially if Retro Rewind continues to sell, but the Blood Pact boys would really like their next endeavor to return to the multiplayer or co-op space.

“It difficult for for me and [my partner] to work on the solo game, because all the session were alone. We were play-testing alone… and just giving feedback to each other,” Gauthier said. “It was not the same as working on Bonesaw, because Bonesaw is a turn-based strategy game and we were playing against each other. So at the same time we were playing, we were testing the game. It was more interesting, I would say.”

Should Retro Rewind grow like, well, Blockbuster itself did in the ’90s, the secretive next game will probably be put on hold.

In a perfect (virtual) world, Retro Rewind will remain so popular that the game continues to advance with the technology of the time, seeing DVDs replace VHS cassettes, for example. In Gauthier’s head, the DVDs may require cleaning and repair work in lieu of rewinding. All of this costs money.

I pointed out to Gauthier that if he goes too far into the future, players will effectively put themselves out of business when Netflix disrupts — and destroys — the entire rental business. Together, we worked out a scenario in which this alt-universe, alt-Blockbuster Video does not pass on buying Netflix for $50 million in 2000, an insane thing that actually happened. (Another crossover of the former competitors happened in 2022 in a failed Netflix sitcom titled Blockbuster.)

“Maybe you become the next streaming website,” Gauthier suggested for a Retro Rewind sequel.