If you were working a retail job at a movie rental store in the early ’90s, there’s a decent chance you couldn’t wait to clock out for the day and escape from the daily grind with a mindless video game. Here in the 2020s, on the other hand, at least one mindless video game is striving to re-create the daily grind of working at a video rental store.
Retro Rewind: Video Store Simulator is the latest in a burgeoning field of “work simulators” that has found indie success on Steam. And while the depth of the game’s overall retail simulation is pretty shallow, there is a sort of soothing, zen comfort to be found in the repetitive nostalgia of that menial workaday world of the past.
Working 9 to 5
Unlike simulations that rely heavily on menus or spreadsheets, Retro Rewind puts you in the first-person perspective of the manager of a small local VHS rental joint circa 1990. That means you have to run around doing everything from buying the tapes to laying out the furniture and decorations in the store. And while you can technically display those tapes out on any shelf you want, grouping them together by genre makes for both a better customer experience and helps to quiet those anal-retentive organizational voices in your head.
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