Strap yourself in for surely the strangest trailer you’re likely to see all year: The Last Video Store is promising pure PlayStation VR nostalgia – potentially to a psychotic degree. This social sim is built around the experience of shopping at VHS rental stores, so if you were born any time beyond 1994 or so you probably don’t even know what we’re talking about.

This author vaguely remembers Blockbuster: the stained carpets, the smell of popcorn and paper, and the cracked Mega Drive cases – it was definitely an iconic establishment. And this game aims to bottle that experience, as you hang out in surrounding parking lots and shop for crummy 80s movies. You’ll then be able to watch said films in two virtual spaces: a living room or a movie theatre.

The trailer shows a copy of Bruce Campbell’s Evil Dead, complete with its worn VHS slip cover. But we’re not sure how this is going to work without the developer individually licensing all of the movies it wants to include – and that’s not financially feasible, is it? In fact, we’re half assuming this is a gag – especially after seeing the scene where the dead-eyed avatar starts dancing around the video shop.

RareBird Games, the developer, is the same team behind Sinfeld Remastered – a fever pitch of a project that started life in Dreams and is poised to release on PS5 at some point in the future. Whether any of these projects will ever see the light of day is up for debate, but at least we’ll always have this trailer etched into our memory now.

[source youtube.com]