I picked up a Saturn around that first Christmas. Electronic's Boutique was having a trade in deal - any Super Nintendo game was worth $10 trade in. I went to another local game store that was selling Rocket Ranger for SNES for $2 and bought enough of them (they had probably 200 copies) to get a Saturn and some games (EB was offering a package deal just to get the console moving).

EB was offering your choice of 3 games from a set of 6. It cost me like $80 or so in Rocket Ranger games. I was friends with the EB staff there at the time and I asked prior if they allowed duplicates, they said sure, the current high score was like 20 copies of one game (some B.S. sports game).

Once I heard that, it was on.

I would have gotten a PlayStation at that time but they were sold out and, of course, their next shipment was after this weekend trade-in deal. They knew what they were doing though as it was store credit for that purchase right then - you couldn't stack the credit and wait.

Looking back, I figure they were trying to make room in the back for the console that was selling like hotcakes for them. One of my friends there told me they only moved like 10 Saturns during that sale. Such a shame that such an awesome console was cut short like that but it is not like Sega is free and clear on the blame here.

I love Sega games, the games made for their platforms have a certain charm that is simply not available elsewhere.