Front cover and coupon

The coupon lists several game consoles that are excluded from the deal but no longer in stores. OK, maybe one location had the last Neo Geo in stock. It does not list the 3DO which was actually in stock. That extra $5 didn't move a lot of 3DOs. Also it misspells TurboGrafx-16, which was probably gone at most locations by then.

Page 2 - Contents and 3DO games

I don't have a large 3DO collection, under 20 games, yet somehow own all three of these. I can't even clear the first section of Out of this World.

Page 3 - Sega CD hardware and games

Later on there are some very nice deals on hardware. I don't know that I can justify the Sega CD at $219.99, or not yet given the game selection. If it was a standalone system then sure, why not.

Page 4 - Mad Dog McCree, Rage in the Cade, My Paint, Sonic CD, Ecco, Sherlock Holmes

I probably mentioned it somewhere before, but that Sonic CD pre-release box art is not great. The final version was a big improvement.

Page 5 - Sega Genesis consoles, Landstalker, Aladdin, Dracula, Gunstar Heroes

I get it, Landstalker at $67.99 is almost the price of the console. It wasn't in stores very long as I recall. The other three games would be around a while.

Page 6 - Toejam and Earl, Shining in the Darkness, Sonic 3, Chakan, Cool Spot, Little Mermaid

I have one of those Sonic sweatshirts in my closet. I didn't pre-order the game. I just took one of the many that was shipped to our store. That's how it worked. We'd get a couple giant garbage bags filled with pre-order giveaway items and took many of them home. Pre-orders were still not very common outside of the Mortal Kombat games. Maybe I will wear it one day, maybe I will retire by selling it.

Page 7 - Jurassic Park, Eternal Champions, Ecco, Activator, Menacer

Eternal Champions would launch with a more comic book themed cover.

Page 8 - Dragon's Revenge, Race Drivin', Crash Test Dummies, FIFA, Virtual Pinball, F-117 Night Storm

Two pinball games on the same page, if only Crueball was still in stores...

Page 9 - Street Fighter II, Robocop vs. Terminator, Hook, some controllers

I originally did not write comments for these scans. Then one day, not in January despite my previous comments, I looked at the description for the SG-6 pad and could remain silent no longer. No, it's not that the picture has a 3-button controller. It's the part about "Turbo control for all buttons provides super fire power at up to 94 shots per second!" I know just a little bit about how to read input from Sega Genesis controllers, and can say this is a wild claim. Sega Genesis games typically read controller input during vblank events which occur 60 times a second, this is a hard number. You can not have multiple presses of the same button within the same vblank. It's possible to read the controllers during hblank, getting to 94 is easy then. However, the screen is still only drawn 60 times a second. Maybe they are talking about 94 combined presses of the buttons? Since 94 is not divisible by 3 I'm skeptical of that claim too. The Fighter Stick SG-6 (actually pictured with 6 buttons) makes a more plausible claim of 32 presses per second. Although that is also a weird number to pick.

Page 10 - Super Nintendo consoles, SimCity, Metal Combat, Yoshi's Safari, A Link to the Past

That $129.99 Super Nintendo set was a solid deal before the inclusion of Super Mario All Stars, a game that retailed for over $50 at the time.

Page 11 - Vega Stakes, Star Fox, Super Mario Kart, Stanley Cup, Mario All-Stars, Battle Clash

It was not long before Star Fox went down to $29.99, it was part of some deal where you had to buy other games though. I don't think Super Mario All-Stars was actually $54.99 at most stores either. Maybe they kept the price high to make the previous bundle look like an even better deal?

Page 12 - Mega Man X, Aladdin, Street Fighter II Turbo, Side Pocket, Top Gear 2, Secret of Mana

I suspect that with Street Fighter II Turbo and Secret of Mana, this will be the most popular/shared page in the catalog.

Page 13 - Chuck Rock, Equinox, Last Action Hero, Cliffhanger, Dennis the Menace, Jurassic Park

I believe that is the Japanese box art for Equinox. Four of these are of course based on recent movies.

Page 14 - Quarterback Club, Lester the Unlikely, Mario's Time Machine, Clay Fighter, Romance of the Three Kingdoms III, Robocop vs Terminator

I can't understate how jagged that Robocop vs Terminator box was. It needed some kind of warning sticker. It also looks to have a Super Famicom logo.

Page 15 - Super Nintendo controllers and Mario Paint

Note to whoever links to this page to talk about old game prices: a first-party Super Nintendo controller is only $17.99. It is a significantly better controller than the $26.99 CyberPad. The CyberPad's claim of "27 shots per second" is at least plausible.

Page 16 - Game Gears, World Series Baseball, Streets of Rage 2, Jurassic Park, Evander Holyfield's Boxing

Even though much higher than the Game Boy, the Game Gear system prices aren't that absurd for the time. I've played the Sonic 2 and Streets of Rage 2 ports and they're pretty good. Sure, again, it's all a bit more than the Game Boy but it had many good quality games.

Page 17 - RoboCop 3, Sonic Chaos, Desert Speedtrap, Dr. Robotnik, and accessories

I dunno, the Super Wide Gear doesn't look much wider than the original screen. I have no recollection of that FM tuner at all. I bet that sells for a stupid amount now.

Page 18 - Game Boy hardware, Tetris 2, Super Mario Land, Super Mario Land 2, Racing Set

The Game Boy was a solid value for the time. For $100 you could get the hardware, with Tetris, a bunch of accessories, and a second game. I feel like today it's $500 for a basic system that includes a power cord if you are lucky.

Page 19 - Kirby's Dream Land, Yoshi's Cookie, Link's Awakening, Spider-Man/X-Men, Bingo

I can't get over one row of letter selections on that Bingo game. What were they thinking?

Page 20 - NES top loader, Kirby, Punch-Out, Super Mario Bros. 3, Dr. Mario, Tetris 2

Is $49.99 for Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1994 a good or bad deal? That is a serious question. It is the best Mario game made up to that point. On the other hand, Super Mario All-Stars was just a few dollars more. Pre-owned games weren't a thing yet, or they weren't at Electronics Boutique, so there weren't cheaper used copies there. $49.99 to replace your likely broken original NES is a spectacular deal for sure though.

Page 21 - Star Trek, Quest for Glory IV, Leisure Suit Larry 6, Police Quest IV, Gabriel Knight, Wolfenstein 3D, Jeopardy!

This is the page of many Sierra sequels.

Page 22 - Flight Simulator, Microsoft Arcade, World Circuit, Blood Net, Ultima VIII, Syndicate, Hand of Fate

Before DLC, there was the Ultima VIII speech pack for $21.99. This is not the first add-on or even close to it. It's just one example of how DLC worked before the D part was around.

Page 23 - Body Blows, T2, Isle of the Dead, Unnatural Selection, Spectre VR, Hired Guns, Innocent Until Caught, IndyCar Racing

Isle of the Dead sounds like a good starting premise. I'll checkout a video right now... uh, I don't know. It's a 3D environment with 2D textures, annoying music, point-and-click puzzles, and... wait, what is going on in this game? I would advise avoiding it.

Page 24 - Axis: The Gamecheater, Companions of Xanth, Unnecessary Roughness, Oxyd Magnum, Simon the Sorcerer, Sam and Max

I had to lookup if "Dongleware" was as real company... and it was. Neat. They developed games for about 7 years then decided to pivot to web design. They look pretty non-existent now.

Page 25 - Edutainment

Kaboom! includes dozens of songs by musicians you've heard of? Really? OK, well it's on archive.org so let's see what that's about... OK, it's a bin/cue so bchunk it to .iso... OK, that is a file system I can't mount but a couple minutes in a hex editor will fix that... OK, it's mounted. I hope y'all appreciate all the work that went into writing this comment that almost no one will read. OK, it indeed features 27 MIDI versions of songs. This is where the wording is important: "Includes dozens of songs made famous by Elton John, Gloria Estefan, Phil Collins, and more!" - so for example, this includes "A Groovy Kind of Love" which was covered by Phil Collins but written by someone much more likely to sign-off on using it. I'm not going through all 27 songs but am already certain that is the case for the others. It's not false advertising, just creative wording.

Page 26 - Edutainment

By 1994 you would definitely be better off if you learned typing instead of cursive as a kid. If not for square dancing, cursive would be the most useless thing I learned in school.

Page 27 - Educational and reference

The roller coaster screen saver only includes three coasters. For $41.99 that seems like a not super deal. A randomly generated never-ending roller coaster would have been a fun screensaver.

Page 28 - Screen savers, recipes, calendar, myHouse

These old recipe programs have to be a 1000x better experience than visiting any recipe web site. I don't care if they take some zany virtualization setup to run. It's still better than watching your browser struggle to load the approximately 2.4 million ads on the average recipe site.

Page 29 - Parsons software

I tend to get hung-up on weird details in these catalogs. Like why are two products $29.00 instead of $28.99?

Page 30 - Lotus and other productivity software

Eclipse Find sounds kind of neat, I wonder if it actually worked though.

Page 31 - Tax and finance software

Bold idea for GameStop - get back into the tax preparation business. Hey, you could let people pay back taxes via trade-ins or apply their refunds as store credit. You think I'm joking but also can see an article about this happening.

Page 32 - DacEasy and Softkey

Some portion of this DacEasy software may still exist within the Sage accounting software packages. My life must be boring that I just happened to know that off-hand.

Page 33 - Microsoft Office and DOS 6.2

The short-lived MS-DOS 6.2 is pictured here. There was a legal issue around the disk compression included. That was removed in MS-DOS 6.21 and an alternative was re-added in MS-DOS 6.22.

Page 34 - WordPerfect and Borland software

Activision published that Time and Money Manager program.

Page 35 - Print Shop and other productivity titles

I don't have much to say here - the Comic Characters box contains a review copy/not for resale sticker. That's something.

Page 36 - Random software and Voice Assist

Font-O-Matic sounds super helpful really. It would take me like 200 hours to figure out how to do the same in GIMP.

Page 37 - Various hardware

I like how they just expected you to know all those modem acronyms. Like yeah sure, 'OH' and 'MR' are on, I totally know what that means, whatever. User-friendliness was not yet a concern.

Page 38 - Dummies books, CompuServe, Sound Blaster 16, other accessories

I owned those Labtec speakers and can't fathom why I got rid of them now. Maybe the plastic got all yellow or something, I don't know. They worked fine and the style never looks dated to me.

Page 39 - A bunch of CD-ROM stuff

When you think about Microsoft Bookshelf for $149.99 you need to remember all those old commercials trying to sell you an encyclopedia one letter at a time. Maybe they combined 'X' with something, I don't know. $149.99 was a bargain by comparison.

Page 40 - Omni CD and CD-ROM software

"software controller automatic loading tray" - I don't like the sound of that. The back and front cover are the same so I'm ending the catalog here, thanks for visiting.