Hey, man! Those were some rough years when the GOUT was my go-to way of watching the trilogy. As a kid, I had been so excited for the Blu-ray release. Then, after the Blu-ray came out, I heard about the new changes, and saw the clip of Vader shouting “Nooo!” in RotJ. That was the last straw for me regarding the Special Editions. I had accepted every change up until then, but that one was just too much. So I stuck with my 2006 discs for the longest time, only getting the Blu-rays so I could enjoy Harmy’s works of art.
Lol, well as an older teenager I looked forward to the 1995 THX remastered release. This was on a format known as “VHS”. 🙂
Before that the only versions I had were taped from network TV - often edited for time! And they were taped on a Video Cassette Recorder (VCR for short) that my family would rent from our local independently owned video rental store.
I do remember VHS lol. In the early 2000s, my family would go to the local video store every other Friday and rent one of the OT films to watch. The store had two copies of each movie: the 1995 THX version with the faces on the box, and the 1997 Special Editions. We would often go back and forth on which versions we watched, and we thought it was neat that we had options. My two siblings and I would always argue over which to rent, since each of us had a different favorite of the trilogy (mine being Star Wars, of course).