Yeah, i LOVED the SE when it came out. I read all about it in Star Wars Insider, memorized all the screenshots that they previewed--and when the first trailer debuted in late 1996--WOW! You have no idea how powerful that was--seeing the first snippets of Star Wars on the big screen, such as the jump to hyperspace, and the new jabba footage--it was just incredible. I remember it was attached to the beginning of that Stallone film Daylight.

When the SE came out it wasn't supposed to replace the films. As Scruffy pointed out, it was a "special" edition. In fact, rumour was that it wouldn't even be available on home video! I saw Star Wars i think five times and loved most of the changes. Greedo was always a bad WTF moment but I quickly forgot about it, and the Jabba scene was great to finally see, and it was very surprising to see extra Biggs footage and I remember finding Han's run-in with the extra Stormtroopers hilarious. Anyway, it was a fun way to celebrate the original--you got some new and improved footage and got to see it all in theaters. Great!

Then it came out on video. I thought "great, now i can watch them again!". But then after the prequels started coming out this whole "the OOT doesn't exist" stuff started coming out...and then everything went downhill. Honestly, the Special Edition is fine as a "Special Edition", existing alongside the originals--the backlash didn't even exist until Lucas began suppressing the originals around 1999 or 2000 or whenever.