I suppose I've always been a purist, but I wasn't against the SEs at first. I had gotten into the trilogy when the '95 boxset came out and was crazy excited in '97 to see the SEs in theatres and to collect them on VHS when those came out. So I now had both, and I'd alternate between both of them, but I still saw the originals as the "real" movies and the SEs as a fun alternative, where I enjoyed picking out all the changes and new effects. And when the SEs came out on video, I immediately remembered the "One Last Time..." marketing slogan and put two and two together. But I was a kid then and didn't really understand the differences between home video and film. I figured VHS tapes lasted forever, so it was never going to be a big deal. And the quality was the same as in the theatres, right?

It was around 2000, when I'd become a bit older, a bit more educated, and the SE re-release happened, minus the term "Special Edition," that I got a sick feeling in my stomach realizing what was happening, and I began to resent the SEs for it. But it wasn't until soon after the '04 DVDs came out that I started looking for a way to get the original on DVD and found my way here. The rest is history.