Toys R’ Us 1996 CHRISTMAS CATALOG is gaming nostalgic bliss.

Friends, take a walk with me. We shall walk together through the land of gaming’s past. Here in the land, we shall appreciate those warm and fuzzy days when Sega was still producing consoles, Vectorman was dominating my friend Brian’s Genesis, and I was still firing blanks. It was 1996.

Kotaku:

Ah, 1996. The future, as the front cover of Toys R’ Us’ catalogue so boldly states, is here! Or…was there. And it was only really there for some of the systems involved (sorry, Sega Saturn!)

I love looking at these things. Not for the general nostalgic rush, but to see the individual games highlighted. Of the titles retailers thought would shift units that year, which ones do we still talk about today, and which had we stopped talking about by 1997.

That Saturn section, for example. Virtual On, Nights, Daytona…as good as the N64 and PlayStation were, if I had to go back and scoop up a bag’s worth of stuff, it’d be that Saturn section.

1996 [Save Room Mini Bar]