Walmart and the Genesis era...

[schuwalker]

I was heavy into the Genesis scene since it's release up to around the early '90s. For the life of me, I don't ever recall purchasing a Genesis era game at all from one of their stores. I got me to thinking... I don't even remember seeing any Sega stuff from them bitd. 

 

I asked about this before in passing in one of the other topics but never pursued it. I tried to look for any sales flyers from Walmart circa that era - they were non existent.

 

Anybody chime in and tell me their Walmart and Genesis tales? Maybe my local Walmarts were just too Nintendo centric - not sure

[Frozone212]

I think walmart still sells sega genesis stuff online

[Tanooki]

I was not into them, personal thing really and not targeted at them specifically but companies in general from the era that lied flat out to sell stuff, but I wasn't blind to it and eventually did get Sega in the mid upper 90s.

That said, I did vaguely remember them selling at all major chains so I did some poking about, and reading up into the history of video games the best shred of indirect evidence I could get was because of not it (Genesis) but the lousy Saturn.  Very specifically the god awful wrong way they launched that thing and dumped it on retail early and without warning.  Walmart, Target, KayBee, and Toys R Us all featured selling Sega 8/16bit consoles/handhelds through the first half of the 90s.  When Sega screwed them with the Saturn going in early, just basically showing up, and with more arrogant ad and display stuff with bluster and nearly no product to back it up they pissed these places off across the board.  Largely they stopped carrying sega in some cases in places, but more so just didn't make an effort to feature, highlight, or give them much shelf space let alone in premium eye catching spots.  They poked the bear, got their arms pulled off at the sockets for it.

 

Back in the day though Nintendo-centric did fit for TRU and Target, still kind of are today still with Target and now Walmart too because of the perks of displays, larger supplies and inventories etc.

 

Sales flyers aren't easy, not really sure why, other than Sega crapped the bed and fans never forgave so for like every 100 scraps of old catalog, monthly magazine, and weekly ad fliers you see for Nintendo, then you see a few for Sega and others in that like 1986-1996 time frame.  I know Sega Visions had ads all over theirs, maybe you'll find a walmart comment in that as they're PDF scanned on the archive org site and elsewhere.

[+Torrax]

Around 1996/7 my local WalMart was clearing out their old Genesis/SNES carts for $7 a pop. Snagged a bunch of the Genny carts for about $160/180 canadian bucks.  They did this clearance sale several times at the EOL of various game systems.  The last 5/6 years have been slim pickings though. And the electronics/video section has been reduced to a 1/4 of its original size.

[zylon]

In early 00's, I bought Ms Pacman, Frogger, and UMK3 there, $5 each. Summer of '21, I sold that still sealed UMK3 for $600. I bought a DC around same time, so it was around the smashpack bundle time period.